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Last spring, two
Plain Truth
edi–
tors visited the nations of East–
ern Europe on a tour sponsored
by the National Press Club of
Washington, D.C. Here, in words
and pictures, is part one of their
story.
•
iding on t.he bus from the
a irport into the heart of
Prague,
J
was puzzled. 1
had made this same jaunt once be–
fore, two years previously, but some–
thing was strangely clifferent this
t ime. The city was almost deserted.
Where had all the good
Praguers
gone?
Shops everywhere were closed ;
pedestrians were almost nowhere to
be seen; the red-and-cream-colored
traros were few in number and
nearly devoid of their customarily
crammed human cargoes. Only an
occasional
Skoda
or
Tafl·a
au.tomo–
bi le sped past our coacb-load of
travel-weary Americans to break up
the expanse of empty pavement.
lL was Friday, a business day,
wasn't it? Normally that would be
true, Vera, ou.r ample Czech guide
reminded us, bul it was also May 2,
midpoint of the three-day "May
Day" Communist holiday. Prague
would not revert to its norma l pace
until the following Sunday, she told
us, when it would aga in be business
as usual
(no/
normally true of other
Sundays).
Explanation accepted (not a lways
the case from East bloc guides, espe–
ciaUy those in the Soviet Union), I
nevertheless kept wondering to my–
self: Where were the burghers of
" mys ti ca l, magical , millennia l
(Continued on page 8)
The
PLAIN TRUTH Aprii -May 1976
by
Gene H. Hogberg
photos by Dexter H. Faulkner and the author