Ing. Ljuba Loukotová

"My father, then, I'd say he had to change jobs quite categorically in the 1950s, so he switched to geological research, went underground to explore the mines and deposits, and so on." - "Why did he have to leave the factory?" - "Well, somebody just did not like him. He had two such periods. The first was, they abused him first, because he founded cosmetics in Slovakia. So, the Slovak cosmetics, it's actually my dad's work. He commuted home once a week, so he was actually in Slovakia, in Levice, for over a week, and there he founded the cosmetics there: the Astrid Slovakia and Slovakofarma, so that's all my dad's work. And then when he completed it here, they wanted to get rid of him. There was no place for him back in Prague. He switched to geological research and became very successful in it. Unfortunately, when I was supposed to apply for university, it happened several times that he found an application for a party on the table. He kept asking, 'Whose is it? Whose is it? Take it. It's not mine.' And they tempted him there that way. So, he finally took it and threw it in the trash. And it caused that he got fired again. A few years before his retirement." - "So, from that geological research..." - "they fired him. When he was out of work for two months, and being out of work in socialism, that's almost a crime, isn't it? I was just doing my final year in high school. My brother was two years younger than me. So, to support two minor children, have one salary and living with a grandmother who gets two hundred crowns, it was absolutely crazy. My mother got very angry at the time and she went to the deputy and told him everything. It happened that they took him to the geological research again, but to a research institute, and he went to Mníšek every day to IRDE (Institute for Research and Development of Education)."

"My grandmother and grandfather had a lot of friends who were visiting them, and they were associated with the Czech minority, which built the city of Uzhhorod into its current form. There was the Hošovský family building a grammar school, then there was Dr. Pežanský from Košice, and it was a zupan (an unofficial term for the leader of the autonomous region in Slovakia). My grandmother and grandfather built a villa there. Such a small villa, a house, is still there today. Friends from Czech were visiting them, of course they were visiting all of them there. My grandmother had a friend, Helena Malířová, who was Ivan Olbracht's first wife, so my grandmother collected data for the Nikola Šuhaj loupežník (a novel written by Ivan Olbracht) in my grandfather's archive and helped to collect all the data for the book. At the same time, she was hiking with them in the mountains, in the lowlands, on Hoverla, and all the beautiful stories that are described in the works of Ivan Olbracht she experienced with them, as they lived with them." - "So, Ivan Olbracht also lived there ... "- "The Olbrachts lived there. When Ivan Olbracht broke up with Helena Malířová, my grandmother never forgave him, they reconciled only before death, before his death. "