PhDr. Jana Pavlíková

"When I was studying at university, I went to France for three weeks. It was just a coincidence, normally it was difficult to get to Western Europe. And there you suddenly realised how we were always getting these ideas drilled into us about how crazy it is there and how people don't have jobs and how angry they are. It just wasn't like that. It was... we just got to know a different world, we got to know that it doesn't have to be as grey as it is here. And the interesting thing was that when we were getting the papers to go to France, the police asked us if we wanted to go from here or from the West, in France. They were already counting on the fact that we would stay there, that we would emigrate."

"There are mountains around, it's Beskydy and there are mountains. When you are born in the mountains, I found that out during my life, you don't feel quite comfortable on the plain. I also lived in Pardubice for ten years, and even though at the beginning it was an interesting place for me, after a while I found out that I didn't feel comfortable there, that the mountains were very important for me. The town of Vsetín is actually the centre of Wallachia, and as a child I was... I'm just at home there. Imagine that even today, when I go to Vsetín after x years, I just go home, even though I haven't lived there since I was nineteen."