Ing. Zdeněk Nachlinger

"I was one of the opportunists in the headquarters in Prague. I challenged the activities and the structure and the management of the company in general, because it was so subservient to the leadership role (of the party) that it was not a matter of whether it was better or not, but whether it was in accordance with the line. And I was challenging that, so I was sort of tolerated, and anything I ever suggested in meetings and so on was already negated in advance, that if he says it, then it's not allowed. So those were the reasons why I was considering or regretting transferring. And when that occurred, of course it was inspiring to me. A little story, I remember that day, November 17, 1989, quite well, there was a seminar on growing bulbs for quickening, where a colleague who was in charge of distribution from our mass propagation gave some lecture, I also gave some supplementary lecture on that. And we were coming back with the driver in the evening, we were driving at six o'clock or half past five, something like that from Brno, and it was freezing, it was freezing on the way. And when we were driving somewhere around the fiftieth kilometer, I noticed - and there were northern lights over Kolín, green, beautiful. It was flying like that. And I don't know which of the fellow passengers said, 'Well, that's a sign of something bad.' I don't know any superstition like that, but it was said. And they dropped me off in Průhonice and went on to Prague."

"The range of flowers in the 1970s was completely different in the West and here. So what was exported from us was a limited range that intersected what was common here and what was common in the West. And gradually that was sorted out. For example, when I talked about this Mr. Kostka who spent fourteen years in the uranium mines prison camp, he was like very action oriented and he pushed his way through even in the prison and they got him foreign expert gardening books on growing and assortment and so on. And he actually came out of the prison, although in failing health, but he came out educated to a higher level than was usual. So when we were starting in Tushimice, he had already ordered everything from abroad, they arranged all that for him, the mother plants or the plants from which he established his mother plants, like ficus, diphenbachia, croton, aglaonema. Things of ornamental foliage that were then modern in this country, or could be and were, and that's actually how they started to be grown in Czechoslovakia. So there was a difference and that's how it was catching up."

"We were already in Opava, we had three or four days' work to do to get the fifty thousand that was ready there done. We had two teams there, each of us had two helpers behind us, one who was cleaning and that kind of prep work. Well, on the 20th of August, when that classmate and I were invited to have dinner with the parents of another classmate who was there, and the parents worked there, at one of the companies... So we went there for dinner, and the gentleman, the father of the classmate, was the manager of the biggest plant of that gardening company, Květena, an important personality, so we were talking, talking, and they were working there from six o'clock, and so were we. So at about eleven o'clock they cut it off and we went to bed, because in the morning we would go to work. So we said goodbye and left. And on the way, we passed through a convoy of armoured personnel carriers, cars with trailers. One car or trailer was already without a wheel, it didn't matter, they were going. Three kilometers from where we were, that was the border with Poland. So we cursed, what are the soldiers doing, another exercise. And in the morning we were woken up by the landlady where we were staying: 'Turn on the radio, listen to what's going on!' So we turned on the radio, were getting dressed, having breakfast, and then we had to pay attention, it was: 'Keep calm.' What is often used now. And then we went to work. The co-workers told us more, they heard it from home. But then it started to get worse, maybe noon, before noon, all of a sudden we were being flown over, we were in a field that was out of town, and Russian jets were coming in. Always sort of down and then picked it up. The noise was terrible. At about two o'clock, the headmaster himself, who was the father of another classmate, came and said, 'Look, guys, stop it, go home, don't let your parents worry, we'll finish it somehow.' But the trains were not going. I had a motorbike, I admit, so I took my classmate to Ostrava on the train, because he was from Znojmo, so he would get home somehow, it was in the morning. And I drove from Opava through Bruntál, Rýmařov, Šumperk, Hradec Králové, Poděbrady home. Of course, almost the whole way in parallel or between army convoys, most of them were Poles, fortunately, and then before Prague it was Russians."