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I’ve lived under one roof with my daughter since she’s been married. My daughter has worked for twenty-three years at Smena. Their head office was on Prazska Street. Smena is a book and periodical publisher in Bratislava, but they have a daily paper also.
The publishing house closed about fifteen years ago. It published very many books, original Slovak works, as well as a lot of translations. It was one of the largest publishers during socialism. My son-in-law works in the construction industry; after the Velvet Revolution [36], he started a private construction company with a colleague.
They do exclusively reconstruction and renovations of apartments, so they don’t build houses, they just fix them up. After the change of regime, you could buy apartments, and a lot of people redid their bathrooms, and kitchens. They had a lot of work.
He worked in that business until last spring [2003], then he quit. Now he’s retired. My daughter is also retired. They have a garden. They have a little weekend house, they spend whole afternoons there and both of them are mainly gardening now.
They also have just one daughter. Petra was born in 1977. She didn’t get into university, but she finished a three-year travel program, went for a half-year to London as an au pair girl – she knew English before that, but learned it perfectly there. And when she came back, she translated books from English and German.
My grandchild is now living in Hradec Kralove [a Czech city], she has a life partner and mostly translates from English and German, but not books anymore, technical texts. She works very, very much and they are very happy with her.
The publishing house closed about fifteen years ago. It published very many books, original Slovak works, as well as a lot of translations. It was one of the largest publishers during socialism. My son-in-law works in the construction industry; after the Velvet Revolution [36], he started a private construction company with a colleague.
They do exclusively reconstruction and renovations of apartments, so they don’t build houses, they just fix them up. After the change of regime, you could buy apartments, and a lot of people redid their bathrooms, and kitchens. They had a lot of work.
He worked in that business until last spring [2003], then he quit. Now he’s retired. My daughter is also retired. They have a garden. They have a little weekend house, they spend whole afternoons there and both of them are mainly gardening now.
They also have just one daughter. Petra was born in 1977. She didn’t get into university, but she finished a three-year travel program, went for a half-year to London as an au pair girl – she knew English before that, but learned it perfectly there. And when she came back, she translated books from English and German.
My grandchild is now living in Hradec Kralove [a Czech city], she has a life partner and mostly translates from English and German, but not books anymore, technical texts. She works very, very much and they are very happy with her.
Location
Slovakia
Interview
Katarina Löfflerova