Helena Jindáčková

“When we went to Western Germany, we were silly and asked a technician first. When sportspeople went abroad during the communist era, there were eleven players and twenty people accompanying them, because they wanted to go abroad too and they were also meant to keep an eye on us. We told one technician that we wanted to stay there. They grabbed us by our hair and took us back to the team. From then on, we knew we could not ask. When we came to Italy we were not prepared. All we had was a suitcase with clothes for a week, football shoes and a hair drier. The hair drier was the first thing I didn’t have to buy. We weren’t ready. – “Why did you do it?” – “To have a different life. There was no freedom here. I was not one of those who would settle for that. I needed to learn, move, do something. You couldn’t go abroad, so finally you fled. If it can’t be done by fair means it will be done by foul. See, you are aged eighteen or twenty, you see foreigners driving fancy cars on Wenceslas Square and wearing different clothes. You keep on dreaming about living a better life, being able to buy things… All that was here was the Tuzex shops and endless queues. If you were lucky to have the Tuzex vouchers you could buy something out of the ordinary; that was great – a different blouse than those available from usual shops, all in grey or that liver colour, that ugly purple… Our stockings were coloured like café latte. When you see others who can have it, how do you not want it too? Well, maybe not everyone, but I did. I wanted to travel and see things. We had been to Germany and seen something. A different country; different colours. So when I had the first opportunity…”

“When I had been here for some time and was allowed to visit home [ten years after the escape], I still had that grey passport. It meant that I could go, but Austrians wanted me to have a transit visa from Germans, and Germans wanted the same from Austrians first. That was a problem. You always had to wait for three months. Then I said, I will do it by fair means or foul, and I looked for someone to marry me. You paid for that – still in lire at the time. I asked some friends if anyone had an uncle who could get married if I paid them. One of my friends said: ‘You know what? I’ll do it, give me the money.’ He was a little younger than me. So we got married. My new name was Bannci. I had to borrow a ring from a friend who was my bridesmaid; I didn’t realise it was necessary. Her ring was too small, so we searched the entire building for a toilet and some soap so she could take it off and give it to me. After the ceremony, Aurelio was waiting for me in front of the town hall and he asked me: ‘Won’t you invite your husband for a cup of coffee?’ So we had a cup of coffee at a bar opposite the town hall. Interestingly, when we were arranging it all, my future husband told me: ‘Can we do it three weeks earlier? I am leaving for the country…’ I said, why not, and when the wedding was over Aurelio and I went to Cuba. When we went to have breakfast at the hotel in the morning, I heard, ‘Helena!’ and that was my husband. He happened to be there too. So you cannot really say I didn’t go on honeymoon with him! We did it all to get those papers, to make things simpler. And for me to get Italian citizenship, I had to give up mine.”