Month: August 2010

A Trip to Stuttgart

Rev'd Ken Dimmick, Chaplain of St. Catherine's Anglican Church, Stuttgart © Ricky Yates

When Bishop Geoffrey Rowell visited the Prague Chaplaincy at the beginning of May this year, he mentioned during a Church Council meeting, about how under the ministry of Rev’d Ken Dimmick, the Anglican Church in Stuttgart had grown both numerically and financially. At a more recent Church Council meeting, some members made reference back to Bishop Geoffrey’s remarks and suggested that it might be good for the Prague Chaplaincy to learn from his experience.

Taking note of what had been said by the Church Council, I wrote to Ken in July, asking if I could visit him in Stuttgart and as suggested, ‘learn from his experience’. His reply was both prompt and positive – he would welcome me to visit though in his very modest way he declared that, “I’m not sure that I have any secret answers to church growth or financial success… Perhaps we were just lucky!”

Last Thursday 19th August, just before 9am, I set out to drive to Stuttgart. It is a journey of just over 300 miles/480 km but, having reached the outskirts of Prague; it is then almost entirely on Czech motorway or German autobahn. I broke the journey with a coffee stop near Amberg in northern Bavaria and then had a sandwich lunch at a Rasthof about 20km north of Stuttgart.

I only had problems with the very last part of my journey as my Google map didn’t indicate that I needed to pass through a road tunnel near the centre of Stuttgart and I therefore avoided the tunnel and ended up several streets away from where I was meant to be. Eventually, I found the name of the street I was in and worked out from my downloaded Google map, how to reach the St. Catherine’s Church Parish Centre where I had agreed to meet Ken at 3pm that afternoon. I finally reached my intended destination with ten minutes to spare.

I spent the following twenty-four hours in Ken’s company, both going with him to a few fixed appointments as well as sharing an enjoyable evening meal together in a Stuttgart beer garden. Ken is an American priest, three years younger than me and a bachelor. He took up the Stuttgart appointment just over four years ago, wanting to do something different rather than remaining in parish ministry in Texas.

When Ken took up his post as Anglican Chaplain in Stuttgart, there were about nine people remaining in the congregation and no real money to pay him. So in advance of his arrival, he successfully raised $US 100,000 from friends and supporters in Texas to help fund the first few years of his ‘Mission to Germany’! This enabled him to rent an apartment in the Stuttgart suburbs and have enough to live on whilst he sought to grow the congregation.

In just over four years, the congregation has grown to between 80-90 on a Sunday and they are now able to pay Ken a modest stipend. He still has some of the US money to fall back on if need be – what he refers to as his ‘Texas slush fund’! Whilst the Church building, (which they share with the German Old Catholics), will hold around 120 people, it has no other facility other than a small meeting room added to the side of the Church over twenty years ago. This began to prove increasingly inadequate as the Anglican congregation grew.

St. Catherine's Church Parish Centre, Stuttgart © Ricky Yates

In November 2008 St. Catherine’s took a lease on a former bakery which has gradually been renovated and transformed into a parish centre and office. The Parish Centre is located only a few minutes walk from St. Catherine’s Church. Initially, Ken gave up his suburban apartment and lived in a couple of rooms at the rear of the bakery. Just under a year ago, a small flat in the complex above the bakery became vacant. Ken now lives in this small flat allowing the Parish Centre to be increased in size. Instead of living ‘behind the shop’ he now lives ‘above the shop’!

The Parish Centre is used for after service refreshments on Sunday morning together with Sunday School. During the week there are a variety of events including services of Morning and Evening Prayer, Bible Studies and a Mums and Toddlers Group. Ken has his office in the front of the building which in turn, becomes the shop window for the Church, both figuratively and literally! On the Thursday afternoon whilst I was sitting there talking to Ken, three German youths dropped by wanting to know more about the Anglican Church!

However, being located in an old bakery does attract interesting requests. As can be seen in the photo below, there is still sign protruding from the building with the picture of a pretzel on it. More than two years after the bakery closed down, people still call in wanting to buy bread or cakes. Ken’s response is to say to all who enquire that he offers ‘The bread of life’!

More than anything, it was this Parish Centre with Ken being based there, that most impressed me. Whilst Sybille and I live in a very nice flat, it is out in the suburbs and not in the city centre of Prague. And we have nowhere which is a ‘shop window’ for St. Clement’s during the week. In other respects, what Ken has done to build up the Church in Stuttgart both numerically and financially, is very similar to what I have been doing since arriving in Prague nearly two years ago. In that respect, my conversations with Ken were very reassuring.

St. Catherine's Church Parish Centre, Stuttgart. Note the protruding sign with a picture of a pretzil © Ricky Yates

So is there somewhere in Prague, not too far from St. Clement’s Church, which could become our ‘Parish Centre’ and office? Even better, somewhere with accommodation above where we could live? Am I dreaming or have I caught a vision for what under God, we might possibly be able to do?

A Scottish – Slovak Wedding

Matthew & Jana leaving Church at the end of their Marriage Service © Sybille Yates

On Saturday 14th August, I conducted my first wedding for nearly a year when Matthew, a Scotsman, married Jana, a Slovak. The wedding took place at St. Clement’s Church in the presence of about forty friends and family – a wonderful mix of nationalities including Scottish, English, American, Slovak, Czech, German and Japanese.

I first met Matthew in June 2009 when he began worshipping with us at St. Clement’s. He had been living in Prague for nearly a year before he found the Church, teaching English in a Czech school. He had previously spent several years in the British Army seeing service in the Gulf and in Northern Ireland.  I was thrilled when he approached me at the beginning of this year saying he had met Jana and they wished me to marry them at St. Clement’s.

Jana comes from near Košice in the far eastern part of Slovakia. However, she has lived in Prague for a number of years and works as an air stewardess for a Japanese airline, regularly flying between Central Europe and Japan. As well as speaking fluent English, she also is reasonably conversant in Japanese!

All the Scots in their kilts including the Czech bagpiper on the far right © Ricky Yates

As a good Scotsman, Matthew wore his kilt for the occasion as did his best man John, his brother Kim who acted as usher, and his friend Stewart who is a Chaplain in the army and who read one of the Bible readings. Matthew also had found a Czech who could play the bagpipes and who piped Jana into Church, accompanied by her parents and then piped the newly married couple out of Church at the end of the service.

The service was followed by a buffet reception held at Restaurant Kabinet in the suburb of Žižkov. As well as good food and drink, we were also treated to some impromptu musical entertainment by the best man on guitar, his wife on the fiddle and an adult pupil of Matthew on the mandolin.

The wedding party outside St. Clement's Church © Sybille Yates

Walking the Šárka Valley

Signpost for the circular red route. EL. DR. is an abreviation of 'Elektrická dráha' - 'Electric railway': another name for the tram system. © Ricky Yates

I have blogged previously about the Šárka Valley Nature Reserve, a wonderful steep-sided wooded valley that lies beyond the Baba ridge which in turn, lies immediately behind the Podbaba flats complex where we live. There are a series of waymarked paths which enable this wonderful green oasis to be explored on foot with points every few kilometres, where public transport can be accessed.

Since we moved to Prague, Sybille and I have explored various parts of the valley, following a variety of the paths including walking from the Divorka Šárka tram terminus at the western end of the valley, all the way back to our flat which lies just beyond the eastern end. That walk was along one half of the circular red route and I traversed it once again with my sister Jenny when she visited us last August.

However, on my day off last Monday 9th August, I finally managed to do what I’ve been wanting to do ever since I discovered the joys of the Šárka Valley – I walked the complete circular red route from one end of the valley to the other and then back round again on the other side. According to the signpost that is 20.5 km and if you add in the walk up the hill to reach the route and the walk back down the hill to return to the flat, I reckon it is 22 km in total.

View across the fields to the panelaks of Bohnice © Ricky Yates

I walked the route in an anti-clockwise direction, initially walking along the Baba ridge to its eastern extremity where the signpost in the photograph above is situated. The path then passes through woodland and down to the bottom of the valley at Dolní Šárka – ‘Dolní’ means ‘lower’. Then it climbs back up through the woods on the other side, emerging at the top to the view in this next photograph – a beautiful field of wheat swaying in the breeze but in the distance, the communist era panalaks rising from the suburb of Bohnice.

The red route through the woods. Note the red & white waymark on the tree © Ricky Yates

The route then follows the northern edge of the wooded valley before re-entering woodland, dropping down and through the village of Nebušice and on through the most spectacular part of the valley – Divorka (Wild) Šárka before emerging near the tram terminus of the same name at Dolní Liboc. As I was walking the final part of this section, the heavens decided to open with one of the ‘heavy showers’ the BBC Weather website had promised. It therefore gave me a good excuse to shelter in the McDonald Restaurant that is situated alongside the tram terminus and enjoy a ‘Double Cheeseburger Meal’ whilst waiting for the rain to stop.

The slightly shorter return route is the one I had walked previously twice last year and took me through more attractive woodland before dropping down to the little settlement of Jenerálka. Then the route has one more climb back up to the beginning of the Baba ridge from where I could walk back down the hill to the Chaplaincy flat. Fortunately, there was no more rain and I arrived home in the late afternoon, pleased to know that I can still walk over 20 km without too much difficulty.

My disintegrating walking boots © Ricky Yates

However, when I came to take my walking boots off, I got a shock that I was not expecting. I discovered to my horror that whilst walking, my boots had been slowly disintegrating. As can be seen in the photograph below, the central section of the sole and heel of each boot has turned to rubbery powder leaving a gaping hole on the side of the heel of the left boot. I last wore my boots during the very snowy weather we had here in Prague this past winter and can only postulate that maybe the salt used by the city authorities has affected the rubber.

These are the boots that I wore to walk 1500 km along the Chemin de St Jacques/Camino de Santiago. They are so comfortable I shall be extremely sad if I have to part with them and have the difficult and expensive task of wearing in a new pair of boots. Fortunately, there is still a culture here of trying to repair things rather than just throwing them away. So in the next few days, I shall pay a visit a shoe repair shop I have once previously patronised, in the hope that something can be done and that my much-loved walking boots are not deemed to be beyond repair.

Don’t offend or be offended

Take your shoes off before entering a Czech home © Ricky Yates

The picture on the left illustrates a Czech practice that any foreigner visiting a Czech home, needs to be very aware of if they do not want to cause serious offence to their hosts. When entering a Czech home you should always remove your shoes.

Normally, this is done immediately after you have just set foot inside the front door of the house or flat you are visiting. There will usually already be a number of pairs of outdoor shoes sitting on a mat in the entrance hallway and, as a polite visitor, you should remove your own outdoor shoes and put them alongside those already sitting there.

Sometimes your Czech host may say, “O don’t worry about taking off your shoes”. If you want to be invited back, ignore what has just been said and still remove your shoes. Those who take what has just been said at face value will always be known and remembered as the impolite foreigners who didn’t remove their shoes!

The accompanying picture is of the doorway of a flat on the first floor of our block of flats where we live. The scene always brings a smile to my face each time I walk past it. Sybille reckons that the reason all the shoes being left completely outside on the public landing and stairway, is because the family have a young puppy who might otherwise chew them. But not only are there shoes but also a motor cycle helmet. And I love the provision of a shoe horn to help everyone put their shoes back on again as they leave!

What is newly reconstructed? © Ricky Yates

This second photo is of an advertisement on the side of a public telephone box for the M1 nightclub in the centre Prague. When Sybille and I first saw it several months ago, we nearly collapsed in a heap with laughter. Not only does it feature yet another example of Czenglish by indicating that one should ‘Make left’ rather than ‘Turn left’, one also has to ask whether ‘Newly reconstructed’ refers to the building wherein the night club is located or to certain parts of the young lady’s anatomy!

What the advertisement does illustrate is the very relaxed attitude that Czechs have to the exposure of the human body, something that comes as a complete shock to some people, particularly to those conservative Americans who hail from the Bible belt. This relaxed attitude is sometimes reflected in men publicly urinating when they could quite easily use a little more discretion. But it also has some very positive aspects, particularly with women being totally free to breastfeed in public places without anyone, (other than conservative Americans!) batting an eyelid.

During the summer months, there are a number of places in and around Prague where it is possible to swim and sunbathe, in or alongside open-air swimming pools, lakes or rivers. In these locations, some women happily go topless. It is far from being obligatory but just accepted as being natural and normal.

All I have described is part of what any foreigner needs to understand when s/he moves to live and work in a different culture and society. Learn how not to offend, and equally, learn how not to be offended.

A brief visit to my old stamping ground

Three regulars outside ‘The Red Lion’ at Little Tingewick © Ricky Yates

On Monday 19th July, I travelled by National Express coach from Derby to Milton Keynes, my first experience of travelling by long distance bus in the UK for many years. Whilst the journey went smoothly, it did include a tour of the campus of Loughborough University, (where actually nobody got on or off!), as well as passing through the centre of Leicester where we stopped for about thirty minutes.

The drop off point in Milton Keynes was fortunately not far from the main Central Milton Keynes Shopping Centre. I was glad that I had chosen to take my clothes etc in my large rucksack which made walking from there, to and then around the shopping centre, very easy. I was also pleased to be able to finally purchase three packs of six ‘Thank You’ cards from the John Lewis Department Store. This is an extremely rare example of something I needed which I just could not find anywhere in Prague. Normally, having both Marks & Spencer & Tesco in the Czech Republic means that within reason, most things any Brit might want can be found.

After my brief foray around this familiar old shopping haunt, I then caught the X5 Cambridge – Oxford bus which took me from outside the CMK Shopping Centre to outside the even more familiar Tesco Supermarket on the outskirts of Buckingham. My good friends Mike and Nikki Geelan, had kindly offered me a bed for the night in their home in the village of Tingewick and Nikki picked me up from Tesco as she needed to do some shopping there.

Just after 6pm that evening, I set off to walk out of Tingewick, up the hill, to visit another old haunt, ‘The Red Lion’ at Little Tingewick. ‘The Red Lion’ is effectively the pub of Finmere, the village in which I used to live from January 1993 until September 2008. But whilst Finmere, together with the other nine villages of which I used to be Rector, are all in Oxfordshire, Little Tingewick is in Buckinghamshire – the county boundary runs down the middle of the road in front of the pub. Therefore I could always claim, as I did when drinking there, that I was at least six feet/two metres outside my parishes!

I caused a nice surprise to a few of the regulars as I walked in. The accompanying photograph is of three of them enjoying their respective pints in front of the pub. But for my pint (0.568 litre) of Staropramen, I was charged £3.75/112 Kc. In Prague, I will rarely pay more than 25 Kc for 0.5litre of Staropramen. I’m glad that one of the regulars kindly bought me my second pint!

Afterwards, I walked back down the hill to Tingewick and shared a thoroughly enjoyable evening meal with Mike and Nikki, together with our mutual good friends, their neighbours Marc and Donna. As we all said at the end of the evening, it was very much like old times.

Rev’d Christobel Hargraves, current Rector of the Shelswell Group of Parishes and me, former Rector, outside Finmere Rectory © Ricky Yates

An unwritten but most important rule for Anglican clergy is that they should not interfere in anyway in their former parish(es) to enable their successor to minister freely. This is one of the reasons why I’ve stayed away completely from the UK until now. My successor as Rector of the Shelswell Group of Parishes is Rev’d Christobel Hargraves who came into post in August 2009, nearly a year after I left. Chris and I had been in contact with each other by email on a number of matters, but we had never met. Recently she emailed me about a particularly tricky legal matter in relation to some land owned by a Church Trust. In my reply, as well as answering her query, I said that I would be staying overnight nearby on Monday 19th July and would she like to meet up with me. Her reply was positive with an invitation to coffee at Finmere Rectory on the morning of Tuesday 20th July.

On the Tuesday morning, I walked up the hill from Tingewick, past ‘The Red Lion’ and into the village. Seeing the familiar houses and roads did seem somewhat strange, as did walking across the gravel to the front door of my former home. I was greeted warmly both by Becky, my former part-time benefice administrator, and by Chris. Inevitably, a combination of redecoration and Chris’s own possessions, have put a different style upon my former home. But I had to admire the garden which, courtesy of her husband (also called Chris!), was in far better shape than Sybille and I had ever been able to get it!

My other reason for visiting my former home was because I had accidentally left some personal papers in the back of the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in the Benefice Office. They all related to the education of my two (now adult) children including various school reports. I was able to sort through them all; rescuing what I thought was worth keeping and consigning the remainder to Cherwell District Council’s paper recycling service.

Wizz Air flight delayed to 01.50 © Ricky Yates

I had arranged to fly back to Prague from Luton Airport with the Hungarian low-cost airline Wizz Air. The flight was scheduled to leave at 20.10 on Tuesday evening meaning that I should have got back to the Chaplaincy flat by midnight CEST. As I queued at the check-in desk, there was an unwelcome notice that my flight was delayed 00.40 which I wishfully thought meant by just 40 minutes. The check-in clerk kindly broke my illusion telling me it meant the flight was now scheduled to depart at 00.40, four and a half hours late. As you can see from the pictures of the departure board, this eventually extended to 01.50.

Yes – it is the flight to Prague! © Ricky Yates

When I and the rest of the frustrated passengers did eventually get on board our flight, we were finally offered some explanation for the five and a half hour delay. The pilot explained that earlier in the day, (by now, the previous day!), the aircraft had experienced a bird strike and had to be pulled out-of-service for safety checks. The flight was uneventful and once reunited with my rucksack; I walked out of Prague airport just after 05.00 on Wednesday morning and by means of two bus journeys, reached my home at about 05.50.

Whilst I enjoyed my trip, spending roughly seven hours sitting in Luton Airport did rather take away some of the pleasure. The experience was uncannily similar to what happened to Sybille and I the last time we both flew in September 2008. Then we were stuck in Corfu Airport for several hours by a combination of bad weather and the returning Easyjet flight being overbooked and overweight. Thus, instead of getting back to Finmere Rectory just after midnight as scheduled, we got there at 07.00, just an hour and a half before the removal men arrived to start packing up our belongings to transport them to Prague! I will certainly be thinking twice before booking flights with a low-cost airline in the immediate future.