Jaroslav Macoun

"He may have been more developed politically. Or intellectually. So he said he didn't want to live in this state, he didn't like it here. So he picked himself up, took a map and two bags of pepper and left for Cheb. Pepper, you know what for? So he got off at the station. Of course, whoever got off the train in Cheb, everybody knew about him right away. Especially the guy with the backpack. So he crawled into the woods and started spreading pepper, so he wouldn't be tracked down by those dogs border guards had. But soon they got him anyway, he climbed up a tree somewhere, so they wanted him to come down. He ran off with a paper map of Germany, a dictionary of German and he had the pepper. They caught him, tied him to the heater in the staff room with cuffs that were really tight. Maybe he confessed to more beers than I did, I think he got slapped too. That was a bigger offence than my few beers I didn't even have, but they knew we probably practiced it. So he had maybe a little bit of a harsher experience."

"I didn't get involved much in this one. As I say, the closest I came to it was when the Several Sentences was signed, or if it was the Charter, I don't know either, to tell you the truth. But I was a 16-year-old kid, so they didn't even want me to do it. They wanted sensible adults, grown up people. I was there to dance to the rock music. But I know it was happening, and I was in a community of people who didn't like it. We liked the music mostly, and just for the music, I was bullied that I shouldn't have this, I shouldn't have that. But I didn't have a strong opinion about politics, that I wanted, I don't know, more rights for the women's movement or something that they were suppressing. I had more of a cultural point of view."