Jaroslav Kreibich

"Back then when we met, he took me to a restaurant, to a small hotel like that. I thought he was just a visitor like me, but then I actually found out that he was the owner of the inn. And he offered me whether I would like to stay there for a week and ten days and said: 'You don't have to do anything, you will travel to get to know the surroundings here and I will be very happy if we speak Czech together in the evening.'Well, and when I first saw the first evening he has a job as a cook, because he had about forty guests in that inn there. And his wife worked there at the bar, they also had a waiter and there was a woman from Yugoslavia who cleaned their hotel, so I offered to help him."

"So in 1967 I went to France for a few months to find out if it was possible to make a living as a painter. Well, I got there that way, because it was a time when traveling west was a big deal, but already at high school I corresponded with a girl who was from France, and we actually wrote each other for several years. And I then wrote her a letter asking her if she would be so kind as to send me an invitation because it was the only way to visit the country. I finally received the invitation and went to take care of all the documents, which means not only the visa, but I also went to the bank, which promised me that I would also receive some foreign exchange pledge. I received fifteen francs at the time, it was such an awfully small amount. It was just enough to get off the train at the station and going for a sandwich.''