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British Mensa Travel Special Interest Group |
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Journey
to 1984 1968 was a particularly traumatic time internationally as Czechoslovakia was invaded by its allies in the Warsaw Pact in order to put an end to Alexander Dubcek’s efforts to implement what was variously called “The velvet revolution” or “Socialism with a human face” during the “Prague Spring”. This happened a week or two before my planned departure for my first visit to Yugoslavia, on a package tour via Dubrovnik to the Club Méditerranée on the small island of Sveti Marko in the Bay of Kotor. The fact that Dubrovnik is in Croatia and Kotor in Montenegro was not significant then as there was no apparent sign of Yugoslavia coming apart at the seams! There were however suggestions that the Soviet Union’s appetite for dominating its neighbours might soon extend to Yugoslavia, although it was well known that, as Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy had previously found, it would be a much tougher proposition than Czechoslovakia, for reasons of geography as well as “national” character. Anyhow I wasn’t going to be put off a holiday I'd looked forward to for so long, so I went! One of the optional excursions offered was a two-day trip into Albania, which intrigued me. We went by chartered coach, the driver and guide being apparently among the few Yugoslavs allowed into Albania, crossing the frontier near Titograd (now Podgorica) at the North-east corner of Lake Scutari: there was an electrified border fence stretching as far as one could see from the lake up the mountain on the other side. I disingenuously asked the Albanian guide who joined the coach there why the fence was electrified: he replied, “To keep the Yugoslavs out.” We stayed overnight in Tirana and the next day visited the port of Durres. Apart from that I recall little of the excursion: we did not have any opportunity to meet the natives! The country was somewhat surreal, recalling Orwell's 1984, which was then of course in the unimaginable future! First published in VISA issue 55 (March 2004) |