Miroslav Seidl

* 1933

  • “Packing the church into carts, that was fastidious work. All the walls had to be undercut and put onto cartwheels that would, using hydraulics, it had these giant cylinders, lift them up. We controlled the carts using this computer that would send an impulse every thirty seconds with either a positive or a negative signal. The negative one meant that there was a decrease, the positive one meant that there was too much pressure. This was combined to create a sort of an average in order to prevent the church from falling apart. Any cracks in the church were monitored using these resistance transmitters, if the crack was getting bigger the whole thing would be stopped immediately.”

  • “You know, I now have great-grandchildren and I feel sorry for them that they can't have the childhood I had. Childhood can obviously look different to everyone, I had to walk three kilometres to get to my school in Slaný, every day, in winter, in summer. I would come home from school, and my schoolbag flew into a corner and we would go have fun, we had this group of people from my generation in our village. Together we would shepherd geese, go swimming with horses, play football. Exactly like Menšík, in one of his stories he says that everything growing within twenty kilomentres was theirs. We were the same. On our way from school we knew where the turnip was, where the pears were, where the plums were. Everything. Often we would come home covered in dirt because on the way we made a campfire, we dug out some potatoes, roasted them and ate them… You don't know what that is like, neither does today's generation. Climbing trees and rocks, that was our thing.”

  • “And the third thing I loved were forests and mountains. Basically, after I ended all of that, I settled in that village, Kovářská, below the Klínovec mountain, and there I spent every day in the forest. The forest was a hundred metres from my house and let me tell you that it doesn’t get better than that. Imagine sitting in the forest, eating a snack, and suddenly a tit lands on your arm and eats from your hand. That would never happen in here. Or you notice a badger watching you. Then they were trying to get me to become the local gamekeeper, but, well, I refused because once you look a deer or a doe in the eyes, I don't know who could feel like murdering it, certainly not me.”

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    v Mostě, 25.04.2016

    (audio)
    délka: 48:33
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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The way I see it today is that it was a desperate attempt from the communists to get noticed

Miroslav Seidl
Miroslav Seidl
zdroj: Děti z PNS

Miroslav Seidl was born on the 10th of January 1933 in Dolín, near the town of Slaný. His father Antonín worked as a crane operator and welder, his mother Anna worked at a farm estate. He graduated from an electrotechnical high school, worked at a coal processing plant in Komořany and later in the company Elektrizace železnic Praha where he worked his way up to a senior mechanic position. In 1975 he worked on moving the church of Assumption of Virgin Mary. During his career he travelled across Europe and the Soviet Union, and even visited Iraq and the United Arab Emirates. Out of Europe he most enjoyed seeing Switzerland, having been to the city of Montreux on Lake Geneva. During his trips to Asia he was also impressed by Kurdistan. Over his life he has lived in Most, Chomutov, in a village called Kovářská, and as of today he lives in Most again, in the Astra retirement home.