Ricky Yates

Snowdrop flowering in Stromovka Park © Ricky Yates

Today my blog is exactly three years old. My first ever blogpost was published here on 4^th February 2009. So today is both a time for a little celebration as well as an occasion for some reflection on what I’ve written in the past as well as what might appear here in the coming year.

For any of my readers who are statistically minded, this is post number 163. In my first year, I published 73 posts, in my second year it was 48. In the past twelve months, I’ve published a further 41 as I will deem this post to be the first of my fourth blogging year.

The reason for the disparity in numbers stems mainly from my prolific period of writing and posting in November and December 2009 when I wrote in detail about our long distance trip to Turkey. That apart, it has normally been just under one blogpost a week. In the coming year my goal is to publish at least 52 posts – an average of one a week.

The aim will still be that as outlined in ‘About me – including a photo’. That is, to reflect on ministering here in Prague, to English-speakers from a variety of backgrounds and countries, and living as an expat myself in this fascinating city, as well as the wider Czech Republic. However, I do probably need to update the photograph that currently appears on that page. My hair is now far greyer, there is slightly less of it, and the shirt has long since disintegrated!

I shall try to continue to keep a balance between writing about everyday experiences seen from an expat perspective, recording my travels around, and occasionally beyond, the Czech Republic, together with addressing theological and ecclesiological issues. I’m aware that sometimes there is an imbalance between these things which I hope, corrects itself over a longer period of time.

According to Google analytics, this blog receives on average, between 60 and 70 visitors a day. Yet I get increasingly frustrated that so few of those visitors ever bother to leave me a coherent and relevant comment. My thanks to the two most faithful ones who do – Perpetua and Karen.

This issue was so clearly illustrated to me when I was standing at the Church door and shaking hands with members of the congregation after our Midnight Eucharist last Christmas Eve. A former member of the regular congregation, who still has a flat in Prague but is now based in London, shook my hand and warmly thanked me for the service. But he then said, “Whatever you do Ricky, don’t stop writing your blog”. I was most grateful for his words of encouragement. But that was the first I ever knew that he read and enjoyed this blog as he has never left a single comment!

Therefore as my blog enters its fourth year, if you visit here and regularly to read my musings, please tell me! Leave a comment – tell me if you agree or disagree with what I’ve written. Tell me if you would like me to focus more on a particular area or concern. Likewise, comments on Facebook, when I post a link, are also welcome. But I really would like to also have them here too.

My glass of wine is alongside my computer. I’m raising it and saying, “Here’s to year four of Ricky Yates – A blog and more!”

The west front of St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague © Ricky Yates

Last Monday evening, Sybille and I took the tram from Podbaba to Vozovna Strešovice and from there, walked through the back lanes to Hradcanské namestí, the large square lying immediately to the west of Prague Castle. As we did so, the only other people we saw were a young couple who were walking the same way as we were and whom we thought were probably Russian. Whilst we can tell when people aren’t speaking Czech, we have yet to be able to clearly distinguish between other Slavic languages!

In front of the west gates of the castle, there was a small group of Spaniards with a native Spanish speaker as their guide. But as we entered the first two quadrangles of the Prague Castle complex, we were surrounded by the amazing array of architecturally beautiful floodlit buildings, including the west front of St. Vitus Cathedral, with hardly a soul in sight. We basically had the whole place to ourselves. We were enjoying Prague – minus the tourists!

This is our fourth winter since moving to Prague in September 2008. Therefore we knew from previous experience that, following the Epiphany weekend in early January, through until late March, Prague has what can best be described as its non-tourist season. It is the period when you can walk around all the amazingly attractive sights of the historic centre of Prague, with very few foreign visitors surrounding you. But even then on Monday evening, we were still astonished as to how few people there were around.

For anyone reading this blog and wondering when is a good time to visit Prague, the answer I would give is between now and the third week in March. And if you want a really good financial deal, be adventurous and come without having pre-booked accommodation. At this time of year, there are regularly signs outside of hotels in the city centre saying, “Rooms available tonight” at remarkably reasonable prices.

Of course, you need to come prepared for the weather. Normally by now, there would be snow on the ground. But as I wrote in my earlier post, ‘Winter weather and walks’, we still have yet to experience really cold weather this current winter.

As someone who has chosen to live in Prague, I realise how very easy it is to complain about how, for much of the year, the city can feel almost overwhelmed by the number of tourist visitors. And yet they make a major contribution to the Czech economy and keep a considerable number of people in employment.

Likewise, they also make quite a contribution to the life of St. Clement’s Church. It very rare for us to have a Sunday service without visiting tourists in the congregation. Nearly all of them express grateful thanks for the opportunity we give them to worship in English, whilst they are visiting Prague. And some of them are quite generous towards us financially which we greatly appreciate. However, you would be amazed at the variety of  currencies that appear in the collection!

The most recent example was Christmas Day morning 2011. For our Family Eucharist that day, we had a congregation of about 110 people. Of those, only about 25 were regular members of our worshipping community, as so many of them go back to their home countries over the Christmas season. All the rest were visitors spending Christmas in Prague.

I shall seek to make the most of the next two relatively tourist-free months in Prague. But I am very aware that much of what I enjoy living here only exists because Prague attracts so many visiting tourists.

Tribute to former President Václav Havel in a lady's fashion shop window © Ricky Yates

I’m writing this on Christmas Eve, just a few hours before setting out from the Chaplaincy Flat to St Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church in the centre of Prague, in order to celebrate our Christmas Midnight Eucharist which begins at 23.30 this evening. It is now dark and therefore in terms of the liturgical Church year, the season of Advent has ended and we have entered the Christmas season.

As I mentioned in my earlier blogpost entitled ‘Advent Sunday‘, this year, because of Christmas Day being on a Sunday, the preceding season of Advent has been a full four weeks long. Depending on which day of the week Christmas Day falls, in some years the fourth ‘week’ of Advent is only one or two days long. However, further to my blogpost of earlier this week, here in Prague the fourth week of Advent has been overshadowed by the death of former President Václav Havel last Sunday and the preparations for his state funeral which took place yesterday.

In that earlier post about Havel, I did say that, ‘as I previously understood it, the general consensus was that in many respects, Havel was more highly regarded outside of this country than within in it’. However, I did then go on to say that what I had then seen in the thirty hours following his death when I wrote that piece was rapidly changing that understanding. What I have observed since then has completely changed that view.

The photo above is probably the best way to illustrate what I mean. Here in the window of an upmarket lady’s fashion store ‘5^th Avenue’, a whole display window has been given over to a tribute to Havel with his picture, a number of votive candles, and a large flower arrangement. Even in our favourite local bar-restaurant U Topolu where we ate yesterday evening, in one corner was a picture of Havel pinned to the wall with a votive candle in front of it. I meant to take a picture of that as well but unfortunately failed to do so.

Our Christmas Eve dinner © Ricky Yates

But with all of this going on, the city has also been busy getting ready to celebrate Christmas. Which of course raises the interesting question of when do you actually celebrate the festival. Here in the Czech Republic, the greater celebration takes place on Christmas Eve as it does in many other continental European countries. This is well illustrated by the wonderful Prague public transport system which goes onto a night timetable early in the afternoon of Christmas Eve but then runs a normal Sunday timetable on Christmas Day.

As my wife Sybille is German, having the main celebration on Christmas Eve is also her tradition. Therefore we had our Christmas Dinner this evening – a very tasty roast duck with vegetables. Appropriately, the duck had been reared and packaged in Germany but, as we frequently experience here, with a sticky label in Czech stuck over the German cooking instructions!

Veselé Vánoce – Happy Christmas

The Prague crew, together with Katka, gathered around the organ. From l to r, David Hellam, Karen Moritz, Katka Bánová, Larry Leifeste, Celieta Leifeste, Gordon Truefit, Ricky Yates © Celieta Leifeste

As I wrote in my previous post, last Sunday evening, 18^th December 2011, the Prague Anglican congregation created a little bit of history by holding the first ever English-language Anglican service in Brno. In the appropriately named Betlémský Kostel / Bethlehem Chapel, we held a Service of Lessons and Carols for Christmas.

Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic with a population of about 400,000 people. It is home to a number of high tech companies together with numerous university and research institutions therefore meaning that there are quite a large number of English-speakers living there. But unlike Prague (population 1.3 million), where St. Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church is one of eight mainstream English-speaking congregations, in Brno there are only two – a Roman Catholic one and an small Evangelical Fellowship with no Pastor. In terms of the Christian spectrum, there is a large gap in between for which there is currently no provision whatsoever.

Officially the whole of the Czech Republic is my ‘parish’ and in the more than three years I have been here, I have had a couple of enquiries from individuals spending a few months in Brno, asking if we ever hold English-language services in the city. Sadly, I’ve always had to reply saying that we don’t. In recent months, as I have talked with members of the Church Council as to how we might ‘grow the congregation’, it has often struck me that we ought to look at doing so away from Prague in places where there is ‘far less competition’ (if you will excuse that expression this context) and where there is almost certainly far greater need.

Earlier this year whilst I was pondering all of this, I had a totally unexpected phone call from a fluent English-speaking Czech young lady from Brno called Katka. I should really say extremely fluent as she makes a living as a freelance interpreter and translator. What Katka wanted was any old hymnbooks we might have, so that the Czech congregation to which she belongs, could occasionally sing a hymn in English. Taking her phone call as the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I put to her the idea I had of trying to start a satellite English-speaking Anglican congregation in Brno.

Fortunately, Katka was immediately enthusiastic and has since spent numerous hours doing research on my behalf, finding possible Church buildings to use, and helping to organise publicity, particularly via the Brno Expat Centre. The project has also involved me in two day trips to Brno by train, in order to meet people and look at venues. But all of this preparation led to the successful holding of our first ever service last Sunday evening.

I’ve also been most encouraged by the support and enthusiasm of members of the Prague Anglican congregation regarding the Brno venture. As can be seen in the photograph above, five of them volunteered to come with me to Brno for the service. All of them first came to our Sunday Eucharist at 11.00 in the morning in Prague, then managed some quick refreshment at our post-service Coffee Hour, before taking the tram for three stops to the main railway station in order to catch the 13.42 train for Brno. The return train got back at to Prague at 23.15 meaning that we didn’t get back to our respective homes until around midnight.

Larry & Celieta Leifeste at the organ with no volume pedal! © Ricky Yates

Our organist was Larry Leifeste who with his wife Celieta, only joined our congregation in August when they moved from Texas to Prague. It was obviously the first time he had ever played the organ in the Bethlehem Chapel and he found that much to his surprise, it had no volume pedal. How then did he increase the volume? By literally ‘pulling out all the stops’!

Celieta sang two wonderful solos – a setting of the Magnificat and an American spiritual ‘Sweet little Jesus boy’. David Hellam and Gordon Truefit both read a lesson and together with me, sang the individual verses of ‘We three kings’; Gordon as ‘gold’, myself as ‘frankincense’ and David as ‘myrrh’. David along with Karen Moritz also did the important job of welcoming all those who came.

Katka also read a lesson as did three other Brno people that she successfully recruited. Katka also helped to lay on some wonderful post-service refreshments giving me the chance to talk with several of those who attended.

Several of the thirty-strong congregation filled out contact forms with various expressions of interest in being part of future services. Currently, these are planned to start on a monthly basis on Sunday 8^th January 2012 using a smaller nearby venue belonging to the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. More details can be found on the new Brno page of our website.

I am really quite excited about starting a satellite congregation in Brno. I suspect that we will be quite small to start with but, as Jesus said, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18. 20 TNIV Or alternatively, ‘from small acorns, large oak trees grow’. Watch this space!

In the bleak mid-winter..... © Ricky Yates

Today is 31^st December – New Year’s Eve. In Czech it is known as Silvestr as we discovered last year when the car park attendant at our local Billa supermarket wished us ‘hezky Silvestr’ as we gave him our ticket at the barrier. Sybille immediately knew what he meant as today is Silvester in German. And the reason for the name? In the Roman Catholic Church, today is the feast day of St. Sylvester/Pope Sylvester I who died on 31^st December 335.

This post is really just a quick update on the things I’ve written about in my three previous December blog posts.

Weather

Not only did winter, with considerable snowfall, come early to Prague this year – it hasn’t gone away! We had a white Christmas with snow already on the ground and more fine powdery snow falling as we travelled to Church for our Midnight service on Christmas Eve.

Emu in the snow at Prague Zoo © Ricky Yates

Yesterday, rather than being cold and cloudy, it was fine; cold but sunny. So we went to visit one of Sybille’s favourite places – Prague zoo. The weather was perfect for the polar bears, North American bison and other animals used to snow and below freezing temperatures. However, I did feel somewhat sorry for this emu though I believe he was outside by choice.

Since well before Christmas, we’ve been planning to take the car to our good friend Adrian of Nepomuk in order to have four new ‘winter tyres’ fitted and a couple of other minor things fixed. But unfortunately, the weather has been so bad we just haven’t felt able to undertake the journey. Therefore, the poor ‘Carly’, as it has become affectionately known, continues to sit outside covered in snow.

The 'Carly' in the snow © Ricky Yates

‘On the Feast of Stephen’

Our broadcast service on BBC Radio 4 on 26^th December had been very well received. As well as complimentary emails from various persons, known and unknown, one other very interesting statistic has emerged. Our Church website normally gets 10 – 15 hits a day. On Sunday 26^th December it got 153 hits!!! If you haven’t yet heard the broadcast, you can still do so during the next two days by visiting the Radio 4 Sunday Worship website.

Christmas Carp induced flooding

We’ve dried out and all the electrics are working. However, we are still awaiting a visit from our neighbour’s insurance company’s appropriately named ‘liquidator’!

Happy New Year!

Frozen waterfall in the grounds of Prague Zoo © Ricky Yates