Helena Třeštíková

“My parents began to consider that seriously as they had rather bad experience living here. My dad, who was a lawyer, worked as a painted for ten years due to political reasons. So he also experienced a lot himself. So they were thinking of it and I said that under no circumstances I will stay elsewhere and wish to return. And I kept that attitude. They finally decided to go back too. I kept working for the family there as agreed for about a month, before another au-pair arrived. But I could not wait to go back to the poor dirty Czechoslovakia, where in comparison to the shiny West everything was imperfect, but made sense to me and when I was crossing the borders taking a train back, I cried and promised myself I would never leave my country and stay whatever happens, good or bad, just everything, as it is a little corner, where I was born and wish to stay as nowhere else.”

“I believe I actually experienced quite an interesting period of the 20th century, at least now I feel that way. When I was a child I was a bit angry that I don’t live in an romantic environment I knew from books, like Kája Mařík and similar, and live in the Wenceslas square, and only now I realise that it was probably the most romantic location I could spend my youth in, as it was the centre of all action during my growing up. There were various marches and I terribly liked it and I totally loved the celebrations of the 1st of May and sat at the window all through that watching it with much excitement. And what was curious, that such communist festivities were perceived by my parents and grandma in a rather negative way. As my grandma lost a lot of money during the currency reform, which she inherited after her father, she much disliked the communists and so did my parents. But they were wise enough not to talk me out of it and when we sometimes talked about it, they just casually remarked: ,You will surely learn, when you grow up.‘”