Oh, you COULD under communism, could you? Well, this may come as a shock to you, you COULDN'T. I'm not talking about
NOW, I'm talking about before the wall fell. The Berlin Wall,
have you heard of it? When the Czech Republic and Slovakia were: Czechoslovakia (and I also went to East Germany).
When I was there at that time, you couldn't own your own toilet. The government owned everything. And if you had anything in your possession, your neighbor wanted it, too.
The government also told you where to work. If you didn't have a job, one was assigned to you.
You couldn't own your own business, either. There were no businesses, only government-owned ones. We did go to a secret after-hours bar. It was an unmarked door, and everything was dark. The owner would have been put in jail if the government found out.
When we first arrived, we had to register with the local police. No one in town could travel anywhere without the permission of the government.
At lunch time, the government-owned restaurants would open at 12 and close at 1. One hour. You'd rush in, get your potato, cabbage, and pork chop, and watery fruit drink and sit down at a long picnic table with strangers. The restaurant employees were MISERABLE. If they did poorly at that job, they'd get another one from the government.
You had one hour to eat, and then that was it. You were out of there.
They had department stores where there was cheap clothing displayed BEHIND roped off areas. Those clothes were from the West and only Western money could pay for them. Again, the employees were miserable to the customers. There was no capitalism, no reason to be any better than another store.
There were STILL bombed out buildings EVERYWHERE left over from the war. There were no developers to make them better.
The government owned EVERYTHING.
Going there was like going back in time. It was a totally black and white world (literally). The only bits of color were political posters. Everything else was covered in soot. There were no pollution controls. Waves of sulphur in huge clouds would roll down the street.
You'd put your clothes out to dry, and in the morning, they smelled 100 percent like sulphur.
The air was poison.
There were few cars, and all of them were decades old.
We saw people in long lines. They were buying strawberries, a rarity.
When we came over, we brought bananas and chocolate -- two things rarely seen. We bought some Communist chocolate, and it tasted like dust. It looked like it had melted and hardened multiple times.
People who USED to own property no longer did. They paid the government.
The people we stayed with used to wait for hours at the bakery and at the butcher. They could buy only so much at a time, and it wasn't very much -- enough for the day.
The people we stayed with -- he was a truck driver and sometimes was able to drive to West Germany. He was allowed to do this only because he was married and had children, so they knew he'd come back.
In his travels, he'd pick up little souvenirs (a little wooden windmill from the Netherlands), and they were proudly displayed in his home. He had the RARE ability to buy something that few of his neighbors ever could.
When a young couple showed off their "apartment" to us -- a room over a garage, and proudly showed off their bed, one bookcase, and a tiny TV, I sat on the bed and cried like a baby. They deserved so much more. They were such good people. But because of the government and the way the government worked, they had very little. Every day was a struggle.
So, no, they could
NOT at that time purchase pools, fountains, or gnomes of any type. The government was not in the pools, fountains, or gnome business.
Of course, capitalism has now flooded the former Eastern bloc countries, and that is a wonderful thing.
So please
forgive me if I reflected for a moment my gratefulness that I am an American and never had to suffer as people in those countries once did.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JoeChristmas
This may come as a shock to you, but you can choose to have a pool in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. You can have a mountain themed waterfall. And golden garden gnomes. You could under communism, as well.
Not to get off topic. It's just silly to write something like, "Thank goodness we're in America so we can buy a gaudy swimming pool!" Outside of North Korea, just about anyone in the world can have a pool if they have the cash.
--JC
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