By Ricky, on November 9th, 2013
Prague Castle & the Vltava River © Ricky Yates
As October has become November, so many aspects of my life and the situations around me with which I interact, have changed. I’ve therefore decided that this provides an overarching theme for a new blog post 🙂
As all across Europe, overnight between Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th October, our clocks changed, going back one hour. I write this, partly for the benefit of my British son-in-law who some months ago, famously remarked, ‘I don’t suppose the clocks change where you are?’ Well yes – they do! At the same time as the United Kingdom was moving from British Summer Time (BST), back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), here in the Czech Republic, we changed from Central European Summer Time (CEST), back to Central European Time (CET). This means that we remain one hour ahead of . . . → Read More: November – a time of change
By Ricky, on April 18th, 2013
Ricky at the entrance to Rícky. Sorry about closing my eyes! © Ricky Yates
In January 2012, I wrote a post entitled ‘Exploring the Czech Republic‘, in which I told of my discovery of a place in the Czech Republic which bears my name – Ricky. As I explained in that post, the village is actually called Rícky v Orlických horách, and there should be a hacek, a little hook, above both the ‘R’ and the ‘c’ in ‘Rícky, as there should be above the ‘c’ in ‘hácek’. But as I know from past experience, for technical reasons that are beyond my comprehension, if I put one in, the letter will appear as ‘?’ in the text of this blog.
‘Rícka’ means ‘stream’ and so with the ‘a’ replaced with a ‘y’, the word is made plural meaning ‘streams’. ‘v Orlických . . . → Read More: When Ricky went to Rícky
By Ricky, on April 15th, 2013
Rokytnice v Orlických horách – ‘Gateway to the Eagle Mountains’ © Ricky Yates
After spending Easter Monday exploring Boskovice, the following morning we drove further north for about three hours, (including a mid-morning coffee break), from South Moravia, into the extreme north-eastern corner of Bohemia. This was in order to visit the Orlické hory (Czech) or Adlergebirge (German), both names which translate literally into English as ‘Eagle Mountains’.
The Orlické hory lie close to the border with Poland in the former Sudetenland, from which the Sudetendeutsche population were expelled at the end of the Second World War. They are not as high as the Krkonoše Mountains where we spent a walking holiday for a week in July 2011. Therefore, when planning some weeks earlier, how to spend my post-Easter break, we thought they would be an ideal location for . . . → Read More: Orlické hory
By Ricky, on April 8th, 2013
Kostel Sv. Jakuba Staršího/Church of St. James the Great, Boskovice © Ricky Yates
On the morning of Easter Monday, Sybille and I set off from Brno, to spend the first few days of my post-Easter break, exploring some more parts of the Czech Republic we have not previously visited. We drove about 40 km north from Brno, to the town of Boskovice. Despite seeing ever-increasing amounts of snow lying on the surrounding countryside as we drove into the hills of the Moravský kras, the main roads were fortunately perfectly clear.
We parked the ‘Carly’ in the somewhat snow-covered Masarykovo námestí, the main square in the town centre, which is dominated at the west end, by the impressive Kostel Sv. Jakuba Staršího/Church of St. James the Great. From there, we set out to discover two of Boskovice’s main landmarks. A large Zámek/Chateau, which dates from the early nineteenth . . . → Read More: Boskovice
By Ricky, on April 6th, 2013
The view across Komin, Brno on Easter Monday 2013, with snow on the hills & the rooftops © Ricky Yates
With Easter Day being quite early in 2013, and with Northern and Central Europe experiencing one of the coldest months of March on record, I did rather expect our Prague Easter Day congregation not to be quite as large as it was in 2012. Added to these two factors, was the change to Central European Summer Time (CEST) during the previous night, another discouragement &/or confusion to add to the mix. In view of the weather, the term ‘summer time’ did seem somewhat inappropriate 🙁
Despite all of this, we did still have a large congregation for Easter Day worship in Prague with a very good turnout of our regular congregation, a few of our ‘lost sheep’ reappearing, and being joined by a . . . → Read More: A ‘White Easter’ in Brno
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