REINHARD ENGEL
The Troublesome Road to Europe
T
HE TWISTS AND TURNS
of the events following
19
8
9
could best be
observed from Austria-a country with three socialist neigh–
bors. In August 1989, its foreign minister, in a joint action with
his Hungarian counterpart, opened the iron curtain to let East Germans
leave the Soviet Bloc. Other East European citizens soon followed-if
not for good, then at least for a brief vacation in the West. Thus Aus–
trians saw, for instance, the happy Czech family of Milan Sebek during
the summer of J990. Together with their three daughters, Mr. and Mrs.
Sebek sat on the terrace of a small bed-and-breakfast establishment in
Bad Dtirnburg near Sa lzburg. Evenings, they watched the bejeweled
guests of the music festival; during the day they hiked in the nearby
forests. The trip from their homeland, just then between the worlds of
communism and capitalism, did not yet follow the laws of the free mar–
ket. After spending three days in that bed-and-breakfast, they moved
into the two tents they had packed onto the roof of their Skoda car.
They used Austrian travelers' coupons to get the most for their money.
And finally, the owner of the pension gave them a special price, saying:
"I can see that they don't have any money."
Austrian experts on tourism looked at the situation more dispassion–
ately. According to the head of the Salzburg Association of Tourism,
"Of our
200,000
beds,
35,000
don't have showers in their rooms. So, if
some of these enterprises should close down a bit later, I don't care.
After all, these low-priced tourists don't do any damage."
The pleasure they took in their new-found freedom led the Sebeks to
overlook some of the bitter realities. They came as tolerated spectators
of the beautiful and the rich. They were the cheap customers in market
sectors already
4'
decline. And as working representatives of the middle
class, they were dependent, finally, upon the good graces of a landlady
who herself did not belong
to
the winners among her own compatriots.
These sobering facts were similar to the fate of the countries that
were pushed behind the iron curtain in 1947-48. Bohemia and Moravia,
EDITOR'S NOTE:
This essay is an abbreviated version of Part
J
from
Der
harte Weg nach Europa,
published by Deuticke in October 1999. The post–
script was added after Austria's subsequent elections.
