The picnic that brought down a vast empire

The picnic that brought down a vast empire: "The date was August 19. The place: Sopron, a sleepy provincial town in western Hungary. Even in such a backwater, the winds of change were blowing. In Hungary, a new generation of reform-minded communists had taken charge. Almost overnight, they wrote a US-style constitution and began speaking openly of a free press, free markets and free elections. Emboldened, a small group of local Sopron activists decided to celebrate the new spirit. Their modest aim: put up some tents, hire a brass band and let the beer and good vibes flow. One of the organisers came up with an especially inspired idea - to briefly open a gate through the barbed-wire frontier to Austria, allowing people to casually stroll back and forth across the border for the first time in four decades. They called it the Pan-European Picnic."