"I worked as a guide, I had to take exams for that." - "Did you do that as a teacher?" - "Yes, on holidays or on Saturdays and Sundays, when some groups came to Hradec Králové. I remember that at that time I climbed the 215 steps with them to the White Tower, I told them everything about the Great Square, the Church of the Holy Spirit, the baptistery, in the tower that is the second largest bell in our country after the bell in St. Vitus Cathedral. And then I sent them to that church and they came to see me, and why don't I go with them? I told them I was a teacher and I couldn't afford it if I wanted to teach so it may cause me problems." - "That you can't afford what?" - "Go to church." - "Couldn't you go to church?" - "It was the 1970's." - "But it was accessible to tourists..." - "For tourists it was... We went there then because they were open and they went to see it in silence. Otherwise, however, the inspections were not carried out at that time. These were churches that were open for masses - from eight, or ten o´clock, and I did a tour mostly from nine to eleven, so at that time between nine and ten they went to see. But I didn't dare go there then, that's true. I wasn't that brave."
"I saw on the roads, for example when we were passing by on a bus, that the only guy there was behind the machine that was rolling the asphalt. Otherwise, women worked there. In Russia, I noticed, there was a cult of men. It was still there after World War II. Women took over a lot of men's work there. There were no such women in my childhood, but we noticed that they were so stronger, more emancipated. In the Soviet Union, I wondered where those people were shopping. There was a queue for everything in Sochi. Even for gold, some rings, there was a queue. I saw people with backpacks walking in Moscow and I didn't understand it. They went from the outskirts to the centre to do their shopping, because there was nothing in those shops. I could see that. We also had free time in Sochi and Moscow, so we could take a walk ourselves."
"How did I experience the Prague Spring? We read Procházka, we read about the gulag One day by Ivan Denisovič, not only Šik, the political economy. It was a period of relaxation and we read a lot. I also learned about Havel, the Garden Party. We didn't get to that before and suddenly we had our eyes open."
Marie Havlíková, née Marešová, was born on May 17, 1946 in Hradec Králové. The family moved to Tanvald, when she was only nine months old; her father Josef Mareš got a job at the railway there. Marie spent eight years of her life there, in 1954 the Marešs returned to Hradec Králové, where her father worked as the head of the railway station. Marie graduated from the Faculty of Education in 1968, with an approbation in Czech – Russian; in the same year she began working in the school in Holice as a teacher. In addition to her teaching skills, she also worked as a guide and interpreter during standardization. She took several trips around the Soviet Union, in the 1980s she also travelled to Yugoslavia. She welcomed the 1989 Velvet Revolution with great enthusiasm. In November 1989, she accepted an offer to lead a Czech language cabinet at the district pedagogical control centre, where she participated in the reorganization and preparation of new teaching materials. In June she went to teach at the faculty school in Bezručová Street in Hradec Králové and in 1994 she was entrusted with the management of the educational program for teachers. She also recalls the fate of her partner, director Oleg Reif, whom she met in 1999.
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