Ricky Yates

Left to right; Rev'd Petr Jan Vinš, Archdeacon Patrick Curran and me © Sybille Yates

One of the things anyone taking on being an Anglican Chaplain in the Diocese in Europe is warned about, is the fact that you will be working in relative isolation. In England, most Anglican clergy meet their nearby colleagues at regular meetings of the Deanery Clergy Chapter. These meetings provide an opportunity for mutual help and support as well as being a safe environment in which to sound off about difficult parishioners! Likewise, if you want to talk an issue over with your bishop or archdeacon, they are usually no more than a one hour journey away and a meeting can be easily organised.

Here in Prague, my nearest Anglican colleagues are in Warsaw to the north, Budapest to the east and Vienna to the south-east. As I have blogged previously, I only usually see my colleagues once a year at our Eastern Archdeaconry Synod. Actually, my nearest Anglican colleague is probably the Chaplain in Leipzig, but then he is in the Archdeaconry of Germany and Northern Europe!

Another contrast with England is that my Archdeacon Patrick Curran is not only Archdeacon of the Eastern Archdeaconry, but also Chaplain of Christ Church, Vienna. In England, most Archdeacons have no other responsibilities other than being Archdeacon. Some, including my previous Archdeacon Julian Hubbard, also have a role in the Diocesan Cathedral. But as Cathedrals have numerous ordained staff, duties are rarely very onerous.

Whilst Archdeacon Patrick does have a non-stipendiary colleague, Rev’d Aileen Hackl and more recently has been joined by a part-time curate, Rev’d Jady Koch, he still has an unenviable task of heading up a large chaplaincy in Vienna as well as trying to oversee our Archdeaconry which stretches from Poland, Czech Republic and Austria in the west, all the way to Vladivostok in the east and including all the former Yugoslavia together with Greece and Turkey.

Despite the distances and the workload, Archdeacon Patrick does try to visit each of the Chaplaincies within his Archdeaconry, once every three years. Although he was in Prague on 28^th October 2008 for my licensing service, he had not made a Sunday visit here since the time of my predecessor John Philpott, who retired in April 2008. Therefore, he kindly agreed to make a weekend visit this past weekend, travelling by train from Vienna on Saturday 30^th January and returning by train on the afternoon of Sunday 31^st January.

Patrick’s visit got off to a slightly inauspicious start. Prague has four different mainline railway stations and the through train from Vienna to Hamburg stops at two of them. Patrick got off at the first station – we were waiting to meet him at the second! But realising what he must have done when he did not appear where we were expecting him; we made the reverse journey and eventually found him.

Although Archdeacon Patrick was only with us for twenty four hours, he still managed to pack in a two hour meeting with my Church Council and a private meeting with the Churchwardens, before Sybille and I shared an evening meal with him in one of our favourite eating places, the Na staré fare Bar-Restaurant, up the hill behind where we live.

Archdeacon Patrick Curran with Pastor Eva Halamová outside St. Clement's Church, Prague © Sybille Yates

On Sunday morning, he was the guest preacher at our Sung Eucharist as we celebrated the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple or Candlemas as it is commonly known. This was followed a very enjoyable soup and sandwich shared lunch with a large number of our congregation, held in the meeting room on the third floor of Klimentská 18 which, like the Church itself, we borrow from our host congregation, the Ceskobratrské Cíckve Evangelické / the Czech Evangelical Brethren. After lunch, we successfully delivered him to the correct railway station for his return four hour journey back to Vienna.

As you will see from the photo above, we were also joined for our service by the recently ordained Old Catholic priest, Petr Jan Vinš who is a fluent English-speaker. It was an extremely rare event to have three ordained clergy present for a service at St. Clements! Archdeacon Patrick also enjoyed meeting Pastor Eva Halamová who leads our host congregation. She is pictured here in her Geneva gown, alongside Patrick who put his coat over his cassock because it was so cold! The snow that you can also see in both photographs,  is part of what fell on Friday 8^th January and has yet to melt.

Forsythia in full bloom © Sybille Yates

Apologies to those who follow my blog that I haven’t posted anything for just over two weeks. I’ve got three excuses. The first is suffering from bloggers block – not really knowing what to write about. The second is we’ve just had Holy Week & Easter – a somewhat busy time in my profession and about which I will write in due course. And the third is the complete change in the weather we have experienced here in Prague meaning that it has been much more fun to be outside rather than sitting before the computer!

On the night of Saturday 28^th – Sunday 29^th March, all across Europe, the clocks went forward by one hour. Here in Prague, we are now two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) on Central European Summer Time (CEST) which remains one hour ahead of the UK who are now on British Summer Time (BST). However, calling it ‘summer time’ did seem rather odd bearing in mind that in the week before the clocks went forward, we’d had several snow showers! But in the week following the clock change, as March became April, suddenly Winter became Spring. In fact it was almost more like Winter became Summer!

For the past twelve days or so, we’ve had clear blue skies during the day with ever increasing hours of sunshine and temperatures into the low twenties Celsius. And as each succeeding day has a few more minutes’ daylight and a few minutes less darkness, the change is quite astounding. You see and experience it in so many ways.

Out of the ground have sprung a whole array of spring flowers in a variety of bright colours. You see them in the flowerbeds of public open spaces, in window boxes hung on balconies and in the private gardens of those lucky enough to have ground-floor flats or houses. Forsythia is flowering bright yellow and all those trees that should have blossom, have blossomed!

We often walk up the steep tarmac path called Pat’anka that leads from our flats complex up to a fascinating suburb of late 1920s/early 1930s Bauhaus houses above. We walk to exercise our legs, enjoy the wonderful view across the city at the top of the hill, visit the Albert Supermarket, as well as to enjoy some occasional liquid refreshment in the Na staré fare Bar-Restaurant. In just one week, the wooded slope that the steep path traverses has gone from bare trees and branches to every shade of green imaginable.

At the back of the Na staré fare Bar-Restaurant, there is a wonderful shaded courtyard which we had previously only ever seen through the window. For the past ten days it has been furnished with tables, chairs & sun umbrellas and we have enjoyed eating meals there al fresco. Likewise in the city centre, every bar & restaurant that can, now has tables and chairs outside so that customers can enjoy the warmth and the sunshine.

It is not only nature and the Hotel/restaurant/bar trade that has suddenly gone into Spring/Summer mode, so has most of the resident population. Throughout the winter months, most Prague women have dressed in jeans or trousers with leather boots. Very rarely did you see a skirt, no doubt because it was too cold. Suddenly, skirts are everywhere and only occasionally are they of the mid-calf or below variety. Nearly all the younger ladies, together with quite a number of the not-so-young ladies, wear them knee length or above, often considerably above!!! Many men are in shorts whilst the builders working on the final part of our flat complex development opposite are bare-chested & displaying their six packs as they fabricate steel mesh & pour concrete.

Whilst it has been wonderful to finally be able to enjoy this amazing city in warmth and sunshine, there are two downsides. After three months (January – March) of being able to walk freely through the historic areas and across Charles Bridge with relatively few people around, the tourist season has now re-started with a vengeance. We are threatening to start wearing tee-shirts declaring ‘I’m not a tourist, I live here!’ And today I found the first two unwelcome visitors of a different kind in our bathroom – mosquitoes! Unfortunately, one of them found me first. I have a lovely bite on my left forearm!