Over the mountains: My journey to Canada.: Ch 38: Czech tales.

I was eager to go to the Tisá Mountains to show Sue my old stomping grounds. My climbing club was still active and soon I ran into some of my old friends and climbing buddies. Incredibly, some had been climbing for more than twenty five years. I was eager to test my climbing skills and asked them to take me along to climb some easy routes. My legs were shaky, looking down made my head spin and clearly I was not in any climbing shape but I managed to climb some routes.

In the evening we went to our favorite pub. We used to go to the pub after a day of climbing to unwind and many times, after many beers, we would stagger late at night into the bivouac. This time however, we would just sip beer and reminisce but couldn’t get into the right mood. I guess we had mellowed with age.
Much of the time was spent debating life and politics in Czechoslovakia before and after the Velvet Revolution. My understanding of life under the Communists was outdated and by and large I remembered the good times of my climbing life. But many considered those years to be a Dark Age. “But you had free education, medical and dental care. Would you like to know how much it costs to rent an apartment in Canada?” I challenged them.
However they took these “Socialist privileges “for granted and complained that the Communist made it difficult to travel to West or buy the kind of car they liked. And free university? Only if you toed the party line. But after they got over their bitching, there was stuff they could brag about. Like the aircraft company Aero Vodochody that was making sleek L 39 military trainers and fighter jets for the Warsaw Pact. Boeing snapped up the company when it was privatized: “My cousin works there and told me what had happened after it was bought up: Boeing sent their experts to improve and modernize our production, to bring it to Boeing’s standards. They would walk up and down the production lines, clipboards in hands, making notes, talking to engineers and taking pictures. After a couple of weeks they came to some unexpected conclusions. There were hardly any improvements to be made; The Aero Company had higher standards than Boeing”.

Different comments came from Polda, the deputy Mayor of Ústí a big industrial city: “After the Revolution the country was swamped by various experts who wanted to teach the Czechs how to run the government. A few had good suggestions but many were sent by various NGO’s that had the impression that Czechoslovakia was a third world country. Three experts came to my office to teach us, among other things, about garbage collection and recycling. They were surprised to learn that we had been recycling since before the war”
Sue wanted to see a day care so Polda sent us to a city-run center. It was a Soviet-style day care with maybe thirty kids. When we arrived they were lining up their day cots for an afternoon nap. They were well behaved and Sue was impressed that the two year olds were already potty trained! The day care was very clean with many toys that Sue had never seen before. And the day care was free.
  When Škoda Auto, a Czech automobile manufacturer was privatized it was bought by Volkswagen. But instead of switching production to make VW cars, Škoda had such a good reputation that it was allowed to make cars under the Škoda name and to design its own line of cars. Anybody following Tour de France, the famous French bicycle race, would notice that Czech Škodas had been the official cars of the race for many years.
However there many examples of how badly managed the country was. The most shocking case greeted us when we arrived to Tisá. Instead of a thriving pine forest that I had remembered well, we saw only dead trees as far as the eye could see. It was easy to figure out what had killed them: Acid rain. The region had big deposits of brown coal and the government excavated it in giant open-pit mines. Some mines were so big and deep that huge trucks crawling down at the bottom looked like toys. And way out in the distance, coal burning power plants generating electricity were spewing smoke laded with acid rain from tall smokestacks. Some mines were being closed down because of the pollution and the open pits would be converted into lakes and recreation areas, but it would take many years before pine forest regenerated.

  There was another big surprise awaiting me in Tisá. Out of the blue, my old climbing buddy Eda arrived from Germany. It was Eda who had talked me into escaping with him during our climbing trip to Yugoslavia. He wanted to follow his brother Hans who had escaped the year before. And Eda was not alone; his brother was visiting all the way from New Zealand. So, after some twenty five years our lives came full circle.
We had a lot of things to talk about. Eda told me why he had changed his mind and went back to Czechoslovakia, leaving Franta and I high and dry in the Slovenian mountains: His mother was German and she had petitioned the government to be allowed to move with her family to Germany. When her son Hans skipped the country, her application was in trouble; the communist government didn’t look kindly on a family of refugees. After we arrived to Yugoslavia and the excitement had died down, Eda realized that his family would not be allowed to immigrate. But he was worried about telling us why he had changed his mind, because he wasn’t sure how Franta and I would react. It certainly was a good idea that he had returned. Within two years he immigrated with his family to West Germany and was then able to come many times for a visit. His brother Hans and I had to wait for twenty five years.

However we all had one question on our minds. What happened to Franta? He had escaped with me but immigrated to the States. We had kept in touch and met several times. After the Berlin Wall came down, all the “refugees” that had skipped the country illegally (we were now called immigrants) came back, some for a visit, others to stay. Franta never showed up.
When I had last seen him, some ten years previously, he was driving a bus for a touring company in Seattle. Many times excursions took him to Yosemite or other famous climbing areas. “I keep my climbing gear in the bus. When we stay overnight for a couple of days I try to hook up with other climbers. Sometimes I climb solo” I couldn’t believe it. Climbing solo is dangerous; Franta was taking a big risk. But he was a fatalist and shrugged off my warnings. “What is supposed to happen will happen”. This was the last time I spoke with him.
We had exchanged a couple of letters but all of a sudden my letters were not being answered and his telephone was eventually disconnected. Some years later, I Googled his house in Seattle. The windows were boarded up and a FOR SALE sign confirmed that Franta had disappeared. On the Internet I found when he had immigrated to the States, when he got his citizenship and that he had changed his name from Franta Buk to Frank Buck. I have searched some death records but the trail went cold. Franta had vanished.

This is the last chapter of my escape story and new beginning in Canada. I have visited my old country with Sue many times and we always had a good time. After taking an early retirement we sold our house in Collingwood, bought a truck and boat trailer our sailboat to British Columbia and then to Mexico. We spent many winters in Mexico camping and sailing the Sea of Cortez. Maybe one day I will be able to write about our adventures (there were some) travelling
around Mexico.