Dr Sarath Obeysekera

For most foreign students in the Soviet Union, summer meant one thing: a government-sponsored holiday on the Black Sea coast at Sochi. The university arranged everything and paid for it. Sun, sea, and relaxation awaited us.
I did it only once.
After that, I had a different plan.
Instead of spending my holidays in Sochi, I decided to travel to England to earn a few pounds. To a foreign student living on a modest Soviet stipend, British pounds were as precious as gold.
The journey itself was an adventure.
I bought a sleeper ticket for about 109 roubles—a considerable sum at the time—and began my journey from Moscow’s Belarusskaya Station. In a single day I somehow managed to obtain transit visas for Poland, East Germany, and the Netherlands. In those days England still allowed relatively easy entry for students, although visas became necessary later.
I packed like a true Soviet student traveller.
My suitcase contained several bottles of vodka, canned fish, canned meat, and enough black bread to survive a siege. The train conductor supplied endless glasses of strong black tea, which somehow made the journey feel civilised.
The first major stop was Brest on the Soviet-Polish border.
There, history literally sat beneath the train.
Russian railway tracks were wider than those in Europe, partly because the Tsars and later the Soviets wanted to make it difficult for invading armies to simply roll into Russia by train. As a result, the entire wheel assembly of the train had to be changed.
For several hours the train stood motionless while gigantic jacks lifted the carriages and workers replaced the bogies.
Meanwhile, immigration officers searched luggage thoroughly.

Their main concern was smuggling.

People attempted to take out dollars bought on the black market, ancient religious icons, and various treasures of the Soviet state. Students had developed ingenious methods of hiding currency. One popular method was to remove the tobacco from cigarettes and replace it with tightly rolled hundred-dollar bills.

The border inspectors knew every trick.
Or so they thought.

Crossing Poland was like entering another world. The landscape changed, and cheerful Polish passengers boarded the train. They talked loudly, laughed easily, and seemed far more relaxed than their Soviet neighbours.
One incident remains vivid in my memory.
I was travelling with a Sri Lankan friend. Sharing our compartment was a West German professor who had been conducting research in Poland. He was also attempting to transport some Polish furniture to West Berlin. The arrangement apparently involved several Polish men whose intentions were, shall we say, not entirely legal.
Unfortunately for everyone, the East German authorities discovered the scheme.

The Polish men were arrested immediately.

The East German security officers—who reminded me of a less fashionable version of the old Gestapo—then arrested the West German professor.
My Sri Lankan friend, trying to explain matters and perhaps displaying more courage than wisdom, attempted to argue with them.
They arrested him too.
When the train finally reached West Berlin, I got off and immediately returned to the border station looking for my friend.
I found him locked up and being interrogated.
The West German professor, meanwhile, was creating his own problems.
The authorities wanted him to answer questions in German. He refused.

I do not speak German to dogs,” he declared.
The situation became almost comical.

The East Germans then had to find an English translator to interrogate a German professor in Germany because he refused to speak German.
For hours they grilled him while we sat there watching the spectacle like an absurd theatre performance.
Eventually, both men were released.
The professor returned to the train, crossed into West Germany and visibly sighed with relief as the border disappeared behind him.
The adventure, however, was not over.
The train continued through the Netherlands and finally arrived at the Hook of Holland. The railway line ended practically at the pier itself.
From there we boarded the ferry to Harwich.
After days of crossing Communist Europe, seeing England emerge through the mist felt like arriving on another planet.
At Harwich we boarded the train to London’s Liverpool Street Station and then took the Underground to Marble Arch, where the Ceylon Students’ Centre was located.
A proper Sri Lankan dinner cost three shillings and sixpence.
After weeks of black bread and canned fish, rice and curry tasted better than any banquet.
The following morning I walked along Oxford Street looking for work.
A burly English restaurant manager looked me up and down and hired me immediately.
My job?
Washing dishes.
The pay was three pounds and fifty pence a day.
To a Soviet student, that felt like winning a lottery.
There was another benefit.
Part of my duties involved peeling and preparing eggs in large quantities. I consumed an astonishing number of eggs during that month. I suspect my cholesterol would have terrified modern cardiologists, but at the time I considered it free nutrition.
After a month of hard work, I returned to Moscow carrying a few precious items: Levi’s jeans and Beatles records, both expensive and highly desirable in the Soviet Union.
More importantly, I returned with enough money to finance my next journey.
In later years my studies and work took me to places such as Orenburg and Baku and into the oil fields of the Soviet Union.
There I met a fireman who disliked using the common Russian swear word Blyad.” Instead, he substituted it with the word Pomidori”—meaning tomatoes.
Even profanity had regional variations.

Those journeys across Communist Europe, those border interrogations, the endless train rides, washing dishes in London and returning with a suitcase containing jeans and Beatles records—all of it shaped me.

They taught me resilience.

They taught me to survive discomfort, uncertainty and bureaucracy.
Perhaps that is why, many years later, I could face harsh weather, difficult working conditions and even aggressive trade unions in the shipyards I managed.

Compared with an East German interrogation room, most challenges in life seemed relatively simple.

Looking back now, I realise that I never went to England merely to earn pounds.

I travelled there to collect stories.
And those stories have paid dividends for the rest of my life.

Regards

Dr Sarath Obeysekera