Thirty years ago today, I woke up in a train compartment -- an overnight sleeper- - in Brest-Litvosk, USSR*. Now it’s known as Brest, Belarus, but on that morning, Belarus didn’t exist. It was just a featureless steppe transited in the dark on the way to Warsaw from Moscow. The outlines of its heroic cities—Minsk, Smolensk – were still obscured by the cold war. Brest-Litvosk was the end of the line for Soviet trains.
I was travelling with a British circus performer and a man who in subsequent years would become my husband, and much later, my ex-husband. We had been living in Warsaw, doing what the young, unskilled and dissolute did in those days: testing boundaries, teaching English, working for newspapers, working on film sets, performing in Polish circuses. Everyone else had gone to Prague that year. Warsaw was the frumpier option that no one went to.
We had spent the weekend visiting Moscow. It was so great! We ate in McDonalds and Pizza Hut – chains that had not yet opened in Warsaw and appealed to the deprived. We visited the Ismailovsky market and the USSR Exposition center, and stayed in a massive Intourist hotel organized by Orbis, the wobbly Communist-era Polish travel agency.
I don’t remember much else. That I don’t have the photos from that trip -- film, bien sûr – is a constant source of irritation.
I do remember, as if was yesterday, our anxious arrival at the border train station. We had overstayed our visas by a day. Therefore, we’d also missed our Intourist-ticketed train to Warsaw. This was not, at that time, a minor hassle for Americans and Brits. We set off to see what could be done about it, not noticing what mobs of people were watching on station TVs at 7am on a Tuesday.
Also, none of us noticed that our visa problem was not the biggest concern of Soviet border guards that morning, which is probably the only reason the issue was resolved with only minor suffering on our part. Hours later, we pushed through the crowds and onto a train leaving for Warsaw. In my first experience of “throwing money at a problem,” I gave a train conductor 5 USD, a princely sum to both of us, for three seats on the Warsaw train. What a relief! Out of the USSR!
When we arrived to our flat in Warsaw, the phone was ringing. It was my mother. Unscheduled incoming international calls were unheard of at that time. She knew we had been in Moscow and noted we we hadn’t arrived back. She had persisted.
“WHAT ARE THE PEOPLE DOING?” she shouted. “Uh, you know. Acting like normal people, I guess.” “WHAT WAS IT LIKE?” “Long lines, empty shelves. They were right about that part, actually.” YOU DON’T KNOW DO YOU?
Nope, we didn’t know. Not a clue. She filled in the details for us, with the confidence of someone who was sure Soviet tanks were on their way to Warsaw.
We didn’t have a TV. We went downtown to the Warsaw Marriott – an oasis of serenity of the kind I have come to value over subsequent years – and watched the tanks on Moscow streets on TV. We’d missed everything. The present became the future while we were sitting on the border of a country that wouldn’t exist for six more days.
*Props to those of you thinking, “doesn’t she have any other stories?” Thanks for paying attention!