"We went there... we went to Rohr first, Abbot Opasek was there, I don't know if that tells you anything. We spent the night there, I think, and then he arranged for us to move on. We took a bus, I think, all the way to Rome and then we stayed overnight in a little town called Frascati. But I don't know what kind of a house it was, just somebody apparently made it available and we slept on the ground. There was one pregnant woman there, so we got her a mattress somewhere. And then the next day, of course, we went to St. Peter's, and there was an old priest with us too, somewhere from the border, I don't know. And he got lost there, poor guy, and we - then somebody got us a mattress that we could sit on. And the poor old priest, because he got lost somewhere, he was standing there all the time. Well, it was very beautiful."
"And then I even got into the eleven-year school. At first, I wanted to study German—I had an excellent German teacher at the grammar school in Plzeň, so I actually started to like it. But then the school principal called me in and said, ‘You know, you’d probably end up being a teacher, and I can’t give you a recommendation for that. But maybe try applying for medicine instead.’ So I applied for medical school, but then the local party committee decided that they wouldn’t allow me to get the recommendation. So I went to the healthcare extension program—it was the first such program after grammar school."
"Then it was briefly returned after the 45th, and in the 48th it was nationalised again [the castle and farm] and my dad worked on the road as a roadman. There on the road that goes from Cheb to Pilsen and beyond. So there were a lot of foreigners driving around and he would give them advice in French when they asked questions. So there's a nice story that someone stopped and dad answered them in French and then they said, 'Well, they're so educated in Bohemia, even the roadmen speak several languages.'"
"So my husband, when he first looked into the castle, he said, 'Well, it's a good thing dad didn't live to see it,' because it was really - they used to drive this little tractor - you know, I don't know what it's called exactly - over the parquet floors. And it was just in a terrible state, it was in a terrible state. And we lived in the villa first, and Tomáš, the oldest, and Děpík - they lived in the soda house in these little houses. And so we thought that he wouldn't even be able to go to the mansion. And then in the soda house, Tomáš already had three children, and they were all squeezed in there, it was small. So my daughter-in-law said, 'Well, what about the castle, if they've given it back?' So first, we had to get things a bit in order. My husband always used to say that the farm had to come first—because, well, where would the money come from? First you have to earn something."
"That was the first time we got permission to go abroad, and we stayed with my father-in-law and mother-in-law, who are from Dymokur. They had been in Vienna since 1964, and they got permission then. He father-in-law was really not well off. First of all, he was also locked up during the war, it was somewhere in Golnov or somewhere and he was just scared of it, so then he was in Vienna from that year 1964. And we got permission to go there for the first time. And when I wanted to go and see Vienna, my husband said to me in the elevator: 'The Russians have come.' So at first everybody said that we should stay there and everything, but we decided to go back after all, we missed it somehow."
"Pilsen was liberated by the Americans, and they thought my grandfather was collaborating with the Germans, which was not true at all. So first they locked us all in the kitchen, occupied it, and then they found out that it wasn't true, so they apologized to my grandfather. And they lived there for a while, always throwing chocolate to my sister, she was little. And then there was a chapel where people from the village used to go, to that chapel on Sundays. And the Americans, some of them used to go there too, because they lived there. And one time they invited us for some refreshments after the mass, because they had their own kitchen. That's so funny, that's why I'm telling you. I was like, 'Oh, that's weird, they give us egg yolks in the white only, not fried eggs.' And then I tasted it - they were apricots, I didn't know that at the time."
Polyxena Czerninová was born on April 28, 1941 in Prague to parents Gabriela, née Kerssenbrocková, and Jaroslav Lobkowicz. She grew up on the family estate in Křimice near Plzeň and had four siblings. In 1951 the family was evicted from the castle and all their land and properties were confiscated by the communists. The father had to work as a roadman for the road administration. Polyxena Czerninová was not allowed to go to university after graduating from the eleventh grade, she completed a medical extension course and worked as a nurse. In 1961, she married Děpold Czernin and they had five children, Tomáš, Terezie, Děpold, Jan and Gabriela. The large family lived successively in Bílina, Chodov near Karlovy Vary and Rudny near Nejdek. They spent the days of the August 1968 occupation with relatives in Austria. They stayed in Switzerland until April 1969, but decided to go back to their homeland. In 1991, they returned to the restituted farm in Dymokure, from where her husband’s family came. They restored the castle where Polyxena Czerninová lived after her husband’s death (2015) with her eldest son, Tomáš, also in 2025.
