Bar-Restaurace U Soni

Beer © Ricky Yates

Three doors down the road from my new home in Stará Oleška, is Bar-Restaurace U Soni. It has been a real find and an absolute godsend since moving here. But if you go online, you will be hard-pushed to find any reference to it at all. It doesn’t have its own website. The building does not appear as a bar-restaurant on any online map.

The one reference I could find, gave the address incorrectly as Stará Oleška 76 when it it should be Stará Oleška 86. Putting the incorrect address into an online map will send you to the completely wrong location. To find the correct location, click on this link.

This . . . → Read More: Bar-Restaurace U Soni

How to be Czech in 10 easy steps – revisited

Half a litre of Gambrinus Czech beer © Ricky Yates

Ten months ago, I published a blog post entitled ‘How to be Czech in 10 easy steps‘, based on my experience at that time, of having lived as a cizinec / foreigner in the Czech Republic for nearly four and a half years. To my utter amazement, this post almost immediately went viral. It resulted in the blog getting 2040 visits on 20th February 2013, the day after it was published, and 1034 visits the following day. It took another three weeks before the daily visitor numbers returned to the more normal figure of around fifty.

I found the main reason for this sudden upsurge of visitor numbers in the social media buttons at the end of the post. The number of ‘likes’ and ‘shares’ on Facebook rapidly rose from zero, to . . . → Read More: How to be Czech in 10 easy steps – revisited

Keeping your tab

Running tab on slip of paper with beer & wine © Ricky Yates

One thing that I have increasingly realized living in Prague, is that most Czech people do not expect non-Czechs to necessarily be able to speak their language – many of them recognize what a difficult language it is to learn! But what Czech people do expect is that foreigners should understand, respect and follow their cultural manners and practices.

I have previously written a post entitled ‘Eating and drinking in a Czech Bar-Restaurant’, explaining what to expect in contrast to the UK and elsewhere. In this post, I’m going to expand and illustrate a practice I mentioned briefly in that previous post – something that is quite commonplace in many bar-restaurants throughout the Czech Republic.

When your first drinks order has been delivered to your table, the person doing so will produce . . . → Read More: Keeping your tab

Why I like living in Prague

St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague photographed from Petrín Hill on New Year's Day 2011 © Ricky Yates

“Do you like living in Prague?” This is a question I’m frequently asked by Czech people once they discover that I’m not a tourist but that I’ve actually chosen to live and work here. Many Czechs cannot understand why someone from Western Europe might actually want to come and permanently reside in their country.

The same question is also frequently posed by English-speaking visitors who join us for worship at St. Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church and by family and friends when they write or speak with me. So for my first post of 2011, I’m going to set out some of the reasons why I enjoy living particularly here in Prague and more widely in the Czech Republic. Some of these I’ve mentioned in previous posts so there are . . . → Read More: Why I like living in Prague

The Weak Will

U Slabé vule – The Weak Will © Ricky Yates

Although Saint Clement’s Church is located in the centre of Prague, it does lie slightly away from the streets most frequented by visiting tourists. It is situated in Klimentská, the street taking its name from the Czech form of Saint Clement, Svatý Kliment. Klimentská is accessed from Revolucní, which runs from Námestí Republiky to the River Vltava. Whilst Námestí Republiky is bright and busy, particularly since the opening in October 2007 of the Palladium Shopping Centre, Revolucní has always struck me as being a little run down, with a number of empty premises at street level.

It was therefore a most pleasant surprise a couple of months ago, when alighting from the Number 8 tram at the Dlouhá Trída tram stop on Revolucní, to see that one of these vacant premises directly alongside the tram stop, had been . . . → Read More: The Weak Will