Brno
9/2/70
Dear Mum and Dad,
Thank you for your holiday reply letter. I had one from Paula on the same day which was very nice.
.
Re your holiday; the last week in May- 1st week in June would suit us fine-. You can have a week in Prague and we can all go off the second week to the mountains where Dad can fish and we can walk and talk. I feel quite proud of Czechoslovakia now and I am looking forward to showing you around. I have just been today to get some brochures so we can choose the best route to follow. You must do the following things to arrive here in time:-
1st of all get a valid passport (takes about 3 weeks)
Also write to the Czech embassy for the visa application forms.
When your passport arrives send this plus the filled form, plus 2 passport photographs to the embassy and you should get a visa within 2 days. Put tourism as the purpose of your visit. Don’t worry about anything between
arriving and leaving Czechoslovakia- it will all be arranged.
Money? Have you enough for the air fare? If not we’ll pay. I am really looking forward to your visit- bring the cine camera and we will have some good films to remember it by.
It was lovely to go home to Prague last weekend and find our things had arrived. I played the record player and curled up in a big red blanket. The table clothes were really fabulous but I am sure they were very expensive- we must settle out accounts when you come here- I would write you a cheque but I know I have no money in the bank in England.
Last weekend we went to Austria to get the car mended. (the wing was crumpled the other week). I flew to Prague on Thursday and got my multi entry exit visa on Friday and we drove down to Linz on Friday afternoon. We spent the night in Linz and then did some shopping on Saturday morning and then drove to Vienna along the river Danube. We seem to specialise in rivers- the Rhine The Neckar, the Vltava and now the Danube. We stopped in a lovely Austrian village and explored a castle. It was a sunny day and we could just feel the first hint of Spring. There were lots of dogwood bushes along the river and there stems were really red.
I was not very impressed with Vienna at first. It is quite a nice city but I think I prefer Prague.
We went out for a meal with another 2 ICLers and their little girl. Lisa is 2 years old and very like Nicky with a will of her own. I spent most of dinner time building houses out of beer mats for her.
On Sunday we ‘did’ Vienna in our ‘true Fifield family fashion’. Unfortunately the Spanish riding school was closed because it was Sunday but normally you are allowed in to watch the training sessions. We went around an art gallery (Art nouveau) which we enjoyed but the whole architecture is very heavy Austrian. We had a real Chinese meal at dinner time- but not so good as in England. After dinner we drove up to the Vienna woods which are very nice except for the fact that all the Austrians had the same idea and we were driving bumper to bumper.
Austria is very expensive- it must have cost £30 for the weekend. I am hoping it will be easier to save money when we are both together in Prague.
We left the Daf in Vienna and Tony is collecting next Friday and driving to Brno for the weekend. As the following weekend we are going to the Ski championships we will not have a weekend in Prague for 5 weeks.
We had a letter from Tony’s mum for the first time last week!!! However it seems his father has been ill and off work for 4 weeks so I don’t expect Mrs F had time to write. She did not say what was wrong with him but I expect it was bronchitis as his chest has been bad all winter.
I just started knitting my sweater again- by the time I get it finished it will be summer time.
Tony and I will have a week’s holiday when you come so you will only be on your own for 5 days and there is plenty to do in Prague during that time. Also Chedok do several day trips from Prague to the surrounding countryside including some very interesting castles. We should have 7 days motoring round the country. I think we will plan a route and book hotels as I know what Dad is like if he doesn’t know where he is going to be sleeping at night. If you have any places you would like to visit after reading about them let me know and I will include them in the itinerary. Perhaps you would prefer to stay in one hotel in Slovakia and travel to different places of interest? (My husband’s a bit of a touring maniac and I don’t really agree with this as I get so tired of travelling I cease to notice the countryside). I will try and phone soon but it is more difficult now neither of us is living in a hotel.
Is Nanny well again?
A big kiss for pussy Nick
See you soon
Love Gillian and Tony
You can see we did not write about the Russians in our letters or put in anything derogatory about Czechoslovakia and the communist regime. We were warned by MI6 that our mail would be read and anything political would prevent the letter from being sent. It was a difficult time for the Czechs.
The first customer Tony was introduced to was the IT Director of CKD, one of the largest heavy engineering companies in Czechoslovakia. A one-time Jewish owned company established in the previous century, it was now state owned. Situated on a massive site in the outer suburbs of Prague, it was like many Czech organisations with old & grimy buildings and manufacturing equipment. If buildings were painted at all they were a uniform dull cream colour, produced (we speculated) in some vast factory in deepest USSR making the same dull yellow paint for just about all the buildings one ever saw. The facility had gradually turned a dirty grey/brown with the grime of decades, and the machinery would not have looked out of place in late Victorian Britain.
The next surprise compared with working in the UK was the high level of contact we would have. In CKD it was the Director of Computing compared with dealing with a senior programmer in the UK. He was a delightful, competent and cultivated man, who spoke excellent English. In the 1968 he had been attending a training course with ICL in the UK when the Russian Tanks had rolled into Czechoslovakia. He was unable to return to his homeland, and with only very limited hard currency to live on, life looked bleak. ICL were very supportive and found him a job with the Calor Gas Company in the UK (somewhere near London Airport I recall) in their computer centre.
However, as it transpired, the many months he spent in England served him well. At the same time the many anti-Communist/anti-Russian demonstrations were being secretly filmed by the authorities in Czechoslovakia. By the time he returned to Prague, not long before we arrived, an extensive purge was underway of anyone who could be identified as an anti-authority demonstrator in 1968. The purge was known locally as ‘The Provings’. Starting at the top of Government Ministries, the Universities, and all major organisations, a harsh inquisition process was carried out, person by person. If the secret film & photographs taken during the riots & demonstrations could show that an individual took part, they were immediately dismissed from their job, however senior. Since the State provided everyone with a job, and it was illegal not to work if you were capable & offered work (ultimately punishable by imprisonment), it was not uncommon to find people who were professors or directors one day becoming road sweepers or forestry workers the next. Amongst the Czech people this led to old scores being settled as people eager to protect themselves would denounce others as anti-communist demonstrators. We were frequently told by locals that they did not talk about the ‘Prague Spring’, even to members of their extended families for fear of being denounced and losing their jobs. It was a stressful time for many families.
By being marooned in the UK with a plausible reason for remaining there for a period (having to work and save enough hard currency to buy a return plane ticket), my friend, the CKD Director of Computing who wasn’t in the country to participate in any demonstrations retained his position. But later we would meet others not so lucky.
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