A warm welcome in the West
During a summer holiday in Hungary in 1989, Christian Weiss fled with his family across the Hungarian border to Austria at the age of 13. Having arrived on the other side of the border, the first thing the family saw was vineyards. They walked on until they felt safe and finally stopped a man in a campervan to ask him to inform their Austrian friends about their safe arrival in Austria. They then stopped another car, a woman traveling with her son, who took them to the neighboring village, Deutschkreuz (Sopronkeresztúr). “I asked her why her son was sitting in the car in his pajamas and she replied that it was because he couldn’t sleep and asked her to drive him around the area. I’ll never forget that moment because at that point, I said to myself: ‘So this is the West where the parents have to do what the kids say’,” he recalled. In Deutschkreuz, Christian and his family was taken care of by the workers of the Red Cross. They were received very cordially and supplied with everything they needed: “Well, I had the feeling as if they had been waiting only for us. And in a way it was true. It was absolutely great.” At the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Christian and his family once again visited the inn in Deutschkreuz where they had been so warmly received. In the breakfast book from that time, he could read what he had written as a child. “They had a book where the fugitives could put down how many persons they were and what they wanted for breakfast. They showed me that book when I was there a few years ago and I recognized my writing from the time when I was a child. I had noted how many people we were and how many bagels we wanted for dinner. It was all in there.”