Frank
The It was the end of the 70s. We have been 3 students living in Bonn, Western-Germany. I, Franz and Johannes, called Jo. We didn’t ‘t have any lectures and internships over the Easter holidays, so we wanted to spend the time in a beautiful European capital that we could afford financially. Paris, London or Berlin was therefore out of the question and we came up with the idea of driving beyond an iron curtain to the golden city, to Prague, the capital of what was then Czechoslovakia. At that time, you still had to officially exchange 100 German marks per day into Czech crowns at the rate of 4:1 at the border. The so-called forced exchange was still advantageous for us and there was the possibility to exchange black on site, which would improve our travel budget.
We packed our things into my car, a French Renault 4 with 34 hp and drove comfortably 600 km to the German-Czech border.
According to the time, Franz and I wore almost shoulder-length hair. Jo’s mane, on the other hand, was extraordinary even by the standards of the time. His parents had fled East Germany and hated everything that had to do with coercion. They allowed him to grow his hair at the age of 15. Jo was a big rock music fan and played electric guitar in a band. After graduating from high school, he was released from military service for health reasons, did not have to enlist like me and Franz and say goodbye to our long hair.
So, his hair grew for a good seven years. He had thick, wavy blond hair with a middle parting and uncut forehead hair, which constantly blocked his vision and reached almost to his belt. At the back, his curls were so long that he could already sit on them. Most of the time, he wore his hair down or hidden under his parka when the wind blew. He had a bold red moustache and tucked his parting hair behind his ears to get a clear view. When he shook his open, freshly washed mane during his guitar solos during performances with his band, he could hardly save himself from girls.
In my Renault 4, the heating didn’t work well, and we therefore put on our parkas to avoid freezing. At the border at Eger/Cheb we had to get off and hand in our passports to the Czech border guards. They were very friendly and asked us to do our forced exchange (4:1) in the exchange office. After we showed them our receipts, they took a quick look at each of us, stamped the passports and wished us a good trip. We refuelled, drove on narrow country roads to Karlovy Vary and quickly found a simple place to stay there. Franz exchanged money at the market square at the rate of 8:1 and was happy about the win.
Me and Jo wanted to swap first in Prague and hoped perhaps to get a slightly better course. We spent a beer-filled evening with dumplings and roast pork in a rustic pub, made friends with Czech students and partied with them half the night. They were interested in Western rock music, and we exchanged our addresses to send them records of bands that were not available in their country. Jo with his mat was the attraction in the pub and at the end the Czech students took some photos of us before we parted.
On the way to the hotel, we walked past a billboard and happily tore down posters of communist politicians. As we rolled them up, we heard whistles and saw people in uniforms. We immediately fled and ran into the streets of Carlsbad to outrun our pursuers. Finally, exhausted, we made it to the hotel. The next morning, our landlord told us with a smile that the militia was looking for three people, two men and a woman with very long hair, who had desecrated posters of the proletariat during the night. We looked at Jo and had to laugh inside. In a good mood, we continued our trip to Prague.
At the Charles Bridge in Prague, we were immediately asked if we wanted to change money: rate 13:1! Jo and I couldn’t believe our luck: we were rich! We rented a room in the best hotel in Prague and ordered champagne to our room. Jo now behaved like a prince, and we decided to go to the Parrot, the most elite club in Prague. The bouncer didn’t want to let us in at first when he saw Jo with his open mane and five-day beard. We waved a few bills and the door opened for us as if by magic. However, we had to hand in our passports at the cloakroom and were then led into the club rooms by an elegant waiter.
The shop was elegantly furnished and most of the guests wore evening wear and Russian officer uniforms. We immediately attracted attention with our broken jeans and shabby look when we were led to a table. Pecunia non olet – Money doesn’t stink! This motto also applied under socialism. Jo had a lot of fun playing the rich class enemy from the West, loudly ordering lobster and caviar and the best wines on the menu. To annoy people, he made loud abusive comments about socialism and Russians in general and became louder and louder the more he drank. We tried to moderate it, because such lapses could be dangerous, because we were guests in a totalitarian country. The people at the neighbouring tables looked over at Jo in disgust. After the meal, we gave the waiters big tips and got our passports back.
So, we lived in luxury for the next few days until we drove back to the border to Eger/Cheb without a stop. Jo was particularly exuberant and still drunk when we reached the border. The heating in the car worked again, miraculously, so we could all take off our parkas. Here at the border, we first had to stop at a barrier and wait half an hour before a border guard opened the barrier after a call with a walkie talky. We drove on until we came to another barrier with check-in halls.
Here 4 grim border guards were waiting for us, took our passports and ordered us to leave the car. I had to open all the doors and the trunk, and they started to search everything thoroughly. One of them found the rolled-up posters from Karlsbad in the trunk and became angry. Jo told him with a smile that they were his and that he would hang them in the toilet at home.
The officers didn’t think it was funny, examined our passports and looked at Jo with a serious face. They said that his passport photo did not match his current appearance. So, they would not let him leave the country. There has recently been a requirement that passport photos must match the person exactly.
The passports of Franz and me were no problem, because we had had them redone especially for the trip. But Jo’s passport had been issued 9 years ago and his picture really didn’t correspond to reality anymore. He smiled beardless with a brush cut! The border guards pointed to a barbershop in the terminal buildings, which lived mainly from the border militia and soldiers. Jo was shocked, cursed and raged, but it didn’t help, and we went with him to the old-fashioned hairdresser’s shop. The hairdresser was already over sixty and was happy to have new customers. Since the new regulation, he had his hands full, and his shop was full of customers with passport photos which did not match the actual appearance.
In most cases, hair gel, a shave, sometimes a simple haircut and bribes helped. Unfortunately, we were all so bankrupt after our drinking binge in Prague that we couldn’t get any more bribes worth mentioning.
After two hours, it was Jo’s turn and took a seat on one of the barber chairs. The hairdresser put a paper ruff on him and stretched a cape around his neck. He combed out Jo’s hair with relish and was amazed that Jo’s hair covered the entire backrest like a carpet. has never had a customer like this before. He took a closer look at Jo’s passport photo, just shook his head and said that this would be a difficult case and asked Jo what he should do. Jo wasn’t willing to sacrifice even a millimetre of his hair and just wanted a shave. The hairdresser braided him a long braid and straightened the hair at the front with hair gel. He soaped him and shaved off his five-day beard and moustache from an old razor, but left the long sideburns at Jo’s request.
However, he remained sceptical as to whether that would be enough for the militias. Shaved clean, Jo now looked like a young woman. He pulled his parka over his braid and presented his passport to the officers again. But they just laughed, pulled his long braid out of his parka and sent him away again. Jo was desperate. So back on hold at the hairdressing salon. When it was his turn, the hairdresser suggested that he first sacrifice his sideburns, cut his hair in general at least to shoulder length and shorten it to match length at the front. Jo was horrified, but he had no choice and hoped to save at least a certain length of hair. He sighed, the hairdresser put his paper ruff and cape on him again, combed his hair back over the backrest, soaped his sideburns and shaved them off.
Now it was his hair’s turn. He combed the front hair over his face, which now covered his face like a tent, and cut it off above his forehead. Then he cut strand by strand at shoulder height and Jo’s lap filled all over with his long curls. Around the barber’s chair was a single battlefield. The hairdresser did everything again and tried to build up the illusion of a short hairstyle. Jo went back to the border guards, and they compared his passport photo with his new appearance again.
They grinned and sent him back again. There was no escape, and the hairdresser made a tabula rasa – took a hair clipper, shaved off the hair on the back of the neck completely and trimmed the hair on the top of the head to brush cut height. Again, Jo was covered all over with cut hair, but now looked like in the passport photo! The wild rock musician with a mane of hair had become a well-behaved young man. The border guards inspected him, and his passport meticulously and obviously had a lot of fun with Jo’s new hairstyle. Finally, they happily stamped his passport. One of the militias casually said that one should behave in the parrot in Prague even if high-ranking Russian friends were present. In addition, political posters should not be desecrated.
We got into our car and drove across the border as fast as we could. At home, many friends no longer recognized him, and he was the laughing stock at the university without his trademark. A few weeks later, the Czech friends sent us the last photos of the long-maned Jo and it was very enjoyable to see the difference. Jo let his hair grow back until the end of his studies and only dared to return to Prague after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
