"... So we had to stop at their farm. There were about thirty of us. Those Romanian shacks are one-room houses about the size of this studio. So he somehow crammed us all into the house, where there were already about seven people. And that they will treat us. And he brought a huge dirty rag of a completely indeterminate color. We all looked at it... And they ceremoniously unwrapped it, and it was completely fresh sheep's curd, the whitest you can imagine. And they split it for us, and it was the best sheep's cheese I've ever eaten. There I learned that you must not pay attention to details that are a little different. And this helped me in my next job, that we were used to not turning our noses up at anything. Our chief professor Richard Jeřábek used to say that an ethnographer must stop at nothing..."
"So we were charmed, of course. I will never forget that in Norwich we first walked around the market and then we also went to a shopping center. I still call it the velvet wall. There was an entire wall filled with rolls of velvet, from white to black. In about thirty shades. One saw it... for us, it meant we could see it but couldn't afford anything..."
"The children wanted to make her happy too, and one evening one of the boys pulled a big, heavy trunk into the barn, and mom says: 'What do you have there?' And he: 'Teacher, there are pears behind the village!' Well, because the food was limited in World War II, he says, 'I plucked this for all of us.' And now she, who was responsible for those children, realized that for this act of plucking the fruit, which was intended for German soldiers, the death penalty was established. . . When one realizes such complete banalities and what it means at what time. . ."
Kateřina Cichrová was born on 14 March 1951 in České Budějovice into a family that shared Masaryk‘s ideals. The witness was interested in foreign countries and languages. She studied first at a grammar school and then at the Faculty of Arts, where she chose the field of ethnography. A crucial moment in her adolescence was the work trip to England, from which she returned the day before 21 August 1968. The foreign experience gave her a glimpse of other worlds, and she benefited from this experience throughout her life. She dedicated her professional life to the care of historical monuments as a collection administrator at the South Bohemian Museum and later as a curator at the Regional Center for Monument Care and Nature. Thanks to her work, it was possible to save many fascinating historical legacies of our ancestors. Perhaps her most awarded project is the rescue of the baroque theater in Český Krumlov. In 2003, it was awarded the prestigious Europa Nostra award, which is awarded by the European Union in the field of cultural heritage care. Together with her colleagues, she won in a great competition of three hundred projects from nineteen countries. In 2022, she lived in České Budějovice.
