The more people I meet, the more aware I am of the impact communism had on people's everyday lives. I'm not referring to the spying and threats, the repression of individual and artistic freedom, or even the cement block monstrosities that litter the outskirts of the city. It's the little everyday, seemingly meaningless, impacts that really astound me. I learned about communism and the fall of the Berlin wall in school, but even though it happened during my life time it always seemed like some distant, long-ago history lesson.
However here it shaped people's childhoods. It strikes me because it's different than meeting great grandpa so-and-so who fought in WWII, these people are my age, they share my interests, we relate to a common pop culture, heck, they're my friends on Facebook. Despite this fact every now and then some comment will pop up in conversation and I'm reminded that our childhoods were very different.
For example, I was recently having breakfast with a friend who grew up in Prague. Half way through my bowl of Cherios i see her face light up. She's holding a single serving packet of Nutella. "I have to bring this back to my husband," she declared. "Why?" I ask. "You can buy a big one in any grocery store."
Apparently as a child she used to collect the labels of any western candy that snuck it's way into the country. She and her friends would treasure these logos and paste the labels inside their notebooks. Nutella was one of the grand prizes. It still makes her excited.
A couple of weeks later I'm sitting in my living room with a friend from Latvia. We're chatting about movies when she spots the bunch of bananas on my counter. "I didn't see a banana until I was 10 years old," she states. They just didn't have them. She vividly remembers an uncle who brought a banana all the way from Poland in the early 90's. It was brown and mushy, but a very exciting treat all the same.
I know these are small anecdotes, but they pop-up all the time and they fascinate me. I'm often reminded of the opening line by one of my favorite British comics, Eddie Izzard, when performing for an American audience( I paraphrase),
"Hello, I'm from Europe, you know, where the history's from."
So I'm now living in the middle of where all that history happened, both distant and recent. We'll see how much I absorb, but one thing I know for sure is that I won't be able to eat another crepe without thinking of communism.
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