40 Years in Beer, Part Nineteen: Moscow skyline in twilight, 1989

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40 Years in Beer, Part Nineteen: Moscow skyline in twilight, 1989
Spliced-together panorama of Moscow in July, 1989 from atop the since demolished Hotel Rossiya.

Previously: 40 Years in Beer, Part Eighteen: In Ostrava, the beer of the people at the factory gates.

In the autumn of 1989 my travels led me back to lovely Prague, where I’d started the trip in June, back when the lovely continental weather encouraged t-shirts and tables in the shade. Now in September there was a nip in the air even on sunny days, and the locals already were bundling up.

Then it dawned on me that I hadn’t even considered the need for a winter coat.

At least Prague’s classic pubs stayed toasty, and the Czech beer was as good as ever. They were quiet places awash in venerable wood conditioned by decades of cigarette smoke, hushed like libraries, with clusters of drinkers seated at long tables conferring in low voices, almost whispering.

Summer was gone and there was something unusual in the air—murmurs, fidgeting, uneasiness. People seemed tense.

One morning the three of us were walking through Malostranské náměstí near Castle Hill when it gradually became apparent that we were hemmed in on all sides by perfectly stationary East German Trabant and Wartburg automobiles, packed two and three deep off the curb. Suitably for Prague, the onetime realm of Franz Kafka, the scene was inexplicable and puzzling.

After all, the tourist season had long since passed. Who were these out-of-season visitors, and how were they getting away with triple-parking?

Only later did we grasp that these cars, so difficult and time-consuming to obtain back home in Hoyeswerda or Leipzig, had been summarily abandoned by their drivers and passengers, who had climbed the fence of the West German embassy close by and squatted on the grounds, seeking to transform themselves as expeditiously as possible into former citizens of the GDR.

At pretty much the precise moment we were scratching our heads in confusion, they were being transported by sealed trains to West Germany, to be granted the desired asylum (and immediate citizenship). Their scrupulously cared-for automobiles stayed behind in Prague, waiting for someone to impound them.

It wasn’t as if we could grab a newspaper and read all about it, although had we been able to speak the language, it might have become apparent that the Czechoslovak regime was plenty annoyed at its fraternal socialist neighbor’s inability to control the behavior of its...Read more