This disorientation mixed with hope followed me in January 1990 when I traveled through Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, and Bulgaria. I knew that, just like every other trip I had ever made to these countries, it would feel very much like revisiting my own past - the shortages, the distinctive odors, the shabby clothing. After all, we had all long suffered under the same ideology. Despite this, I needed to see with my own eyes what was going on.

One of the first things I noticed on these travels was the influence of Hollywood movies on our media and, consequently, on our way of thinking. In newspapers and on TV revolutions looked spectacular: cut barbed wire, seas of lighted candIes, masses chanting in the streets, convulsive embraces and tears of happiness, people chiseling pieces from the Berlin Wall. A famous Hollywood director once said that movies are the same as life with the boring parts cut out. I found that this was precisely right. The boring parts of the revolutions had simply finished up on the floors of television studio cutting rooms all over the world. What the world had seen and heard were only the most dramatic and symbolic images. This was all right, but it was not all. Life, for the most part, is trivial.

Svetlana Vakulic 1987: How we survived Communism and even laughed, p.xxii