Ivan Hajniš

“For our first holiday in emigration we flew to Italy to the sea. We had to change course and the plane flew over Prague. When we where passing above Prague, the pilot announced that we were flying over Prague. That was two three years after we had emigrated, we had tears in our eyes. We didn’t yet know then that we would ever come back again, that it would ever end. No one expected that.”

“As dandies (people following an alternative sub-culture, characteristic for their long hair - transl.) we spent lots of time in practice rooms. With the big beat (the Czech term for beat music - transl.) all the time, even ten hours a day. Our first success was in a pub in Kbely, the pub there had a saloon. So we started to do Sunday big beat concerts. That’s the first time I experienced that people would start to shriek and scream when we played. Dandies from all over Prague came to hear us, we were the first ‘hairies’ in Czechia. Our members were Pepík Brouček, Korejs and others. A part of that was that we were chased, beaten and jailed by policemen.”

“I was caught by patrolmen once. ‘ID check. Where is your stamp?’ (In the ID card - ed.) - ‘They didn’t give us any stamp. I’m employed by Prague Concerts and Shows.’ - ‘Don’t try that on us!’ Spent the whole night at the police station, in the morning they took me by 603 (Škoda car type used by the police - transl.) to the prison in Ruzyně. They locked me up in a cell. [...] For about four hours; the prison doctor came along, rummaged through my hair. ‘Okay, he doesn’t have lice.’ [...] The next day I was supposed to turn up with my hair cut.”

“When we arrived in Czechia, it was like when one goes back into the First Republic, into greyness. Greyness, smoke, dirt. The pubs stank from the crapper, they didn’t have the pottery. We were looking forward to having a stew in Dubí. [...] The bartender was in a dingy overcoat, he hardly washed the pint mugs. We were used to sparkling clean glass in Sweden. We knew this. We were home. A journey through time. [...]”