David Řasa

"When we got our ID cards, I don't remember exactly, it's been a while, so I have a feeling it was in 1989, definitely under the communists. So I upgraded my ID a little bit. At that time the Czechoslovak state emblem had a Czech lion. Instead of a chest, it had... I think it was Tatras, and instead of a crown, it had a communist five-pointed star. So I wrote in the star the U.S. On the page, I don't remember which page it was, where the chief's signature was, there was some kind of communist leader, so I couldn't think of anything better than to write Vinnetou in print."

"When I got there, there were two gentlemen there. One by one they asked me if I knew why I was there. So I said I didn't know. Then they asked me about the demonstrations, if I'd seen it somewhere, and I said, 'Oh yeah, I've seen it, or I've read it somewhere. It's posted up.' And then all of a sudden they asked or told me that I supposedly wrote it. They told me that they had also detained Zbyšek Jindra, Onegin. And that he said that he took the machine from me and that he wrote the whole thing and that I didn't know anything about it. So I said, 'No, that's nonsense. I didn't lend the machine to anybody.' So I decided to deny it when they told me that. Of course I didn't believe them, not a word. I thought they were playing us and they were going to blame it on Zbyšek or then gradually on me. So I decided I'd deny it. In the meantime, one of the State Security guys started to test the machine, put paper in it and started tapping like a woodpecker. And I said to him, 'This is a German machine, there are no commas and hooks.' Because I had read it, so I told them that I had seen it and that it was impossible to write on this. And they just told me to shut up and not to be smart. After, well, I guess I overreacted a little bit, after about five minutes the cop was like, 'But it's a German machine!' I laughed, and the laughter passed right away, because the other cop slapped me and I fell off my chair."