04-VII-1968.
On first we took of for the long trip to Warszawa and back. We in fića, Janči with Ilona and Aranka in his škodilak 1000MB (thousand small worries, „malih briga“, as the joke translated the MB), with roof racks mounted and loaded with tents and what gear we had. The plan was to buy the rest of it there, then go home, rest for a day, then go to Black sea for a real vacation.
The first stay was on Roman baths in Buda. This is not the first photo I ever made on my own as a freshly baked amateur, it's the second. The first one (with that bridge with lions, from Budai end) suffered somewhat in the lab, the narrower end of the film, which threads into the pulling spool, got partly stuck to it, so the upper two thirds are lighter, and anyway on many of the shots the developer didn't reach evenly. We didn't have proper developing doses, so we wound and rewound the negatives in the developer in a tray, trying to soak them equally, which didn't succeed for all the shots. I'll fix that soon, it's something that comes with practice, but there's no repeats, it's developed once with what luck it has.
(Aranka, Ilona, mom, in the camp)
We weren't camping rookies anymore, so we pitched up the tent rather quickly. This combination of pools and camp had its good sides, it's a nice forest, we could swim, and they had a playhouse with fussball and pinball. I got rather good with the former, gained some reflexes, I remember some Italian kid and I played against two Poles, and he called me „profesionali“. This may be the first time where I was alone with foreigners and managed, with what english and russian I put together.
We buzzed around town some, but how we got by the west railway station is beyond me. In Budapest, „around town“ means Pest, and this is Buda side. Looking at the sign, says „BP west RS“, they skimped on lettering.
On fourth we packed and went on the long trip from Budapest to Prague, via Vienna. We picked up the tents and everything rather early in the morning, and Janči stuck tightly to his schedule, as usual. He'd set the timetable and then got pissed off if we were late.
Drove to Vienna to visit a clothes-by-meter shop somewhere on Mexikoplatz and buy me a few things (didn't amount to much) and buy some česky koruna and polski złoty. The Austrian law allows anyone to trade in foreign currency; they simply don't care.
The traffic around Vienna was sort of nightmarish, long multiple columns which barely moved. And fića didn't have any fan - the ventillation was achieved by the butterfly windows, which worked excellently when it moved. When it stops, hell.
The ride through ČSSR took forever. At dusk, we were still driving slalom between nice country houses in the hills. Everybody was flashing us when they got closer. First we thought it was the solidarity of the fića drivers - just like the drivers of škodilaks greeted each other back home. Their fića was somewhat different - the hinges in front, better and larger headlights, and less decoration in front, so obviously not made in Kragujevac (probably made in Poland). But it wasn't only them who flashed us... so eventually we understood that that was a greeting. These people were happy to see us. It was the beginning of the last month (which nobody really knew it was) of the Prague spring. They recognized our license plates - with the red star between the city letters and the digits it was unmistakable. Yugoslavia was a non-aligned country, owing no allegiance to the Warsaw pact, and we supported the spring openly. Tito visited just a few weeks later (okay, six - 9th to 11th of august).
When we found the camp in Prague, it was night already. The soil was damp and grass was full of dew and we didn't really find a good location, but we stayed only one day anyway.
Mentions: Aranka Gnajs, fića, Ilona Gnajs, Janči Gnajs, škodilak, in serbian
2-X-2011 - 15-I-2026