Jarmila Poláková

"We went to see Springsteen in Berlin and on the way we stopped at Hrádeček. All the performers or the organisers and the organizing staff [of the Folk Lipnice festival] were marked with guitars made of modeling clay. At the factory they made for me a metal mould and we baked the clay in the oven at home like a Christmas cake. They had various colours...We arrived to Hrádeček, rang the bell and said that we were organizing Folk Lipnice and that it would be great if [Václav Havel] came there. At that time, Petruška Šustrová was visiting. Olga [Havlová] was kind of suspicious and would go outside to have a look. She thought it was strange that we had been driving by just like that, we rang the bell and came to Hrádeček. That we just hadn´t been checked when the [police] booth was there...So Václav Havel said, 'If I don't have any other dissident duties, I'll come.'"

"Those people almost didn't believe their own ears, because they could tell by Havel's voice that he was really Václav Havel. When he came down from the stage, people were coming to him and wanted him to sign their IDs, banknotes, papers and everything. The State Security guy was totally [bemused]... and I said to this Púčala: "What did he say wrong? He didn't say anything'... And he said: 'It doesn´t matter, Václav Havel just appeared in public here!' So I thought, so what ... But because all the documents were signed by Honza Hammer, so Honza Hammer went to State Security interrogation. I was living in Prague at the time and he actually was on the receiving end of it. I'm sorry that Honza got the worst of it like that, because he had... he has had health problems to this day. The pressure by State Security men, actually... I would just put it behind me, I was really quite careless at that time, but Honza didn't have the same character. I still feel guilty about it to this day."

"And Jirka Choun came up with the idea: 'Let's make a big festival, where more people will arrive, we will collect a higher entrance fee and we will have money to run the club during the year when people from Prague cannot come. Because now we make one Karel Plíhal concert and twenty people come, or Jaromír Nohavica and thirty people come, because only people from Světlá [nad Sázavou ] and Havlíčkův Brod come.' So that's how Folk Lipnice came into existence, that we would do a festival to have money to run the club during the year."