Ivan Exnar

"Then there is the sports part (of my life). Of course I was climbing in Switzerland with my Swiss as well as Czech colleagues. My friend and I got invited to the Mount McKinley in Alaska, and we managed to climb the mountain. The expedition was guided by a famous Austrian mountaineer, Erich Vanis, so we got acquainted. The Austrians were planning an expedition under the auspices of the Austrian Himalaya Association and invited me as a guest to come with them. For me it was a huge chance to get to Himalayas. That was in 1979. We went there together with Petr Šír, a friend from Vienna, also of Czech origin. (…) We were lucky to get the peak. It was one of the last largely state funded expeditions.“

"Well ok, there (in Chamonix) we stayed for a relatively long time, about three or four weeks. Then the Czechs had much sympathy. All hoteliers were borrowing us for lunch and dinners and we had everything for free in the best hotels. Gradually people were missing out, some tried to come back home. As a student of chemistry in fourth grade I arranged a praxis in a company CAMAG in Muttenz. It was privately agreed, but the school in Prague accepted the deal. So I went over there (…) "I came to Switzerland and everything was ready for the Czechs, just euphoria. I began working in CAMAG in Muttenz; I spent about three weeks there. They offered me to study at the university so I signed up. It gave me the opportunity to stay there and I had never intended to come back or run away, it was just out of discussion. Sometime later I got an announcement form from the Czech institutions regarding being expelled from studies and was sentenced for three years to serve in prison."

„When we talk to relation to the Czechoslovakia, so I remember we flew from Vienna. We went to Vienna by train and there was an official saying good-bye. (…) We flew up and the weather was lovely and we could see the Elbe and Moldow confluencing in Mělník. It was a very emotional moment for me, as I was ten kilometres from home and stil so very far. I still remember it today in a very fine manner.“

"It was such a time. By escaping we got lucky personally. A man killed himself there (in Czechoslovakia) through all the active years, when you can realize yourself (in sport of workwise). For us, and our year the revolution came too late. Here I could realize myself, I learned languages and quite a different way of life. To a certain extent we got lucky. Of course it was paid for by immigration.“