Travel Travails

Life in general, sometimes surprisingly, is a marathon. Which means that at some point everyone wants to stop. Everyone. Dead tired, completely exhausted, not wanting to go one single yard. The same truth applies to life in science. The periods of crisis may seem to last forever, the way out obscured behind an infinite horizon. The only way to survive such periods is to keep running, keep moving at least, never lose the belief that at some point things will get better. The best way to solve these sorts of depression was, at least in my case, to go to the West and work hard, like a meditating monk in a desert, separated from everything and everybody at home. I did it many times and spent a total of five years in Western laboratories, most of the time alone.

Still deeply immersed in one such depression, in March 1993 I made my first visit to the UK, the country which in later years became my second home, and to the University of Glasgow, my work place. The first few hours, however, were just a bad dream. After a sleepless night in a coach from Prague I finally arrived at the immigration office in Dover, only to be immediately detained. Why? I had no work permit.

Looking back on those few hours in a detention camp, it was a funny and valuable experience (I seriously recommend everybody should spend a few hours in prison to appreciate the real value of freedom). But in that rainy, cold night in Dover, it was not funny at all.

It seemed to be fun in the beginning, in the course of discussions with immigrations officers. It still might have been regarded as a somewhat unusual but still bearable experience when all the other people from the coach left (for their final ride to London). But when the door of the van that was escorting me to the detention centre was closed and there was no lock on the inside, the fun suddenly ended. I had to remove my belt (probably to stop me hanging myself), matches, cigarettes, etc. and I also had to invert my pockets and show that there was nothing inside. Then I was guided to the inner space of PRISON.

The first impression is panic at one’s total separation from the outer world. There is no way to describe this feeling. Simply, one has to spend some time in prison to know what it feels like. You feel absolutely and totally alone in the whole universe. After some time, however, I started to look around and tried to communicate with other people. The guy from Romania could not speak English, but an MD from Congo did. Call by phone, call somebody in the external world by phone. PHONE!!!!! Yes, there was a phone. So at 7 a.m., I called the lab in Glasgow and, luckily, my future boss was there. GM is an early bird.

"Hello Graeme, I am in prison. No. Yes. No. Yes, I may give you the officer who is present here." By lucky coincidence somebody came at that moment with breakfast. "Well, Mr Svoboda is not in prison, he is detained." Not in prison? There was a heavy iron bar in the middle of a small window, behind which I could see the white cliffs of Dover. I remembered the first sentence from lesson no. 1 in all our English textbooks: "When approaching England, we can see the white cliffs of Dover." Yes, I could see them, but from behind an iron bar.

GM mobilised the rescue force represented by the kind angels from the Wellcome Trust and after three more hours, the chief officer of the morning shift came and let me out. With all my luggage I had to take the local bus to London, which took three hours. It was raining, dark and cold, but the ride through all those beautiful small villages slowly brought home to me that I was in the country which had stood firm against tyranny, the home of great statesman, and many great scientists. It was not the most auspicious of starts, but surely the good times lay ahead?

External links

• Institute of Physiology: Details of the Institute at the Academy of Sciences in the Czech Republic where Dr Petr Svoboda works
• Professor Graeme Milligan: Details of his research interests at the University of Glasgow