More Than Collecting Keys, A Developing Mind

By Verónica de Castro Alonso

When I arrived to my dormitory in Brno, Czech Republic, I thought that the receptionists would speak in Czech or in English. However, I heard one of the receptionists speaking in other languages. I was very interested in him because, why a man who is 68 years old can speak so many languages?
A low “Hello”, or maybe nothing, is the greeting that a receptionist receives everyday. Practically, people seem not to look at them. Nevertheless, in Vinarska’s reception, one of the dormitories of Masaryk University in Brno, there is a special receptionist; in fact, he was one of Czechoslovakia’s furniture experts.
Arnošt Zahrádka’s life, nowadays, is very different. As he says, “Things can change very easily. When you are old you are not very useful for high positions; young people are well-prepared, they have more energy and a deeper knowledge about the high technology, so you have to look for another job with fewer responsibilities if you want or need to work.” In addition he told that he has to work because “my wife has a heart illness and the treatment is very costly so my pension is not enough for all the expenses. I like my job in the reception but I miss the investigation and the science. However, I have to adapt my life to the current conditions.”
Arnošt studied in Zvolen University. In 1961 he went to this small city in which is today is Slovakia. It was the only place where he could study Engineering in the former Czechoslovakia. He selected engineering because it was a degree where “I could do what I liked, to investigate.” He told that he loves looking for the reasons why things happen, “it is my own personality.”
After finishing the degree, in 1966, he started to work in Uprousínov; the biggest company in Czechoslovakia related to the furniture industry in that time and located in a village near Brno. It was not the first contact with this industry, because Arnošt made some courses related with that topic in the university. He worked like a technician in the chain of production and, after that; he worked in the export department. He said that he learnt a lot during the five years that he was working in Uprousínov because “I received a lot of experiences and practices.”
Then, in 1971, the research and development institute of the furniture industry – VVÚN –appeared in his life. He decided to move to Brno and to work in this institute because his job was going to be, practically, research (how to improve the machinery for making chairs, how to make a table in a cheaper way, etc.) “I felt very good in the institute,” he said “Basically, my job was looking for a solution for my tasks. For example, how could I stick effectively oak and pine wood? I did not know! So I had to make a very exhaustive job.”
But Arnošt can speak a lot of languages too, so he was very useful for the institute, because VVÚN had contact with other countries. Arnošt can speak Czech, but also German, because he studied it in the school and his grandmother was German; French, because his mother needed to speak in French in the bank; English and Russian, because he studied them in language academies. “I studied languages because, if you could speak different languages, it was easier to have a better job,” he said. Thanks to that, the institute gave him the opportunity to travel around Germany and Italy, the countries that had the better research institutes. He remarked that, during these trips, he got a deeper knowledge of the industry in other places.
But in 1980 his life changed. He knew that the company Politechna needed people to work in the development of countries like Cuba, so he started to study Spanish. He thought that it could be a very good experience in the personal and in the professional level. Finally he flew to Cuba, where he was working during four years in Las Tunas and in Batabanó, little towns 700 and 70 kilometers from La Habana respectively.
These four years were, for him, “the most exciting part of my life. I had to adapt myself to a new country and it was not easy to start a new life: you have to change your mind, your habits…but I discovered a new way to think and another culture.” Arnošt finished his contract in Cuba in 1984 and he said that he achieved his professional objectives there: to set a little factory for making furniture in each town; so he came back to Czechoslovakia.
In spite of the change, he explained that it was not very hard for him to start with his old life in the VVÚN again. In 1993 the institute was closed by the government. According to Arnošt, the explanation that the government gave to the institute’s workers was that they did not have a lot of money for support the institute. After that he was working in the external relations department in different companies associated with Spain and Belgium and related to the furniture industry. Finally, two years ago, he started to work in Vinarska’s reception.
The other receptionists do not want to speak about Arnošt because they said that they do not stay a lot of time together so they do not know him very well. Thus, they added that Arnošt does his job in the correct way. Flora Dietrich, Vinarska’s resident, said that “he looks to be a happy man. He really tries to have a good relationship with the students, he is always ready to help you and he tries to speak in your own language if he has any knowledge.”
“Maybe I cannot work in a big company, but I am happy because my brain is still working and I can walk by myself,” Arnošt said. “Vinarska could be very interesting if you speak with the students. I can practice different languages speaking with them and I learn a lot about how youth thinks nowadays. When I am surrounded by young people, I feel like one of them.”