Community spotlight
20
Meet the people who add zest to life in Luxembourg
The Czechs and the Slovaks
A touch of the homeland APRIL/MAY 2019
T
o feel the connection between Luxembourg and the Czech Republic, Marta Vacca Veselá says it doesn’t take much more than walking around the grand duchy’s capital, to two points in particular. There’s the crypt of the Notre Dame cathedral, which is the resting place of John the Blind, who was king of Bohemia and count of Luxembourg in the early 14th century. There’s also the Jan Palach square, located off the place d’Armes, which honours the Czech student of the same name who, in 1969, protested against the end of the Prague Spring by self-immolation. Vacca Veselá hails from Olomouc in the Czech Republic, not far from the border with Slovakia, although she hasn’t lived there since the age of 14. She has spent most of her life abroad, in places
like the UK and Russia, and for the last roughly 20 years, she has called Luxembourg home. “Luxembourg, for me, represents it all. It is medium sized, but it has all the advantages of an international city, all the embassies and mixture of communities, without the huge stress of a metropole,” she says, adding that she could never see herself living in a monocultural environment. Vacca Veselá linked up with the Amitiés Tchèque et Slovaque Luxembourg (Czech and Slovak friendship in Luxembourg) group when she arrived in the grand duchy, and for the last three years has served as its president. ATSL was founded in 1972, following a wave of Czech and Slovak immigration in → the late 1960s after the invasion of
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MARTA VACCA VESELÁ The president of Amitiés Tchèque et Slovaque Luxembourg is pictured in the courtyard of the Czech embassy in Limpertsberg ATSL - Amitiés tchéque et slovaque Luxembourg ↳ atsl.lu