Rudolf Skaunic

“For every trip abroad we had to write a so-called journey report, the last paragraph of which was: who had I met and whether anyone hadcontacted me. Because it was our duty of course, there was this lovely sentence: ‘For the duration of my work trip I did not meet anyone, and apart from work matters I did not communicate about anything.’ And our signature.”

“The bad luck was that we went to say goodbye to our friends, and we agreed to set off at six a.m. Of course, the goodbyes couldn’t be said without a bottle, not that we drank it up, but I was delayed. So they managed to phone us up from Technoexport to say that the Six Day War had just broken out in the Middle East and that we weren’t going anywhere. So just imagine the disappointment when you’re all ready to go, you’re just about to set off, and then you don’t go anywhere. Luckily, the war ended in six days, and they gave us permission to leave three weeks later, and we went via the Balkans, Istanbul, and Ankara.”