I was only like 15 years old at the time but IIRC we were kinda breaking some sort of travel rule for Americans about being that close to the border . I think we were told that there were a few select spots where the border fence didn ' t precisely follow the actual border for costlogistics reasons and it was supposedly possible to stray into East Germany in a couple places by accident , thus precipitating some sort of diplomatic incident when you got detainedshot etc . Maybe my father just made that up to freak us out IDK . I don ' t remember what the East Germans wanted but my father said Czechoslovakia wanted $ 32 per person to cross the border , which seemed like a lot in 1983 so we skipped it . We visited Hungary which I think wanted $ 5 a head . We drove to Budapest and stayed at some Intourist type hotel . Everything in Budapest felt grim and gray , nothing like the pictures I see today . Stores with empty shelves . The whole bit . I remember everything on the menu at the hotel was $ 3 except the steak , which was $ 4 , and the food was decent . Victory of Communism over high food prices and all that . The fact that the barbed wire around the hotel pool faced outwards made a statement though . Creepy .