Accompanying American soldiers

Ida Roučková, a curious young girl just could not miss the US Army’s arrival in Plzeň on 6 May 1945. She put on her Plzeň folk costume and bid the Americans welcome. It became her and, in addition, she spoke English, so an American officer invited her to an official dinner at Mr Poláček’s restaurant to mark the end of the war. Even though most of the meals served came from tin cans, the dinner was quite an experience for Czechs: used to poor food supplies during the war, they could finally eat something substantial and even try some new, unknown meals, (such as tomato soup, which was not usual in Bohemia at the time). But that was just the beginning of social life with US soldiers: “The officer invited me to a ball at a Škoda hotel, which we used to call Cizinecký dům Škodovky (Škoda’s Foreigners House), but the Americans called it the ‘Skoda Hotel’. It took me some time to figure out that Skoda Hotel was ‘Ciziňák’, as we used to call it. I went in wearing my long evening dress and learned dances different from those we knew here.”