When Petra Braunová was working as an au pair, there were no agencies in Slovakia to help find stays abroad connected to childcare. As soon as the Iron Curtain fell and the borders from the communist bloc to the West opened, she set out for France at the instigation of her father.
"I went into the unknown solely with the address of my father's best friend from the Buchenwald concentration camp. My father taught me French and as a little girl I wrote his friends in France long letters full of mistakes," Braunová recalled.