Petr Vašina

* 1953

  • "Jirka Hejnice and I, my mates of the time, we went to burn brandy every year. And in 1989, we there was a deadline for burning brandy on November 17th. So we picked pears here along the mill road, Jirka made yeast out of it, somewhere in Drkolnov, there he just drove it to the balcony, to the cellar, to the balcony and to the cellar to ferment it properly. So we loaded it on the seventeenth in the morning and we went there to Sulimov somewhere near Kroměříž to have it burnt in the distillery. So we distilled brandy, we had fun until about four or five in the morning, and we were supposed to have it on the eighteenth, because we were playing in a theatre orchestra at that time, so the performance was supposed to be a theatrical one. I think it should have been Aunt at dinner or something like that, Lubomír Feldek, such a show. Well, so we went and surely, we could still feel some alcohol in our blood systems, but so we wouldn't miss the show, let's go, go, go, and we came to the theatre and they told us there was a strike. I said, how about a strike?! We did not know anything at all, it wasn't common yet that there was a radio in the cars, and you didn't listen to the radio in the distillery, we didn't know anything at all. So, we were there as if ruining the strike. We asked what to do, as we went a long way there risking our driving licences and now there was a strike! We came to earn our one hundred and ten crowns for the show, and nothing else mattered!”

  • "I was working in a dairy at the time, so the interesting thing is that I even have that noted in my documents, that I worked in a dairy for a month in August 1968, so it was child labor, because I wasn't fifteen years old yet, it was interesting. However, they did not recognize it for my retirement. And I remember, I worked from about five in the morning, because I worked with milk so that there was enough time to deliver, and I rode my bike there, somewhere from the square, there was a dairy in the back, it's probably not there today. And I know my mom woke me up to work, and said I wasn't going anywhere because the Russians were here. So I still didn't listen, I sat on the bike and went there, there was nothing, the dairy was fine. And somehow around ten o'clock, I think it was, a tank suddenly appeared in front of the dairy and headed for the dairy, because it was an object of strategic importance."

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    Příbram, 26.02.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 50:55
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Music has always kept me afloat

Petr Vašina was born on October 21, 1953 in Karlovy Vary. His father ended up as a political prisoner in the Jáchymov uranium mines. In 1956, the family moved to Příbram. Petr Vašina still experienced old Příbram before insensitive construction interventions in the 1960s and 1970s. He has been involved in music, playing and composing music since the age of thirteen. He remembers the relaxed atmosphere of the Prague Spring, concerts after theater performances and clubs where big beat was played in Příbram. In August 1968, he witnessed the arrival of Soviet troops in Příbram. In the years 1969–1973 he studied at the grammar school in Příbram, yet he did not receive a recommendation to study at university. Eventually, he could study technology in Brno, while his faculty was located in what was then Gottwald (today’s Zlín). He also got married there in 1977. After his studies, he went to war in Karlovy Vary. For five years he lived on the border in the Ore Mountains and worked for a textile factory in Abertamy, which fell under the Dobříš Glove Plant. In the middle of 1984 he returned to Příbram with his family. He played in a theater orchestra. He recalls the course of the Velvet Revolution in Příbram. He still devotes himself to music.