North Bohemia – Page 14

Why did I decide to retire and move to live in North Bohemia?

My home in Stará Oleška as it looks today © Ricky Yates

This is a question, sometimes with slight variations, that I’ve been asked time and again this past year. So as this is my four hundredth blog post 🙂 🙂 🙂 , I thought I would put into written form, the answers I’ve been giving to all those who have enquired. I’ve broken the question down into two parts, with four reasons under each heading. If you have further questions, please leave them in a comment and I promise to respond.

Why did I decide to retire?

1. Because I could

On 26^th February 2017, I celebrated my sixty-fifth birthday. Although, because of increasing longevity and consequent increased costs, both the Church of England and the British government are raising the age of retirement for younger people, these changes have had very little effect on me. I remained entitled to retire at age sixty-five and claim both my Church and state pensions.

When I left the UK and moved to Prague in September 2008, I knew that in the previous financial year, I had completed paying sufficient National Insurance contributions, to be entitled to receive the minimum state pension at age sixty-five. Continuing working past my sixty-fifth birthday in the Czech Republic, was not going to increase my UK state pension 🙂 I did work on for two more months, retiring on 30^th April 2017, but all that did was to slightly increase my Church of England pension.

2. It is what I always envisaged

When I was offered and accepted the position as Anglican Chaplain in Prague, I always envisaged being in post for the following eight and a half years and then retiring. My predecessor as Chaplain, John Philpott, had done exactly the same, except that when appointed, he was one year older than me and therefore served for seven and a half years before retiring at age sixty-five. As I pointed out to the Prague congregation at my final Annual Church Meeting on 9^th April, compared to many other European Anglican Chaplaincies, Prague had enjoyed a long period of stability with only two chaplains in nearly seventeen years.

3. Repeating myself

Over my final two or three years at St Clement’s, Prague, I increasingly felt I was saying the same things over and over again in my preaching. Because of the relatively high turnover of congregational membership, with people only being in Prague for relatively short periods of time, this might not seem to be a problem. But I felt sorry for the long-standing members of the congregation who might well have heard me say something at least once too often 😉

4. My health

In August 2015, I had a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in my lung, which nearly killed me. As a consequence, I have to permanently take the blood-thinning drug Warfarin, (aka ‘rat poison’), and wear a compression stocking on the lower half of my left leg.

The cause of my pulmonary embolism was a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) that formed in my left calf, then escaped from there and travelled to my lung. Despite wearing a compression stocking, I continue to have problems with my left calf and foot. Sometimes they become swollen with areas of bleeding through the skin, which in turn is difficult to stop, because of taking Warfarin 🙁 Currently the calf and skin are as good as can be expected but I had a serious flare up this summer, not helped by being stuck in cattle class for two hours on a Wizz Air flight to the UK.

Why did I retire to North Bohemia and not back in the UK?

1. Affordability

In simple terms, I can afford to retire here in North Bohemia and live fairly comfortably, but in no way could I do so in the UK.

For the nearly twenty-eight years I was in full-time ordained ministry, I was always housed as part of my job. But I do not own a house in the UK and with the absurd price of property, there is no way I could now afford to buy one. The Church of England does have various schemes to help retired clergy with housing. But they would all eat into my pension giving me much less income to live on.

In contrast, using just over half the lump sum from my Church pension, I have been able to purchase outright, my new home in Stará Oleška, and still have funds left over to make improvements to it – five new uPVC double-glazed window units were fitted last week 🙂 Major work to completely refit the kitchen, is due to commence on 8^th January 2018.

2. Frauenkirche, Dresden

Although I have retired from full-time ministry, as I have previously explained, I have been granted Permission to Officiate (PTO) by my bishop, in order that I may continue as the Coordinator of Anglican worship in Dresden. This currently means officiating at the monthly English-language Anglican service of Evening Prayer, hosted by the Frauenkirche, but will hopefully lead to a second monthly service, starting in the new year.

Stará Oleška is only a twelve kilometre drive from the main railway station in Decín from where it is just forty-five minutes by train to Dresden. Therefore by living here, I can now return home following the evening service, rather than staying overnight and returning on Monday as I was doing whilst living Prague. To answer the question as to why I didn’t then choose to set up home in Germany, the answer is simple – cost! Housing, and so many other things, are considerably cheaper on this side of the border, as explained in this recent post.

3. ‘Location, location, location’

‘The three most important things to consider when buying a property are location, location, and location’. A quick check on the internet reveals that no one can be sure who first said this but it is a mantra that is often repeated. As well as proximity to Dresden, I love the surrounding environment of the CHKO Labské Pískovce, the landscape protected area in which Stará Oleška is situated. As I have already explained and illustrated in this post and this post, it offers wonderful opportunities for walks out in ‘the nature’ as English-speaking Czech people often say.

4. Xenophobia in the UK

Besides cost, the other main reason for not retiring back in the UK is the rise of xenophobia, at times bordering on racism, which is now being freely voiced in parts of British society as a result of David Cameron’s ill-thought out EU referendum. Each time I visit the UK, the more I feel like a stranger in a strange land. I visit in order to spend time with my two adult children, their spouses and my two grandchildren. But even if I could afford to do so, I’m not at all sure that at the present time, I would want to make the UK my home once again.

Not that the Czech Republic doesn’t also have a vocal right-wing, recently winning electoral support by voicing anti-refugee, anti-Islam, anti-Roma propaganda. It is a politics of fear, bearing mind that very few refugees have come here, there are extremely few Muslims, and the country has had no experience at all of so-called Islamic terrorism.

However, as an ‘immigrant’ myself, I have been made very welcome in the community where I have now chosen to live in my retirement, smiling and waving helping to overcome the language barrier.

Czech bureaucracy – yet again!

A few months after arriving in the Czech Republic, Sybille and I, aided by an agency, successfully registered with the Czech Foreign Police. Our respective passports were stamped granting us ‘Temporary residence’ that was ‘neomezený‘ – ‘unlimited’ or ‘forever’. As I have pointed out many times since, temporary residence that is unlimited, is a contradiction in terms!

We were also issued with flimsy paper certificates of temporary residence, which most importantly, also showed our official registered address as being the Chaplaincy Flat in Prague 6. Shortly afterwards, we were also each issued with a ‘Rodné císlo‘, social security number. You can read about how we managed to achieve this in two early posts on this blog, here and here.

Fast forward to 2017 and my current British passport, together with that flimsy paper certificate of temporary residence, have been accepted as proof of my ID and Czech residency, during the whole process of purchasing my new home in Stará Oleška. The house is now registered in my name with the Katastrální úrad pro Ústecký kraj and I’ve paid CZK 40,000 in property transfer tax to the Czech state 🙁

I was waiting until I received my property registration document from the Katastrál, before seeking to change my registered address and apply for ‘permanent residence’, (I’m entitled to apply now I’ve lived in the Czech Republic for more than five years), because I knew I would need it to prove I have the right to live at Stará Oleška 44. But where did the Katastrál send it? Not to Stará Oleška 44 but to the Chaplaincy Flat in Prague, because that is my registered address with the Czech state! They also sent it by registered mail to be signed for, meaning I needed a combination of a long arm and long pen to do so 🙁

I had been given to understand by those who have had more recent dealings with the Czech Foreign Police, that they had become a little more user friendly than they were back in early 2009. Now more prosaically entitled ‘Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic’ (MOI), they even have a website in English! And the six page application form is in Czech and English though they do say, not unreasonably, that it must be completed in Czech. I have therefore learned a few new Czech words such as ‘duchodce‘, which is what I now am, a ‘retired person’ or ‘pensioner’ 🙂

Therefore on Monday 23rd October, armed with a carefully completed application form, two passport sized photographs, a notarised copy of the property registration document from the Katastrál, my certificate of temporary residence and my current passport, I set off for my nearest MOI Office, located in Ústí nad Labem. Realising that the stamp granting me ‘Temporary residence’ that is ‘neomezený‘, was in my previous, now expired passport, I dug it out of one of the yet to be unpacked boxes upstairs, and took that along with me too.

When I arrived at the MOI office, immediately inside the door was a young lady, (who I now know as Barbora), sitting at a desk with a laptop computer in front of her. I explained in Czech, that I was British and spoke limited Czech. She responded that it wasn’t a problem as she spoke English. I explained that I had come to apply for permanent residence in my newly purchased home and she offered to go through my application form, to see if I had completed it correctly.

As Barbora went through my form, she noted that my first Christian name was ‘Warwick’ – (for those who don’t know, ‘Ricky’ is my diminutive). ‘Was this the same as Warwick Castle’, she asked, as she had been an Erasmus student for a year at nearby Coventry University. I replied that it was the same and that she should note my place of birth – Coventry – slightly further down the form. Call it a ‘coincidence’ or a ‘God-incidence’ but it was quite remarkable.

Other than a couple of little additions, Barbora assured me I’d completed the form correctly and had brought all the necessary additional documentation that I needed. As I am an EU citizen, I was to go out the door, around the corner and into the same building through a different doorway, take a numbered ticket, and wait there until my number was called.

Barbora also gave me her business card to which she added her mobile phone number. If I had any problems, especially with language, I could call on that number. It was only when looking at the business card that I realised she is from a voluntary organisation, seeking to help foreigners integrate in the Czech Republic. No – the Czech Ministry of the Interior have still not become that user-friendly, as I was about to discover.

After an hour-long wait, and being the last person sitting in the waiting room, my number was finally called. Unfortunately, the lady at desk 12, was rather officious right from the beginning. I was her last customer for the day and I think she was very keen to get home. I presented my completed application form, pointing to the box indicating that I was applying for permanent residency. When I eventually twigged that she first wanted to see my ID, I presented my current passport, my certificate of temporary residence and my previous expired passport, in order to show continuity.

This is when the fun started 🙁 There were two problems with my application which therefore made it impossible for it to be dealt with that afternoon. Firstly, the passport number on my certificate of temporary residence did not agree with that of my current British passport. I had committed the serious offence of failing to tell the MOI in July 2016, that I now had a new passport, an offence for which I could be fined!

Secondly, I was applying to do two separate things. I was applying for permanent residency, but I was also applying to change my registered address. The application form for permanent residency was fine. However, I also needed to fill out a second identical form with exactly the same information, in order to apply to change my registered address.

All this was confirmed to me after I got Barbora to speak to the officious lady at desk 12, on my mobile phone. I was also given a slip of paper with a fixed appointment to return on Monday 30^th October at 13.30, armed with my identically completed second application form, to resume battle with the Czech MOI. Barbora also confirmed that she was available that day and kindly agreed to accompany me.

My appointment(s) for Monday 30th October 2017

On Monday 30^th October, I met with Barbora and together we went to the EU citizens section of the MOI offices, waiting for appointment 209 to appear on the display screen in the waiting room. Promptly at 13.30 it did so, calling us desk 11. I was very pleased that we had a different lady to deal with, rather than the very officious one of the previous Monday. This one later even complimented me on how well I had filled out my application forms 🙂

Firstly, I had to present my current British passport so that its number could be recorded. For my serious sin of omission, that of failing to previously report my obtaining a new passport, I was fined CZK 200 which I paid in cash on the spot. Bearing in mind that two other expat friends had previously told me they had also made the same mistake and had each been fined CZK 500, I felt I got off quite lightly. Maybe it was because I am now a duchodce 😉

After that transaction was completed, and a receipt issued for my CZK 200 fine, I then had to present my completed application form to change my registered address. I was surprised that I wasn’t required to handover the notarised copy of the property registration document I’d brought with me. Instead, the lady accessed the computer of the Katastrál office which confirmed my ownership of Stará Oleška 44 and therefore my right to live there.

I was then required to formerly surrender my nearly nine year old flimsy paper certificate of temporary residence for which I received a formal printed receipt. In its place, I was presented with a new flimsy paper certificate of temporary residence showing my new registered address as Stará Oleška 44. But irony of ironies, it doesn’t show my current British passport number – that section has been left blank! I can only presume that it is because my new certificate does have my Rodné císlo recorded, by which the Czech state can identify me. It hadn’t been allocated when the previous certificate was issued.

Finally, I then was able to present my second identically completed application form, along with my two passport size photographs, to apply to be granted permanent residence in the Czech Republic. I was formerly told that the MOI now had up to sixty days to consider my application and decide whether or not to grant me permanent residence. Once a decision has been made, I will be summoned back to the MOI office in Ústí nad Labem.

If granted, I will then have to surrender my brand new certificate of temporary residence. In its place will be given a photo ID card showing me to be a permanent resident of the Czech Republic. Watch this space!

As we were leaving the building, I asked Barbora why the slip of paper I had been given the previous week, had three numbers on it? The explanation? Officially I had three appointments – one to change my passport number, one to change my registered address, and one to apply for permanent residency! As I first wrote back in March 2009, I love the Czech Republic but NOT Czech bureaucracy!

Language and visitors

Stará Oleška from the hills above Huntírov © Ricky Yates

There are two questions I am regularly asked in comments on this blog, by email, or on Facebook. One is, ‘Are there many English-speakers where you’re now living?’ The other is, ‘Does the area get many visitors?’ This post is my attempt to answer both these questions.

Stará Oleška has had many visitors over the five months I’ve now lived here. This is because the village is home to three camping & caravan sites – Autokempink Ceská Brána, Autokemp Aljaška and Camp Pod lesem; and two pensions – Pension Vyhlídka and Penzion Rosalka. Many of those who come are Czech, from right across the country. But there are also many foreign visitors, most notably Germans, together with Dutch, Flemish-speaking Belgians and Danes.

Why do Germans visit? There are numerous reasons.

Proximity – In a straight line, Stará Oleška is little more than ten kilometres from the Czech-German border. However, you cannot drive or walk there in a straight line because of the hills and mountains in-between. Instead, it takes about half-an-hour to drive from the Schmilka-Hrensko border crossing that lies alongside the point where the Elbe becomes the Labe. And plenty of Germans from nearby Pirna, Dresden and Meissen do come, judging by the registration plates of vehicles passing through the village, along with those from major centres slightly further afield such as Leipzig and Chemnitz.

Price – Petrol, cigarettes, beer and eating out are all cheaper than in Germany. Some Germans cross the border just to fill up and buy supplies. But it does mean that a weekend, long weekend or week’s visit can be had at a considerable lower cost than if spent in Germany.

Heimat – A word that is almost impossible to fully translate into English! The usual translation is ‘homeland’, but it has a far deeper meaning. For many Germans, travelling to the Böhmische Schweiz/Bohemian Switzerland is revisiting the Heimat.

Therefore if local Czech people have a second language it is almost always German. Menus in Bar-Restaurants are in Czech and German. Staff working in these establishments have to have at least basic German as visiting Germans usually don’t speak a word of Czech, beyond knowing that ‘beer’, (or Bier 🙂 ), is ‘pivo‘.

With regard to language, most visiting Germans also have the annoying habit of greeting people on entering a restaurant, or meeting fellow walkers on waymarked footpaths, with either ‘Guten Tag‘ or ‘Hallo‘, with absolutely no recognition that they are no longer in Germany. I always reply very firmly with ‘Dobrý den‘, sometimes following it up with, ‘Wir sind in der Tschechischen Republik, nicht in Deutschland‘. The reactions are interesting 🙂

The other typical German assumption is not to bother to exchange currency, believing that they can always pay in Euro, rather than in Czech crowns. Most hotels, restaurants and many shops are happy for them to do so. But sometimes German laziness can be costly.

Bar-Restaurace U Soni was using an exchange rate of CZK 24.00 to EUR 1.00 over the summer. The current official exchange rate is around CZK 25.50 to EUR 1.00 so I think they were being perfectly fair as they will be charged by their Czech bankers, for banking foreign currency. I know, as each time the Frauenkirche in Dresden reimburse me for my travel expenses, I lose CZK 100 for the privilege of having Euro paid into my Czech bank account 🙁

But when exploring this area a year ago, I had lunch in a bar-restaurant in nearby Ceská Kamenice. This is the scan of my bill. The Euro price at the bottom has been calculated at an exchange rate of CZK 20.00 to EUR 1.00. At that time, the correct exchange rate was nearly CZK 27.00 to EUR 1.00!

One final story about visiting Germans and currency. On Saturday 23^rd September, I attended a most enjoyable classical concert in Kostel sv Václava, Srbská Kamenice. The entrance fee was a very modest CZK 100. The male half of an older German couple immediately in front of me at the Church door, produced a fifty Euro note from his wallet & expected change!!!!!!

What about visiting Dutch, Flemish-speaking Belgians and Danes? Why do they come?

My usual answer to this question is because they have no hills or mountains in their own countries 🙂 Actually, the Flemish-speaking Belgians do; but they would have to travel to Wallonia and speak French 🙁

All three nationalities love caravanning and camping and so the facilities here are perfect for their needs. And for all of them, it only takes one long day’s drive to get here.

As with the Germans, the other important factor is price. Nearly everything is cheaper here than in their home countries. For a Dane, used to paying around DKK 45.00, (over CZK 150.00), for 0.5l of beer, being charged CZK 22.00 in Bar-Restaurace U Soni for the same quantity of liquid refreshment, is like being in heaven 😀

But then comes the question of language. Because very few people, other than their fellow citizens, speak their native tongue, Dutch, Flemish-speaking Belgians and Danes recognise that to communicate when outside of their home countries, they need to speak another language. And for nearly all of them, it is second language English. But that is where they sometimes come unstuck as very few people here speak English!

Several times this past summer, when sitting on the terrace at Bar-Restaurace U Soni, I have heard Dutch/Flemish/Danish people say in English, what they want to drink. In Prague, that would be fine, but not in the Böhmische Schweiz/Bohemian Switzerland. Other than ‘beer’, because it sounds the same as ‘Bier‘ in German, they are not understood. Instead, they have to resort to third, or even fourth language German, bearing in mind that Flemish Belgians and many Dutch people, are often also fluent in French.

Several times this past summer, I have been quite proud of myself by helping convert second language English, into my best bar-restaurant Czech, in order to help Dutch/Flemish/Danish visitors to obtain what they want.

So to further answer the first question at the beginning of this post, there are very few English speakers living in this part of the Czech Republic. I have now met a small number when doing business in Decín, usually people who have spent time working or studying in the UK or the USA. But because very few native English-speakers visit this area, people who speak fluent English are very few and far between.

Kostel sv Martina/St Martin’s Church, Markvartice

Today saw the reconsecration of Kostel sv Martina/St Martin’s Church in the nearby village of Markvartice. For the somewhat irreligious Czech Republic, renovating an abandoned Church building and bringing it back into liturgical use, is quite an event.

Whilst there has been a Church on the current site since the thirteenth century, the building in its present baroque appearance, dates from a rebuilding between 1701-04. It started falling into disrepair following the end of the Second World War, a result of the expulsion of the majority Sudetendeutsche population in 1945-6 and the communist takeover of power in Czechoslovakia, shortly afterwards.

The Church was last used for liturgical worship in 1966. By the late 1980s, all that was left standing were the perimeter walls – all of the roof had collapsed. Apparently, in 1989, the communist authorities issued an order for the demolition of the building, but fortunately, the Velvet Revolution took place before the order could be carried out.

Work to restore the Church began fifteen years ago, in 2002. Whilst funds to carry out the restoration have been raised locally, considerable finance has come from various German Roman Catholic dioceses. There has also been financial support from the regional government and from the Czech Ministry of Culture. This governmental support whilst welcome, is more about preserving what is seen as the country’s cultural and architectural heritage, rather than directly supporting the Roman Catholic Church.

Markvartice is about eight kilometres by road from Stará Oleška. Earlier this week, after I first read about today’s reconsecration, I drove across there to visit the Church. Last minute work to get everything ready for today’s celebrations, was taking place, but I was able to explore and take the photographs that follow.

Interior of Kostel sv Martina/St Martin’s Church © Ricky Yates

As you can see, the very baroque interior has been completely restored to a very high standard and a modern forward altar and lectern installed. One rather ‘interesting’ feature is the coloured light under the front of the new altar. It changes between the different liturgical colours, avoiding the need for different coloured altar frontals 🙂

Inscription over chancel arch © Ricky Yates

The inscription above the chancel arch clearly reflects the fact that German was the language of the majority population at the beginning of the eighteenth century until 1945.

A rather elaborate pulpit from which to preach 🙂

The churchyard on the north side of the Church, has been almost completely cleared with the damaged remains of memorials, moved and placed alongside the boundary wall.

John 14. 6 in German & Czech © Ricky Yates

However, this memorial, with its bilingual inscription underneath a large cross, has been renovated and preserved. It is also an example of how much longer it takes to say something in German than in most other languages 🙂

Statue of the Virgin Mary being carried in procession © Ricky Yates

Today’s celebrations began with this statue of the Virgin Mary being carried in procession through the village. The procession started at the railway station, located at the southern end of the village, and proceeded to the Church, located at the northern end.

At the head of the procession, along with a processional cross and four banners, was a small brass band who I’m almost certain had travelled from Germany. There was quite a German presence with many German registered cars parked in the various temporary car parks that had been set up.

Hence this bilingual sign! There were also coaches which had brought people from elsewhere in the Czech Republic, particularly from Moravia which is the more Roman Catholic end of the country. Therefore whilst the Church was packed for the 11.00 mass of reconsecration, I do wonder how well attended it will be by local people, Sunday by Sunday, once all the visitors have left.

Making progress

Yesterday, I made major progress in bringing order to the garden and outbuildings of my new home. In less than an hour, Jan with his van, assisted by a friend, removed a whole load of items left behind by the previous elderly owners, all of which were of no use to me. I hope the ‘before and after’ photographs which follow, will illustrate the progress that has been made.

Circular saw with ‘rain cover’ © Ricky Yates

Just under two weeks after moving to my new home in Stará Oleška, I wrote a post entitled, ‘Plenty to keep me occupied‘. In that post, I pointed out this ancient electrically driven circular saw for cutting logs, sitting in the middle of the back garden and wondered how on earth I would get it removed. Well yesterday, Jan using his electric metal cutter, removed the heavy engine from one side of the contraption. Then he and his colleague, aided by a trolley, were able to wheel the two parts out of the garden and into their van.

Where the ancient circular saw once stood © Ricky Yates

Here is where it once stood – now just an area of long grass and several centimetres of sawdust 😉

In that same post was this photograph of what I call my wood shed, showing a whole variety of ‘interesting’ items, stuffed into one end of the shed.

As this photograph shows, these ‘interesting’ items are now gone. There is still plenty of sorting out to do, but what is left is wood in some shape or form. Some pieces will be useful for future construction projects such as forming the framework for a concrete path. The rest will eventually be sawn up and become fuel for the wood burning stove which will be my main source of heating in the forthcoming winter.

Lean-to storage unit in May 2017 © Ricky Yates

What I didn’t illustrate in that previous post was the half completed lean-to storage unit on one side of the house. This is what it looked like back then.

Lean-to storage unit minus junk © Ricky Yates

This is what it looks like now. Once I’ve removed some remaining loose timber into the wood shed, then I plan to lay a proper concrete floor. After that, I hope to be able to hang the door that is already sitting there, propped up on one side, and create a dry and secure home for my mower and garden tools.

For his labours, I paid Jan CZK 1000, just under £35.00 at current exchange rates. Whilst I’m sure he will be able to re-sell some of the bits and pieces, I still felt I got very good value for money.