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ALL STORIES
“The architecture studios at Stavoprojekt were comprehensive, and everything was done there – from preparing ground plans through implementation projects for our own buildings, engineering networks and so on. Around fifty people who worked in a wide range of professions were employed there. Then we were certified to design buildings in the area of Kopřivnice, Nový Jičín, Frenštát. It’s fair to say that we did all the construction that was organized in Nový Jičín after the war. We designed all of Kopřivnice, Bohumín. It was a very busy period, because we were designing ten thousand flats a year.” >>>more here
“Today I’m glad that my parents made exactly the decision they did. I found my husband here, I started a family – what more could one wish? Ostrava suits me, but it has a couple of shortcomings, such as the local air, but I wouldn’t change it.” >>>more here
“The change gave me a different view of life in the city and more opportunities for cultural and sporting activities. As a negative, I see less connection with nature.” >>>more here
“Ostrava has plenty of experience with organizing various festivals and events … there are exhibitions at the Chagall Gallery, at the House of Art and at other galleries here. And we also have the excellent artist Jaromír Nohavica, whose songs are known simply everywhere. Therefore I think that if the stance of people towards their surroundings were to change and they would throw trash into the bins, which are full everywhere, then Ostrava would have quite a good chance for success.” >>>more here
MK: I lived in Podlesí u Budišova nad Budišovkou.
I: Can you describe what it’s like there?
MK: It’s a small village, roughly 70 permanent residents, at the edge of the Libavá military training area.
I: And why did you come to Ostrava?
MK: It’s hard to find work there. Most of the young people have already left, and there’s no cultural life. >>>more here
“I think that there is more more information about the environment in Ostrava. Ostrava has also become more modernized but unfortunately also more globalized.” >>>more here
“My mother Cecílie Bodzásová, who originally came from Slovakia, moved here around five years ago. As a doctor, she received a rather good offer, and so the main reason for her move was work.” >>>more here
“I like it here. It took a while before I got used to it here and to the local customs and air. Thanks to the fact that I play here, I get to see plenty of interesting places because I travel with the team throughout the country. The only thing I miss here is my family and old friends.” >>>more here
“At the time when I moved to Ostrava, parts of the city such as Výškovice, the Dubina housing estate and Bělský forest didn’t exist. In the centre of Ostrava the former Square of the People’s Militia, today called Masaryk Square, had a completely different appearance and also different shops, which at that time didn’t belong to private owners but everything was owned by the state, and the buildings were fixed up like they are today. On the façades of buildings there weren’t ads, and there weren’t billboards in various places throughout the city.” >>>more here
“In Ostrava there was more cultural sustenance, more shops. I didn’t like that it was called black Ostrava, but it really was that way. The place I had left, Pardubice, was in a flat landscape and was much smaller than Ostrava. You could travel from one end of the city to the other on foot. That’s not possible in Ostrava without using transportation.” >>>more here
“Today they talk a lot about how bad the air is here, and I even signed some petition. It is already good, but it could be better. They repaired the pavement in front of the house, which as an invalid helped me a lot, and I also like the trams and buses with the lowered thresholds.” >>>more here
“It was in some sense an interesting feeling, to find myself in a foreign country and not know even the first thing about it. I gradually learned the new language beginning in the first grade. My mother had a bigger problem with it since she didn’t work and didn’t have so much contact with people as I did.” >>>more here
“I came back to Ostrava in 1992, when the civil war was beginning in Yugoslavia, which after the two months that we stayed there didn’t look as if it would end. So we decided that we would leave. And it was, I think, quite dramatic in that it was the last flight leaving from the civilian airport. Then in two days they occupied it, and from that time it was no longer possible to get out of Sarajevo by plane.” >>>more here
“My great-grandfather lived in Ostrava from the year 1880 until his death in 1920. He didn’t travel much. He was very happy in Ostrava; he built a house here and turned into an Ostravan. But a Czech Ostravan. Because Ostrava was at that time was very German, and my grandmother, his daughter, claimed that he was the first Czech doctor on Ostrava soil. And he really dealt with the authorities in Czech; he felt like a Czech and he gave his children Czech names. In 1883 my great-grandfather built a red villa on Sokolská Street, where he also had a private practice. When the hundredth anniversary of his birth came around, several articles were written about him, and in one of them Vojtěch Martínek remembered that he really was a physician-philanthropist and that lots of people went to his villa on credit >>>more here
“It surprised me that people here go to the doctor literally with every “idiocy”; in Canada you have to wait to see a doctor, because there are so few of them. There, I was used to wild animals being all around us, like bears, for example, and oversized deer, which would come through my garden … People here complain how they have polluted air, but in Calgary it is much worse. What’s more, here there are houses that have been standing for 200 years and they are of assorted colours, whilst everything there is some shade of grey.” >>>more here
“On the tram, miners rode with black lines of soot around their eyes. It looked like normal thick women’s eyeliner
What? That can’t be true?!
Well, it is true; then someone told me that it simply couldn’t be washed off with anything. >>>more here
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