Magdalena Stefanová

"I told my parents that I was going to my aunt's in Michalovce. I came to Bratislava to the boarding school, I slept there and went to exams. There the professors were on formal terms with me, I was excited about it. It was because I was terribly underestimated, at least I felt that way. I did not want to be embarrassed in front of them and I must say that I answered almost all the questions. I enrolled in architecture. The professor who tested me said to me, 'Don't be angry, but what you said to me here, I see how you speak and what your interests are, I advise you to go into engineering.' Jesus, me and engineering? But what, we'll see later. I waited to see if they would accept me. There were a lot of people at the entrance exams, some even with their parents. Then I returned home. Silence, I didn't tell anyone, I was waiting until June. And in June, they sent a letter to me saying that I had been accepted for engineering and that I had a boarding school. Well, Jesus, how do I tell my parents now? So, I told them, and my mother said, 'Don't tell me anything.' (When I was twelve, my brother was born. Because my mother couldn't have children. Then it happened somehow, and at that time my brother was little.) 'Aren't you ashamed to leave your brother here to me? I'm sick!' It hurt so bad. But I took the courage and left in winter boots because they didn't want to give me money, nothing, but I left. And there in the boarding school I met a friend who ate little, so I went to the canteen with her for lunch and what she left, or we shared it in half, so I ate with her and I managed it.”

"My father came there [to Stropkov], I think it was that way, after four years of the military service, he was sometimes nervous about it. When I was little, he sometimes slapped me and I wasn't allowed to cry. That's how it was then. My mother was terribly sad about it, and moreover, she had a headache all the time, for as long as I can remember, since my childhood. She had a problem with that. My father knew quite a different life. When he got to a town as small as Stropkov, it must have been very difficult for him, I think. I think so now. And that's why, like the others, he started drinking. He was such a bohemian. He could paint, he had a lot of culture in him. He read a lot, he also liked philosophy. I learned a lot from him. However, I didn't find out until years later. And so my childhood, because my father drank... when he wasn't drinking, he was great. He played theater with us children, all the children loved him. I couldn't understand that I loved him once, and then when I saw him drunk on the street, I hated him. I was ashamed of him. That was something terrible. Then the people, in such a small town, the gossip. Who's from which family they said - that's the daughter of the heavy drinker."