“It was destiny. I and my husband wanted to go to France. He was there as a little child with his parents because his father worked at our embassy. Well, I am a bit Francophile so we both wished to go and see Paris. So, we repeatedly requested an exit visa. Well and we suddenly got it but there was a problem with... Excuse me, I mean we got the promise. [the foreign exchange promise] We requested an exit visa, which was denied to me. They would have probably given it to my husband, but they denied it to me. And the reason was then identified by the paragraph. That is why I went to the library to borrow a statute book. I found the paragraph in question and there in the paragraph, it was written that it was not in the interest of the Republic for a person to travel because of reasons A, B, or C. And the only thing that was left - because I did not sell any property. I did not say that I wanted to leave. I was not prosecuted. So the only thing I could choose from was that I would embarrass or defame the Republic. And I stated that it offended me personally. Because only those two paragraphs could concern me - and that I requested that someone look into it immediately. And it was smart of them - they always used the thirty days they had for an answer and wrote me that it was being investigated. And that other thirty days started. Then I got the answer saying that they found nothing wrong with the decision, so I appealed to a higher authority. There it took thirty days again. And at the time I wrote a letter to the president's office, I received an envelope with a stripe, that is, from the bank, telling me that the promise had expired and that someone more suitable would get it.”
“Well, we went to bed and a phone call woke us up at two o´clock in the morning. And a complete stranger who probably mistook the phone number was calling. I am not sure. He was probably upset and was stammering a bit and I thought at first that he was drunk. So, I (told) that poor guy who said: ‘For Christ, it must be a mistake. But so that you know, the Russians invaded us!‘ And I responded: ‘Please, go and get some sleep and leave working people alone.‘ I apologized to him many times from a distance for thinking he was drunk. Even though I do not know who he was.”
“On the one hand, there was my subconscious desire to become independent. I studied in my home town contrary to my many schoolmates. I never lived in a hall of residence, and I never ate in the school cafeteria because I had my mum who took care of everything at home. I studied without worries. Well. I tutored. I tutored little children in maths to make some money for my needs because we did not get pocket money. You had to somehow deserve it during the holidays. Well, I deserved it during the school year by tutoring in maths. I taught children to draw parallel lines and so on. They paid me seven crowns per hour, it was an amazing part-time job back then.”
“We did not take it badly. Firstly, we did not move far away and secondly, it was a huge adventure for us children because our parents borrowed a two-wheel hand truck from their friend who was a room painter and we moved everything, including my father´s piano on it. And little punks from Štěpánská Street were shouting at us: ‘Comedians are coming, there will be a circus!‘ Because a guitar, violin, all those musical instruments... They might have thought there would be a festival or something like that.”
Anna Hostičková was born on 23 August 1942 in Prague. Her father Bohuslav Kupšovský was an actor and singer and her mother owned a convenience store that was nationalised in 1951. The family also lost a flat in the back part of the store and they had to move to Charles Square. As a little child, she experienced the allied air raid on Prague on 14 February 1945. She graduated in Architecture, and she devoted her life to the architectural development of Pilsen. Her sister and husband emigrated to London in 1968. The witness was at the birth of the regular Pilsen Courtyards event and published a book of the same name in 2020. She lived in a flat in Pilsen - Slovany in 2021.
