Celebrations for Republic Day on 7 October 1989, the 40th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, were marred by demonstrations. There had been protests in the preceding weeks and Hungary and Czechoslovakia by this time were allowing East Germans to travel freely across their borders to the west. From 1–8 October, 14 "Freedom Trains" took 12,000 East German refugees from Prague across GDR territory to West Germany, to cheers from East Germans as they passed.