Czechoslovakia: Czechs and Slovaks mark 30 years since Velvet Divorce

31 December marked the 30th day of the break-up of Czechoslovakia; 1 of the fewer cases successful past erstwhile a authorities has been divided up without a azygous beingness being lost. Today the Czech Republic and Slovakia bask a harmonious, friction-free relationship - tinged with a interaction of regret for what was erstwhile a blessed marriage.

"This is my full life. It's my regular bread." Filip Svrcek formed his oculus on the snow-covered banks of the River Morava, watching the grey-green wide flowing towards a weir and hydroelectric powerfulness presumption from the 1930s.

Filip, president of the Hodonin Rowing Club, has spent each of his 41 years wrong earshot of the river, which forms a agelong long of the Czech Republic's south-eastern borderline with Slovakia.

"Over there, that's Slovakia, but for america it's astir the aforesaid place," helium said, explaining that his rowers travel the rules of stream navigation alternatively than planetary law.

"We stray into the Slovak fractional of the stream each the time. We don't request authoritative support - and I anticipation we ne'er will," helium went on.

The lone conflicts - successful summertime months - were with section fishermen alternatively than the police, helium said.

Filip, who lives 500m from the rowing nine with his Slovak woman and 2 children, was conscionable 11 erstwhile Czechoslovakia divided into two.

His representation of it is simply a child's memory: immoderate excitement, confusion, alarm perhaps. But immoderate emotions person agelong since subsided.

"For me, everything stayed the same. Friends, connection - everything was the same."

In town, astatine Hodonin's Masaryk Museum, I received a circuit of the exhibits devoted to Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the section lad who went connected to go the founding begetter of Czechoslovakia astatine the adjacent of World War One.

Son of a Slovak coachman and a Moravian navigator who some served the imperial court, the young Masaryk - similar Filip - was arsenic astatine location connected some sides of the river.

Technically each clip helium crossed it helium would beryllium passing from the Margraviate of Moravia to the Kingdom of Hungary, from 1 Habsburg crownland to another.

"But helium wouldn't person perceived it similar that," said the museum's manager Irena Chovancikova, mildly scolding my efforts to use 21st-Century knowing of statehood - with its passports and clearly-defined borders - to the Central Europe of the mid-19th Century.

I pondered what Masaryk - who forged a communal authorities for Czechs and Slovaks retired of the ashes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire successful 1918 - would person made of his treasured instauration being dismembered by Czech and Slovak politicians conscionable 75 years later.

"It's astir intolerable to say," said Irena.

"Maybe helium would person tugged them by their ears and told them off. Who knows? But 1 happening is for definite - if it had happened successful his lifetime, determination would surely person been an aggravated statement astir it," she went on.

Perhaps much aggravated than successful 1992 - erstwhile Czechoslovakia was divvied up softly by the national state's 2 premier ministers, with nary referendum.

After a five-minute thrust I recovered myself trudging done the slush extracurricular Holic castle - a alternatively dilapidated three-storey baroque heap conscionable crossed the borderline successful Slovakia.

The castle - erstwhile a Habsburg summertime retreat - was shuttered and deserted connected the time I visited, truthful I made a beeline for Holic's tiny Christmas market, to lukewarm up with a cupful of mulled wine.

I archetypal had to scour my pockets for immoderate euros. The astir evident quality betwixt the 2 countries is that the Slovaks person enthusiastically embraced the azygous European currency. Their neighbours person stuck doggedly to their Czech crowns.

"Maybe it was a shame we divided up, who knows? But we're conscionable the small radical aren't we," said stallholder Jan.

"But it hasn't divided us," added his woman Mirka. "For us, thing is divided."

That evening I stopped by an evening of people dancing astatine a section hotel. There I met a subordinate of the Valsa people ensemble, Miroslav Milota, a antheral from Holic who's been commuting crossed the borderline to Hodonin for enactment for 42 years.

"I retrieve that New Year's Eve, 1992. I retrieve we sang the Czechoslovak anthem - some parts, the Czech verse and past the Slovak one. It was emotional," said Miroslav.

"We realised that from present on, we'd lone beryllium singing our ain half. So we didn't truly cognize was going to happen: however everything other - not conscionable the anthem - would beryllium divided."

I was visiting Czechoslovakia successful December 1992, and retrieve that consciousness of uncertainty and nervousness. By the clip I moved present permanently six months later, the state was nary more.

Today Czechs and Slovaks are champion friends. Dig heavy capable and you volition find immoderate nostalgia for their communal state, and occasionally regret for its passing.

But their fast-track divorcement - the presumption of which were scribbled down successful the plot of a villa - is precise overmuch successful the past.