Tanya Heaslip

Well, in my mind, Settelcani was sort of Heidi, Switzerland, crossed with little villages across Switzerland and Austria.

And I arrived to this very industrial town set in a valley filled with smokestacks where people got terrible bronchial diseases all the time, especially in winter.

And about 8,000 people whose lives were still frozen, it felt, in time before communism had fallen.

Now, this was 94, right at the start.

Communism had only fallen four years before, and it was taking a very long time to recede.

from the thinking and the ways of life of people.

So when I got to settle, Charlie, it was a very rude shock because it was winter and it was dark and it was grey.

It was depressing.

I got really, really sick.

And most people wouldn't look at me or talk to me because I was from the West and they were very suspicious of me.

My friends who lived through that time before the fall of communism said that you practiced something that they called inward migration.

So you had this outward personality, which would sort of agree with everything the state told you, more or less.

But inwardly, you had your own life.

And maybe you'd share that with some friends if you could trust them.

Very private.

When I got there, we arrived at seven o'clock at night and the entire town was in darkness.

So they turned off the lights at seven o'clock every night.

There was no television.

There was no nothing.

This was four years on and they were still doing it.