Jana Kociánová

“The other time someone asked me what was worst about this period of time and I told them – as I am telling you now – that it wasn’t fear, but rather the stress. A permanent stress of remaining undercover, up until the last moment. That was the worst thing about that era. Because the other things we could sort out by organizing private, closed parties. Back then, people hadn’t rushed after money the way they do today and everyone had the same regardless of what they did. So we lived our amazing private lives during the parties – of course with the curtains drawn. Nobody was hiding anything there, and there was no way anything would become an issue.”

“Mummy couldn’t have simply said: I’m going to make this and that for dinner. She went to the shop and such basic items like onions may be lacking. One time there were no onions, another time no potatoes, and I don’t even mention toilet paper. There were no sanitary pads. Even after my mummy passed away I still had to combine and invent at least three variations of meals because some things simply couldn’t be found in the shops. Later I learned somewhere or simply figured it out myself that they did it on purpose. So that people wouldn’t dig into politics, and rather spend their time hunting for stuff that was lacking. Things like a fridge or a washing machine could not be purchased by simply coming to the store. They just weren’t there. They were obtained via personal connections.”

“I dreamt of playing tennis and I even think I wouldn’t have been bad at it. But to come to my mummy and ask her to buy me a racket – she’d chase me around with a wooden spoon. So I saved money. When mummy couldn’t make us bread with grease she gave us 30 hellers for a roll. I saved these coins, bought a ping-pong paddle for fifteen crowns and went to see Mr. Karlík, telling him I wanted to do ping pong. Which had happened. So I had been doing it ever since I was fourteen up until five years ago. I still have a number of medals from the veterans’ tournaments. Ping pong requires daily training. But most of all – given that we hadn’t even had running water at home, let alone a bathroom – the tournaments and all meant that every weekend we’d go play a match where there were showers and all the luxury.”