Mikuláš Pánek

"When I was talking here about the records I got for Christmas, I must not forget one that my mother bought me and which was absolutely essential and is still essential for me today, and that was Karel Kryl's first and only album in the Czech Republic - Bratříčku, zavírej vrátka. After that, I listened to Radion Free Europe radio Voice of America with my friends from the tramp movement, especially one, and we recorded, especially Kryl's songs. So, I had a huge collection of lyrics and tape recordings on disc tape recorder. I learned a lot of those songs. My friend and I actually competed to see who would learn which song first, and then we were here in the village pubs around Olomouc, where we used to go for fun, either to Domašov or to Uničov region, to Nová Hradečná or then higher up in the mountains, so we played them. Strangely enough, even though local villagers sat in those pubs, who might not have liked everything, strangely enough we never had any State Security patrol break into the pub and deal with us. I guess we were lucky.'

"However, I still got to the secondary grammar school. Of course, I had a lot of problems with Comrade Director. Just because they knew what family I came from, who I was. But not only because of that, but also because of such trivialities as clothes, long hair and so on. But when I finished the secondary grammar school, he decided not to let me graduate, to at least make it a little bitter for me. So one of my fellow professors was given the task of failing me at graduation. Fortunately, there were reasonable people in the graduation committee, and in the end they let me go with a D on my graduation certificate. But that wasn't all, Comrade Director was not lazy, and when I applied for acting at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts - already at that time I realized that it was one of the few universities that I would have a chance to get into, because with my Dossier (a file with information about one´s class background, one´s views and ideological attitudes) and what Comrade Director writes in my report, I can't get anywhere else. So, I applied there. Paradoxically, because admissions to JAMU (Janáček Academy of Performing Art) and DAMU (The Academy of Performing Arts in Prague Theatre Faculty) were always sometime in February, I was the first from our school to be accepted, even though I knew I wouldn't get a recommendation, because they accepted me. However, Comrade Director was still not lazy and wrote a letter to JAMU, how is it possible that a person from such an unreliable family got into the university and that it is a scandal and that they should do something about it. Of course, I found out about this ex post, when I was already at that school and one of the sensible teachers there told me that they got it, that they studied it, but that they had so much sense that they threw it in the trash and didn't deal with it any further."