Roman Havránek

* 1934

  • "We had... abroad at the embassy was a mission, a cultural mission. And there was a cultural mission in Japan, and they wrote a book about life in Japan. And I got the book at that time, somewhere in an antique shop, and I read it carefully. And it said, to curry favor with the ambassador by some informal gift, but it must not be a gift like a bribe or a monetary gift. And he, the ambassador, I mean the Japanese ambassador here, when I read the book, I found out that it was supposed to be some kind of informal gift. And so I bought-there was some kind of Works that sold various souvenirs at that time, and I bought a straw doll. I brought it to the embassy and the lady who was on duty there said, 'Well, I'll give it to him,' so she went upstairs, but she didn't come back down, and the ambassador came back and said, 'Sir, you're on to something! I don't have a lady here, and now I have a spare. So I got to Japan. That was my first foreign trip."

  • "I remember I probably followed the events. Maybe they were broadcasting Hitler's speeches. And I always had these glosses on that, which my father always liked, so he would always take me with him when he went to the office, and to tell those fellow employees how I glossed those speeches of Hitler, how he gesticulated during those speeches. That was the first time we had a radio. My father got a radio, so that's why we heard it, these speeches. It was all on the radio, the internet didn't exist yet. So it was a little bit different."

  • "Immediately after the liberation they announced on the radio who wants to join the scout troop, the assembly will be there and there. It was called Na Střelnici, that was the contact point. So I was the first one there, not the first one, from the whole area or from that Příbram. Boys who were interested came there, and in those days they worked not in a troop way, but in a centre way. The centre leader, who was already a scout in the First Republic, that is before the war, then he organized the scouts. And we used to go on trips as a centre, and then I, as the youngest, was placed among the "wolf cubs"."

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    Praha, 21.11.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:20:09
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

His scouting story began after the Protectorate and lives on to this day

Roman Havranek, 1981
Roman Havranek, 1981
zdroj: Archive of Roman Havranek

Roman Havránek was born on 19 September 1934 in Jáchymov, his father was employed there as a mine manager. In 1938 his family was displaced to Příbram, his father was transferred to the mines in Březové Hory. In Příbram he started to attend the first class. After the liberation he joined the Junák, his nickname is Mánek. He graduated from the Faculty of Civil Engineering at the Czech Technical University. He participated in the 1971 World Scout Jamboree in Japan and four years later in Norway, after which the regime banned him from travelling. He worked for Underground Engineering Construction on the drinking water intake from Želivka, he also worked on the Dlouhé stráně pumped storage plant. For example, he published a fictionalized biography of the founder of the Scout movement called „The Wolf Who Never Sleeps“. He is officially a member of the Svojsík Scout Troop and the Velen Fanderlik Troop. He was married three times and had three children. In 2023 he lived in Zbraslav, Prague.