Krista Dytrychová

"I was all the way up on Rügen because my aunt and cousin worked in gastronomy, had a restaurant. And my aunt came one morning, I was still at home, I didn't know anything, and my aunt came one morning all upset about what had happened at our place. Here in Bohemia. And we didn't know what to do, and then, a few days later, I don't know if it was common knowledge, I don't know how they found out, the families, I don't know, just my aunt found out again that all the Czechs that were there, because there were a lot of them in the camps and the camps and the hotels. Those who had cars, it was called for a certain time, date, place. Those of us who had cars went by car, those of us who didn't go in buses, and the whole convoy, policemen in the front, policemen in the back, took us to the border. To the border to Cínovec. They dropped us off in Cínovec and buses were waiting on the Czech side. But how my aunt found out, I don't know."

"The passengers took a bus from a travel agency in the city to the airport. The ticket could be bought both at the travel agency and at the airport. There we checked in the tickets, the luggage, if there was any, and the goods were checked in. No proper checks, nothing. Passengers would pile into the departure lounge after check-in and wait there to be taken to the airport. In the meantime, the plane arrived, sometimes early, sometimes by the time the passengers were already there. The planes' transit time was usually forty or fifty minutes, or at that time it was even less than that, half an hour for domestic. So it was all so intermingled. The plane came in, we checked the arrival, took the passengers from the airport to the lounge. Meanwhile, most of the departing passengers had already checked in. Either the plane was refueled or it wasn't refueled. They loaded the luggage on the plane and we had to do all the paperwork ourselves for the plane, which is the bill of loading, that was all done by hand at that time. That's about it. We handed the documents to the captain to sign, took people to the plane. There weren't any stewards on the planes, on the 14s, back then, so we had to hand out candies and then, we called it a poem, recite a poem there. And so it was, when I think back on it today, anybody who didn't experience it wouldn't believe it. We just had to stand at the front of the plane and we had to speak to the whole plane, which was forty people when it was full. And it's quite long, forty people is a lot. Without a microphone, without everything there to say that poem. There were a lot of service passengers flying, which means mostly gentlemen. Well, they were also making fun of us quite a lot, joking, and laughing at us in various ways, and we had to recite the poem in all seriousness. And then the plane could take off."