“There was a Radio Luxembourg station in England, we called it Laxouš, Luxembourg. And there at seven o'clock they increased the output from the original one hundred and twenty kilowatts to one megawatt. So suddenly it became the strongest European station. So at seven o'clock we heard their jingle: 'This is Radio Luxembourg, your station of stars.' And so we walked past the street to bring my dad beer back home, and from every window you could hear all sorts of hits from all over the world. That means in England, France, Germany, America and so on, yeah. So we were a bit stocked again, weren't we.”
"So my girlfriend and I decided to screw it up and leave for good. That's how we did it. Look, back then, leaving the republic wasn't so difficult because everything was such a mess. So we had a passport, just getting the passport took two days. We left via Austria. Mom had a classmate there, so we lived with her for a while. Well, then we negotiated Australia, they invited us to Australia. And when we signed at the Australian embassy, we signed a document where we simply committed to staying for three years in Australia, so we had a free ticket. Which was great.”
“I used to have nothing against the Russians, as well, but we learned about them, we learned Russian, right, or Russian was compulsory. In the end, I enjoyed the Russian. Well, yes, but then I saw the Russian soldiers, so I wanted to speak Russian with some of them. But they were some other soldiers, they were more from Asia, because none of them spoke Russian, not one, no one at all. And I notice how terribly dirty they were, as if they had not seen water for many months. So I thought to myself: 'For god´s sake, what kind of army is this?' And then the decision was simply made that that was not possible. For I suspected that the dark times were coming.”
Jan Novotný was born on February 27, 1943 in Kralupy nad Vltavou. In the early 1960s, he joined the basic military service, where he was assigned to the border guard in Šumava. After the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops, which he experienced in Prague, he and his girlfriend decided to emigrate. They first went to Austria, from where they flew to Australia. Jan made a living as a construction technician and also graduated from art school. He returned to the Czech Republic permanently in 1997. In 2022, he lived in Kralupy nad Vltavou.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
