Miroslav Seidl

“You know, I now have great-grandchildren and I feel sorry for them that they can't have the childhood I had. Childhood can obviously look different to everyone, I had to walk three kilometres to get to my school in Slaný, every day, in winter, in summer. I would come home from school, and my schoolbag flew into a corner and we would go have fun, we had this group of people from my generation in our village. Together we would shepherd geese, go swimming with horses, play football. Exactly like Menšík, in one of his stories he says that everything growing within twenty kilomentres was theirs. We were the same. On our way from school we knew where the turnip was, where the pears were, where the plums were. Everything. Often we would come home covered in dirt because on the way we made a campfire, we dug out some potatoes, roasted them and ate them… You don't know what that is like, neither does today's generation. Climbing trees and rocks, that was our thing.”

“And the third thing I loved were forests and mountains. Basically, after I ended all of that, I settled in that village, Kovářská, below the Klínovec mountain, and there I spent every day in the forest. The forest was a hundred metres from my house and let me tell you that it doesn’t get better than that. Imagine sitting in the forest, eating a snack, and suddenly a tit lands on your arm and eats from your hand. That would never happen in here. Or you notice a badger watching you. Then they were trying to get me to become the local gamekeeper, but, well, I refused because once you look a deer or a doe in the eyes, I don't know who could feel like murdering it, certainly not me.”