Month: July 2010

A deputation visit for ICS

As mentioned in my previous post, part of the reason for UK trip was to fulfil a deputation visit on behalf of the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) who both prayerfully and financially support the Prague Chaplaincy. This was organised earlier in the year when Sybille and I had originally planned to spend two weeks holiday in the UK. Therefore on Sunday 18th July, I was the preacher and celebrant at the 9.45am Eucharist at St. Luke’s Parish Church, Goostrey, Cheshire.

I had originally asked Phillip if I could borrow his car & drive myself from Derby to Goostrey. However, in response to my request, Phillip kindly offered to come with me and be my chauffeur. We set out early at 7.40am as although the journey should only take just over an hour, I wanted to allow time for any hold-ups en-route and arrive at the Church in good time.

It was only when we had been driving for about ten minutes across Derby, heading for the A50 to Stoke-on-Trent, that I realised my cassock alb & stole were still hanging up in the wardrobe of the guest bedroom in Phillip’s house! For years when Rector of the Shelswell Parishes, taking my clerical robes with me in the car to a service, was a matter of habit. Almost two years of only having one Church and therefore being able to leave them hanging in the vestry, very nearly caught me out.  A quick return journey to collect them meant we left the house for the second time at 8am. Fortunately, there were no delays on the A50, A500 or the M6 and we safely arrived in Goostrey soon after 9am.

St. Luke’s, Goostrey have financially supported the work of ICS for a number of years. My task was therefore to thank them for that support, explain something about what ICS does, and in particular, say something about the life and work of the Prague Chaplaincy. But I also had my normal Sunday task of preaching from the biblical readings set by the Lectionary for that Sunday.

Earlier in the week, when I looked at the biblical readings, I discovered one those wonderful coincidences – what I often call ‘God-incidences’. On the front cover of the current ‘ICS News and Prayer Diary’ are words of St. Paul, “Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is he whom we proclaim….” Colossians 1. 27-28. What was the New Testament reading set for the day? Colossians 1. 15-28 containing those very words! This wonderful ‘God-incidence’ enabled me to give an exposition of the biblical text whilst at the same time quite naturally saying something about the purpose of the Prague Chaplaincy and the support it receives from ICS.

The Goostrey congregation were warm and welcoming. They are currently in an interregnum as there previous vicar had to retire because of ill health and his successor is yet to be appointed. Therefore having me come and cover a Sunday for them was particularly appreciated. Whilst the liturgy was familiar being ‘Common Worship Order 1 in contemporary language’, just as we use at St. Clement’s, Prague, one unfamiliar task was having to publish banns of marriage, something I haven’t done for over two years. Whilst I can conduct a legal wedding here in the Czech Republic, this can only happen once the couple have completed legal preliminaries with the local Registrar, not after the publication of banns of marriage in Church by me!

The return journey to Derby went smoothly after which Phillip, Charlotte and I enjoyed a Sunday pub lunch at the ‘Seven Wells’. Whilst I have now quite happily lived without a television for nearly two years, I do just occasionally wish I could watch the odd sporting event that appeals to me. Therefore, I did thoroughly enjoy spending the rest of Sunday afternoon, watching the final round of the Open Golf Championship from St. Andrews on Phillip & Charlotte’s TV and seeing the young South African golfer Louis Oosthuizen, become Open Champion for the first time.

A visit to the UK

Phillip & Charlotte at Matt’s birthday sports afternoon © Ricky Yates

On Friday 16th July, I set out to make my first return visit to the UK since moving to Prague nearly two years ago. The five day trip was part holiday – spending sometime with my son Phillip in Derby; and part work – fulfilling a promise made earlier in the year to undertake a deputation visit for the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) who prayerfully and financially support the work of the Prague Chaplaincy.

As usual, the wonderful Prague public transport system got me from the bus stop, five minutes walk from the Chaplaincy flat, to the front entrance of Terminal 1 at Prague Airport, in little more than thirty minutes. Much more surprisingly, my Easyjet flight was taxiing down the runway at 10.45, exactly the time it was meant to be departing from Prague. Less than two hours later, we landed in the UK though, because of the one hour time difference, it was only 11.40 BST.

I flew into the rather incongruously named ‘Robin Hood Airport’ which serves Doncaster and Sheffield in South Yorkshire. At the end of 2009, Easyjet ceased to operate out of East Midlands Airport, the airport that serves Derby, and passed the Prague – East Midlands route to bmibaby.com. In their wisdom, bmibaby.com have suspended their Prague – East Midlands flights during July and August, presumably because it is more profitable to use their planes to fly British tourists to the Costas in Spain or the Greek islands during this time.

At UK passport control, I had great difficulty stopping myself from saying “Dobrý den” to the immigration officer, instead of saying “Good morning”. This was a problem I continued to have during the following few days, adjusting to the fact that I could actually speak in English and be completely understood. That I needed to say “Thank you” and “Goodbye”, not “Dekuji” and “Na shledanou”.

It was equally strange once I met up with Phillip in the airport car park. I got into the front passenger seat of his right-hand drive (RHD) car, in that respect no different from being in my RHD car in Prague. But he then proceeded to drive on the left-hand side of the road! After nearly two years of travelling or driving on the right-hand side of the road, that took some getting used to once again.

A forty minute drive down the M18 and the M1 got us to Derby. After Phillip had purchased a few things from Morrisons supermarket, I tried to get some Sterling currency out of the nearby ATM, using my Barclays Bank debit card. I had deliberately transferred funds from my Czech bank account to my UK Barclays account to be able to do exactly this. My attempt to withdraw cash was declined – a security measure because I hadn’t used the debit card in the UK for nearly two years!  So, before proceeding to Phillip’s home for a late lunch, we drove to a branch of Barclays Bank plc where I duly produced my passport and debit card with the request that I be allowed to withdraw my own money! I was extremely glad that I had arrived in the UK on a weekday rather than a weekend.

During my visit to the UK, I was asked several times whether there was anything I missed about the UK now I lived in the Czech Republic. My answer was always negative – as things currently stand, I don’t see myself living in the UK again in the foreseeable future. But on that Friday evening, I did do two thoroughly enjoyable things which it would not be possible to do in Prague.

Firstly, en-route to the city centre, Phillip and I purchased our evening meal from a Fish & Chips shop. We then walked slightly further on to the County Ground where we ate our fish and chips, (in Phillip’s case, pie and chips), whilst watching a day/night Twenty20 cricket match between Derbyshire CC and Northamptonshire CC. However, one less enjoyable, (though expected), thing was paying £3.00 a pint (0.568 litre) for a beer whilst watching the cricket when a 0.5 litre beer in most Prague bars would cost no more than £1.00.

The following day, Saturday 17th July, Phillip and his girlfriend Charlotte, had been invited to the birthday celebrations of Matt, a university friend of Phillip who, like Phillip, has stayed on in Derby after graduating. Matt kindly assured Phillip that his Dad was more than welcome to come along with him.

Matt lives with his heavily pregnant wife, in the village of Hilton, just to the west of Derby. For his birthday, he had invited various friends, his brother and sister, together with their respective boyfriends/girlfriends, to a picnic lunch and a sports afternoon on the nearby village playing field. So, after sandwiches, crisps and other goodies, accompanied by a variety of liquid refreshment, we spent the afternoon playing rounders and kwik cricket.

Afterwards, I returned with Phillip and Charlotte to their home. We quickly ate a stir-fry and got washed and changed before we rejoined the others in the centre of Derby where the birthday celebrations were resumed and the following two pictures were taken.

Father and Son © Ricky Yates
Phillip & Charlotte © Ricky Yates

More about my UK trip in my next post.

Beautiful Gardens and a tale of two Bar-Restaurants

Further to what I wrote in my previous post, last Saturday I totally cleaned the kitchen. Despite our kitchen being somewhat small – it is only an alcove off the sitting room – it took far longer than I was anticipating. Dust combined with grease is far from easy to shift! However, as with the other rooms, the end result has left me with a deep sense of satisfaction.

After a rest day on Sunday, I decided that the office could wait until next week when I’m officially back at work. As always, it is that difficult line of demarcation when one lives on-the-job. What is work and what is domestic? However, as cleaning out the office will in part involve sorting through Chaplaincy papers and filing them, I think that is more work than domestic.

Therefore this week has been more holiday than domestic chores and tomorrow, I fly to the UK for a long weekend for my first visit there since moving to the Czech Republic nearly two years ago. I shall write all about that upon my return.

Charles University Botanical Gardens, Prague © Ricky Yates

The weather in Prague these past two weeks has been exceptionally hot with daytime temperatures exceeding 30 degrees Celsius. However on Tuesday 13th, after some overnight rain, it was a little cooler, so Sybille and I decided to have a day out in Prague exploring somewhere we hadn’t previously visited.

As my sidebar indicates, one English-speaking expat blogger I particularly enjoy reading is ‘Girl in Czechland’. GIC is an English young lady who met ‘Czechman’ in the UK and has now moved with him to live in Prague. Her insights into Czech culture and habits are both funny and perceptive. Her most recent post is about a quiet corner of Prague that she particularly enjoys – the Charles University Botanical Gardens. So on her advice, that is where we went and we were not disappointed.

A quiet corner of Charles University Botanical Gardens, Prague © Ricky Yates

The gardens are located just east of Prague city centre but away from those areas most frequented by tourists. Entrance is free, but if you want to visit the large glasshouses which contain a fascinating cactus collection, together with a wonderful tropical garden with a large lily pond, then you have to pay the large sum of 50 Kc (about £1.65) to do so. We spent a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours exploring both the gardens and the glasshouses and were amazed at how few other people there were. A similar National Trust garden in the UK would be overrun with visitors on a warm Tuesday in July.

Our tour of the garden over, and with mutual agreement between us that this was a place to re-visit in the Autumn, we went in search of a place to have a cool beer and a late lunch. Across the road from the entrance to the gardens, is Restaurace u Trajcu. We sat down at an outside table under the awning in front of the restaurant and ordered a beer for me and a ‘ne alko pivo’ (alcohol free beer) for Sybille, as she is currently trying to diet & alcohol free beer has only 25% of the calories of normal beer. We also asked for the menu with a view to ordering some lunch.

When our beers were delivered to the table, we received a double surprise. Firstly, we were immediately presented with a bill – normally in the Czech Republic the waiter will keep a tab and you pay when you leave. Secondly, the bill was for 100 Kc – way over the odds. We were charged 45 Kc for 0.5l of Pilsner Urquel and 55 Kc for 0.3l of Birrell alcohol-free beer. Despite the fact that we had ordered using our limited Czech, the waiter had clearly decided that we were English-speaking tourists who could be ripped off. We left without ordering lunch!

I’ve since checked the website of Restaurace u Trajcu which says that 0.5l of Pilsner Urquel is 30 Kc. The website doesn’t give a price for alcohol-free beer but it ought to be about 25 Kc. I’m looking forward to sending the proprietors of Restaurace u Trajcu, a link to this post which I hope will generate some well deserved bad publicity!

Instead we walked slightly further down Vyšehradská and found Labrinth Pizzaria Restaurace-Bar. Here we were charged 22 Kc for 0.5l of Gambrinus beer and and the same price for 0.5l Birrel ‘ne alko pivo’. We stayed and ate an excellent lunch! Whilst waiting for our food to be served, we did enjoy the final entry on their cocktail price list. Another wonderful example of Czenglish!

Another wonderful example of Czenglish © Ricky Yates

On holiday – but in Prague!

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 travel costs to get there. This decision also meant that our original plan, of spending two weeks of my annual leave in the UK immediately following the conference, also had to change. So instead, after celebrating the Eucharist on Sunday 4th July at St. Clements, I’ve been on a stay-at-home-holiday (vacation to my US readers) here in Prague.

One of the real difficulties of being a clergyman living on-the-job is that it is very difficult to be ‘on holiday at home’ without work inevitably intruding. However, other than answering a variety of emails and fielding a couple of phone calls, I’ve managed pretty well so far. And next week, I am going to the UK, but just for a long weekend – more about this in due course.

These past five days, I’ve set about trying to completely clean our flat, room by room. I don’t just mean running the vacuum cleaner across the floors and giving the furniture a quick wipe with the duster. I mean giving every room a really thorough clean! Therefore I’ve had my stepladder up from the cellar to enable me to reach and dismantle all the light fittings to remove a variety of dead insects and dust. It has also enabled me to clean the tops of wardrobes and the ledges above doorways.

For the first time since they were made and hung in January 2006, I’ve taken down the curtains a room at a time, in order to wash, dry, iron and re-hang them. They now seem several shades lighter, hopefully due to losing dirt rather than colour from the fabric! As I feared, the curtains have also shrunk a little. Fortunately, it is nothing too dramatic and no doubt they’ll drop a little in the next few weeks now they’ve been re-hung.

One very good reason for carrying out this cleaning exercise now is that finally, we are no longer living next to a building site. Our flat was built as part of the first stage of what the developers describe as Residence Podbaba. Ever since we moved here nearly two years ago, the fourth and final stage of the development has been under construction in front and at the side of our apartment block. Cleaning anything, especially the outside of windows or our balconies, was virtually a waste of time as within twenty-four hours, everything would once more be covered in dust from the building site.

About a month ago, the building work finished, paths were laid and the grounds landscaped. Therefore, whilst the curtains have been down, Sybille has been busy cleaning the windows and I’ve washed down all three of our external balconies.

As part of this cleaning exercise, we have also tried to look once more at our possessions, especially things that have gathered dust through lack of use. Have we used this item in the nearly two years we have been here? Are we likely to use it in the coming months? Jesus’ words recorded in Luke 12 v15 have been resonating once again. “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed: life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

Two rooms remain to be tackled as part of this major cleaning exercise – the kitchen and our joint office. The latter is the most cluttered and therefore the most difficult to both clean and sort out. I promise to provide a further progress report in the next few days…….