I was travelling in a train from Dusseldorf to Hamburg in August of 1991, with my sister and our 2 friends. We were four in an old fashioned rail cabin for six people where 3 seats are facing other 3 seats, just like in the old Agatha Christie and Harry Potter films.
We had been going from Heidelberg to Dusseldorf, where we saw the city and stayed at a youth hostel in town. There we met a lot of young people travelling, some from Hong Kong, other from the USA and Canada. I also met a group of boys that kept to themselves in the sleeping rooms, but I got a chance to talk to a little bit. I turned out that they kept to themselves because they were from the old Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Croatia or Serbia and a war had broken out between these countries. The did not want to go back home, because would be drafted right away and sent to fight. Their travel visa for good for another 2 weeks they said. I liked them and we were the same age, 19 years old.. Thinking back, and knowing now what happened there, I hope some of them survived the war but somehow I don’t think so.
Anyway we were relaxing the train cabin, when all of a sudden a young pair knocked on the door, and asked in they might join us, because they had seen 2 seats free in our cabin. We said yes of course. They told us that they had been married for a few years, but they wanted to travel so they sold their apartment and car, and used the money to travel all over the world. We said wow, that was cool and brave too. They were pleased with that answer, and then they asked us what we thought about the situation in Moscow and the fall of the government in the Soviet Union, that happened 2 days prior. We said “what are you talking about?”, so they told us all about it. We had been travelling around, never watching the news and no clue as to what was going on in the world.
Two days earlier at dinnertime when everything going on Moscow, we were still in Heidelberg at a café and saying to the waiter “noch zwei” which meant “two more beers please”.
