In all the former Soviet satellite states (or the “socialist bloc”), the years have brought changes in society, customs and everyday life – undoubtedly for the better. There is now a democratic electoral system; people can say want they choose, accept any religion, gather and defend their interests. We have no censorship, and can travel abroad and work where we want, and return later. The literally walled-off borders, guarded intensely by soldiers with loaded rifles, both separated us (citizens of former Czechoslovakia) from others and our current neighbors from us. Because among all “socialist states” ours was economically strongest, foreign laborers poured into our land. Some – paid worse than we were – sold goods that were sometimes smuggled, and when the police caught them it was not their bosses who were deported, but them, the lowest component in the whole chain. Typically, these were young women from Ukraine. Sometimes I would buy their bottle openers just to engage them in conversation. The stories were the same: a husband missing, or a drunkard, or unemployed.