JUDr. PhDr. Oldřich Choděra

"Already in 1967 after graduation I was able to go to Germany to Frankfurt am Main and I was there for about six Sundays and the following year and the following too. I was at the dining cars, so the first year I washed the dishes, the second I ran with a basket on the train selling beer and sausages and a third, I already served it in a dining car, and it had the advantage that I lived in Frankfurt, but the train had a final station somewhere… so in Emerich, it was on the Dutch border or on an island for example, in Austria, in Basel, even in Geneva, it was interesting that I did not have a visa, I only had a visa to Germany, and at the border with Austria, their passport controllers came, looked at my passport and saw that I don't have a visa, so they laughed and said, 'Well, you see, if you didn't break Austria, you wouldn't need a visa.' And they let me pass. And when they went to Geneva via Switzerland, they locked me in a closet at the border. Because otherwise the Swiss probably wouldn't let me go. So I visited a number of German cities."

"Because when I got accepted to the Law Facultry, I thought, 'Yes, I'll probably make a living that way.' Because it is very difficult to live from philosophy studies. After all, I wanted to study archeology. And I would probably get there, because during the holidays I dug with archaeologists in Envy, that's the hill near Zbraslav, and I would have a recommendation from them. But I probably wouldn't be able to support a family here. Professor Patočka was a phenomenologist and a student of Husserl, so these were (lectures) in the field of phenomenology. Until the times of Descartes, philosophers sought what was true. Then the so called Copernican turn was done, and it was no longer ascertained or sought what was true, but how to know the truth. And one of the directions that sought to clarify this was phenomenology. At that time, they lent books in the university library, which were thirty years old, only to the study room. So because I had relatively enough time, I went to the library and borrowed books there, which were not borrowed at home. Why? Because I wanted to know what they contained."