Masaryk at Tábor station: locals mistake actor for Petr Pavel

On Friday at 11 a.m., Czechoslovakia’s first president, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, arrived at the railway station in Tábor aboard the Vltava express. He was played by actor Jan Matásek. Dozens of locals came to greet him on the platform, and some of them took the performer for the current head of state, Petr Pavel.

The event, “Meeting the President”, part of a “presidential visit”, was organised by the local Oskar Nedbal Theatre and the Prague-based association “Tiger in Distress”. It recalls Masaryk’s journey in December 1918, when he returned from exile to Prague and passed through Tábor. As theatre director Linda Rybáková explained, the visit also makes up for a presidential trip to the town that never took place for its 600th anniversary.

The president in the white suit greeted the crowd and tried Tábor’s “Jordán” bread with salt, while the song “Ah, Son, My Son” rang out over the station. Seeing the man in white, some townspeople decided that Petr Pavel had dressed up as Masaryk. “That’s our current president. I’ve never seen him except on TV, but it’s him. He’s just wearing Masaryk’s suit to remind us of him,” said Jiřina Kotrbová from Tábor. “We’re arguing here about whether it’s really Petr Pavel. It is him, isn’t it?” asked Marie Řehková.

They were not alone. “It can’t be an actor. He looks exactly like Petr Pavel, you’re only saying that to confuse us,” declared Jindřich Novotný. Jiřina Králová admitted she saw Masaryk, but that the man reminded her of the current president too. “It was not President Petr Pavel but an actor who was meant to remind us of T. G. Masaryk,” Rybáková confirmed.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz