Hold on, we’re flying to meet mummy!
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Josef Hlavatý was born on 6 April 1964 in Jablonec nad Nisou as the only child to a blue-collar family with a “burgeois” past. He hadn’t joined either Pionýr or Svazarm and his father, a truck driver, listened to Voice of America. Ever since childhood he had great interest in motorbikes and cars. He put his technical skills and ideas to practice with support of his father and to the police’s discontent by designing his own motorbikes based on what he saw in Western magazines. His models were received with acclaim at exhibitions and contests, and he wanted to become a designer. However, due to his political stance, he wasn’t even admitted to become a car mechanic. Placing a US flag on the tank of a motorbike put him at risk of prosecution for promotion of capitalism. In 1987 he and his father built a hang-glider, and he was about to become an agricultural pilot. After the secret police intervened and made sure he wouldn’t get the job he and his wife decided to leave the country. His wife with their year-old son fled from a tour to Yugoslavia but Josef and his three-year-old David weren’t allowed to join them. He therefore undertook a dramatic and risky hang-glider cross-border flight to Austria. In summer 1989 his parents joined him there, escaping via Hungary. Josef Hlavatý only returned to Czech Republic in late-1990s following a divorce. To this day he commutes to Austria for work.
