Rudolf Deiml with his wife Marketa Deimlova and sister-in-law

Rudolf Deiml with his wife Marketa Deimlova and sister-in-law

These are my parents with my aunt, my uncle Jan Korbel's wife. My aunt is standing on the left, my mother (Marketa Deimlova, nee Korbelova) on the right and between them is my father (Rudolf Deiml). Most likely they're out on some walk, either somewhere around Strakonice, where we lived, or around Jevany, where Grandpa had a villa and always gathered all our families there for the summer. The photo was taken in 1937. My mother was home with us, my father was a doctor. Father wasn't the only doctor in Strakonice, there were lots of them, but he definitely had the most patients and was very popular. Still to this day, when I meet with my former classmates, they remember him. My father's practice was at home. But he was also the railway doctor, and used to have hours in the railway clinic, and was also a school doctor. Back then a doctor had to manage everything. A general practitioner was really a general practitioner. He knew how to mend broken bones, pull a tooth, deliver a child. To recognize pneumonia. Not like now, when someone specializes in the left eye, he doesn't understand the right one. Both our parents did a lot of sports, and also encouraged us to do sports as well. Always, when Father closed his practice before lunchtime, he'd go for a swim in the Otava, a little ways away from us. Our father was also a hiker, and used to go with other hikers on long walkabouts. Back then knee breeches were in fashion, so he also wore them, he had a hiker's walking stick... My mother didn't go hiking, but often our whole family would go for trips into the hills around Strakonice, we used to go picking mushrooms in the forest... Father was a great believer in the mountains. He was convinced that in the summer it's much better to spend a week in the mountains than fourteen days by the sea. We were in the middle of the Sumava region and we also enjoyed the mountains in the winter. I skied from around the age of three. At that time I still had these little skis, you could walk in the boots. They were rectangular, it had these metal plates, leather bindings and a buckle at the back. Almost every Sunday we used to go skiing at Kubova Hut, that was fantastic.
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