![]() ![]() ![]() And when I finally had to leave Prague on Day Nineteen, with the revolution by no means over, people were still saying, “You see, with us-ten days!” Such is the magic of round numbers. It was on the front page of the Polish opposition daily, Gazeta Wyborcza. An opposition spokesman recalled it in a television broadcast just before the general strike-on Day Eleven. It was repeated in the Czechoslovak papers. And because he used it, it had a fantastic career. ![]() Havel subsequently used the conceit in several interviews. The camera team dashed off to copy the tape, so that it could be shown on television sets in public places. I was politely compelled to repeat my quip to camera, over a glass of beer, and then Havel gave his reaction: “It would be fabulous if it could be so….” Revolution, he said, is too exhausting. I said: “In Poland it took ten years, in Hungary ten months, in East Germany ten weeks: perhaps in Czechoslovakia it will take ten days!” Grasping my hands, and fixing me with his winning smile, he immediately summoned over a video-camera team from the samizdat Video-journál, who just happened to be waiting in the corner. Arriving in Prague on Day Seven (November 23), when the pace of change was already breathtaking, I met Václav Havel in the back room of his favored basement pub. My modest contribution to the revolution was a quip. ![]()
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