Interviews

I met Jana through the Czechmate diary couple of months ago. She has been very diligent with leaving comments on my site (thank you Jana!) as well as sending me a lot of useful info as far as Czech-American stuff goes. One day we struck up a conversation and I found out that she has a VERY interesting story. Just like Karin Gandalicova from my previous post, Jana was born abroad but both of her parents are Czech. “I bet she has so many interesting stories to tell!”, I thought to myself and then I acted upon that thought and a THRILLING interview with Jana was born (it’s kind of long so I had to brake it up into parts):

CZ: Janu jsem potkala pres Czechmate diary pred par mesici; je jedna z mych nejvzornejsich cternaru – zanechava koment skoro pod kazdym clankem (dekuji Jano!) – tak jsem si jednoho dne rekla, ze si ji trosku “proklepnu”. Zjistila jsem, ze tato mlada slecna byla narozena v cizine (US), ale jako je to s Krarin Gandalicovou z meho nedavneho clanku, oba jeji rodice jsou Cesi. “Ta musi mit tolik zajimavych zivotnich prihod!” pomyslela jsem si, a taky ze jo! Presvedcte se sami:

1/Tell us something about yourself. Where were you born? How did your childhood look like when having 2 Czech parents and growing up in the US? Do you have any funny childhood story (I am sure you got plenty) to share as far as being brought up in the midst of the 2 cultures (Czech and American)?
I was born in West, Texas USA in a multigenerational home, parents, grandchildren, grandparents. My mom teaches special needs children in the public school and my dad is editor, publisher, and owner of an over 200 year old Czech language newspaper, Hospodar, founded in Nebraska. It is one of two papers still being published in Texas entirely in the Czech language. As far as I know it was the one of the few western newspapers allowed into Czechoslovakia under communism.He did a blog cast a year or two ago about his paper.
As far as I know, I am not related to the author Ludvik Vaculik. Wouldn’t it be nice though? I love his fejetons and our family’s sense of humor is similar to his.  My father’s parents, great grandmother, great aunt emigrated while my mother’s parents and the rest of the family stayed in Czechoslovakia. My grandfather was born in Slovakia and emigrated in 1948 because of the communist coup. He managed to get across the border into an Austrian camp and then to Canada before communist agents were able to take him back. As a result of helping my grandfather escape, my great uncle Daniel spent five years in the silver/uranium mines in Jachymov. [click to continue…]