When the apples began to ripen, it was like in the Garden of Eden.
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Giorgios Sideridis was born in 1943 in Megali Sterna (Kozani district) in Greece. He fled to Yugoslavia with his mother, grandmother, brother and sister. They spent a year in Buljkes, from whence the siblings were taken to Poland in 1948. They lived there in children’s homes until 1954, when they were moved to Czechoslovakia. They met up with their father, who had been wounded during the civil war, with their mother and their grandmother. After arriving in Czechoslovakia, Giorgios Sideridis finished primary school in Višnová (Znojmo district), where he lived with his siblings in a children’s home. He then moved in to his family in Brno, learnt to be a car mechanic, and started working first in Pragovka in Prague, then in Avie Brno, Chemomont, and finally in a concrete plant in Chrlice, where he remained till retirement. He was the chairman of the Greek community in Brno after 1991, during the socialist period he was culturally active, he headed the Prométheus ensemble. He married a Greek woman from the same village, they have a son and daughter. He keeps up the Greek traditions, speaks fluent Czech, Greek and Polish, they have a Greek household and apart from a few classic Czech recipes the cooking is mostly Greek. He considered returning to Greece, but decided to stay - the children went to Czech schools, and then came grandchildren. He accepted Czech citizenship, but sees himself as Greek. As he says, every Greek is proud. He claims that he was born a Greek, he’ll die a Greek. All his siblings returned to Greece, his daughter married off there, his son took a Czech wife and lives in the Czech Republic. Giorgios Sideridis visits Greece every year. He says that he still has much to thank Czechs for, and he does not think that Czechs feel any enmity towards Greeks. He says they are on friendly terms with the Macedonian associations on a personal basis, but not on societal levels.