Photo: Daniel Antal (Flickr); Licence: CC BY 2.0   On Prague's famous Wenceslas Square during the Velvet Revolution of November 1989

In the third part of our mini series commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of communism in many parts of Central and Southeastern Europe, Kamila Kubásková, a recent graduate, currently based in Munich, shares her experiences of growing up in the Czech Republic.

It must have been wonderful to have been living in Czechoslovakia in November 1989. Although I belong to the lucky ones who never had to put up with communist rule, I could not particularly enjoy the events of the year, as I was a baby with entirely apolitical interests. But I can vividly imagine the atmosphere of the day. I can feel the excitement, the air of anticipation and expectation. I picture people all over the country waiting impatiently for news from the capital, trying to comprehend what was happening and knowing that everything in their lives was about to change. The revolution was a peaceful event that filled the people with euphoria and, for the first time in many decades, with hope for a better future.

My parents could not join the spontaneous celebrations that were happening in the streets, because they had to look after me and my older brother. However, the knowledge that their children would grow up with the freedom to travel, study and live without constant fear of their own government, was satisfying enough for them. Parents of our generation also knew that our lives will be very different to their own and they would not always be able to prepare for all the choices that would lie ahead of us.

Photo: Thomas Hedden (Wikimedia Commons); Licence: Public domain A Solidarity demonstration on the streets of Warsaw back in 1984

In the second part of our series commemorating a quarter of a century since the fall of communism in many parts of Central and Southeastern Europe, we hear the views and recollections of Szymon Pozimski, who was born in Poland in 1988.

This year we have witnessed the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one of the historical milestones that, along with other memorable events like the first partially free elections in Poland in June 1989, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the toppling of Ceauseșcu in Romania, marks the end of communism in Eastern Europe.

Naturally, it only makes sense to consider the events of 1989 in reference to the decades that preceded them, decades of struggle for the oppressed peoples of Eastern Europe. Without at least a cursory glance at what it was like to live in a communist state, it is impossible to understand what sort of a victory we celebrate. Placing the great triumph in its wider context is all the more important, as with the passage of time the recollection of the period 1945-89 becomes more and more obliterated in the common memory – and this goes for both sides of the now-defunct Iron Curtain.

Photo: MD (Wikimedia Commons); Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0   Demonstrators during the Velvet Revolution in 1989

As a way of marking the 25th anniversary of the fall of communism in many parts of Central and Southeastern Europe, E&M asked young people from some of the countries involved to tell us what the anniversary means to them. First up is Timea Szilvássy, who lives in Bratislava and was a year and a half old when the Velvet Revolution took place.

To understand how much the post-communist countries have changed, one must recall how they started out. Recall, what freedom meant at that time and how has it changed over the last 25 years.

Our parents and grandparents might talk about the fragility of freedom, about how distant and unclear the term could be in their lives and how far away we are from that perception nowadays. Back then, propagandists of the state told the people what to think, the secret police watched basically everyone and put regime critics behind bars. Only dreams stayed safe, but it was better to not dream big, but rather to stay dutiful so as to lead a convenient life of sorts.

Something changed a quarter of a century ago. Thousands of people took the risk and stood out from the line. They exposed themselves and their families to high risks, sometimes even imprisonment. But the power of those people as well as similar actions all over Europe made a non-violent transition possible, overthrowing the communist leaders. At that time democracy and prosperity seemed to be just around the corner. In Czechoslovakia, it led to the country's first non-communist government in more than four decades. And the transition was just the beginning. On New Year's Day 2015 Slovakia will celebrate its 22st anniversary as an independent nation.

Photo: Christian Diemer Chernivtsi, morbid paradise of decaying beauty. Since 2006, when this photo was taken, the city has smartened itself up a lot, thanks to an efficient mayor – and smuggling into the EU via the nearby Romanian border.

Continuing on his journey of exploration throughout Ukraine, Christian Diemer arrives in Chernivtsi, a forgotten city in the west of the country, the fate of which has been inextricably tied up with the turbulent history of Eastern and Central Europe over the last centuries.

I have found paradise on earth. Nobody knows that it exists. The world has long forgotten about it. Even the Ukrainians, that blessed people who live so close by, would not have it on their radar – their smallest regional capital, lost somewhere in the most remote south western corner of their large country, twenty minutes from what is now the border of Romania and the outer edge of the EU.

TRAINS LONG GONE

In May 1914 I could have boarded a train at Vienna's Nordbahnhof at 12:35. A first class ticket would have cost just under 100 crowns, a second-class ticket around 60. Only 19 hours later, the low, elegant art nouveau train station would have come into sight, couched in the gentle bend of the railway lines amidst a green, flat valley. As the train came to a halt, a sign would have drifted in front of the dirty carriage window: "Czernowitz". Maybe a train guard with a handlebar moustache would have shouted: "Endstation, bitte alle aussteigen! Last stop, all change here!", in a melodic Austrian accent, accompanied by the curses of the Ruthenians, Poles, or Jews heaving their leather suitcases down the tall carriages.