| Dec-30-22 | | avenant69: In his autobiography "Grettisfang" (2017), Freysteinn describes how playing in this, and some other tournaments in East-Germany, came about. He was working as a craftsman in a town in southern Sweden at the time, and with his earnings had managed to buy himself a second hand motorcycle. With chess tournaments coming few and far between in that part of the country, he discovered one day an advertisement for an interesting competition down in East Germany, so he simply jumped on his bike and rode it to the nearest ferry-harbour where he caught the next boat over to E-Germany. Arriving at one of their ominous border posts, he considered himself lucky when there was only one vehicle ahead of him, which was being thoroughly checked, so he just waited patiently on his bike at a safe distance until it was over. At last, the guards beckoned him to approch and he also got a similar search, his passport, money and foreign currency, etc, all being scrutinized, and their final check was to call the tournament organizers in order to find out if indeed there was a Freysteinn Þorbergsson, an Icelandic national, registered to play in their tournament? He was, and got waved through.
While all this was going on, Freysteinn had noticed that the guards, in their spartan booth, had absolutely nothing to pass the time while their border post was idle, no TV, no playing cards, no magazines, no nothing. So on his way back from the tournament, he picked up a chess set from a local store, and arriving at the border, he presented it to the guards, who were genuinely surprised by his gift. Thereafter, each time that Freysteinn passed through that border on his way to another tournament, he just got waved through, with a big round smile on all faces ! People will be people, no matter what...n'est-ce pas? More on Freysteinn to come at his personal page shortly. |
Kibitzing
