Back in July, we had to laugh when three different restaurants, all located in Jugoslávských partyzánu, the street that leads from Podbaba where we live to our nearest Metro station at Dejvicka, all closed down for refurbishment at the same time. Two of them were ones that Sybille & I have often frequented.
One was our favourite Italian restaurant, Pizzeria Grosseto, which shut down for exactly two weeks between 19th July and 1st August. During that time, the place was completely gutted. New windows and doors were installed, along with a completely new heating system ready for the winter. Tables and chairs were refurbished, the lighting updated and the whole place redecorated, inside and out. About the only thing to be left unchanged was the pizza oven!
In contrast, Bar – Restaurace U Internationalu is sadly still closed. This little establishment was run by two women, Margarita a Bulgarian and Suzanna a Czech. We used to be two of their very rare foreign customers. We hardly ever heard anything but Czech spoken when we ate there. Sadly it appears that the business/premises has been sold to new Vietnamese or Chinese owners who are slowly carrying out building work and promising a nová restaurace/new restaurant. What it will be like & when it will open is unclear. And sadly, we have no idea as to what has happened to Margarita and Suzanna.
The third business to be refurbished was Bar – Restaurace U Topolu, situated nearly opposite Bar – Restaurace U Internationalu. We had once had a beer there but never found it very appealing. It was only closed for about ten days and the refurbishment was far less extensive than that undertaken or still being undertaken in the other two establishments. But when it re-opened, we noticed that there were new staff and therefore presumably, new owners or new management. And what is more, there is an almost separate room at one end which is smoke-free, a sadly still rare facility in the Czech Republic.
We tried it out one evening and have since been back several times. The food is plentiful and extremely reasonably priced. They have Kozel beer on tap at 26 Kc (£0.87) for 0.5litre. And they have a menu that is almost free from Czenglish – with the exception of the bottom line. Should I ask the staff member to recommend Gobi, Sahara or Kalahari?
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.
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.
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?
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!
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 Kabinetin 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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!
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.
