Štefan Tišer

“My name is Štefan Tišer, and currently live in Pilsen. And I very much like remembering lovely holidays at my grandparents, where I had a beautiful childhood and free time, where I learnt about village life as a small baby. My granny loved me a lot. My mummy was glad and of course put me in their custody often enough, I was her first son so of course she worried. But when she found out how my granny loved me, she had absolutely no fear at all. My granny had an oven, where she baked bread and used to wake up with a smell of a freshly baked bread and cow mild and a lump of butter. Until today I feel such nostalgia in my heart and always when I remember granny and granddad, I feel bad. My granddad used to teach me, horses, sheep, pigs, he had them all. And I always felt that I don’t know if I didn’t get it from them, that I had so much feeling, as they helped those, who had nothing a lot. Whatever it was the pig butchery or anything, the always gave food to villagers, who didn’t have much. Granny was a herbalist healing people, right above the oven she had little perches and even at night she used to collect herbs to dry them and use for healing. Influenza, anything. And my granddad was a hard working man. Those were Betlanovce in the heart of the Slovak paradise. There was a castle called Bethlenfalvy, owned by a nobleman, where grandad used to work as a hunter. And he gave his a piece of land for saving his life. He was attacked by a wild boar during hunt and my grandad stabbed him through with a javelin. And we got land and there was a certain fields and he farmed there and later passed it on to the eldest son, who was my granddad.”

“Still in the v meantime we used to meet up; Emil, deceased Andrej Giňa, Vláďa Rusenko, Margita Reiznerová, Pepík Čonka and Ivan Veselý... We used to meet in that period, but it was a crime, so we always found out, when there were cultural events, entertainment, so we debated in the back discussing what we would do. Of course we were afraid that they find out as the spies were everywhere, that we´d get locked up. But we got lucky and nothing ever happened. And I got an idea to establish this kind of organisation: ‚And it will be a perfect meeting point providing cultural events, where I can invite bands, even children...‘ So I went to the National front here in Pilsen and founded the Roma Cultural Unity. I had to go even to the ministry of interior that was the procedure, so I went to personally hand my application in and I got it stamped. And we had a house in Černická street, later a hotel, so there were our offices. And back then I used to organise these events and always got a grant from the town, a small one, as it came from the communists, who only gave you a contribution so we didn’t have to pay a hall rent and similar.”