It was the best job I’ve ever had in my life.
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Pavel Virág was born on 16 November 1950 in the village of Kolárovo in southern Slovakia. His parents moved to this area after the end of World War II during the population exchange, when Virág and Litvai (his mother’s family) left Hungary as Slovaks and settled in Slovakia. After the great floods in the mid-1950s, they were forced to move again, to relatives in Trnava, and after a short time they settled permanently in the nearby village of Cífer. He experienced the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops in Trnava, where he saw with his own eyes various civil actions against the occupying army. He spent his military service in the air defence in Aš and after the war ended he started working as a wagon repairer again in Trnava. After a while he wanted to change his job and decided to take up a new job. In 1978 he started working as a miner in the uranium mines of the plant Hamr na Jezeře. According to his own words, he was very satisfied at work and was promoted to the foreman of the geomechanics party. After ten years and working a certain number of shifts, he had to leave the job, but he remained with the company - this time he started working on the surface directly in the foundation section, where it was necessary to fill in the excavated areas to prevent subsidence. In 2003, he moved to the drilling section, where he was involved in the disposal of boreholes after chemical mining, where he stayed until the end of August 2018. In 2012, together with other miners and enthusiasts, he founded the Mining and Historical Society under Ralsko. Today (2024) Pavel Virág lives in Stráž pod Ralskem and in his spare time he enjoys beekeeping and mountaineering.
