Ricky Yates

Lea & Petra at Bouzov Castle © Ricky Yates

The newly married couple © Ricky Yates

Earlier this year I received an email from an English young man called Lea, asking if there was a Czech language version of the Anglican ‘Common Worship’ Marriage Service. He was planning to marry a Czech young lady called Petra, at a venue near her home town of Olomouc in the east of the Czech Republic, and this was the liturgy that they wanted to use. As there would be both English and Czech speakers attending the wedding, they wanted the text in both languages.

One of the many helpful things left by my predecessor John Philpott, was a ‘Word document’ containing exactly the text that Lea had asked for. I forwarded it to him but wrote an accompanying note asking who was going to use it? If they were going to be married by an English-speaking minister from one of the Czech Churches, then surely that minister would want to use his/her own Church’s liturgy. On the other hand, if they were going to have a Czech civil ceremony followed by a Church service conducted by an Anglican priest imported for the occasion, then it was common courtesy for me, as the Anglican priest for the area concerned, to be consulted.

In reply, Lea and Petra explained that they didn’t yet have anyone to use the liturgy. But they had booked their wedding venue, the ‘chapel’ in Bouzov Castle, and that they had met with the local registrar and were in the process of completing all the necessary preliminaries to enable  a legal wedding to take place. Once I explained that, because of my status as a priest in the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, I could legally marry them, then they promptly invited me to do so. Thus on Friday 3^rd July, I conducted my first Czech wedding and my first wedding of any variety since mid-August 2008.

Olomouc is a historic city in Moravia, part of the Czech Republic that neither of us had previously visited. Although it should only take about two and a half hours to drive there from Prague, we decided not to risk it and drove down on the Thursday evening in order to ensure we reached the wedding venue in good time the next day. Some good internet research by Sybille found us a very comfortable double room in the Poet’s Corner Hostel, an extremely interesting establishment owned and run by an ex-pat Australian.

Our ‘Lonely Planet’ Guide to the Czech & Slovak Republics describes Olomouc as ‘Prague  minus the tourists’ and it is an apt description. We ate our evening meal in an open air restaurant on the square in the historic centre of the city. The architectural views surrounding us are reminiscent of Old Town Square in Prague. However, other than a small amount of German, we heard no other language spoken that evening except Czech and were far from being surrounded by hoards of people.

The next morning, after leisurely breakfast, we put on our best clothes and set off on the  forty minute drive to Bouzov Castle. The castle is situated in the small village of Bouzov set in the rolling wooded hills of Moravia. It was a spectacular sight to see as we drove towards it. After parking in the official car park, we walked up to the main entrance to await  the arrival of the wedding party. We had been warned that we would need to be admitted as one group all together to avoid any confusion, as the castle is also open to paying visitors. Eventually, everybody arrived and we were all escorted over the castle bridge and up the stairs to the the ‘chapel’.

As we had discussed back in April when I had met Lea & Petra for the first time, everybody had an order of service with the English liturgy on one side and the Czech translation on the other, using the very material that had been the subject of Lea’s original enquiry. Whilst I conducted the service in English, I did manage to greet the congregation at the beginning in Czech. I was assisted by a wonderful lady called Ivana, who helped Petra make her vows in Czech after Lea had made his in English. She also translated my short address into Czech.

My greatest fear was getting the registration of the marriage wrong. In advance of the service, I had filled out a four-page form all in Czech, which being part of Czech bureaucracy, inevitably required an immense amount of detailed information about the bride and groom, their respective parents, both witnesses and me. This included full name and address, date and place of birth, birth number for Czechs, passport number for non Czechs! Fortunately, John Philpott had also left me an annotated version of this form with guidance as to how to fill it out. Having completed it following his instructions, I got the ever-faithful Gerry Turner to double check what I’d done in Czech, before we set out for Olmouc.

It is this form, rather than two sets of Church registers, that is signed during the wedding service. Again, as I have explained previously in this blog, not only signed but, much more importantly, stamped!! As I raised my hand above the stamp that declares us to be the English-speaking parish of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, I said in English & Ivana said in Czech, “This is the most important part of a Czech marriage service!” Everybody smiled and laughed as I very firmly slammed the stamp down. It is this signed and stamped form which must be returned to the local registrar within two working days. The registrar will then issue the happy couple with their marriage certificate.

The service over, we were all escorted back out of the castle and then the newly married Lea and Petra walked down from the castle bridge hand-in-hand. As you can see, you cannot really have a much better setting than Bouzov Castle for your wedding photographs. An evening reception followed back in Olomouc.

British car © Sybille Yates

Change is coming! © Sybille Yates

This morning, I walked out of the offices of ‘Praha Hlavní Mesto’ in the centre of Prague with an incredible sense of satisfaction. I had achieved what I had been told so many times, by a whole variety of people, was impossible to achieve. In my rucksack were Czech number plates and a Czech registration document for my previously British registered right-hand drive (RHD) car. Today my red Renault Megane Scenic has legally become a Czech car!

Czech car © Sybille Yates

It should really be what we have achieved as I would never have managed to do this without the help and support of Sybille, the knowledge of the whole variety of procedures to obtain the appropriate protocols which came from Adrian Blank of Nepomuk, together with being accompanied through the final stages by Gerry Turner speaking in Czech on my behalf.

In my previous post entitled “Driving on the ‘right’ side of the road”; I explained how Gerry & I had gone to the imposing offices of the Czech Ministry of Transport on Wednesday 3^rd June, to submit my application and accompanying papers for a ‘Certificate of Exemption’ for my RHD car. Adrian of Nepomuk had said that I should receive the certificate a week to ten days after submitting the application. When after two weeks, I had neither heard nor received anything; Gerry made a phone call asking what was happening. “Oh it will be in our system and we can take up to four weeks to process it” was the somewhat unhelpful answer given to Gerry. However, on Monday 22^nd June, a registered letter arrived at our flat containing the certificate of exemption. The fact that the certificate was dated 17^th June 2009, the date of Gerry’s phone call, does seem a little more than coincidence!

On the afternoon of Monday 22^nd, I duly delivered the certificate to the Magistrát office in Vysorany, Prague 9 where all my other papers were already lodged. I had to return to the office on Tuesday to put two signatures onto the completed paperwork. Then it was a third visit in three days to collect the completed file on Wednesday. On this third occasion, Gerry accompanied me to ensure I discovered correctly what to do next.

We were told to go to the offices of ‘Praha Hlavní Mesto’ in the centre of Prague, pay 3000 Kc (about £100) environmental fee as my emissions are only ‘Euro 2 standard’, and there I would finally be issued with a Czech registration document and Czech number plates. We hopped on the tram, changed onto the Metro and arrived at the correct office. Through the good offices of Gerry, we explained to the lady on the information desk, what I had come to do. She checked through all the papers giving her approval to everything I had until she asked, “Do you have your insurance certificate with you?” What was the one thing I had not got with me????

So it was that Gerry and I reconvened at the offices of ‘Praha Hlavní Mesto’ at 9.30am this morning. We took our numbered ticket and waited for our number to come up on the electronic board to tell us which kiosk to attend. After about a half hour wait we were summoned.

The lady at kiosk 35 was perfectly friendly. We presented all my papers, including my insurance certificate. “Did I have my passport and residency document with me, not just the photocopies in the file?” Fortunately I had anticipated that one! “Had I personally imported the car?” This question reflects the concern of the Czech authorities of a glut of cheap second-hand British RHD cars being brought into the Czech Republic by unscrupulous dealers. “Did I have 3000 Kc to pay the environmental charge?” I went off to the cash desk, handed over the cash and returned with a receipt.

Then the magic moment came. Number plates were produced from a drawer. Stickers were attached, marked to show the end date of the validity of my mechanical and emissions protocols. A registration document in two parts, showing my new car registration number and my full name and address, came out of the computer printer. All these were presented to me. As a parting gesture, the lady then said to me in Czech, “May God bless you”. Gerry replied by telling her in Czech, how appropriate her words were as she had just said them to the English-speaking Anglican Priest in Prague. The poor lady nearly fell off her chair both with shock and with laughter!

This afternoon, the car underwent it’s transformation from being a British car to being a Czech car. Off came the British number plates and the ‘GB’ sticker. Using the British plates as a template, I successfully drilled two holes in each of the Czech plates and then proudly screwed them onto the car before, of course, posing for the photograph!

Right-hand drive vintage car in Prague © John Millar

Continental Europeans, together with Americans & Canadians, are quick to tell British people that they drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. To them, driving on the right is ‘right’! Some British people can be just as bad in reverse, complaining that if they take their car across the English Channel, they have to drive on what to them is also the ‘wrong’ side of the road.

Like many British people, I have regularly taken my British registered right-hand drive (RHD) car to continental Europe both for holidays as well as for shopping trips to Calais. I personally have no real problem with driving a RHD car on the right (as in the opposite of left) side of the road. In the past few years I’ve twice driven from the UK to Galicia in the far north-west of Spain, as well as to southern Bavaria, to Switzerland and in June 2008 to Savona in northern Italy & then by ferry to Corsica.

Once you have driven well away from the French Channel ports and the popular coastal holiday areas of France, a British registered RHD car can attract considerable interest and attention. Last year, we drove slowly through a Corsican mountain village, the car windows wide open because of the heat. We passed the village bar with several men sitting outside enjoying a lunchtime drink. Spotting the RHD and the GB sticker, they stared at us in utter amazement until one of them called out rather slowly, “Do you speak English?” Sybille and I just descended into fits of laughter on hearing him. It was almost as though we had arrived from outer space!

Exactly a year ago, immediately before our holiday in Corsica, I accepted the invitation to be the next Anglican Chaplain in Prague. One of the many decisions that we then had to make was what to do with my car. Should I sell it and buy a left-hand drive (LHD) model in the Czech Republic. Or should I take it with me even though it would have the steering wheel on the ‘wrong’ side.

I soon decided that I would take it with me and that when we moved, we would drive all the way to Prague. My reasons were numerous

• Selling my car for cash in the UK would never produce sufficient funds to buy the equivalent or similar model in the Czech Republic. I’ve since discovered that second hand cars here are considerably more expensive than in the UK.
• I bought my current car, a Renault Scenic, from my local garage in Oxfordshire in January 2004. They have looked after and serviced it ever since and I was on first name terms with the owner and his staff. Buying a car in Prague without being able to speak Czech and with no way of knowing a vehicle’s history was a risk I was not prepared to take.
• Driving in the car from Oxfordshire to Prague, enabled us to bring many things with us which we could not have put on a plane nor sent with the rest of our belongings which were transported here as a part container load. Chief amongst these was Oscar the cat, along with various plants, including a bay tree and an olive tree. We were also able to bring a computer and monitor and numerous other things that enabled us to live fairly normally before being reunited with the rest of our belongings some four weeks later.

As the Czech Republic is now part of the EU, I assumed that I would not have too many problems registering the car here. After all, there are an increasing number of LHD cars being driven around the UK with British number plates. These have either been brought into the UK by citizens of other EU countries now resident in Britain or by Brits themselves who have returned from living in continental Europe and have brought their LHD cars with them. That was, of course, before knowing what I now know about Czech bureaucracy!

My initial enquiries were all met with the same negative response. Yes, you can import a car but it must be LHD. There is no way to get a RHD car registered in the Czech Republic I was told. It was then that we first discovered the value of the website expats.cz. Searching the forum soon brought us to several threads dealing with cars. And with regard to getting a RHD car registered, the answer each time was, ‘Talk to Adrian of Nepomuk‘.

Adrian is a Brit married to a Czech and now works for his ‘in-laws’ truck and car servicing business in Nepomuk, south of Plzen. Early one Monday morning last December, after various phone & email exchanges, we made the one and a half hour journey out to Nepomuk. The main alteration necessary to the car was the headlights being changed so that they dip in the correct direction for driving on the right. Temporary stickers on the headlights are fine for short term holidays but not acceptable if the car is to be registered here. Fortunately, no other changes were necessary as my Renault Scenic had functioning rear fog lights on both sides and a speedometer that was calibrated in kph as well as mph.

After that, we set off with Adrian to nearby Horazdovice where before and after lunch, the car was tested both mechanically and for it emissions, very much along the lines of the annual British MOT test. The tests were successfully passed and produced two protocols for me to take away. Adrian also arranged for us to go to another test centre in Prague some ten days later, in order to have the car mirrors checked to prove that the driver’s rear vision is not impeded by virtue of the car being RHD. This duly produced protocol number three.

Armed with these protocols, I successfully found a firm of English-speaking insurance brokers who kindly arranged third party insurance for the car, essential as my British insurer would only cover me for the first 90 days after leaving the UK. But jumping through the final hoops and getting the car registered with Czech number plates, had to wait until we had being granted our residency permits proving where we live. My previous blog entries entitled ‘A 21^st century defenestration of Prague’ and ‘Dealing with Czech bureaucracy’ will explain that long drawn out procedure.

However, yesterday morning, accompanied by the ever-faithful Czech-speaking Gerry, I went to visit the imposing offices of the Czech Ministry of Transport alongside the Vltava River in the centre of Prague. Gerry took great delight in informing me that, prior to 1989, the building had been the headquarters of the Communist Party! There I presented all my numerous protocols, a copy of my UK car registration document, my passport and my Czech residency document and a signed statement in Czech and English declaring that my Renault Scenic is only for my own personal use and that I will not sell it on to anyone else in the Czech Republic. I also completed and submitted an application for a special exemption for my RHD car. Once I have my certificate of exemption, I can submit it with all the self same papers to another office in Prague and finally get a Czech registration document and Czech number plates. I’ve already paid the necessary fees.

What is so funny is the reason why in Czech law, it is possible to get an exemption for a RHD car. The explanation is that until 1939, the Czechs drove on the left side of the road using RHD vehicles! The rules of the road were changed overnight by decree when Hitler and his Nazi forces marched in. Therefore all cars made in and for driving in Czechoslovakia prior to 1939, are RHD. It was for these vintage cars that the original exemption provision was incorporated into Czech law.

The evidence of history is very easy to see in the historic centre of Prague today as in the photo above. Numerous individuals and companies offer visiting tourists guided drives around the main sites in vintage cars and nearly all of them are RHD because they date from the 1920s & 1930s. The odd one that is LHD is an import from Germany. My red Renault Scenic may not be a vintage car, (though it is now 9 years old), but it very soon will be a legally registered right-hand drive car in the Czech Republic.

Schengen Visa - Image in public domain via Wikimedia

As I feared, Anna has suffered the same fate as Karen. Despite going in person to the Foreign Police three times this past week, accompanied by a Czech speaking friend, she has had to leave the country today. She was eventually told that her application for a work permit & residency visa, submitted in Berlin on 21^st January 2009, would not be granted because she had exceeded the 90 days she was allowed to be in the Czech Republic as a tourist.

Anna sent me a text/SMS message with this information early on Wednesday afternoon. I rang her straight back and invited her to join Sybille & I for a meal at Grosetto that evening so I could learn more about her experience with the Foreign Police and also say a proper ‘Goodbye’. We had an enjoyable time together and discussed her future plans. She is twenty three and single and has decided to do some travelling rather than return to the USA. Her initial plan is to fly to Croatia (outside the EU & the Schengen agreement) and spend some time on the beach. Whilst being fully in agreement with her plans, we did warn her that she might observe a few things on a Croatian beach which would surprise someone whose upbringing had taken place in conservative middle-America!

Anna also spoke of going to spend sometime in the UK which is something we also encouraged her to do. Not only would she almost certainly find work there as a TEFL teacher, it would also be the best place to re-apply for a work permit & visa to return to the Czech Republic. Whilst part of the EU, the UK is NOT part of the Schengen agreement. Staff at the London embassy of the Czech Republic would inevitably speak English, thus making the application process much easier for her. She has promised to keep in touch and I do really hope that last Wednesday is not the last time we see her.

Having listened to Karen’s story on Wednesday 29^th April, two days before she was forced to leave the country, I wrote an email to the TEFL Course Coordinator at the Caledonian School, particularly challenging the clearly inaccurate information regarding work permits and visas for non-EU citizens that was still displayed on their website in view of what had happened to Karen & what was likely to happen to Anna. Much to my surprise, I got a reply the following day.

The TEFL Course Coordinator at the Caledonian School inevitably blamed the Czech authorities. “The Schengen/EU rules have literally been changing before our eyes this spring, and we have done everything we can to make the necessary adjustments.  The problems that we encountered recently were obviously unexpected, and we are extremely sorry for them”, she declared.  However interestingly, today when I checked their website, the wording regarding visas, as quoted in my previous post, had been altered and reduced to, “The Caledonian School has a full-time visa assistant to help you through the process of applying for a work permit and visa (residency permit)”. They do finally seem to have realized that they should not be making promises they clearly cannot keep nor encouraging people to arrive as tourists and weeks later apply for a work permit and permanent visa.

A big ‘Thank you’ to those who commented on my original post. I agree with both Mike and Sher, that many language schools such as Caledonian here in Prague, have a lot to answer for. To their credit, Caledonian did agree to pay for both Anna & Karen’s flights out of the Czech Republic. I suspect that the ‘tax and social security payments’, deducted from their pay packets whilst not yet legal employees, went towards paying for those flight tickets.

Image taken from http://www.a-cesky-krumlov.com/guide#h4 assuming fair use. Please contact me if in breach of copyright

One of the things I was warned about before accepting an invitation to become Chaplain to a continental European Anglican Church, was having to cope with a high turnover of members of the congregation. Many people come to major European cities as exchange students, visiting lecturers or on short-term contracts for international companies. Therefore, they may only worship with you for a few months and then move on. Just as you feel you have got to know them, they are leaving. The constant round of farewells I was warned, could become quite dispiriting.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed so they say. Therefore when an American couple, Tom & Myra, came to St. Clement’s for the first time on my first Sunday last September, I soon discovered that they would only be worshipping with us until the year end. Tom had a Fulbright scholarship and would be teaching for a semester at Charles University. They threw themselves into the life of the Chaplaincy and made many friends amongst members of the congregation. But, on the Sunday after Christmas, we had to bid them farewell as they returned to their home in Georgia, USA.

However, in the last couple of weeks I have lost one congregational member and am likely to lose another, neither of whom wants to leave but who are both being made to leave the country by the Czech Foreign Police. This is a wholly new situation, both for me and for the congregation.

The two people concerned, Karen and Anna, are both Americans and came to Prague in early November 2008 to undertake an intensive TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) training course with the Caledonian School here in Prague. The school, like many others in Prague, offers TEFL courses to native graduate English speakers and guarantees a teaching job with the school, to all who successfully complete the course. It also promises to support all its newly qualified teachers with obtaining the necessary visa and work permit. The following is taken directly from their website.

“American, Canadian, Australian and European Union citizens do NOT need visas to enter the Czech Republic. American, Canadian and Australian citizens need a valid passport. The Caledonian School has a full-time visa assistant to help you through the process of applying for a work permit and visa (residency permit). Our visa assistant, Vera Antsiouova, will inform you about the process of obtaining your work/residency visas after you arrive”.

Back on 21^st January, Karen & Anna were taken to the Czech Embassy in Berlin by the Caledonian School, in order to submit their applications for visas and work permits from outside of the Czech Republic. This procedure in itself seems somewhat absurd but apparently had previously been perfectly acceptable to the Czech authorities. However, on Thursday 2^nd April, Karen was summoned the offices of the Foreign Police and Anna likewise a week later on Thursday 9^th. They were both given what they believed at the time to be a four week extension to their tourist visas, to allow them to remain in the Czech Republic whilst they waited for their work and residency permits to come through the system. As they discovered a couple of weeks later, they had in fact been given deportation orders telling them to leave the country in four weeks or else face being banned from entering any of the countries covered by the Schengen agreement for five years.

As a result of all of this, Karen was forced to fly back to the USA last Friday and I fear that Anna, despite the last-minute personal efforts she is currently making, will also find herself in the same situation this coming Friday. Karen relates her experience of failing to get a visa as a TEFL teacher in Prague in this blog post. which also includes a link to an editorial in the English language weekly newspaper, ‘The Prague Post’ .

I admire Karen for not blaming anybody for what has happened to her, not even mentioning her language school by name in her blog. But I am forced to reflect on why this situation has come about even though I have been left feeling powerless to do anything to help these two ladies other than offering a listening ear. Having assessed the information available to me, I have come to the conclusion that no one person or organisation is totally to blame.

Certainly the Caledonian School does not come out this scenario in a very good light. Rather than getting Karen & Anna to apply for their visas as soon as their TEFL course finished in early December 2008, the school waited seven weeks before doing anything, using the excuse of Christmas and their visa assistant being on annual leave. Even worse was their failure to explain that what the Foreign Police gave them following their respective visits on Thursday 2^nd & Thursday 9^th April, was not a four week visa extension but rather a deportation order. Karen only found out the truth two weeks after receiving it when she showed hers to a Czech speaking friend.

I do also feel that both Karen & Anna were probably a little too trusting of the promises given to them by Caledonian. Apparently, a fellow student of theirs was far less trusting and kicked up a fuss several weeks earlier. As a result, her visa came through in time.

However, the Czech authorities also have to a lot of questions to answer too. As I understand it, they decided at the beginning of this year, to apply the immigration rules in a totally different way than they had previously, I suspect in part, to teach the various language schools a lesson for flouting the system as they had in the past. Karen & Anna and numerous other TEFL teachers thus became innocent victims caught in the middle of this power struggle.

The Czech Foreign Police also seem to be reacting to government pressure in the current economic downturn, to help ensure that available jobs only go to Czech people. They are therefore now taking the full 180 days they are technically allowed to use to consider work visa applications from non-EU citizens, rather than the previous 30-45 days that they used to take. This might make sense in relation to Ukrainian building workers but not to TEFL teachers. Language Schools and the firms who use them want TEFL teachers who are native first language English speakers. Karen & Anna are clearly not taking jobs from native Czechs! Rather, they are helping to provide an important service to Czech businesses and Czech business people.

There also remains a complete lack of clarity and consistency from the Foreign Police. Depending on who one talks to, answers and explanations differ. One is left with the ongoing suspicion of corruption within the system. How is it that many wealthy Russians (non-EU citizens) are allowed to reside here? Does money talk? Sadly, I think it does.

It is my fervent hope & prayer that this situation will eventually be brought to a satisfactory conclusion. That both Karen & Anna’s dream of working as TEFL teachers in Prague, living in & learning about a different culture than their own, will be able to happen. And that I won’t permanently lose two lively and intelligent members of my congregation.