Annemarie Goschala

I can tell you – that took a while. I was working in the shop at that time. Wenn we sold something, when I was there and a customer came – we sold all sorts of things, no matter what – and some things I didn’t understand. So I went outside, to the back, where we had our storage room, and when I came back, I said: “Nemáme!” [“We don’t have that!”] If my boss would have heard that, he would have been really angry with me! (laughs). Because there was, you know the daughter of Ms. Steska. We always went, because she also went to school in Vernéřov, down together. She spoke a little German, not much … but still. And we always went home together from school, and she always said: “I have to wash nádobí [dishes]!” And I came home and told my mother: “Listen, mother, the Steskas wash their furniture every day!” She said: “No way, they are not that clean.” Instead of nádobí [dishes] I understood nábytek [furniture] … you know. Back then I mixed up everything. I always told my mother: “They wash every day, we only on Saturday evening, they wash them every day.” (laughs) Well, little by little, because for two years, while I was doing my apprenticeship in the shop, I attend school, well, I could speak it a little …

We also raised her [granddaughter Ines] in German as well (laughs). I always turned on German TV on purpose … she was always grumpy: “I come to school and everybody has seen the same movie and I know nothing about it! I have to watch German TV!” (laughs) Well, now she’s glad, that she knows it – and even on a higher level, expressions and everything, she knows it better than I do. There were no more problems with her learning German? There were no problems, but at the beginning Ines always said, when we went to town: “Grandma, let’s not speak German!” She was a little bit … she usually didn’t speak a word in Czech with us. A Czech lady came to us for a visit very often, Kučerová was her name, you know. She said: “Why doesn’t she speak Czech when I’m here?” But she was used to speak German with us. But she [Kučerová] didn’t understand that. In the end she thought, she [the granddaughter] doesn’t speak Czech good enough or something … but we were already used to that.