Jan Tichý

"In that year of 69 we were going over the railroad on foot for the first train, so that we could catch the first passenger train from Liberec to Prague for May Day. I was going as a hippie to St Václav on St Václav's Square and he went to Strahov, where there were communists... And that's how we split up in Prague. I went to St Václav's Square, I had my hair over my ears, as they say used to say: "It's touching your collar, go to the barber," or: "Find a job, it's touching your collar, go to the barber." And so I went to Václav, where we were gathering, because in 68 May Day was on the Můstek, there were Czechoslovak hippies, as they used to say, back then in the period of loosening they were organized, they had white ID cards, I was going wild and later. Czechoslovak hippies, as it happens with us, immediately started to organize. People were gathering into crowds on St Václav's Square, giving Václav flowers, one guy with long black hair and a bouquet, he set the flowers there, and suddenly buses rode in, militias even then, not on the twenty-first in 69. The militias were taking up arms even then and there, riding in from the factories, talking about what some hooligans are daring to do... they set up a cordon and started to push people out. And people shouted: "Gestapo!" at them, even then, first of May 1969. A Japanese man stood beside me, he had this nice camera, I tried to get out of the way, the camera fell on the ground, he picked it all up off the ground, and so instead of me getting punished, the Japanese man suffered a loss. At least he saw, how things go around here... And so we all dispersed, I didn't get punished, I ran away, May Day was all over."