Jan Macháček

“And so you could get into those little groups and gradually become a part of them, later we named it so called Košíře underground, as we mostly gathered in the pubs Na Klamovce in Košíře, where we used to hang out all the time in fact, if you were not devoting your time to art or reading. So we were sitting in the garden pub Na Klamovce, a part of that was for example Jáchym [Topol], who also lived there, as Viktor Karlík and another part was the Malá Strana underground, you know those boys, the Topols and their groups were from Malá Strana, so we would go to Malostranská café, Slávie, to have tea, that cost us one crown eighty or drinking beer in Klamovka, well and so gradually I became a part of this cultural environment.“

“That was for the smoke, so in winter there was much work, scratching, pulling out, you take whole large bits out, dust bins are cleared, loading, in summer there was hardly any work. Of course, there were different people in the boiler room, there was one jehovist, he did not bother anyone at all, there was n evangelist, then there was Míra Hájek, who was called Nemira Hájek, who was a chartist, but he was like an alcoholic who actually was half-living there and kept drinking at the hotel, and no one bothered him, so as he was still washing black dishes, he worked as a half-homeless. Yet again, he was good at some things, he might have taught me how to go to court, that he went to court a lot, and when he was in court, he was supposed to promote it, as it was a kind of a hobby.“