last post 12th March

Sunday 12^th March 1972

Dear Mum and Dad

It was lovely to speak to you both on Friday. It seems so long since I saw you but it is only a couple of months. I am getting spoilt now with all my planned trips to England. It has been beautifully warm all week, just like spring but last night it started to rain and then to snow and it has been snowing all day today. I hope it does not delay Tony’s plane which is due at 8.10 this evening.

I am getting excited about our move to Holland. It will be wonderful to have the shops and conveniences of the west and be able to phone you more often.

I want to be very firm about this holiday if you come to stay with us in April. I am quite prepared to pay the air fare. I think it would be far quicker and easier for you to go by plane. I would love to see you both again and give you a nice holiday so it is quite selfish that I want you to come so it is only fair if I pay.  After all you must save your money for your trip to America. I hope our furniture will arrive by then otherwise you may find yourself sleeping on the floor! I think you will like Holland as it is a very interesting country with plenty to see and do.

I have been quite busy since Tony has been away. Frano K. and Terry C. have been looking after me so I have not been too lonely. Their daughter Iana is lovely now. She is nine months old and such an intelligent child, smiling and laughing all the time. I went there last Saturday and succeeded in locking myself out of the car. I managed to break in next day using a piece of wire. I am glad the Bulgarians don’t realise how easy it is to open the car as it would have been stolen by now!

I also started writing a book last weekend and wrote about 12 pages but have not done any more since. I felt quite inspired to write down our experiences in Eastern Europe but I don’t think anyone would ever publish it. I met some of Tanya K.’s friends on Saturday and they were not typical Bulgarians being artists, a cartoonist and a journalist- quite the artistic elite and very interesting people. One of the artists invited us both to go and look at his paintings one day. On Monday I went to see a film at the American embassy ‘There was a crooked man’ quite a good Western. On Tuesday I went round to Terry C. and Tanya’s for a meal and played cards. Wednesday was international Women’s day and we bought some champagne to celebrate. Dancha gave me an embroidered cloth she had made herself. In the evening I went round to Terry C.’s and Tanya’s flat for dinner and we all went out to a new Bulgarian film ‘the horn of the goat’. It was mainly silent with only 5 sentences of dialogue so I could understand it OK.

Thursday I went to dinner with Carol.N  as her husband, John was also in the UK. 

Friday I stayed at home! Saturday I had two secretaries from the Austrian embassy to dinner and then afterwards we went to the American embassy to see the film. Gusty and Rosemary are very nice. Gusty is going back to Vienna next month to marry one of the USA marines who was in Sofia for a year. At the embassy I saw Paul (the one American lecturer with a Japanese wife). His wife has gone back to Japan to have another baby so I expect we will invite him round for a meal. They are a very nice couple. I must say travelling around Europe you do meet some very interesting people. The problem is keeping in contact with them when you leave to go to another country. I hope we will have a lot of visitors in Holland as it is conveniently on the route between England and Eastern Europe.

The customers here still don’t know we are leaving yet and keep making me a lot of work. There is still no one to take our place but we hope someone will arrive in the next two weeks.

I had a very flattering telex from Vic C. this week thanking me for going to Bratislava. The customer there wrote a letter saying how useful my visit was for them and praising my work. I now have difficulty getting through the door my head is so big (taking after my mum) but I am careful not to brag about it at work as some people are jealous anyway.

I am glad Nanny is better and she liked her Brandy.

Give our love to everyone

Gillian and Tony

Ps. Thanks for the letter which arrived today. Tony has returned safely- only a bit tired after travelling. The new address is

30, Reigerslaan

Voorhout

Holland

Our adventure behind the iron curtain was at an end. We came away with a different view of communism than that held by the majority of people in the West. We could see the good and the bad in the system. The bad included the lack of freedom of speech, the rigid control of industry with unachievable quotas and unrealistic expectations. There was no motivation to work hard or progress because of the very flat pay system. Both parents had to work to survive and children were often brought up by grandparents or spent long hours in nurseries.  Flats were small and cramped and often identical. The ruling elite became an oligarchy based on who you knew or were related to, rather than on merit and party members had privileges not given to the ordinary citizen. People were not allowed to travel or consider any other ideas that contradicted communism and citizens were spied on by the secret police if they had any Western leanings. There was censorship and terrible architecture. Religion was suppressed. The shops had varying and minimal goods, often only selling basic commodities and the transport and provision of frozen food was still rudimentary.  People queued for food at times especially in Prague. Roads were in a bad state of repair.

On the good side, everyone had a roof over their heads and a job. Education and the health service were free. Sport facilities were excellent and promoted for everyone. People did not work very hard and had lots of holidays. The arts, opera, ballet, plays were affordable. There was less materialism and more community and networking among the population. People valued their friends and family and simpler pleasures such as skiing, walking and being out in the countryside. They also enjoyed meeting together in the pubs and bars though we did not see much alcoholism in either Prague or Sofia. (Unlike Moscow and East Germany).

Communist countries were very different from each other, reflecting a longer history and national characteristics were apparent in spite of communism. We felt much more at home in Czechoslovakia than in Bulgaria.

The other thing we learned is that people are people everywhere, some friendly and honest , others prejudiced and unfriendly. We met some lovely Bulgarians and Czechs as well as some who were aggressive and xenophobic.

We also had a different perspective on our home Nation and its merits and shortcomings. We travelled widely through Germany, Greece, Turkey and France. We saw some things which were better than in the UK and some that were worse. Overall the experience was one that shaped our ideas and our view of the world and we both look back on our time in EasternEurope as an important life changing period which to some extent shaped our future.

No more letters for the blog ‘behind the iron curtain’.  We still have letters from our time in Holland and Pakistan to share with the world. But that is a project for a bit later on this year when we have had time to type them up!

march 1972

March 1972

Dear Mum and dad,

Thank you for the letter. I am sorry I have not written for so long but I have been trying to catch up on the letter I owe to other people so I am afraid you have been rather neglected. Also I have had a bad cold since returning from Amsterdam but I am much better now.

Tony is going to England on Thursday via Amsterdam so he will post this when he reaches London. I expect you will be seeing him in the next couple of weeks.

It looks as if we will be moving at the end of next month. We had a telex from ICL Holland to say they have found us an unfurnished house in Amsterdam for rent. So Tony will stop and look at it on the way to England. If suitable we will have our furniture shipped there and then Tony will drive the Daf back to Holland with the belongings we have left with you and then fly back to Sofia. We are quite excited about the prospect of living in Amsterdam as it is a very interesting city – full of life. I hope we will be settled in for mum’s winter holiday as it would be nice to have you visiting us.

We went to Greece last weekend and it rained solidly the whole time. We went down to Kavalla visiting Philippi on the way-where St Paul preached. Kavalla is a nice little town even in the rain. And we had some nice meals of squid and crayfish as well as steak and spaghetti. We went to the pictures Saturday night and saw ‘The Statue’ which was the only English film showing. It was quite amusing with David Niven and Napoleon Solo.

It is getting boring now in Sofia as we are just waiting for someone to take over from us so we can leave. Of course ICL are messing everything up as usual but we are getting use to that by now.

I think I had better not write any more as Tony will tell you all the news when he sees you. I will remind him to bring the brandy for Nanny and I will try and buy something for auntie Kath tomorrow.

I am glad mum’s literary tastes are developing. We have several Steinbecks and Durrells here you can read. I have just started a book on Tutankhamen which is interesting. Hope I shall see you soon

Love from both of us

Gillian and Tony

The Daf was left in the UK and the aim was to register it in the UK and finally obtain a log book. We spent a great deal of our life driving around in cars which had the steering wheel on the wrong side for the country we were living in. I guess it made us more careful drivers and less likely to overtake.

Tony rejected the Amsterdam house and was shown a possible house to rent in Voorhout, just inland from Noordvijk, only a few miles from the sea  and convenienty situated between Amsterdam and The Hague. It was a three bedroomed terraced house with a small garden, a definite improvement on the small flats we lived in behind the iron curtain. The only similarity with Prague was the fact there was no bath , only a wet room. The other difficulty was that it was unfurnished but ICL agree to pay for our furniture to be shipped from storage in England. We looked forward to getting our own meagre belongings reunited with us after over two years in furnished rented accommodation.

.

The experience of living in Eastern Europe made us far less dependent on television than if we had stayed in the UK. We did not buy our first TV set until 1978- after eleven years of marriage. Reading was our mainstay, though finding English books in Prague or Sofia was not easy and we would stock up on titles every time we were somewhere with an English bookshop. It often led us to read authors we would have otherwise not tried. We also played a great deal of cards and dice in Bulgaria learning many new games. They were useful when playing with multilingual groups with no language in common. Gill was also a big fan of scrabble and would ask any visitors from ICL back to her flat for a game.  We remember one sad occasion when an ICL employee from Putney headquarters visited us to sort out an administration problem. Mr M was of Irish descent and enjoyed his evening with us playing scrabble. He had a really bad cold but insisted on carrying on working and left Bulgaria to travel to Russia on another task.

The next time we were in London we were shocked to find out he had died of pneumonia. His cold had got worse but he refused to take time off and when he finally went to the doctor it was too late for the antibiotics to work. One of the engineers Jim M also had pneumonia whilst he was in Sofia and we visited him in hospital to keep his spirits up. These incidents made us aware that dedication to work should not take precedence over the need to look after your health.

8th february 1972

Hotel Devin

Bratislava

8/02/1972

Dear Mum and Dad

As you can see from the paper I am back in Czechoslovakia again. I arrived in Vienna last Monday and met Andrea L. there. We had a nice day shopping and then came to Bratislava Tuesday evening. Andrea drove on to Prague. The work has been interesting so far and not too difficult. The only problem is getting up at 5.45 to get to work by 7 am. However they finish work at 3.00pm so I have lots of spare time in the evening. I spent the weekend in Prague- it was lovely to see the city again Charles Bridge and the Old Town Square. I stayed with Andrea .L. and V.L and we went our skiing on a small slope near their house. It was enjoyable as there were not many people there to show me up and I mastered going down slowly without falling. The snow was soft anyway so I had a soft landing. We spent a lot of time talking and catching up with the news. Tony had not heard anything about the Amsterdam job yet but is hoping to be contacted next week. He has wrangled a trip to Prague this weekend so we shall be together on Thursday evening and return to Sofia the following Thursday. We shall be looking up our Czech friends over the weekend.

I got all your birthday cards before I left for Bratislava which is amazing considering the postal system. I hope the Daf is behaving itself. It looks as though we may be collecting it sooner than we thought. Has the log book arrived yet?

I had a letter from Jane M and she married in Zambia and is now Jane. W. She is visiting the UK with her new husband at the moment.

How is Dad enjoying his retirement? I expect he will be busy in the garden so I will expect a good show of flowers next time I visit.

Give my love to Paula David and family I will write to them soon and to you as soon as I get more details of the new job.

Lots of love to you and Nanny.

Gillian

After writing this letter we were given a trip to Amsterdam to meet the country manager and staff in Holland and get some background on the customers there. We remember staying at the Polska hotel in Amsterdam and being overwhelmed by the bustle and commercialism of Holland. The Dam square was full of hippies selling homemade silver jewellery and strumming guitars. The whole town appeared to be singing. We went round the red light district to see the famous ladies sitting in their windows. In spite of the lack of an organised religion, the communist countries were very prudish as seen in the censorship of miniskirts. It gave them a sort of moral superiority to talk about the ‘decadent West’. The sheer availability of goods and products was overwhelming. The restaurants offered a variety of food and you did not have to wait hours to get your dinner. In Sofia we usually resorted to playing cards or dice while waiting for our meals because the service was so bad.

When we first went to Eastern Europe it was because there was a desparate need for a system 4 programmer in Brno- the previous one having been deported for taking part in a demonstration against the Russian invasion. In fact they had only been out shopping when the demonstration occurred, but it was convenient to blame foreign agitators for the unrest.  Tony was given a job in Prague so we were both employed. This time it was Tony who was needed to manage a difficult site in Holland who were 1900 users.  He was needed to project manage the site and address their grievances. There were no Systems Four computers in Holland so Gill had to retrain as a George 2 expert. Gill was sent on a 1900 PLAN programming course and a George 2 course so she could become an instant expert.  Gill was allocated to an Insurance customer in The Hague, whilst Tony’s customer was the Amsterdam City council whose computer was at the town of Amstelveen. This caused a bit of a dilemma on where to live as the two cities are about 30 miles apart. At that stage we did not realise how good the rail and bus services were in Holland, plus the tram network in both cities.

27th January 1972

27/01/72

Dear Mum and dad

Sorry I have not written for so long. As usual we have been busy. Things happen very quickly here and I am sorry to say I won’t be coming to England in March. Yesterday Vic C phones to say he needed someone to go to Czechoslovakia next week and that I was requested. I am just waiting to phone A. L and confirm the details. The problem is at our site in Bratislava but they need someone for two months which means I will have to cancel my course in England. This is not as bad as it sounds as I shall be doing a week in Bratislava  and a week here so I shall still see Tony some of the time.

The other startling news that Vic imparted yesterday is that there is a strong possibility of a job in Amsterdam for both Tony and I starting at the beginning of April. We have not got the details but the idea of living in Holland for a while is strongly appealing especially as it will be easy for you to visit us from there. We will let you know when we have more information. Quite appropriate a Holland (Gill’s maiden name) going to Holland.

We are quite excited about both possibilities. I am pleased to be visiting Czechoslovakia again and hope I may be able to fit in a visit to Prague and visit old friends there. The work should also be interesting but difficult as the customer is very anti ICL at present and I have the task of changing that attitude.

I expect we will need to come to England sometime in the next two months to settle the details of the job in Holland and see if it is suitable.

Thank you for the birthday cards. I had one from Paula and from Auntie Dorothy as well. I had a quiet day on Monday but we were busy over the weekend. Saturday we went to a Jazz concert with Frano and Tanya and then for a meal at the Budapest restaurant. On Sunday we went up the mountains with Terry and Tanya and Tanya’s sister and son and walked for about two hours in the snow and sun. There is a fair amount of snow on the mountain but we have had only a few showers in town which have not settled but it has been very cold. Afterwards we went back to Terry’s flat and had a meal and played cards. We have had several ICL visitors from England and have been entertaining them.

I have just spoken with Andrea on the phone and I shall fly to Vienna on Monday and meet her there. I shall probably spend two weeks in Bratislava at first and then see how things go. So don’t be surprised if you get a letter from me from Czechoslovakia. The alarm clock you bought me should come in very useful.

Everyone likes my new hairstyle but I am afraid I have started smoking again after three weeks abstinence. It may be easier to stop when I leave the strain of living in Bulgaria behind me.

I had better close now as someone is going to England tomorrow and can post this letter for me.

Love from both of us

Xxxxx

Gillian and Tony

Christmas in Bulgaria was fun as most of the ICL staff did not go home for Christmas. However the festival was hardly celebrated by the Bulgarians as religion was very much discouraged during the communist regimes. They chose to celebrate New Year rather than Christamas. It was quite a challenge trying to find the usual Christmas food and presents. A trip to Greece always helped when we needed to stock up on goodies not available in Bulgaria.

While we were in Brighton in January we had the usual talk from MI5 about the dangers of fraternising with the natives and being used unwittingly for espionage purposes. However the British embassy was not against using us for their own purposes when it suited them. It was usually the cultural attaché who would put in these requests; innocent sounding requests to look for a bridge or a lake not on a map; or to count the number of telegraph poles between two points. They also asked us to note if an area ran out of four star petrol. This usually meant that the area in questions was expecting to hold some sort of tank movement or military exercise and had requisitioned all the higher grade petrol for that purpose. The ICL engineers were more likely to receive such requests as they more often or not drove to their clients carrying heavy spare parts which would cost a lot to transport on a plane. In this way the British could gradually build up a view of the country and identify targets for if a conflict did break out between the East and the West. I guess the Russians were doing the same thing in Britain and the USA.

Gill was needed in Bratisalava because they were another PERT (critical path analysis) customer. The Eastern block countries really liked PERT and Resource Analysis as it fitted in very well with their planned economies.