One of the boys was still just a baby during the end of the war, and while hiding in the basement from SS soldiers, they were so afraid that he’d start crying when they had to stay all quiet.
Ballet dancer Bessie Ulla Herdis Schultz, set this whole story in motion at age 18, when she, a big novel reader and dance artist, all inexperienced and rather clueless, went with her Danish ballet team to Prague, and fell in love with a circus star. So once back in Denmark, it didn’t take long before she went back to him, got married and had 2 boys, Willy and Johny.
But she the young teen, inexperienced, a classic naive dane, became the alien there. Not only because learning Czech for a Danish person is extremely difficult, and it ends up sounding rather far off with the dänish accent in the Czech language. But also, the mentality she came with from in modern Denmark, was extremely different from the communist Czech mentality, making her look rather spoiled and stupid. And so the fact that she was l an artist who didn’t know how to be a classic housewife, made the others look down on her, and instead of integrating her, they spoke badly of her, throwing judgements all over the place. And they still do today, showing that they haven’t grown much in life, not enough to be able to understand another human, just enough to not “have to” judge them.
Perhaps it was because of all that which made her look pathetic, not to mention the language barrier, and that topped with how she sounded when she spoke the language, all just supported the pathetic look all too well, … so perhaps all that explains, why her husband also turned out to be one who treated her, like a very careless and rather mean man.
He had gotten them a cheap apartment, as he otherwise spent most of his time living in his “maringotka”, within the huge circus that he was part of. There he was a star among his peers, with his elephants. So as he was now married to Bessie, and having children with this foreign ballet dancer wife from Scandinavia, it appears as though he must have felt obliged, rather than happy, as he got them a cheap little apartment and didn’t even take care to ensure to provide for her, for food and all the common household stuff. All the while due to his job, he would often not come home for days,…but then eventually show up asking what’s for dinner, …and she told me of this one memory ….
Bessie had managed to make a stew, as she all too often would, but not so much because of the fact that she didn’t really know how to cook. But more because he was not leaving any money for anything. She might not have been a brilliant cook, and she might have been extremely inexperienced and very naive, but she was far from stupid.
As he sat down, she served the food, but when he saw that it was the same as last time ~ another stew, he started winding himself up in anger, till he got up all furious and purposely pulled up the table with him, as if he was an angry God wanting to turn everything upside down, which knocked Bess of her chair, and had the big pot fall down on her, spilling the stew all over her and the kitchen floor.
Now there she sat with the table, the plates and everything a mess in the hot stew spilled around her, and she burst into tears.
But then Willy and Johny started skating around in the stew, and luckily causing her to start smiling in the mids of all her tears, while their father “the furious God” walked angry out, slamming the door behind him but they didn’t mind any of that at all.
She told me a few lovely stories like that, about her life in Prague with those two funny little disasters, and I made her re-tell those stories to me several times.
On one occasion she was standing by the stove, as she suddenly out of the corner of her eye noticed something sneaking towards the sofa, on which the father was having a nap. And as she turned to look, it was Johny sneaking by and he was holding a wooden cooking spoon behind his back, slowly making his way in silence, aiming towards the sofa.
I remember interrupting her all exited saying “but you didn’t stop him”, and she said that she was too curious to see what he exactly he was gonna do, while in my head, not only that seemed pretty clear, but also the obvious reason behind why a little baby-child around age 4 or 5 would ever do such a thing. ~ It seemed obvious to little me, that the man was mean.
I guess it’s obvious what happened next; yes, little Johny went and smacked his dad on the head with the wooden spoon. And of course the man jumped up from the sofa, in an instant rage, screaming “I’m gonna kill you” .
And what did our little Johny baby do!? Well as in any old movie, he ran over to Bess, to hide behind her skirt, and she started defending him, while fighting not to laugh, reminding her mean and furious husband that “he’s just a baby, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, it’s just a baby”, and managed to save him.
Another episode of her life in Prague, with those two little disasters, was the time that she started going back to the theater, as the money situation had to be fixed somehow, and since the mean husband wasn’t doing anything for that, she had taken it on herself to solve it, by going back to the theater. And so now the two little boys would be home alone for a few hours regularly.
Yeah… And they litup the stove like two little brave scouts, and creatively fed the fire with a pair of rubber boots and closed the stove-door.
Mind you this was after the second World War, so people were all very traumatised. And at some point the entirety of the stove with its tubes running through the whole house, all started trembling within the whole building, so that the neighbours all came running out terrrified, while some of the men were searching for the cause, and exactly in those moments Bess came, arriving home to the whole emergency scene, and to her own embarrassment and terror she admitted that it might be…,well, that she better go check on her boys.
What an exiting life in Prag.
Then, while she continued her theater networking chores for their finance, the boys back home found themselves on a similar mission. Willy had the idea to take mama’s Jewlery and sell it, because he had somehow seen, probably mom herself go there during her survival mission, and so however, he knew that you could go to this specific type of shop and get money for it, and so off they were on their own money mission. Luckly the man in the store saw straight through what the two little scandals were doing, told them to wait, while he went in the back and called the police.
Never a dull moment, it seems.
On one ocassion Johny even saved Willy’s very life, as he had fallen through the ice of the big Vltava river. They arrived safe and sound but soaked-frozen home, and freaked poor mama out with the story that Willy could have been dead today.
She did tell me that she was scared that they’d get into some real accident, or in general that one day something horrible might happen, with all the scandals they would produce all the time.
And then there was this day where they were all on the way out of the house, out of the building, the boys of course running ahead of her, so that as she came out of the house onto the street and looked around for them, she heard them call on her from left up the street, from just a couple of meters, so she saw them almost instantly, and to her horrifying surprise, she spotted them sitting on the back of a huge horse-vagon that had just taken off, which was such a scary shock to her, that she fainted in the minds of screaming out for help.
What a constellation!? …this “Unwritten Diary” of my Loving grandMother, my hero, my Goddess.
She was a very positive and sweet, innocent~naive but proud soul. Always in all ways. Like when she went to the doctor because she was suffering with some illness, and the doctor judged her to be some slut, as they found it was syphilis, and she in her shocked state of wonder there, trying to gather her thoughts without crying and say that she hasn’t been with anyone but her husband……, right then and there realizind that the mean ass husband, is on top of everything also cheating on her.
Eventually he did also get another woman pregnant, and left Bessie, to go start his new family with that woman.
At first it was as if he didn’t even think of his boys, but as they were around 12 and 13 and slowly starting to be… growing into men, Johny was both dancing and acting in the theater, and they were both into music, and that’s when their father began all sorts of fun, luring them to come live with him. And eventually they did leave Bess all alone, in the city of Prag. Alone in a foreign country, where when she spoke the language, people were both amused and confused about her, leaving her in a permanent position of being like a lonely alien there.
It didn’t take too long before she was too sad alone, and all as if forgotten by the teenagers, enough to start realising that her job as a mother had been taken away by another family, of her now ex-husband, leaving her sitting there alone for nothing. And in looking for the bright side, she found herself free to go back home to Denmark.
But she did want Johny to come with her, but he chose to stay.
Though once the moment of her departing on a train had come, he got all emotional and wanted to come along after all. But back in those days you couldn’t just jump on the train like today. Lots of paperwork had to be done first, and his dad would have to sign that he permits his 14 year old boy to go with his mother to her country.
Once in Denmark she wrote him letters all the time, and was doing all she could via the consulates for getting him up to Denmark. But the father held back the letters and ignored everything from her, while on top filling the boys with mean ugly lies about her, to make them turn their back on her.
At the same time, I remeber how my father, Johny, repeatedly told me this story.
When he was 15, his father made him start working, but to hand in all the money at home. Obviously his 4-5 kids and a wife to feed, was a mouthful too big forhimself. But then on top of it all, (this story mostly always began with how) his father hit him like a man, with a fist,… Johny flew into the washing machine, which then was heavily dented and totally disfunctional from it. And it doesn’t even end there. Then he even had to pay for that washing machine. And because was the strong one of the two bothers, everytime Willy had done something wrong, their father would take it out on Johny, and make him be the one who had to pay for it.
He really should have gone with his mother up to Denmark. I know what I am talking about, as she turned into my grandmother, and I am convinced he got to painfully observe some of what he missed out on, by own choise (of his (manipulated) free will).
Yet at the same time, Johny was my grandmother’s little pride and joy, he was lovely, intelligent and sensitive yet strong and clever, and he was a beautiful little boy with his shiny golden blonde-red hair,…which she even at some point, couldn’t bring herself to cut when he was just about 3 or 4 years old. And so his hair grew long and looked so beautiful, shining all bright golden, and very soon people would start admirering the little magical looking boy. Let’s not forget Bessie’s age at that time! But unfortunately this was in the late 40’s, so most people started saying “oh what a beautiful little girl” , and of course little Johny would get angry and say “I’m not a little girl”. And eventually when the father came home from his travels and saw his son looking like a girl, or a fairy tale Prince perhaps, of course he got angry and took him for a haircut.
When they returned Bessie reacted a bit hurt to the vision of the short hair, so that Johny came up to her asking, “you don’t love me anymore?”
Yes he must have been the most wonderful little child, and somehow he was always doing something, as if to pull her out of the attachment to all those moments of whatever hurtful things, so often happening to her. And of course as he grew older, he was also with her in the theater, doing both ballet and acting.
But now she was in Denmark, not knowing that he was not getting any of her letters at all, thinking that the teenager was just ignoring her, that he was busy living his life. And some years went by…
The boys grew up, served in the army, and they both became musicians. Johny became a band-leader on drums, doing backing vocals, and asside also playing some acoustic guitar. And Willy became a very skilled and admired saxophone player. …to everyone’s great surprise, as he was seemingly the less bright one of the two, rather more weak and helpless compared to Johny, and always getting drunk and causing problems.
Back up in Denmark, eventually Bessie met the most lovely man of her life. They got married, taking her from being the abandoned Mrs. Zacha, to being Mr & Mrs. Pedersen, and then she went to Prag with her new husband Ernst, to get in touch with her sons. It took some effort, but she succeeded. Willy and Johny were grown men now, Johny was all toughened up, and he seemed very busy, all driven with his music, and not too interested in reconnecting with mama at this time. But it still meant the world to Bessie, and she kept the contact.
Later in his twenties, Johny’s band had gotten a season long contract in some holiday place, I believe it was in Bulgaria. And just a few days before their contract work would begin, their singer got a much better offer in Norway and left. So now they had a huge problem, and were urgently looking for a singer, as a friend showed up with his cousin, who had just graduated as a singer from the conservatorium.
My dad told me how they all thought she was very beautiful and told her “…,but can you sing as well?”, and they we’re all in general behaving to her like she was probably just beautiful and stupid, and wasn’t gonna know many useful songs. But she did, and as she also sang like an angel, the Kapellmeister Johny himself, immediately let the band know “she’s mine”. He was blow away, she was the perfect woman for him, in his eyes in every way possible.
And he got his princess.
They were very successful and life was financially great for good artists in those days, especially in the communism. And my dad told me how she was amazed with how much they were earning, claiming to him that not even her aunt, who had her own salon was earning as much as they were. They had it all going on, successful as artists, traveling and making loads of money.
The only But, was that Johny had been married already two times before, and divorced both times from each wife, because as soon as a baby had been born, in both cases, both of the women had wanted not to travel with him anymore, in order to stay home and live a normal life, without his music job.
So now, this time around, he was afraid of ruining his relationship again, by repeating the whole of getting married and having a baby again. Especially now that the situation was even better than ever before, as this time his woman was also the very singer of his band.
Valja was her name, and she did eventually convince him to at least have a baby, and so on the second day of June in 1975, around two o’clock in the afternoon, they had a little baby girl. …who’s sitting here writing their story now.
Meanwhile up in Denmark, Bessie’s lovely husband Ernst had suffered with stomach cancer, and had passed away a couple of years before Slavinka was born.
Valja was very fond of Bessie , and wanted to mame her little girl after her; Slavinka Bessie Zachova. But the communists claimed that Slavínka was not a real registered name, but rather just the calling nickname version of the name Slavomila, and Bessie was absolutely in no way accepted at all, as it was not a Czechoslovakian name to begin with.
And now we’re getting closer to the most heavy part 😭 (and most worn feeling subject) …
* To be continued❗
Valja had her all Bulgarian family in Prague, her younger sister and two brothers, but most of them all born in Prague. Her father had died during the early years of their time in Prague, as he had fallen and gotten run over by a train, so her mother was struggling all alone with 4 children. She was a lovely lady, and just like Bessie she knew what it’s like to struggle and have to break a few rules, to make ends meet, when you’re all alone with children to feed and so on.
Come to think of it, they were even very similar, yet they didn’t really ever get to know each other, because they didn’t like each other, for different silly reasons; To Valjas mother Marie, Bessie was the mother of the guy that she hated, because he didn’t want to marry his daughter, not even with the baby in the picture. And from the other side, Bessie from Denmark thought that, the Bulgarian Marie was some primitive village freak, because she once had to sit and watch her feeding me appleslices with the tip of a sharp knife, while I was still just a baby that could hardly even sit up straight yet. And aside that she of course also knew that she didn’t approve of her favorite son.
But from my perspective they were both foreigners in Prag, who ended up being alone, both with children, and both struggling, they both suffered the death of a husband, and later on in life they both loved my mother and me, as if we were both their children. So really they could have been very good friends, and have discovered that their judgements were off enough perhaps.
When Valja and Johny were traveling with their band, they’d put the baby, if she wasn’t with Johnny’s mother in Denmark, to be babysitted either at Valja’s mother’s house in Prague, or at a good friends house in the artist town Karlovy Vary (Carl’s Bád) , where they had moved to as soon as Slavinka was born.
Karlovy Vary the most beautiful of this country today known as Czech Republic. It is a very old thermal spa town with natural healing hot springwater Wells all over the down town. This town truly is the most special of beautiful towns that I know of in this country.
Johny’s band had just been recording in a recording studio for the first time (from which I have the audio cassette tape), and not long after that, they got a several month’s long contract in Germany, with an old big apartment for the band included, so they went to sign the papers and get the keys to the flat.
As they were in that flat, Johny recalls Valja doing some strange thing there, saying something about where he would sleep and where the baby would sleep, but not including herself for some reason, but which he hadn’t really paid attention to at the time (but some 20yrs later), while the most of my life I always felt like she probably committed suicide, but which no one would ever resonate with at all. Of course I could also be wrong.
They drove back to Carl’s Bad to pack for this months long job, take care of a few things, and the next day they were gonna go pick up the baby at her mother’s place in Prague.
Johny was going down to Hotel Pup to make a few calls, as back in those days hardly anyone had a phone at home, the waiting lists were long and not moving much, and so in our building only one family had a phone, and Johny didn’t like to bother them unless it was urgent, so he went to the hotel where they knew everyone, because this was one of their local places, where they played most regularly.
Valja was going to stay home and take a long relaxing bath meanwhile.
Some hours later when Johny returned home, he rang the bell as he hadn’t bothered bringing the keys,…. but Valja didn’t open, so he started thinking that maybe she had changed her mind and had gone somewhere after all. He made a round to all of the places that she could be, but didn’t find her, and so he returned home again. Now thinking that maybe she had just taken a walk and would be home by now, especially since she knew he had not taken any keys with him.
It was pretty dark now as he returned home. He walked up the wide curvy staircase in the old building again, up to their floor, it was the first floor, and then rang the bell, again. As he waited, his mind started rasing. She wasn’t opening, so where could she be!? He walked out feeling as if he should go to check with the band, but as he with his racing mind, had come out of the building, it suddenly hit him that he had breafly registered light up in the bathroom window as he was coming towards the door before, so he turned around and looked up at the bathroom window to the left above the entrance door, and yes there was light. He ran faster than his mind could keep racing now, ran all the way to the keyboard player, while shaking all the way. This keyboard player was a big guynand a good friend, he could help him get inside by just throwing his weight against the door, while now Johny’s mind couldn’t even finish any thoughts of what they might find, what await him inside that bathroom.
As he arrived back and came to the door with the big keyboard player friend, now registering undeniably where the situation felt it was going, his knees gave in and he grabbed the staircase rail to hold on as his legs were falling him. His bodily system was already going into Schock from all what he was feeling now. But the clarity of who was most important now was clear as they looked at each other, and the keyboard player continued on to the door amd rammed it, and it gave in, broke open immediately and let him run in, into the corridor and sharp left into the bathroom. He stormed in there and grabbed her out of the bathtub and away from the heavy gas fumes of the water boiler, out into the hallway,…but she was gone, it was too late.
Eventually, Johny found himself at a layers office with the problem that Valja’s mother did not want to let him have their baby back. And eventually this lawyer told him, “My advise to you, not as a lawyer, as a man to a man, off the books, as a father to a father, is that the only chance you have left to ever get your baby, is to go and take her somehow”.
Johny got together with his youngest and favorite stepsister Mařena, and planned their first and only kidnapping as good as they could. Atleast they were of a performing arts family, so at least they had some confidence in the fact that they would know how to play their roles right.
Since Valjas mother hated Johny for not wanting to marry his daughter, he was absolutely not welcome, and especially now. So the plan was, that he would stay in the entrance door, while his sister Mařena would be welcome enough to go inside to check on the baby. Valja’s mother had other friends and family in the house as she mostly would, everyone gathered together around the baby, and Mařena was to get to hold it, and as soon as she’d have the baby in her arms, she was to make a sign for him to be ready and hold the door open so she could run out. And so the story successfully went, and they ran as fast as they could, out of the building and into the car, but by now Johny was shaking so much that he couldn’t stick the key into the egnition. He kept trying and trying, while the panic kept increasing and Valja’s mother came running out screaming and followed by everyone from the flat. She ran to the drivers door and grabbed a hold of the half-open window, just as he had managed to lock the doors, and now while the old lady was screaming and holding on to his car window, he finally got the key into the egnition, started the engine, and while trembling with fear in panic, they finally started driving. But the old lady held on to the car window, and he the sensitive respectful type was terrified, and he didn’t wanna harm her, but she kept holding on, and still screaming as loud as she could. So he managed to get one of his shaking arms to try rolling up the window just slowly and enough to make he let go and yes, she finally did, and they drove off, and kidnapping mission was complete, as they got away with the baby.
I remember when I first finally heard the story. My reaction was pure relief as it brought back the whole visual, but this time,….well, the visual got that old feeling of wonder attached to it, of me seeing it all but not understanding any of it, especially since, as it was happening, I had just been comfortably with the old lady, right before the next thing I know I’m sitting looking up at a car window, seeing her fingers in the window, feeling the very frantic energy of all the adults, and then her finger about to slowly get squeezed in the car window but then she let go of it. But now, this time around, I had the awareness of the whole story given to me, simultaneously as I was watching it from the in my minds eye being played right from the outer memory bank. (yeah in case you didn’t know our body just has receptors for our memories, and not just in the brain, all over the body. And memories are triggered in all different sorts of ways,but they are not actually stored within the body, but outside in the ether somehow. There where all knowledge of everything is, as the great mediators, and in a way guru’s as well, describe it.)
But Valja’s mother Marie, didn’t give up there. She kept trying all sorts throughout the coming years, to get her daughters baby back. But her attempts were rather direct teorisation for Johny.
In the court after the kidnapping, Johnny’s mother Bess from Denmark, came and saved his case in court, when he was loosing due to being a musician working at night. Spontaneously, in court she got up in the middle of it all, saying that she was going to stay, stay with him to be here to help him take care of his baby.
But after some months, she had to go back to her work, in order not to lose her job, so she suggested to bring the baby along with her to Copenhagen for the 3 months that a standard visa period would allow. And it was like this that I the 16 months old baby Slavínka, came into more traveling, now by train, and spending the next years until age 6, growing up in a partime situation of going back and forth every 3 months, between Denmark and Czechoslovakia, untill the time kids had to start school, at age 6.
In nursery school Slavínka was the strange baby, who would always sit and stare into nothing and be completely out of touch, not hearing anyone, nor registering a thing untill someone would say her very name.
I have this breaf but very rich and really odd memory of something from that time, which later turned out to be a memory from my very first bithday.
I layed eyes on something golden and blueish, and I remember clearly, that it looked like something familiar to me, something I could normaly go into. Today I know, that what I thought it was, is something we would call a door to another dimention, weather we believe such to exist or not, at least most of us know it from movies. But there I was, 1 year old, and as I tried to touch it, it hurt my finger, and I felt surprised in a puzzled sort of way, but obviously I was too young to really wonder, and my physical surroundings quickly distracted me with my kind grandmother (mother’s mother) who was there with me, standing a few meters away with a taller stranger.
Later, at around age 9, my other grandMother (fathers mother) showed me some photo albums of my baby pictures. I remember looking at most of those photos, without any proper memory of any of those moments. …until, I came accross a series of photos, of me sitting in a big arm-chair, with a gigantic teddy bear (the teddy seemed familiar), and each picture in this series, showed my different moves, step by step ~ image by image; showing how my attention was gradually drawn to, what seemed to be, to the birthday cake, which was standing on the table, right next to the chair that I was sitting in. The next picture showed, that it was the one candle on top of the cake, that I was actually focusing on. And the next picture showing, how I raised my arm, pointing my finger towards the flame, and the next picture revealing that I wasn’t pointing at it, but rather, I was on my way to stick my pointing finger into the flame.
Now sitting there at grandMa’s, flipping through the photos, this moment was where I connected the memories I had of this day, and my body was instantly filled with a wild-feeling energy, and I shouted out to my grandMother, ,,I remember this! I REMEMBER THIS!” …the following photo confirmed my memories, showing, me sitting with my finger inside the flame, and of course, the next photo after that showed, me now sitting with that finger in my mouth, and a facial expression of discomfort, as the fingertip was obviously hurting from the burn.
Now, being older and more knowlegable about things of this earthly reality, this life and the things in it, I finally understood, the whole silly deceivement. So I now the memories were all clarified, from this documenting series of photos, showing to the older me, what it all actually was, that happened on that day. …just a damn flame, looking like a familiar entrance to another dimention.
It blows my mind, to know, that a baby can have a memory, of a such thing, without being able to connect it within this earthly reality, without being able to comprehend this surprising fact, that it just looks like what you know, that it just resembles something you know from before this earthly life, unable to understand why it isn’t that, which it appears to be. …why something can look like a thing you know, but is actually something else.
It blows my mind, (and it still gives me that wild-feeling energy, right in the center between my chest and stomach) that I!, have such a memory, from before I was in this physical body. That is just so wild-feeling to me! It feels similar to, when you get surprised by a dream/wish come true.
I even remember, feeling as if I had been cut off (from the reality I knew), as if that was why it didn’t work, the way I knew it to be working; which was, something that would instantly suck me in, to another ralm/dimension/place/space kind of thing. I remember the expecting feeling, that I would go into that thing, as my finger touched it (now knowing, that was just a candle-flame).
This is one major fact, which leaves me with no doubt of, that I am not just this one physical body, which should make me cease to exist one day, when the body itself dies. On the contrary, I know that I go on without the body. …that I am not this body, but rather, that my consciousness in connected to this earthly existence, through this body.
Slavinka became bilingual and rather split between two worlds. It took untill the age of six, before she was able to control which of the two languages she was speaking, and up until then, she had already learned how humans tend to behave when they don’t understand you, and what it’s like when they don’t believe the truth of what you’re telling them.
She loved to be in Denmark with her lovely grandmother Bessie. And in Denmark even the clothes had more colors in general, and there was green soda, and digital watches were common among everyone’s personal possessions, even for kids.
Back in Czechoslovakia, everything seemed dull in comparison, and while kids don’t compare things untill we teach them to do so, it was obviously anyway a harder and colder world, back there in the communism, and Johny was fighting his inner sadness, behaving bitter and aggressive, while often getting drunk. But soon enough he had a nice girlfriend, and her son was only 1year older than Slavinka, and while his name was Slavek, they also looked like real sisters.
Denmark was like a different world, seemingly more friendly feeling for a child, and Slavinka had a lovely young couple, Gitte & Hans, as daily babysitters, while grandma was at work in a big furniture store called Dagels Møbelhus, where she had been allong many times as well, playing around in all the furniture.
In Denmark I was alone with my grandMother and she adored me. I didn’t have a room there of my own, but the whole house was mine and I preffered not to have to play in a room alone anyway, but rather have others around me, and best of all was of course my grandmother.In Denmark people would get together more because of me, they would in a sense gather around a child, whereas in Czechoslovakia, kids were like some lessed breed that just had to be quiet and keep away kind of thing.In Denmark people would love kids, and do more things and go more places because of the kids. We would go to Tivoli or Parken, or even the Zoo.I even went ponyriding a few times, and I remember it was too hot to sit on the hood of the car for a photo, so my grandmother’s friend put a pillow for me there, and we had melted gummy bears in the car that day.(Years later when I asked grandMa about this friend, she said that their friendship remained rather short, as she had cheeted my father and her, when my grandmother had brought her with her to us in Karlovy Vary, and one day she had given her 500 danish kroner to give to my dad in Czech korun, but she only gave him 500 Czech korun, and so after this trip they were no longer friends.)I remember one time standing in the livingroom, I asked her what happens people die. Because she always reffered to that my mother and Ernst were looking at us from the sky. But her reply aganst all of that picture, as she meant that when you die that’s the end nothing further happens. And I remember feeling like aha ok, she doesn’t really know. But I didn’t have much words in my vulcabulary to say much more, and neither does a kid stay stuck over the same thoughts for too long. But the moment stayed stuck in my memory because it made an impression that my grandMa would give me such a bizzare reply, and such a dark one, and I was surprised and slightly puzzled with the fact that the didn’t know, she didn’t have the answers.But even though my grandma still loved Ernst, was missing him and knew he was the best man she ever had, she did eventually and for a longer time, have an eye for the guy who lived above her. I remember her getting all silly to me about him. And I wasn’t even into boys and thought it didn’t matter. But eventually at a Christmas kind of event or so, down in the event rooms at the bottom of her building, she finally got to talk to him. I remember that evening was the first time she ever let me stay to pee alone in the bathroom, and that ironically enough, I couldn’t unlock the door to get out afterwards. But eventually some people heard me, and guided me from outside to unlock the door, and then it was even easy. But for a few moments there I had felt obandoned. But I also remember understanding that she wanted to know this guy and now she finally had the chance.One of the next times I came to Denmark, we no longer went to her amazing apartment, I had so much fun in that apartment, and it was in two floors, in such a way that you could use the space underneath one of the staircases like a slide. We had lots of fun with that. I got my first fancy evening/gala looking dress there when I was four. But now we went to a house that had been more or less in our distant view the whole time, where this Finn of hers had moved to I remember, and now she had moved there as well, to him. He had several health problems, astma and diabetis and something, and was often in the hospital, or the social health insurance would sent him on a recreational holiday to the coastt of Spain because the sea air helps loads of health issues alot.Then one of the next times after that, as we arrived through the garden this big curly black and wild behaving dog came running at us, at first I got a bit scared, but then it only took a couple of days before I was comfortable with him. His name was Skipper, and he was 5 years old, a child like me.In Czech I shared my room with my stepbrother, nobody made my curly hair nice, and my father was not lovely to me like my grandMother. He was hard and cold to me. Even mean sometimes.And then there was my Bulgarian-Czech grandmother…I always had those memories of grandma Marie sometimes showing up at my Kindergarten, and I’d get to go away spending the day with her, and I remember feeling special for getting both the love and the freedom when we’d return to the Kindergarten, as they would nearly all be looking at me.When I first started school, she also came. But I can only remember the one and only time I succeeded to obey the words from home.I wasn’t allowed to go to her, but in the past, at first I was too young to connect the talking moments with the actual happening moments, which were also months apart. As I grew, then later I just couldn’t get the things from home about grandma Marie, to fit with the real grandma Marie, it was obviously two completely different realities, but now in a whole new way than when I was a bit younger.Eventually it was clear as it could ever get, all the bad things they would tell me about her at home, and how much they wanted me to understand that I should never ever go to her again. I told them that she was good to me, but they told me that she just wanted to take me away, take me to live with her. That was very scary because she was more like a stranger to me, as I had no memory of her within my family, only that always came humbly but kreeping like a stranger, because they wouldn’t let her see me. For as long as I could remember, she was this stranger claiming to be my grandmother, and the mother of my mother, the mother that I didn’t remember, and she would come maybe once or twice a year I think. So it was scary to think one could get taken away from the family you know, to go into some dark unknown with a woman who thinks your father killed her daughter.I also told them that I didn’t know how to do what they wanted, that I didn’t even know what to say. ….when she is good to me. But they finally even said, that it’s better to say I’m not allowed to speak with her, then to not know what to say or do.And so back at school, in 2nd or 3rd grade, I not only felt like she was like an evil bad witch, and remembered everything I was told exactly this time, but I finally also pulled my self together and pretended that I hadn’t seen her as I came walking out, hand in hand, two and two, with our teacher in the front. I started feeling exited that I had managed to do something right and not only that, but it was also the very first most difficult thing I ever had to do in my life. (Today I know it was against my own character and against my hearts feeling ways. …and that it was all stupid stuff made up of terrible fears and sorrows.)Just as I was getting the exited feeling of accomplishment inside, the teacher interrupted everything, claiming that I ignored my grandma, in a tone that hit me in the truth; I didn’t want to be doing this to my grandmother who was only kind to me. It wasn’t me. I didn’t want this. I almost started crying, but I was interrupted all the time, and my grandmother took it very calmly and kind. And while I sat there next to her feeling bad about myself and the whole situation, she introduced me to the very first grapefruit I ever saw, which we then shared, and that’s all I remember from that day.But grandma Marie never stopped finding some legal way to bother my dad with either court or police. And she was extremely capable and creative, aparently a propper gemini like me.I do remember that she once appeared very dramatic at our door, crying and complaining, and my father not wanting to let her in, terrified that she would take me, as he thought he knew, that he’d again as before, have no chance in court, but to kidnap me back, again, which would be harder now that he had already done it once, and so she wouldn’t be so easy to fool, and I was older now, maybe she could even manipulate me. He was terrified and shaking.I have no idea how old I was, but I’m sure it was not too long after my mother’s death.
As Slavínka turned six, that summer she didn’t get to go with grandMa to Denmark, as Valja’s mother had somehow managed to get in the way of it legally.
That summer I went beyond the usual area of distance from home that I was allowed, alone without any brother to watch over me. And as I normally would do with grandMa everytime she would come to pick me up and bring me back, I went and did in my own. She used to stay for a week or two and enjoy the little wonderful city of this mountain town. But this time I couldn’t go, plus she had a new boyfriend, so she didn’t come. I took my favorite so over cute doll, and went on the bus with my baby-carriage for the first time, and was for the first time on the bus alone myself as well. I knew which bus to go where, and which bus to go home or to the other side of town. But I went just down bellow where we were living, close to my grandmother’s favorite cafe Elephant, and there I strolled around like some proud 6 year old mother of a baby doll. Children would go on the buss for free anyway.
After that summer Slavinka had to start school, and that same old strangeness observed by the nursery school and kindergarten continued, and almost everyday the teachers would have written a note to Johny in her contact book. He was horrifying himself with the idea that they’d eventually want to see him in person, and eventually they did. But his girlfriend Jindra was really a great woman, and she was full of humor too. And she offered him the perfect solution; she said she was raising the girl as a stepmother, so she had the right to go speak with them instead of him, which was a brilliant solution, as she was not the slightest bit afraid.
This story was told to me around 2002, when she and her son Slavek visited us, in a house my dad and Willy had bought, for the money of selling my grandMother’s house in Denmark, which they sold after she had died.
Aparently Jindra had gone to the school meeting, where she had immediately started confiding in the teacher, about how it was to raise this so weird little girl, and so they exchanged some stories about me and had a laugh or two, and nothing further ever happened with that case.
I remember that the school system was very old fashioned and strict, and the respect we children had for the teachers was based entirely on fear. When a teacher would enter a classroom, we all had to stand up next to our chair, untill the teacher would tell us to sit down. While seated, you were supposed to have your arms aither over each other in front of you, or hanging down your back behind your chair. If you wanted to say something, you should have your one arm all straight up raising your finger, while the other arm should be resting on the table along your chest. And if you were picked to speak, you should stand up next to your chair to speak. And from the beginning of learning how to write, we were being taught to write cursive writing. We emwere given exercise books, where you would practice writing one letter a time, by repeating that one letter over the next approx. 2 pages, and so on with each single letter, I cluding the capital version of each letter. The next practices were about connecting the letter and forming words, and writing beautifully and proportionately was very important. And eventually as the whole class had reached writing, while we were getting used to it, the next practice came, which was to write as lightly as you can, and when some students had gotten good at that, they were given a fountain pen, and gradually bit by bit we all made it.
We were scared of the teachers, as they would be free to punish us in different ways. Either you’d have to stand in a corner with your back to the class, or stand on your knees in front of the teachers dask with your arms horisontaly straight in front of you, with the big chalkboard ruler laying over across your arms. Once a kid even got whipped over the hands with one of those chalkboard tools.
I remember the winter during first grade, because at some late evening event at the school, my shoes went missing, and so I could never forget the walk home that night in the frost and snow. It became so painful that I was crying and begging my stepbrother to give me his shoes for just a bit, but he was only one year older, and of course, didn’t wanna try what I was trying there.
Somewhere around this time, Johny had some 8 months of work, where he’d be away from home for that whole time, and Jindra didn’t want him to go, and swore that she couldn’t go so long without him, but he didn’t really get the seriousness of it I guess, because he did go, and she didn’t last that whole time without him, and as he returned she told him that she had been sleeping with someone else, and so they just split up. The atmosphere in the house went all quiet, it was sad when they were leaving, and the house became very a very empty, quiets and sad feeling place.
That summer Slavinka turned 7, and this time Bessie had no problem bringing her to Denmark. Thanks God for Slavinka.
I remember that summer. Dad was supposed to be on his way in his beetle, pretending to just be going for a short visit to him mother, “where his daughter is on holiday right now” as he had heard tales of such ways of approaching it, to having been an attitude that had made leaving the so called “iron curtain walls” of the communist boarders for some other people. So up in Denmark grandMa kept an eye out for his silver beetle. She’d keep looking out the windows, even go up to the first floor to stand and look for a while. And eventually she saw a beetle just standing further up the road, so we went outside, and if he was there he’d see us ahead of him. It was hard to see if there was anybody in the car as it was reflecting the bright sky too much, so we stood there for a while waiting, till I slowly started insisting that we go there, or at least closer, and as we finally were coming closer there was nobody in the car. But grandMa thought very creatively that he could have gone looking for the address, or for assistance, maybe ended up in good company, maybe they’d even be drinking. And so we took Skipper the doggy for a walk and roamed around the buildings around where the beetle was parked, as it was anyway part of the same area where he was used to walking. As we eventually came back out to the road heading home, I realised that beetle car there was not silver, but dirty white. It took ages before grandma found out if he was coming or what, or if something happened or not, because back in Czech he was afraid to even talk about it with anyone, nevermind talking over any phone about it.
When they returned from Denmark, everything felt so much more different than ever. Johny had a new girlfriend called Dasha. She was kind, seemed very tall, and she was a pianist and sang as well. And it turned out that he had had his birth certificate with him, which they has found possibly suspicious.
Dasha had left a whole big makeup bag of empty perfumebottles on one of the many empty shelfs in Slavinka’s room for her to play with, and she made some effort to talk with her and make her feel comfortable. Then Johny came in, praised Dasha about what a good piano player she is, and started suggesting that she could be Slavinka’s piano teacher.
But one day that winter, in December around Christmas time, Johny decided that now today they just go,…… Travel light. Take some stuff. Afraid to take my doll. .. .. …. …. … ..
My Escape-otions Of Growing Up
Disappointing is the adult world, oh yeah! But ironically enough, they thought I was weird.
– Moving to Denmark, & changing schools –
At age 8 my father had decided that we run away from Czech, to my grandMother in Copenhagen, there I was the first school year in her town that I know so well. We agreed with my grandMother to put me 1 school year back, from 3rd grade to 2nd grade, to make sure I would catch up the best. It went well, and I loved school so much that everyone found it a bit weird. And the living with my grandmother was always the best as well.
The next school year, was in a nother school, there where my father how had gotten an apartment. This school was full of rough bad kids, and I would often end up running home in tears from there.
After 2 years there, a bit into 5th grade, I was finally put into a new school again, but this time a boarding school with my best friend, at own deepest wish.
These were some of my best childhood years, besides all the times I was living with grandma.
Grandma was also the one paying for my boardingschool … …. …. ….
For 8th grade I came back home to live with my dad, same city as before with the same neighbours, but in a different school this time.
Now there in this new school it hit me hard for the first time, that in Dänish school, kids go from 1st to 9th grade in the same school, have their same base-classroom, and the same Danish teacher, and even the same math teacher as well through all these years of a decade, while the Danish teacher is the one to whom the whole class of students somehow as if belongs, so that this teacher not only sees everyone grow up, but also develops a propper knowing of the children’s backgrounds, as they develop their professional relationships with the parrents as well. So now I was a bit of an alien here as well, the outsider, not really belonging to the family feeling of this whole class of students. … While my life with my dad was also a totally different world then everyone else’s homelife.
There is as well a tenth year in the dänish school system, but this one the students can choose not to do, if they feel ready and decided about their next move, they are free to exit after 9th year. Not feeling convinced nor confidant about the so called adult life at all, I wanted to stay where I was and took the tenth.
* Entering the adult world *
So, while for the average person, escaping the daily, becomes by means of alcohol and/or drugs, generally, I was into neither of those.
For me, being born into traveling, the escaping was a totally different case than that; I was escaping the predictable sort of prescribed options for living, that we were all facing as we were getting done with 9th and 10th grade. Though it did pause the feeling then, as I went to business school for about a year, after having been in the Gymnasium for half a year, but it was there in the business school that I “suddenly” had enough.
Once in business school, I was inspired to noticing now more than ever, how most people are not really happy with their jobs, and how many have just created a bit of something around it to make it decently bearable, made the future seem like something we were all sentensed to, as if we’re living in some open world prison.
But when I eventually discovered that lack of interest in the teacher of my favorite subject, that’s when alarms started going off inside me. That’s when the final moment of epiphany started aproaching, when I got an English essay back from this teacher, with way too many red marks posing as corrections, while she had no clue how much I was into giving it my all, for acellerating in being the best I could possibly be in all subjects. And while Danish and English were my favourite subjects, in which I stood very strong, she also didn’t know, that I had checked my essay in every way I could come up with.
I had used the american father of one friend, an English family member of another friend, and the most brilliantly weird genius mother of one of my closer friends, while I myself as well checked it for mistakes, again and again in between every one else that had checked it.
The decision of being the very best I could be, was much like an obsession for me, as I was aiming at being free to choose on my way, so that I could decide to be anything I might discover, to possibly be better for me than being a lawyer or a judge. I simply felt, the whole time, that if I had no choice but to succumb to the whole ways of living prescribed, by others who I don’t even know, if I was forced to sort of just rely on, that they were wise enough to have the power over our lives, even though they’re long gone dead, and weather they were wise enough for their prescription of living to actually really be the best of all options possible, then I couldn’t think of anything better than to be one of those with my pockets and everything, full of all the knowledge about all our laws and so on, so that atleast I’d have the maximum freedom within this prescribed ways of living ones whole LIFE.
Back in the awakening period, of my business school situation, I had just gone through the whole hastle of changing from French to Spanish, or vice versa perhaps, but only to find that the next teacher was extremely similar to the one before, by somehow not having a very professional aproach to the subjects of language learning and the very teaching itself. It was right out mind-boggling how someone could have become a teacher, when they don’t even seem to know how to teach.And I had already tried to tell the teacher, that from my bilingual perspective, I recognize that the reason why I can feel we’re not getting much anywhere with these lessons is because, to learn a language effectively, one must begin with what I call the foundation of the language, which begins with things like “Hello, my name is… What’s your name?” , and “I come from…. Where do you come from?” and so on. Because teaching the students with the aproach of things like “this is a pen, this is a book, this is a table” and so on, makes it almost impossible to get anywhere, as we can’t use any of that for anything. Whereas if we get those basics that I’m talking about, then we can already start using it for fun as kids do, and thereby actually relate enough, to actually remember it all. And as well, if I go now, after half a year of studying this language, to the very country that it comes from, then it’s right out crazy that I can’t even correctly present myself and at least ask for dirrections.And to all of this the teacher just seemed very open and understanding, giving me the impression that she was totally with me on this request. But the next lesson we had, she came with a song to sing instead. I guess she knew that for memorising text, you can give it a melody, because by singing through it you remember it all much much faster. But this trick is rather for remembering texts, such as for example a speach or a poem and so on, but it’s not usable for learning a freakin language hello! But ok, I gave the teacher the benefit of the doubt that she was probably using the song because she needed some time to prepare for this different aproach. But in the following lessons, she just went on as she always had done, as if I hadn’t explained anything, as if we never spoke about this stuff, which started to bother me too much, since it was my future at stake here.It was now crystal clear, that I would have to self study the subject on the side, just to get even get into this language, while I already had a slightly different issue in the German teacher as well, but didn’t care of that too much, as the language never really meant a thing to me, because I never liked the way this language sounded.But besides all this, more than half of the class would so often come drunk to school at 8 am, and just be all too disturbing. And me who doesn’t even like drunk people. While surely the same group of people had some rather generally disturbing fun makers anyway. So yeah why not also come drunk to school everytime someone has a morning birthday.But when all the nonsense hit my favorite subject, English, that’s when I first got angry, then felt so disappointed with the whole of going to this so called adult life world, which now seemed even a bit retarded to me. I thought, here I am, obliged to follow this ways of living that others who I don’t even know came up with. And I don’t even feel any harmony, any resonance with the whole rigidness of it all either, and many other things that are just normal to people with normal lives, just never felt right for me.
I’ve somehow always been an outsider in this way. My family traveled and changed countries through generations, and my parents we traveling as artists, musicians. And from the time I was 16 months old I lived 3 months in Copenhagen and 3 months in Carls Bad, back and forth every 3 months till I was 6. So during the entire forming years of a child.But now, here I stood with the essay of my favourite subject, over-marked with my outdated teachers make-believe miskates. In my confidance it was all too clear to me that her English was an old English, that she obviously hadn’t bothered updating. And shouldn’t that be obligatory when you teach a subject, to be up to date in that subject!? Well aparently no one gives a damn really. So I walked up to her and went through every single red mark with her, explaining each one, most of which was just modern English, and as we came to the last Red mark it felt undoubtedly clear within me, that now I had enough of all this iresponsible stupidity in nearly every important detail of education here, as if the whole of the normal life world was a big old joke on us all. So I told her that we should leave the last mistake as a symbolic reminder, and by that I knew that my grades mattered no more in this life, because there is a big world out there, and I’m gonna get to know this planet that I live on, instead of this prescribed predictable nonsense that I didn’t even come up with for myself to live by. So that day I walked off knowing, that the whole schooling idea was now over for me from here on, and that a new path to finding a way to travel, changing location and country freely as I want, had now begun.Everyone called me unrealistic, a dreamer, or telling me that I see the world through pink glasses and blabla-blaa as usual. Which to me was just another thing of the same kaliber, as the whole education situation; just confidant people talking about things that they don’t even know about. It was clear to me that not only are we too young to know everything, but even too many old people die not knowing much, not even having really grown much. So how would any one of us know enough to know all possibilities that exist out there!?…yeah go figure!