Helena Melichová

"At that time [after the Velvet Revolution] we of course idealised that everything would be good, but of course life goes on as it goes. When we first went to visit some of our friends who were in Vienna as emigrants in early 1990, the feeling of going across the border where there were no wires was something absolutely incredible to me. That was so fixed in us, that when we go somewhere - anywhere - we have to have an ID card all the time, some documents, because if we were checked and we didn't have an ID card, they would search you at the border... So suddenly you could cross the border without wires, so it felt amazing. What was worse was when we found out in Austria what our money could buy and how different things were there, I didn't believe that things could change enough here to match that economy. It's different that we can travel, it's different that we can basically say whatever comes to mind, sometimes it's maybe for worse. It's just like my mother used to say to me when we were discussing, 'Yes, in the West you can say whatever you want, but again, nobody cares.' So it seems to me that it´s that way. But again, it's great that you don't have to be afraid to write something somewhere, your opinion. Then, of course, the big difference is that there were a lot of entrepreneurial people who could suddenly officially go into business, which before, if someone was in business, it was illegal. Because of that, in fact, some people were leaving here because they wanted to make a living somewhere other than just being dependent on our economy and being employed somewhere. It's changed in the culture, not always for the better, you have to think more and choose more because there's so much here that you have to be much more observant to notice what's quality and what's not. It was quite clear at the time, when suddenly something of the culture from the West came here, people were very happy to read it. In the sixties, at the end of the sixties, when it loosened up, there was excellent cinema here, there were a lot of films, there were a lot of books by writers who were not allowed to publish here again afterwards, many emigrated. When you compare it, the culture at the end of the sixties was excellent."