Expedition “Escape” – Journey Diaries

 

(Author: Lyonell Fliss, Vol 78, #3, Spring-Summer 2023)

 

Prologue

In 1969 man reached the moon. The same year I reached freedom.

To me these two journeys looked similar.

The year 2019 was very special for me: it marked the semi-centennial of my escape from communist Romania.

I decided to celebrate this event, which changed the course of my life , by repeating the route I’d followed 50 years before, in a car of the same make I used then, Skoda (this time obviously model 2019). I left Johannesburg on 3 September together with my friend Franz, Austrian by origin, his reason being to visit some parts of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire about which he’d learned at school.

The original escape route of 1969 Bucharest-Arad-Budapest-Bratislava –Vienna, we extended in the Czech Republic to Karlovy Vary (Carlsbad) – Mlada Boleslav-Prague, where we parted, me returning to Johannesburg and Franz going on to Dresden and beyond.

                                                                            …………….

To understand the importance for me of this year expedition and the motivation for doing it, I should start with the story of my escape from communist Romania. It started even earlier, in 1958, when the Romanian government announced that Jews wishing to immigrate to Israel would be free to do so and for this would just have to fill and submit application forms. Immediately a huge queue of Jewish people was formed in front of the Bucharest Central Police Station (and in other towns as well), which our family, father, mother and I, joined and waited for a day and a night to get our forms. Actually it was all just a trap, government’s real intention being to identify those who wanted to leave the “communist heaven”, as they called their regime, and be able to punish them for this act of treason.

As a result of submitting the application for leaving the country, all those who fell in the trap were placed immediately into a special category named “submitters”, second class citizens with more limited rights than the ordinary ones, whose rights were anyway very limited under the communist regime.

A few days after submitting my application I was fired from my job at a company’s general assembly meeting where I was publicly declared a “people’s enemy” and a “traitor” and became unemployable as an engineer or in any position at any company in the country. Other rights were also tacitly withdrawn, such as acquiring an apartment, post graduate studies, travelling even inside the communist block and other discriminatory measures at the discretion of the communist authorities.

After three months I was allowed back to work, but at a reduced salary and in faraway places where nobody liked to go, particularly because of the harsh work and living conditions. After some three years, through connections and protection, I was accepted to work at an engineering design institute in Bucharest, albeit at a lower salary.

In 1966 I married Liliana Wiener, who was also a “submitter”. We dreamed of one day escaping from communist Romania and creating a family in Israel.

As a consequence of being regarded “submitters” with the stain of “traitors” on our personal files, we became the targets of “Securitate” (the secret police, equivalent to the Soviet KGB). They tried through blackmail to force us to collaborate by reporting on our office colleagues. We resisted, but the pressure became almost unbearable. In those times nobody ever dreamed that the communist regime would collapse two decades hence; it seemed to be eternal. Moreover, the communist government invented a new way to make money, by ‘selling’ Jews to relatives in the West. We also had relatives, but they weren’t prepared to pay the ransom for our liberation, so our chances of leaving were zero.

Under these circumstances, we decided that if the slightest opportunity to escape arrived, we would take it, slim though the chance of success might be. Such an opportunity came ten years after submitting our applications, when in the spring of 1968 the people of Czechoslovakia rose up against their communist regime. Through connections and protection (the only way to get anything under communism), we managed in 1969 to obtain passports to travel to Czechoslovakia, and decided to try to cross the border, the infamous “Iron Curtain”, to “the other side” – Austria.

There were rumors that some Romanians succeeded in crossing the Iron Curtain during that period, but that others were stopped and returned to Romania to be imprisoned. It was also rumored that the Czech–Austrian border was alternately guarded by Czechs and Russians and that there was more chance of the Czech guards allowing you to cross.

These were the conditions when Liliana and I left Bucharest on the morning of 29 October, in our blue Skoda 100MB motorcar, prepared with all needed to survive an expedition into unknown and equipped with the most valuable objects in the world (for us): the passports for Czechoslovakia.

From here on, our diaries will follow in parallel the events of the two expeditions, the anniversary one of 2019 with the story of the original of 1969 in the background, leg by leg on the same route.

Diaries

3-4 September 2019 – Johannesburg-Bucharest

Franz and I left together at Johannesburg’s O R Tambo airport, being taken there by our friend Simmy. We arrived the following day after a 12 hours flight (with a stop-over at Istanbul) at Bucharest Otopeni Airport, where other friends, the Armeanu family, met us and took us to a hotel on Magheru Boulevard in the heart of Bucharest. After leaving our luggage in our rooms, we met up at a pie restaurant, La Placinte, where another friend, Nicu Grigore, joined us and all enjoyed a lunch of a variety of pies and beer. Dinner was at the famous restaurant Caru’ cu Bere (The Beer Cart), where we ordered Romanian traditional dishes such as mititei (Romanian kebabs), chips and pickles with local beer. The atmosphere was enhanced by a local group of dancers traditionally dressed, dancing to the tunes of country music.

5 September 2019 – Bucharest-Arad (620km)

The expedition started in earnest at 7 am, when we went to the nearby AVIS agency to collect our car. The Avis agent came with a Skoda Rapid as was agreed (however gray and not blue as we preferred to match the original color of the escape car).  On the back shelf, I placed a small South African flag, a reminder of the Romanian flag displayed in the same place on the original expedition.

We left with Franz at the wheel and me as navigator, as I knew better than the GPS how to get out of my old home town, Bucharest. Franz quickly got used to the left hand wheel and right hand traffic, in spite of the morning rush hour and heavy rain (to me a good omen). We followed the highway passing Otopeni Airport and city of Ploiesti, driving through the spectacular Prahova Valley on the Carpathian Mountains where every little town reminded me of my youth. These were the places I had passed and stopped at so many times when driving my motorbikes, the Trabant car and eventually the Skoda.

We followed the road to Brasov, where I took over the driving. At Sibiu Franz replaced me, asking to take over the driving for the rest of the trip. I accepted with pleasure as I could enjoy the view better.

Only now I realized the extraordinary beauty of this sub-Carpathian region. When Liliana and I passed those very same places 50 years before, we didn’t see it, as our eyes were only on the road and minds on our escape.

At Arad we stayed overnight at a good B&B at Ana’s House. For dinner we went downtown to a mall with a miserable fast food center.

29 October 1969

Liliana and I left the house at dawn in our blue Skoda 100 MB car, with the boot packed with food including two Sibiu salamis (considered as hard currency abroad), winter clothes, sleeping bags (still using them) and two 25 liter Jerry cans full of petrol, plus a little Romanian flag on the shelf behind the back seats displayed for good political reasons. I still keep the anorak I left in, as a memento and a reminder of my size, as today I can hardly zip it. We didn’t say goodbye to anybody, even our parents, who knew only we were going on a short vacation to the mountains. Our plan to escape was secret, exclusively shared between Liliana and me.

We left with a little Czech money, equivalent to some 10 US Dollars, allocated to us by the National Office of Tourism. The weather was good and we passed without long stops through the city of Ploiesti, the Prahova Valley, Brasov and Sibiu, arriving in the evening at Arad. No problem with the car and orientated with a road map and indicators.

We spent the night at the first hotel we got to, without any supper as we had no appetite and were too tired.

6 September 2019 – Arad-Budapest (265km)

We filled the tank and then realized we were not in South Africa. Like everywhere in Europe, the petrol station was self-service!

After 20 km we arrived at the Nadlac border post, where we had crossed with such great emotion into Hungary 50 years before. The place now was very different. The passport control cabins were there but abandoned, with the doors and windows locked and sealed. Cars were passing in both directions at high speed without paying any attention to the border.

We stopped and suddenly from nowhere appeared a young Romanian officer asking us our reason for stopping, as we were the only ones doing so. I told him my story and showed him my original passport of that time. He couldn’t believe his eyes and took us to his commander to tell him my story. I asked the latter if he would apply a stamp on the original passport of 1969 as a proof of our repeat trip in 2019. Unfortunately he declined without giving a reason. We parted shaking hands with the young officer, and crossed the border into the “no man’s land” between Romania and Hungary. There we saw two supermarkets abandoned in ruins.

A few meters away was the Hungarian border post, open and with guards. We stopped there and met a Hungarian officer who by chance was speaking Romanian as well. I told him my story, as 50 years before a Hungarian border officer like him at the same border post had given us friendly advice which would have saved us from jail on return to Romania. I asked him if possible to apply a stamp on my original passport and after consulting a colleague agreed to satisfy my request – now I had a clear proof of the trip repeat.

In Budapest, to reach the Classic Hotel we needed in addition to the GPS the assistance of a pedestrian (who again by chance could speak Romanian) to explain that we were turning in a circle. Leaving our luggage at the hotel, we took a city tour in a Hop-on Hop-off open deck bus. The view from the top of Buda hill over the city and particularly over the Danube, with boats, bridges, islands and Parliament building was magnificent. The city was very crowded, so Franz and I concluded that life in quieter Johannesburg suited us better.

After hopping off from the bus in Pesta near the Danube bank, we took a short walk along the river quay, to stop at a floating restaurant with an elegant terrace looking towards the Royal Palace on the opposite bank. Being in Budapest we ordered traditional goulash plates, washed down with beer. Afterwards, we continued our walk through the Old Town. To our unpleasant surprise, when we returned to the bus station to Hop-on the tour bus to complete our trip the driver and guide asked us in a most impolite manner to leave at the next stop. They were unable to make us understand the reason, as they were speaking Hungarian with a few English words and it was to no avail that we tried to explain that we had paid for a full round hop-on/off tour of the city. Not to spoil the day, which had been so pleasant until then, we decided to leave the bus and take a taxi back to the hotel.

Budapest left us with a good impression aside from this incident.

30 October 1969

After a fast breakfast we embarked, filled the tank at a petrol pump in the town, this being our last opportunity to use Romanian money. We followed the road indicators to the Romanian border post to Hungary that we had to cross, as specified in the passports: Nadlac, some 20 km away from Arad.

When we left Bucharest, we didn’t even tell that we were going to Czechoslovakia, as “submitters” like us had not (unofficially) the right to receive a passport for any trips abroad, even for countries inside the communist bloc. So we didn’t declare at the office that we were going to Czechoslovakia, but that we were taking a two-week leave holiday in the mountains.

In the communist system, the Communist Party committee of the office where we worked and the “Securist” (an officer of Securitate allocated to every large company) were supposed to know everything about the private life of the office employees, including their movements. We feared that if the Securist was aware that we as “submitters” had received passports, he might retain them for investigations to find out where we had got them from, in the best case returning them to the authorities for cancellation or in the worst, arresting us. So we had taken the risk of going without his knowledge.

At the border post we waited breathlessly to see whether the border officer would ask for a document from our office (or its Securist) to confirm that they were aware of our leaving the country, even while going only inside the Communist bloc. It was also possible that he might contact our office by telephone to ascertain this, which would have meant a premature end to our attempt at escape. Luckily, the officer merely looked indifferently at our passports and returned them and after checking the boot gestured to us that we could cross into Hungary. So we passed the first test and recovered our breath.

On the other side of the border, the Hungarian officer stamped the passports without any problem and also did not ask us anything. Speaking Hungarian (her parents being from Targu Mures, a town with a large Hungarian population) Liliana asked him if it would be possible to cross to neighboring Yugoslavia, a country outside the Iron Curtain, so as to visit our family living there (we didn’t have any). The officer looked straight into Liliana’s eyes and clearly understood the real reason for her question. His friendly advice to us, he said, was that we should not allow such an idea even to cross our minds as at that border the Hungarian guards would stamp our passports but not allow us to cross into Yugoslavia. With such an extra stamp, the Romanian authorities would regard us as tentative defectors and the sentence would be a minimum 5 years in jail.

We thanked him for his friendly advice and left for the next destination: Czechoslovakia, realizing that we had escaped another trap.

In the middle of the Hungarian pusta (plain), the car’s temperature indicator signaled that the cooling water temperature was very high. Luckily we were just passing a village, and learned that nearby was the workshop of a kolkhoz. Liliana managed to charm the manager (of course in Hungarian) to do the repair for free as we did not have any Hungarian money. We left without losing much time, giving thanks to our benefactor and to the Almighty who out of the heavens had brought him to us at this moment of great need.

We passed Budapest, as we were not interested in visiting tourist attractions. We had in mind only the final destination: Austria.

 

7 September 2019 – Budapest-Bratislava (202km)

After a good breakfast we left Budapest and drove towards Bratislava, crossing again the monotonous pusta. We didn’t feel anything different when we crossed the border into Slovakia, only realizing the change when seeing road indicators written in Slovak rather than in Hungarian with its strange orthography.

On arrival that morning in Bratislava and after checking in at Viktor Hotel we took a bus to the Bratislava Castle on the other side of the Danube, crossing a spectacular cable-stayed bridge. Not far from the terminal bus station on the way to the castle was a small square with a very dramatic monument. It was a cast-iron memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Slovakia was an ally of Hitler, contributing directly to Nazi war crimes and the monument was erected as a reminder of this stain on Slovak history.

After a long, steep climb we reached the top of the hill with its impressive Bratislava Castle. It offered spectacular views over the new city and the Danube with the impressive bridge and large barges for goods and passenger boats. We didn’t have time to visit the interior of the castle (now a museum) but admired the facades and particularly the dominant equestrian statue of a national Slovak hero at the entrance. We took a walk through the gardens, with beautifully manicured flower beds and hedges in geometric patterns and white pebble paved alleys. The descent was much easier and when we reached the old town, we noticed a street sign reading Zidovka Ulica (Jewish Street), probably part of the historic Ghetto. The old town was totally commercialized, with narrow streets full of souvenir shops and restaurants with tables in the open, where we enjoyed the local food.

                                         30 October 1969

After bypassing Budapest we carried on towards the Czechoslovakian border, reaching and crossing it without any problem.

We arrived at Bratislava in the afternoon. It was a late autumn day, cold, humid and overcast. The few people we saw in the streets were walking quickly and shivering. A sad atmosphere hung over the town, a reminder of the Soviet invasion the previous year and we were completely disorientated in this strange and unhospitable place.  

Our plan was to stay in the town for a few days and try to get information from locals about possibly crossing the border to Austria. We knew that since the Soviet invasion that border was guarded alternately by Russian or Czechoslovakian guards. It was rumored that the Russians would stamp your passports but not allow you to cross th3e border. Consequently, when you returned to Romania and as required handed in your passports to the authorities they would see that stamp and immediately suspect you of trying to defect, resulting in a minimum 5 years in jail. If the guards were Czechoslovakian there might be a chance of being allowed to cross.

At that moment of uncertainty Liliana put her trust in her sixth sense, her woman’s intuition: “I am cold and tired and I can’t take it anymore. Let’s go now straight to the border without waiting a moment” she said in a decisive tone which could not be disputed. To me the idea looked totally absurd and very risky. I wanted to persuade her to wait a bit and think it over, but she was so adamant that she was absolutely right that I gave up. I approached the first passerby, using the only “Slovakian” word I knew: “Vienna?” He understood and indicated with his arm the direction we should take.

Soon we saw a road sign with the magic word “Vienna”.  The road from that point looked like a secondary one, narrow and fenced on both sides with barbed wire, looking like a corridor without any houses around and no traffic at all. Nobody asked us anything when we entered this corridor; we felt that we were now crossing through the Iron Curtain, which wasn’t a “curtain” but a wide strip of land, probably planted with land mines. After a few kilometers through this corridor, we reached a small cabin on the left side, which was the actual Czechoslovakian border post to Austria, the Czechoslovakian end of the Iron Curtain. We stopped in front of the cabin and an officer emerged. His uniform didn’t look Russian (we knew what Russian uniforms look like) and we sighed with relief, believing him to be a Czechoslovak. A good omen?   

8 September 2019 – Bratislava-Vienna (80km)

We found the road to Vienna easily and a few km away was a border post, abandoned as were all others we had passed. Actually, here should have been the culmination of our Escape 2019 expedition, whereby I would cross again at the place through which Liliana and I we had escaped fifty years before. However, the stamp on my original passport read Petralka whereas here the border post name was Jarovice. It definitely wasn’t the place we had gone through, as nothing reminded me of the old one.

A few meters away was a small supermarket. The shop attendant, a young man speaking English, explained that Petralka village and the border post of the same name were some eight km away along the border and even printed a computer map for us. We found the Petralka border post easily and memories of the place where one of the most dramatic events in my life occurred started to roll back. Instead of the small cabin was a much larger and modern building, but abandoned. Across the road was a larger office building that hadn’t been there when we escaped.[1]  On the Austrian side of the border, the old check post was still there, but like all the others it was empty and derelict. The view around the almost dead border post area looked so pastoral; nobody would think that here had been the frightening Iron Curtain barrier that once divided this land. My thoughts went with gratitude to the Czechoslovakian officer who allowed us to cross, a person I didn’t ever know, but whose act had changed the course of our lives. It brought to mind the unknown Romanian officer during World War II who had saved my life at great risk to his own.[2]   

While I was meditating upon these past events, Franz offered me a twig, like a symbolic olive branch, as a souvenir from this remarkable place in my life.

I left with a good feeling, thinking that the happy end 50 years before was an act of God.

These moments were for me the apex of our half centenary Expedition.

30 October 1969

The officer came up to our car. With a shaking hand and trembling heart I handed him our passports, knowing very well they were not valid for leaving the Communist bloc.

He took them without saying a word; actually it would have been useless, as we probably didn’t have any language in common. Waiting for him to return, the 10 minutes he took seemed to us like 10 hours. Finally he returned and without saying a word handed back the passports. Then he pointed to the boot and gestured to me to open it. He inspected it at a glance without asking for the suitcases to be opened then made a sign to close it. Before doing so, Liliana offered him a red, king-size Romanian apple, which he accepted.

As he didn’t say a word or make any other gesture, I decided to try our luck and began driving very, very, slowly towards the barrier some 20m ahead. Around the barrier were a few border guards armed with automatic rifles. One of them opened the barrier and as I was about to cross underneath, we heard a shout: HALT. Halt is Halt in many languages and I understood the order perfectly. We were so close to realizing the dream we had cherished for 11 years, yet now it seemed to be so far away. Some 50m ahead was the Austrian barrier, the symbol of our freedom. Should I obey and stop or instead press the accelerator pedal and speed under the barrier into “no man’s land”? Were I to do the latter, the guards might well spray our car and us with a rain of bullets. Opening fire on those who tried to force their way across the Iron Curtain was well known. So I decided to stop. It was a most critical decision, taken in a fraction of a second. I left the car and went on trembling legs to the guards to ask the reason for their order. One of them pointed to the boot of the car, showing that the bonnet wasn’t closed properly. With a sigh of relief I closed it, thanked the guard and somehow managed on jelly legs to get into the car.

In a few seconds we reached the Austrian side of the border. The guard opened the barrier and the border controller indifferently stamped our passports and returned them to me. I drove away for a short distance, pulled the car onto the side of the road and fainted. I was revived by Liliana, who either proved to be mentally stronger than me or had simply not fully appreciated how critical a moment we had just passed through.

 

First days of freedom

Following the road to Vienna we stopped at the Schwechat Airport to exchange our few Czech Crowns to Austrian Schillings. Back on the road, it was already evening. We passed a few villages with illuminated shop windows then saw a large gate with a sign indicating a camping site. We entered and booked in for the night. It was our first night sleeping in freedom and tired and stressed from the events of the last few hours we fell asleep immediately.

Next morning, when we woke up, still under the extraordinary memories of the previous day, realized that we were in a different world. The camping sanitary block was spotlessly clean and everything was working, such as hot showers, considered luxuries in communist Romania. After breakfast, we left the camping site with good feelings and drove towards Vienna – it was like floating on clouds. It was another miracle that we managed without a map and language to reach the Israeli Embassy, where we related in French our escape story, asking for political asylum and help to immigrate to Israel. The consul agreed, stamped our passports and called a member of the consulate to accompany us to the Sochnut (Jewish Agency) refugee camp for Jewish refugees coming from Eastern Europe. The camp, situated in an old castle around Vienna, was the place where for two weeks we slept in a common dormitory and ate at a canteen. It was for us like paradise, so happy we were to be safely there.

Having with us our precious Skoda and receiving a $50 subsidy from Sochnut, we found that we could afford to fulfill one of our dreams of seeing Vienna. We visited the famous Schonbrunn Palace and walked on Ringstrasse with its beautiful buildings, coffeehouses, shops, restaurants, elegant people and tramways.

We had also another reason to come to Vienna, namely to sell our “hard currency”, the two Sibiu salamis. On the Ringstrasse, we entered a pub and with the help of the barman sold them to customers. I don’t remember how much we received, but it was enough to allow us to travel for three days to Salzburg, Innsbruck and Kaprun where we were even able to climb by cable car to the top of the Alps. Of course we could not afford hotels and restaurants, but this did not concern us as we slept comfortably in the car in our sleeping bags.

After leaving the pub, we went to a post office to send a cable to our parents, informing them casually that we were visiting Vienna. We could imagine their astonishment, as everybody we knew in Bucharest believed we were going to the Carpathian Mountains for a short vacation. In those days, travelling to the West from communist Romania was permitted only to Communist Party “trusty comrades” and unheard for “submitters”.

We also visited the famous entertainment park of Vienna, the Prater. We had a good time there, watching an American movie, admiring the great Stern watching wheel and for the first time drinking Coca Cola, for us the symbol of America and freedom. As we were returning to our car we saw someone inspecting the number plate, which clearly indicated it was Romanian, from Bucharest. Trying to get into the car, the man greeted me in Romanian, asked what we are doing there and offered to take us on a guided tour of Vienna. This looked suspicious to me, so I politely declined his offer and opened the car door. When he also tried to get into the car, I suddenly realized he must be a Securitate agent. It was notorious that such agents were placed all over Western Europe with the purpose of assassinating Romanian defectors. Realising the danger we started to shout for help, people around came to our car and the man disappeared. Then we realized that even outside the Iron Curtain we weren’t safe. [4]

After two weeks in Austria, we embarked on an El Al plane and landed, full of great expectations, at the Tel Aviv Lod airport. The hot air wave which hit us in the face when descending the plane, only a few hours after we had left the cold weather of late autumn in Austria, made us realize that we were in a new world, totally different from the one we’d left behind ……we were in ISRAEL

Our Skoda, however, had a sad fate. We left it (her) at the Vienna refugee camp in the care of Sochnut to transport it to Israel. It arrived some five months after us at Haifa harbor as a wreck. It looked like it had been squashed by a container placed by mistake on top and it was totally rusted by the humid and salty sea air to which it was exposed for such a long time. For us Skoda, as we always called ‘her’ by name like a person, had a sentimental value, being the car “who” took us out of the communist hell and remained in our memory as a dear friend regretfully lost.

EPILOGUE

Vienna was the final stage of our ‘Expedition: Escape’ journey.  Thereafter, our tour was an exploratory trip of mostly tourist interest, albeit even in this part there were places connected to the escape of 1969. On 11 September, Franz and I drove to Mlada Boleslav, 62 km from Prague in the Czech Republic. The reason for this leg of our journey was to visit the Skoda Museum. Skoda factory has one of the largest and oldest car museums in Europe. In addition to motorcars the display includes the early years’ products such as bicycles and motorbikes.

Looking through the exhibits, I unexpectedly found myself facing a copy model of my escape motorcar, the Skoda MB 100 1968. It was of the very same intense blue color with the identical yellow plastic upholstery, the engine in the back and in the front the luggage boot with the same bonnet that had almost given me a heart attack at the crossing of the Iron Curtain.

It was a very special feeling, like seeing a very close friend after a long time. I couldn’t resist touching the driver’s door handle and trying to get in, but it was locked. I kept my hand on the handle until a supervisor came by and informed me that touching the exhibits was not allowed. With regret, I took my hand away, still looking inside at the familiar wheel, seat and board. I left the museum with feelings of affection and gratitude towards our Skoda, which had taken us safely from one world to another.

 

Lyonell Fliss is a Romanian-born civil engineer and Holocaust survivor. In 1969, he and his wife Liliana escaped from Communist-ruled Rumania and moved to Israel. He later immigrated to South Africa, where he became chief engineer for Murray & Roberts.

 

NOTES

1. One of the people emerging from it showed us the historic border stone marking accurately to the last meter the distance of 55 036 km to Vienna, capital of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Next to it was a strident red building which served as a casino according to the sign on the wall, built obviously after the communist bloc collapsed, but now abandoned.

2. See the author’s Holocaust memoir ‘That Sunday’, https://www.jewishaffairs.co.za/that-sunday/

3.https://www.reddit.com/r/Slovakia/comments/lrtv24/since_bratislava_petrzalka_are_so_close_to/

4. When revisiting the Prater with Franz fifty later, the place looked very different. A modern entrance had replaced the old informal parking and even the old wheel (Stern) looked so small and outdated compared with its modern relative, the London Eye. I looked at the entrance for the parking place where 50 years ago we escaped from another trap, but couldn’t find it.