Leaving the Iron Curtain behind. (Part III)
The departure time has been nearing and we rushed beforehand to the depot to get our suitcases from the storage and repack them, to put away everything, what we can leave behind, in an order just to make sure the luggage weight won’t exceed the required 77 lb.
Besides the suitcases, we were not allowed to carry anything bigger than a handbag. So I had to leave my winter coat, it was heavy and taking up too much space, our summer shoes, some of daughter’s light clothing and my husband’s kind of sporty suit, that I sewed from his mom and dad’s summer coats, and of which he was very fond, as a memory of his parents.
The suitcases had been so tightly packed, that there was not a free inch of space left.
Eventually, the time for custom’s inspection has arrived, and we dragged our suitcases and bags through a control post into a big hall. The large open room was unremarkable, save for a huge, taking a whole wall, mural depicting a heroic work of Soviet people. The customs officers were staying near several long tables and rummaging through the laid out suitcases.
Mark remained in the crowd of people seeing off their relatives and friends. Interestingly, now, when all so called "illegals" got together in one place, nobody was asking for documents and trying to deport them, most certainly understanding the senselessness of such actions.
We approached the long table, a customs officer checked out our documents, and then, to our extreme surprise, fixed his stare on us and asked:
- Do you carry drugs, weapons and ammunition?
Who in the sane mind, under such circumstances, would try to smuggle the undeclared objects, when even allowed items have been going through such scrutiny, that you are not certain as to whether you will be permitted to cross the border with them?
Of course, we had nothing even close resembling this things, and opened our meticulously packed suitcases. The officer came to the first suitcase, examined it from different angles for a double bottom, and then started to throw out on the table everything what was so carefully laid in the suitcase, tearing up the wrapping of the store packed blanket covers and bed sheets, shaking them out, probing each item.
We had nothing to hide. We, just, did not have that much money to buy something valuable for retail abroad.
Nevertheless the customs officer had found something to get hold of. We were carrying three photo-cameras Zenith TTL. They were the most expensive items we have had. At the store each camera cost approximately of 2 months salary of an engineer, but they have been obtained through connections and at a double of the store price. On their sale we have held our biggest hopes to add something to the family budget, which consisted of the insignificant sum of $300.
But the customs officer has put aside one of the cameras, saying that is not allowed for a child.
There was no sense to argue with him, we already were glad, that, at least, we have somebody to whom we can pass it. We were allowed to give all banned stuff to Mark, and he, later, brought it to my husband’s aunts.
Finishing with one suitcase, the man began to pull apart the contents of the second one, and I was permitted quickly to pack up what was already checked up. Of course, it was simply impossible to fold neatly the bed sheets and all things in 5 minutes, but thankfully, I followed the suggestion of wise people to get a couple of old pillowcases just in case. We put all, what did not fit in the suitcases, into big fabric bags, made by me for such occasion.
.
At the same time a drama has started to unfold at the table next to us.
There has been emigrating a young family with five-years old child. The family, probably, was well-to-do, of what the customs officers, certainly, have been informed, and therefore have began a zealous search of that something in what the family had invested their money.
Not merely did they slash the covers of suitcases, but husband and wife with child had been sent to different rooms for a personal examination.
The examination included not only a complete undressing, but also a gynecological inspection for a "contraband" smuggling in intimate apertures of the body, and they did not make an exeption for the small child. I don't know how correct and decent were people, who were doing such exploratory check-ups, but the young woman came out of this room hysterically sobbing.
It was not dificult to understand why people, whose crime was only in wanting to leave the country, had to go through such humiliation. An attitude of this kind from the officials towards the emigrating had already surprised and outraged nobody - this is what was expected from the System, which was still trying, even at the very last moment, at least psychologically to spit in the faces of those, who dared to get out from under its influence.
Nonetheless, people were embarrassingly averting their eyes, and for me, too, felt somehow awkward even to cast a glance at the crying woman. Her husband helplessly stood by her side, not daring to voice a slightest protest, unable to defend the loved one from such disgrace, while she was soothing choking with sobs toddler, who, probably, understood nothing, but has been very frightened by everything that had occurred.
With a sinking heart I was expecting us to be asked, too, to go to this awful room with a gynecologic chair, and was fevereshly trying to think up an innocent explanation for my daughter, why she will need to lay down on the table and to show her intimate parts of the body to the strangers in uniform.
In a mean time she was staying by our side, drinking carbonated water from a bottle, totally oblivious to the prospective drama.
To our relieve the custom's information system has been put on an adequate level, they already, in advance, saw into the financial conditions of the leaving, and knew perfectly well whom to search, and whom - not.
My husband has been carefully probed all over.They have found on a lapel his marine colledge pin , and have taken it away, but did not bother themselves with myand daughter and me.
The train was already staying at the platform, but still a lot of people with suitcases were waiting for the custom inspection, so they ordered us to sweep all our belonging from the table to clear out the place for a check up of the following family.
We heaved our suitcases and the bags to the platform, where was the same confusion and chaos as, probably, has been during an evacuation at the time of the war. People were hauling their belongings along the cars in hope to find empty seats.
The train was formed of suburban railroad cars with numbered benches for 3 seats on both sides of the car's interior, but on the tickets the numbers of seats were not specified, and one, who was quicker, has got the seats.
Everybody was trying to grab the seats first, pushing away others. Sometimes a bigger family was piling up their luggage on two facing each other benches, and other people have been left without seats, arranging themselves on the suitcases in a pass-through space in the middle of the car. There was no one to complain about unfairness, and arguments were flaring up over and over again. People’s nerves were already on its breaking point.
However, in my mind still lingers an image of one family, as I have been told, the dentists, loading in the car almost 30 bursting at the seams light blue suitcases, filling up with them the seats intended for sitting. They, probably, so well had greased the palm of someone from the custom’s heads, that they had been allowed to take much more, than the oficially permitted weight, and they felt themselves as sole owners of the car.
We run along the platform with our luggage to the end of the train, and with us other people were running too. Nobody cared for no one, if you fall, they just would run by.
We did not found a free bench, and loaded our luggage into the next to last car. Some kind people cramped themselves up in order to free two seats for us.
We were still trying to cram our suitcases in a tight space, as the train has pulled from the station. Outside the car’s window passed by stern, unsmiling faces of border guards, armed with machine guns, buildings, houses… columnar poplars, gilded by the evening’s sun, so integral with the image of generous, sunny Ukraine...
Then the USSR boundary post has flown by … that's all!!
We are outside of the Soviet Union. Outside the Iron Curtain.
Farewell, Russia!
Farewell, my Motherland!
Ahead is an unknown and frightening new life.
Besides the suitcases, we were not allowed to carry anything bigger than a handbag. So I had to leave my winter coat, it was heavy and taking up too much space, our summer shoes, some of daughter’s light clothing and my husband’s kind of sporty suit, that I sewed from his mom and dad’s summer coats, and of which he was very fond, as a memory of his parents.
The suitcases had been so tightly packed, that there was not a free inch of space left.
Eventually, the time for custom’s inspection has arrived, and we dragged our suitcases and bags through a control post into a big hall. The large open room was unremarkable, save for a huge, taking a whole wall, mural depicting a heroic work of Soviet people. The customs officers were staying near several long tables and rummaging through the laid out suitcases.
Mark remained in the crowd of people seeing off their relatives and friends. Interestingly, now, when all so called "illegals" got together in one place, nobody was asking for documents and trying to deport them, most certainly understanding the senselessness of such actions.
We approached the long table, a customs officer checked out our documents, and then, to our extreme surprise, fixed his stare on us and asked:
- Do you carry drugs, weapons and ammunition?
Who in the sane mind, under such circumstances, would try to smuggle the undeclared objects, when even allowed items have been going through such scrutiny, that you are not certain as to whether you will be permitted to cross the border with them?
Of course, we had nothing even close resembling this things, and opened our meticulously packed suitcases. The officer came to the first suitcase, examined it from different angles for a double bottom, and then started to throw out on the table everything what was so carefully laid in the suitcase, tearing up the wrapping of the store packed blanket covers and bed sheets, shaking them out, probing each item.
We had nothing to hide. We, just, did not have that much money to buy something valuable for retail abroad.
Nevertheless the customs officer had found something to get hold of. We were carrying three photo-cameras Zenith TTL. They were the most expensive items we have had. At the store each camera cost approximately of 2 months salary of an engineer, but they have been obtained through connections and at a double of the store price. On their sale we have held our biggest hopes to add something to the family budget, which consisted of the insignificant sum of $300.
But the customs officer has put aside one of the cameras, saying that is not allowed for a child.
There was no sense to argue with him, we already were glad, that, at least, we have somebody to whom we can pass it. We were allowed to give all banned stuff to Mark, and he, later, brought it to my husband’s aunts.
Finishing with one suitcase, the man began to pull apart the contents of the second one, and I was permitted quickly to pack up what was already checked up. Of course, it was simply impossible to fold neatly the bed sheets and all things in 5 minutes, but thankfully, I followed the suggestion of wise people to get a couple of old pillowcases just in case. We put all, what did not fit in the suitcases, into big fabric bags, made by me for such occasion.
.
At the same time a drama has started to unfold at the table next to us.
There has been emigrating a young family with five-years old child. The family, probably, was well-to-do, of what the customs officers, certainly, have been informed, and therefore have began a zealous search of that something in what the family had invested their money.
Not merely did they slash the covers of suitcases, but husband and wife with child had been sent to different rooms for a personal examination.
The examination included not only a complete undressing, but also a gynecological inspection for a "contraband" smuggling in intimate apertures of the body, and they did not make an exeption for the small child. I don't know how correct and decent were people, who were doing such exploratory check-ups, but the young woman came out of this room hysterically sobbing.
It was not dificult to understand why people, whose crime was only in wanting to leave the country, had to go through such humiliation. An attitude of this kind from the officials towards the emigrating had already surprised and outraged nobody - this is what was expected from the System, which was still trying, even at the very last moment, at least psychologically to spit in the faces of those, who dared to get out from under its influence.
Nonetheless, people were embarrassingly averting their eyes, and for me, too, felt somehow awkward even to cast a glance at the crying woman. Her husband helplessly stood by her side, not daring to voice a slightest protest, unable to defend the loved one from such disgrace, while she was soothing choking with sobs toddler, who, probably, understood nothing, but has been very frightened by everything that had occurred.
With a sinking heart I was expecting us to be asked, too, to go to this awful room with a gynecologic chair, and was fevereshly trying to think up an innocent explanation for my daughter, why she will need to lay down on the table and to show her intimate parts of the body to the strangers in uniform.
In a mean time she was staying by our side, drinking carbonated water from a bottle, totally oblivious to the prospective drama.
To our relieve the custom's information system has been put on an adequate level, they already, in advance, saw into the financial conditions of the leaving, and knew perfectly well whom to search, and whom - not.
My husband has been carefully probed all over.They have found on a lapel his marine colledge pin , and have taken it away, but did not bother themselves with myand daughter and me.
The train was already staying at the platform, but still a lot of people with suitcases were waiting for the custom inspection, so they ordered us to sweep all our belonging from the table to clear out the place for a check up of the following family.
We heaved our suitcases and the bags to the platform, where was the same confusion and chaos as, probably, has been during an evacuation at the time of the war. People were hauling their belongings along the cars in hope to find empty seats.
The train was formed of suburban railroad cars with numbered benches for 3 seats on both sides of the car's interior, but on the tickets the numbers of seats were not specified, and one, who was quicker, has got the seats.
Everybody was trying to grab the seats first, pushing away others. Sometimes a bigger family was piling up their luggage on two facing each other benches, and other people have been left without seats, arranging themselves on the suitcases in a pass-through space in the middle of the car. There was no one to complain about unfairness, and arguments were flaring up over and over again. People’s nerves were already on its breaking point.
However, in my mind still lingers an image of one family, as I have been told, the dentists, loading in the car almost 30 bursting at the seams light blue suitcases, filling up with them the seats intended for sitting. They, probably, so well had greased the palm of someone from the custom’s heads, that they had been allowed to take much more, than the oficially permitted weight, and they felt themselves as sole owners of the car.
We run along the platform with our luggage to the end of the train, and with us other people were running too. Nobody cared for no one, if you fall, they just would run by.
We did not found a free bench, and loaded our luggage into the next to last car. Some kind people cramped themselves up in order to free two seats for us.
We were still trying to cram our suitcases in a tight space, as the train has pulled from the station. Outside the car’s window passed by stern, unsmiling faces of border guards, armed with machine guns, buildings, houses… columnar poplars, gilded by the evening’s sun, so integral with the image of generous, sunny Ukraine...
Then the USSR boundary post has flown by … that's all!!
We are outside of the Soviet Union. Outside the Iron Curtain.
Farewell, Russia!
Farewell, my Motherland!
Ahead is an unknown and frightening new life.