Czechs offer “Retro” communist holidays
A Czech travel agency has come up with a novel idea for a holiday. It is offering holidaymakers “retro” holidays where punters are given the opportunity to turn back the clock and re-live the past. These ‘communist’ holidays are package holidays for people nostalgic for the trade union perks of communist Czechoslovakia, when factory workers were bussed off to recuperate from the daily grind.
For a modest sum guests can stay at a grim-looking hotel in Slovakia’s Tatra Mountains, to relive the sights, sounds and smells of pre 1989 holidays the BBC recently reported. These ‘retro’ holidays are being offered in the style of the workers’ breaks that used to be organised by the Communist Revolutionary Trade Union Movement – or ROH – to use a Czech acronym.
The holidays were a reward for a year of toil in the offices, factories and coal mines of socialist Czechoslovakia. Most visitors today are middle age or elderly Slovaks or Czechs – coming to rekindle fond memories of times gone by. Why not?
