Marie Lapišová

"It was not easy, because in the Ostrava region, there are tougher people. How hard work is, so the people are alike, well of course there are also kind of softer, more loving, I take it as I got to know it. They are more strenuous with work. Even before I got my job, it took me a month to get it, and it was at the internal clinic again, even though my husband had an uncle, who helped me a little, otherwise I would not even have got it at all. Well, so I felt quite unhappy there as they spoke with a strong accent in Ostrava, and that was a quite a bit different. I tell you an example: I came to the afternoon shift and the patient, a real Ostrava man, said he wanted ´gorsky´tea. So I thought, "Well, hot." What you would think, just hot. So I brought a warm tea. He nearly poured it at my feet. And the other patient told me he wanted bitter tea as he was a diabetic."

"My husband went to work early in the morning, I got up and I saw flying bombers over our block of flats. We lived just at the Polish border in Karvina and there was no flight zone at all, there were no airplanes at all, and suddenly I could see them from the window at seven o'clock in the morning, my husband was gone, I was alone at home, and suddenly I see tank approaching from the polish border, the tanks with those cannons, machine guns directed directly to our block. I was just jerking, that's clear. Now there were no phones, neither fixed line, just nothing. I asked myself: 'What's going on?' And just right in front of the blockhouse they turned in the direction Ostrava on the road under our block. So I rushed out and off to work."