As a preliminary matter, you should read yesterday’s post “Are You Hungary” before you read this one.

One thing I did not say yesterday about being in Budapest 50 years ago. When you were behind the Iron Curtain, in a way you felt like you were on another planet, or – perhaps better – in a parallel universe. Everything seemed the same, but different enough to throw you off a bit. And you were out of contact with your world. Obviously, there were no cell phones, but I think even to make a regular long distant phone call was an ordeal, and you could not guarantee that you can arrange it, or that it would work.

From Budapest, I was going to Prague, and I went by train. I don’t recall a great difference in the train I boarded in Budapest compared to trains in western Europe. I think they were quite similar, but perhaps I have forgotten. What I do remember is that it was a long trip, longer than I had anticipated, and that the scenery was sort of ordinary – rural, small hills, a lot of greenery. I don’t remember much more. (I just looked it up – there is now a high speed train that can get you between the two cities in 6 1/2 hours, but the normal train ride is between 12 and 13.)

I shared a compartment with a middle aged couple. I don’t think there was anyone else there. They couldn’t speak English at all, but between my pigeon Russian and my pigeon German, we were able to make sense of each other. And the German seemed easier. They were from Hungary, they were members of the Communist Party, he was an economist (I don’t remember her background), they were Jewish, they lived temporarily in Prague, and he was Hungary’s economic minister (his title was something like that) to Czechoslovakia. They were friendly, but between our language differences and general suspicions, our conversation was limited to the basics.

I had told them about my problem with my reservation in Budapest (they were apologetic as if it were their own fault), and that I was a bit fearful as to what would happen in Prague. They understood and then did something totally unexpected. They gave me their apartment phone number and said that if I was really in trouble – and they meant REALLY in trouble – I could call them.

The train reached Prague and I went right to the Park Hotel, then a brand new hotel (a rarity in Communist Europe) and presented my voucher. Guess what? I was told that they had no record of my voucher (which was for two nights), and that they had a room for the night, but not for the next night – they were booked. I obviously accepted the one night offer, hoping that a vacancy would show up for the next.

Two American men were checking into the hotel the same time I was. They obviously overheard my conversation.

An hour or so later, I went down to the hotel restaurant (I had not yet ventured out into the city), and found myself in a short line behind the two men I had seen in the lobby. They expressed their condolences and understanding at my dilemma and asked if I wanted to join them for supper. Of course.

It turned out that these two Americans (they were maybe ten years older than me) worked for the International Labor Organization (a branch of the United Nations) in Geneva and were in Prague for a day or two on business of some sort. They were both nice fellows, but I really don’t remember one of them and I really can’t forget the other. Why? Because he seemed to me that absolutely smartest person I had ever met.

Well, now perhaps I know better. He may or may not have been “smart”, and he probably didn’t have the world’s most winning personality. He was more like a “savant”, more like a walking trivia container. I remember two areas that he seemed particularly adept at. The first was opera – he not only knew every opera ever written (name, composer, librettist, plot, etc.), but he seemed to know every opera’s performance history (where it premiered, where it had played to raves or boos, the casts, etc.), and of course he knew everything about every opera singer and operatic conductor. Everything. And he wanted to make sure you knew that he knew – I couldn’t tell if he assumed you knew nothing, or if he assumed you know quite a bit – just not as much as he did. I was in the “nothing” category.

The second subject matter was baseball. He knew even more about baseball, it seemed, than opera. He was a follower and fan of the New York teams (now and historic), but his knowledge of games and player statistics had no boundaries. Whew.

The next day I wandered around Prague. Now many of you have been to Prague during the post-Communist years. What a city it has become! Much of it has been restored to pre-World War II glory. New hotels have been built. And everything has been built around an enormous tourist trade. If central Prague resembles anything these days, it resembles a real life Disneyland.

Not in the early 1970s. Then, Prague was the most grayest, dirtiest, down-at-the-heels city you could possibly imagine. The streets were filled with unhappy looking people, and you sensed that nothing uplifting ever happened there. After the buoyancy of Budapest, the depressive nature of Prague was overwhelming. Nothing good will ever come of this place. The Czechs have clearly given up, or escaped to the west.

After a day of wandering these streets, eating at down and out restaurants, and looking in antique stores that showed something of what Prague may have been like in years past, wandering through the old Jewish ghetto, seeing the synagogues and the overused cemetery, I realized that I had nowhere to stay.

What to do? I could go to Cedok, the Ibusz of Czechoslovakia and see what if anything they had to offer (although there was no way I could pull off my Budapest personality in Prague), or I could figure out how to use a payphone and call my friends from the train. I decided on the latter, although I was a little hesitant.

I made the call, they offered me a place to stay, and gave me instructions. They lived on the outskirts of the city. I took a trolley, which went through parts of Prague I would otherwise not have seen, and eventually saw acre after acre of Soviet-style high rise apartment developments, one of which they lived in. When I got to their stop, I saw the buildings from much closer, and saw that their condition was subpar, and that the roads and sidewalks connecting the buildings were also in need of major repair. I found their building, could get into the lobby. And the elevator worked.

There was nothing wrong with their apartment. It was well furnished, as I recall – not stylish but comfortable. They did have hot water. I remember they had both a toilet room and a bath room. Separate.

They told me that there were occasional problems with the plumbing, and the electricity went off now and then, and the elevator didn’t always work. They were clearly happier in Budapest than Prague. But this is where they were. His job was a good job and they had no regrets. We had dinner in their apartment, and breakfast the next morning.

They accompanied me down the elevator and made sure that I knew the way back to the trolley stop to go back to the city. I thanked them profusely. They made something very clear. They were happy to host me. But this was it. I was not to try to communicate with them in any way after this morning. I was certainly not to send them anything like a thank you present or try to correspond with them after I got back to America. This time together never happened. If anyone found out that it did, my host would lose his government job.

That’s pretty much what I remember about Prague. I took a train from Prague to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I transferred to an over night train to Rome. I spent a day and night in Rome, wandering around with some people I had met on the train and having dinner with them at an outdoor restaurant overlooking the forum, and the next morning took a train to Naples. But that’s a different story – not for today.

Just one more thing. About a week after I got home from this trip, my office receptionist buzzed my intercom, and told me that two men were in the lobby and wanted to see me. OK. They showed me their FBI credentials and said something like “We hear you just spent some time in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Why did you go there? What did you do there? Did you have any personal contacts with anyone there? Did you bring anything to anyone there? Did anyone give you anything to bring back? Did you pack your own luggage?

I lied to the FBI, but nothing came of that, I guess. I didn’t go to jail, at any rate.

And, boy, have things changed.

As to the man whose death notice led me back to all of this? Mixed reactions, at best.