I always enjoy reading Jackie Danicki’s blog, and she is currently on her first visit to a former Communist country, which brought to mind my own trips to the places in recovery from those years. In 2000 I flew to Prague, from which I did a round train trip through Budapest and Krakow. While in Krakow I took a bus to Zakopane in the Tatra mountains for a few days, and later the same year I spent a couple of weeks in Berlin.

To me, these were not just places I hadn’t been before, however interesting, although interesting they were. They were the other half of my continent, a half that had been invisible and inaccessible since before I was born. It took me ten years to get to them after the Iron Curtain finally dissolved, but then I found myself discovering something amazing, unsuspected and much, much bigger and older and more powerful than any temporary darkness could possibly destroy. It was dented, absolutely, but the sense of new growth and freedom seemed to me victorious in a way that was impossible to sense without going there. I found it incredibly exciting, and developed an almost desperate desire to go and live there, which was impossible for me at the time. I felt there was some clarity of vision that the West had forgotten about.

Imagine growing up in an America with a wall across the middle of it: your half is free, and the other half ruled by murderous dictatorships. Nobody goes in or out of the closed half, there is very little news from there, things have been like this since before you can remember and in your mind it barely even exists. Except that both sides are pointing nukes at each other.

more later