By Ricky, on July 9th, 2010
The yellow spire of St. Clement's Church seen from Letna Park © Ricky Yates
Once again, I have to start by apologising for not having posted anything here on my blog for over a month. The main reason for this has been a real sense of uncertainty about my situation because of the financial difficulties the Prague Anglican Chaplaincy has been facing. However, things are now looking a good deal more secure, not least due to some generous additional funding being immediately provided by the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) and the likelihood of further help from one or two other sources.
However, as Sybille’s and my contribution towards keeping costs down, we chose not to attend the ICS Chaplains & families conference which took place in Sussex, UK last week, as the Chaplaincy would have had to meet both the cost of the conference and our . . . → Read More: On holiday – but in Prague!
By Ricky, on May 20th, 2009 Šárka Valley © Sybille Yates
I am often asked, both by old friends in the UK and by new friends here in Prague, whether there are things I miss now that I live in a European capital city rather than the Oxfordshire countryside. I usually respond by saying that the only thing I miss is being able see fields and hedgerows directly from the windows of my home. But although I now live in an urban rather than a rural environment, the countryside is not very far away. Just behind the Pat’anka flats complex where we now live is Prírodní Park Šárka – Lysolaje, the Šárka Valley Nature Reserve, an amazing steep-sided wooded valley which once you enter it, seems a million miles away from the busy city environment even though it isn’t!
The main way to explore the Šárka Valley is on foot. There is a network . . . → Read More: Prírodní Park Šárka – Lysolaje
By Ricky, on March 28th, 2009 Although I had lived in my native England for thirty uninterrupted years before moving to Prague, Czech Republic six months ago, this is not my first experience of living outside my country of birth. At the tender age of 18, I left home and family, and emigrated to Australia where I lived for nearly five years. And in my mid-twenties, I spent three years living in a strongly Welsh speaking area of West Wales which is more ‘abroad’ than many English people realise unless they’ve had the same experience.
However, as I reflect on these last six months of living as an English expat in Prague, I feel I have returned to many aspects of the way I use to live during the first 18 years of my life. These were spent in Coventry, my place . . . → Read More: Living as an Expat Englishman in Prague
By Ricky, on March 15th, 2009 A friendly smiley from the Czech police 😉
In October 2008, just about a month after we had arrived in Prague, I walked past my car, parked outside our block of flats one day, to discover I had parking ticket under the windscreen wipers. This came as a complete surprise as I had assumed that it was perfectly in order to park on the access road to the flats, as many others also did. When I told my Churchwardens and Church Council members, they too were surprised as this had never happened previously.
A few days later, I went with Gerry, a Czech speaking member of the Church Council, to the local police station shown on the parking ticket. I donned clerical shirt and collar, hoping to appear the innocent foreign clergyman. According to the young police officer that we met, it is an offence under local bye-laws, . . . → Read More: A Parking Ticket with a difference!
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