Category: Prague Expat Life

The Expat Bible without Religion

The expats.cz Survival Guide & Business Directory 2012. Photo © Ricky Yates

In more than one previous blog post, I have mentioned the extremely helpful website expats.cz. For example, it was through the forum on their website that I found Adrian Blank of Nepomuk to help me through the various hoops in order to register my right-hand drive car here in the Czech Republic.

As well as their website, expats.cz also annually publishes the ‘Czech Republic Survival Guide & Business Directory’. A new edition comes out around the end of September each year. We discovered the then new edition of the ‘Survival Guide for 2009’ within a few days of our arrival in Prague back in September 2008. At that time, expats.cz were specifically asking for new locations from which the guide could be distributed to English-speaking expats. Finding it such a useful source of information ourselves, we offered to take copies to distribute to newcomers who come to St. Clement’s Church and ask for one of our welcome booklets. Since then, we have distributed around forty copies each year.

The ‘Survival Guide’ is distributed free of charge as the cost of production is more than covered by advertising. It contains a great deal of highly useful information that any expat coming to live in the Czech Republic might need, covering employment and business, accommodation and real estate, health, education and leisure activities. This page of the expats.cz website gives full details of the guide including the claim that it is, “Known locally as the expat ‘bible’”.

Each of the three editions that we have previously helped distribute have included just over a page entitled ‘Religion in Prague’ giving basic details of the English-speaking Churches as well as contact information for other faith groups. Therefore, when I discovered whilst attending and exhibiting at the Expats Expo on Saturday 8th October, an event sponsored by expats.cz, that the new 2012 edition of the ‘Survival Guide’ was now available, I picked up a copy for myself and made a mental note to go to the expats.cz office during the following week, in order to pick up a supply of the new edition to distribute from Church.

The first thing I did upon picking up my copy of the 2012 ‘Survival Guide’ was to check that the information about St. Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church was accurate. I went to the contents pages at the front and then to the index at the back, to try and find ‘Churches’ or ‘Religion’. Could I find the information? No – because the 2012 edition of the so-called ‘expat bible’, has been published with all information about both Christian Churches and other religions, completely eliminated.

As well as immediately speaking with two staff members on the expats.cz stand, both of whom claimed to know nothing about the decision to exclude all information about religion, I also sent off a strongly worded email via the ‘contact us’ page of their website. When several days later, I had not received a reply, I rang the expats.cz office. No one there would admit to having even seen my email. But about half-an-hour later, my phone call was returned by their Creative Director Dominic Bignal, who also claimed not to have seen my email but knew about my complaint from feedback from the staff members on their stand to whom I had spoken.

There followed a rather interesting twenty minute phone discussion. Mr Bignall’s main points were as follows.

  • They had to reduce the size of the new 2012 ‘Survival Guide’ from 220 to 200 pages because of not having sold sufficient advertising, therefore something had to go.
  • They had judged what to include or exclude based on the number of visits to the various parts of their website.
  • If we had paid for an advertisement then we would have been included.
  • Going to Church was so specialised that if people wanted to find us, they would.

I have to say, as I also personally told Mr Bignall, that none of these arguments hold water and/or contradict what expats.cz claims.

  • If they needed to reduce the size of the ‘Survival Guide’ by twenty pages in order to be commercially viable, why didn’t they just slightly edit down each section rather than completely cut out one section? Allowing for the fact that 25% of guide is advertising, they needed to reduce about 165 pages of text to around 150 – hardly an impossible task.
  • How does expats.cz know that what people look for on the website is the same as what they look for in the ‘Survival Guide’? Bearing in mind that the information about Churches is already well hidden on the website, it’s not surprising that it doesn’t get so many visitors.
  • Expats.cz claim to provide unbiased information. But if you advertise……
  • The last argument can apply to anything that appears in the ‘Survival Guide’. Yes – put ‘English-speaking Church, Prague’ into Google and up will pop St. Clement’s and six or seven other possibilities. But the same applies to Tennis Clubs, Museums, gay bars etc, all of which are included. It is an argument for the ‘Survival Guide’ not to exist in the first place.

What expats.cz (or Howlings s.r.o. – the company who run the website & publish the guide) have done, is a combination of discrimination and ignorance. Discrimination against those who practice the Christian or any other religious faith. Ignorance in thinking we are so small a group of people that we can be safely ignored.

As a commercial organisation, expats.cz/ Howlings s.r.o. are free to choose what they include in their annual ‘Survival Guide’ and what they exclude – a point Dominic Bignall reiterated to me several times over during our phone conversation. Whilst this is true, they also claim that their ‘Survival Guide’ is ‘Prague’s most comprehensive and objective expat publication guide’. As far as I am concerned, following their unilateral decision to exclude all information about the practice of religious faith, both Christian and otherwise, their guide is no longer comprehensive and certainly not objective.

 

Tábor

Tábor with the spire of the Church of the Transfiguration of our Lord © Ricky Yates

As part of my two weeks of annual leave following my return from the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod in Bucharest, Sybille and I spent a long weekend at the beginning of October, staying in Tábor, exploring this fascinating historical town and parts of the surrounding area of South Bohemia. During the whole time we were there, we were blessed by some wonderful ‘Indian Summer’ weather as can be seen in the accompanying photographs featuring very clear blue skies.

Tábor lies about 100 kilometres south-east of Prague and it took us less than two hours to drive there. After walking around the historic centre of the town, we eventually found excellent accommodation in Penzion Modrá ruže which has a gated back yard where we were able to securely park the car.

The historic centre of Tábor is perched on a steep hillside overlooking the Lužnice River and is surrounded on three sides by precipitous wooded slopes. In the fourteenth century, a castle was built here though all that remains of it is the Kotnov Tower by the west town gate which can be seen in my photo accompanying an earlier post.

Tábor proper was founded by the radical followers of Jan Hus in 1420, five years after he was burnt at the stake in Konstanz. The town was named after the Biblical Mount Tábor (Psalm 89. 12) which is thought by some to also be the mountain on which Jesus was transfigured. The Hussites sought to organise the town following the example of the very early Christian believers by holding everything in common ownership as described in Acts 2. 44-45. They joined together in communal work to build the town and its defences and it is often suggested that this extreme variety of nonconformity is what has given rise to the connotations we now associate with the word ‘Bohemian’.

Historic building in Tábor © Ricky Yates

 

 

 

Despite its defensive site, the forces of the radical Hussites of Tábor were eventually defeated at the Battle of Lipany in 1434 and thereafter, the significance of the town declined. Fortunately, much of the wonderful architecture of the period has survived.

These two photographs are of buildings that surround Žižkovo námestí, the main central square in Tábor, named after the Hussite leader Jan Žižka. Unfortunately, the Hussite Museum, having been closed for stocktaking the two days before we arrived, did not re-open at the weekend as according to its own website, it should have done. Instead, it was scheduled to re-open on Wednesday 5th October, the day after we left Tábor to return to Prague. However, not being able to visit it does give me a good excuse to re-visit Tábor some time in the future.

 

 

 

 

Hussite Museum building in the centre of Tábor © Ricky Yates

Tábor also features many buildings with sgraffito decoration. However, I did find it a little incongruous that that this wonderfully beautiful ancient building was now being used as a fast-food outlet!

Beautiful scraffito decorated building now used as a fast-food takeaway © Ricky Yates
Second World War memorial in Tábor featuring a Soviet soldier, machine gun over his shoulder, lifting a child into the air © Ricky Yates

 

 

 

In the more modern part of Tábor, to the east of the historic centre, I came across two examples of things I’ve previously written about in this blog. The photograph on the left is of a memorial commemorating the liberation of Czechoslovakia, (as it was then), from the occupying Nazi forces. It is a typical example of communist era architecture showing a Soviet soldier, machine gun over his shoulder, lifting a child into the air. Underneath is the correct date of the end of the Second World War, 8th May 1945. But as I explained in my earlier post entitled ‘Correcting History’, because the Nazi surrender was signed late in the evening of 8th May 1945, it was already after midnight in Moscow, thus meaning that the former Soviet Union and its satellite states, always celebrated VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) on 9th May each year.

Since the Velvet Revolution of 1989, VE Day is now celebrated and marked with a public holiday, on 8th May each year in the Czech Republic. If you look closely at the inscription in the second photograph, it is quite clear that the ‘8’ is far newer and shinier than the rest of the lettering. No doubt it replaced a previous ‘9’! Likewise, because this is a memorial erected in the Communist era, it originally featured the hammer and sickle emblem. This was clearly removed at some point after 1989 but, an outline of where it once was, can still clearly be seen on the stone work above the date.

 

 

The inscription with a new '8' and with the outline of the now removed hammer & sickle emblem still visible © Ricky Yates

Finally, despite promising not to feature anymore examples of Czenglish, or ‘bad English’ as one of my fellow cricketers thinks I should call it, I cannot help but post this photograph of a sign in Tábor that had Sybille & I in fits of laughter. Bearing in mind that Tábor is not so far from the Austrian border and German speaking visitors are quite numerous, it appears to be an advertisement in German for a ‘Nothing Club’!

A sign for the 'Nothing Club' in Tábor © Ricky Yates

A local derby football match

My ticket for Bohemians 1905 versus FK Dukla Praha © Ricky Yates

On Sunday 16th October, after celebrating the Eucharist at St. Clement’s Church and chairing a meeting of the Church Council, I went with eight of the guys I play cricket with, to watch a local derby football match – Bohemians 1905 versus FK Dukla Praha. The game was part of the tenth round of matches in the 2011-2012 season of the Gambrinus liga, the top division of Czech football. For the benefit of my American and Australian readers, the sport I am talking about is what you call ‘soccer’ but everybody else in the world calls ‘football’ or fotbal in Czech.

Bohemians’ emblem & mascot is a kangaroo. This apparently dates from a tour the club did to Australia in 1927 when they were given two live kangaroos which they donated to Prague Zoo. One of the nicknames for the club is Klokani which is ‘kangaroos’ in Czech. Not surprisingly, Australians living in Prague tend to support Bohemians 1905 & Terry, who organised our group, is an Aussie from Brisbane and a very keen supporter.

On the other hand, Dukla are really my local club as their home ground lies directly behind the Residence Podbaba estate where I live. This is their first season for many years back in the top flight of Czech football after they gained promotion as champions of Division Two at the end of last season.

Inside the Synot Tip Arena © Ricky Yates

The match was played at the Synot Tip Arena which is the home ground of the more well-known SK Slavia Praha. Bohemians’ proper home ground is the Dolícek Stadium which is only one kilometre away. However, it needs to be upgraded to Gambrinus liga standards which includes having under soil heating & there is currently a dispute both about ownership of the ground & who will pay for the work. Apparently, the really loyal Bohemians 1905 fans gather at Dolícek before every home match & then march the 1 km to the Synot Tip Arena.

The Dukla Praha supporters © Ricky Yates

The Synot Tip Arena will hold 21,000 spectators so, with only 3100 in the crowd, we did rather rattle. As you can see in the photograph above, the whole seating area on the north side of the ground was unused, with just a couple of stewards in bright yellow high-visibility jackets, guarding the stairways.

Over in the north-eastern corner of the ground were the visiting Dukla fans – surprisingly few in view of the relatively short distance they needed to travel. We all sat in the south stand with the somewhat vocal Bohemians’ supporters, all decked out in their club colours of green and white.

I couldn’t help but contrast numerous differences between attending this match and attending a game in the English Premiership. My ticket cost 150 kc, a little more than £5.00 which is about 10 -15% of what it would cost in the UK. And for 35 Kc (about £1.25), you could buy a 0.5 litre of beer and take it with you and drink it whilst watching the match! Admittedly, the league is sponsored by Gambrinus, an extremely drinkable Czech beer! Whilst there was a police presence outside the ground, they were mainly concerned with manually controlling nearby traffic lights to try and ensure the smooth flow of traffic on the streets surrounding the ground. I didn’t see any police presence inside the stadium.

Sadly we saw no goals as the match ended in a 0 – 0 draw. Even some of my Bohemians supporting friends agreed with me that Dukla were overall the better team. On at least three occasions, Dukla should have scored, but unfortunately, they wanted one touch too many in the penalty area. So it was one point each meaning that Bohemians 1905 drop from second to fifth in the league, whilst Dukla remain seventh.

Bohemians poster with the kangaroo emblem © Ricky Yates
Bohemians 1905 players together with their mascots, a kangaroo & a joey © Ricky Yates

Living in the light of one’s own mortality

Ancient tower and town gate in Tábor © Ricky Yates

I’ve become very aware that in recent months, my blog has been predominantly a travelogue with a bit of history thrown in, together with articles describing the changes taking place in and around the Podbaba area of Prague 6 where I currently live. The more spiritual or reflective posts have been somewhat absent. I hope that with this post, the balance will begin to be corrected.

Last week, the news was dominated by the death of Steve Jobs, the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Apple Inc, whilst the sports pages reported the death of Graham Dilley, the former England test cricket fast bowler. What most struck me about the death of both these individuals was their age – Jobs was 56 and Dilley only 52 – therefore both were younger than I am now.

Around the same time as the deaths of these two well-known individuals, I passed a significant milestone in my own life – I am now at least ten days older than my father was when he died nearly forty-one years ago from an acute myocardial infarction or a heart attack as it is commonly known. I was just eighteen years old at the time of his death.

In some ways, I feel a certain sense of satisfaction that I have now passed this landmark. And whilst I cannot change my family history, my father being only fifty-nine when he died and my mother dying ten years later aged sixty-three, I do find it somewhat reassuring that both my sisters are now older than our mother was at the time of her death. But having said that, I have also become very aware of my own mortality. Who but God knows when my time to die will come?

In reporting the life and recent death of Steve Jobs, numerous journalists have made reference to a speech he gave to graduating students at Stanford University, California, a few years ago, soon after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In it, he spoke quite openly about the one fact of life that most of us rarely dare to mention – the fact that sooner or later, each one of us will die. He reminded his audience of what he himself had read when he was 17 which went something like, “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.”

In one other memorable quotation from that address he declared, “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it” In the light of this important truth, he encouraged his hearers to make sure that each day in the future, they were doing something worthwhile and something that they wanted to be doing, recognising that their lives are finite.

On Sunday 18th September, the last Sunday I officiated at St. Clement’s before attending the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod and then taking two weeks annual leave, we celebrated Harvest Festival, giving thanks to God that ’All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above’. For the service, I used the Biblical readings set for Harvest Festival in Year A of the three year lectionary cycle. This meant that the Gospel Reading was Luke 12. 16-30 which begins with Jesus telling the parable of the rich fool – the story of the farmer who pulled down his barns and built bigger ones in order to store the abundant harvest from his lands.

Whilst the parable does have a harvest theme in its story line, that isn’t the reason Jesus told it in the first place. In fact the compilers of the lectionary have unfortunately omitted the three previous verses, which clearly put the account in context. In Luke 12. 13-15, the Gospel writer tells us that a person in the crowd asked Jesus to instruct his brother to more fairly divide the family inheritance of their late father. In response, Jesus both declines to do so and reminds his hearers that, “life does not consist of an abundance of possessions” – a verse I’ve referred to previously in this blog.

In telling the parable of the so-called ‘rich fool’, Jesus does not condemn him for pulling down his barns and building bigger ones. No – it was a perfectly sensible thing to do. It is his attitude that he can, ‘Take life easy, eat, drink and be merry’, that causes God to call him a fool. It is his failure to recognise in the words of Steve Jobs that, “Death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it”.

The challenge to me and to us all, is to live our lives in recognition that, in the words of a well-known Negro spiritual, ‘This world is not my home, I’m just a passing through’. We do not know when our lives will end and, when they do end, to recognise that we will not be able to take our possessions with us. Whilst I hope to be able to retire in just over five year’s time, I cannot guarantee that I will still be here to do so. Who knows when God will say, “This very night your life will be demanded from you.”?

 

Bucharest

View along a side street in Central Bucharest © Ricky Yates

I spent a further 24 hours in Bucharest following our Archdeaconry Synod meeting, not least because flying back to Prague on Monday afternoon was far cheaper than flying back on Sunday evening! I used the time exploring the city centre by bus and on foot, and I hope that these photographs will give readers of my blog, some impression of what Bucharest is like.

Looking at the photograph on the left, it would be very easy to think that it was taken in Paris or another French city, rather than in Bucharest. And many of the most attractive buildings dating from the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth century do display a French architectural style. This is because of the strong French-Romanian links during this time period with many French architects working in Romania and Romanian architects training at French architectural schools.

Below are three more examples of attractive buildings in the French architectural style all located within Central Bucharest. As can be seen, they have each been renovated in recent times after many years of neglect during the communist era.

Romanian Atheneum, Bucharest © Ricky Yates
Central University Library, Bucharest © Ricky Yates
Military Officers Club, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

The French influence even extends to a small version of Paris’ Arc de Triomphe. The Romanian version pictured below, celebrates the re-unification of the country in 1918 at the end of the First World War. Alongside the photograph of Bucharest’s ‘Triumphal Arch’, is a view along another city centre side street which once more illustrates the influence of French nineteenth century architecture. However, the photograph also shows more recent Czech influence with the Staropramen Beer logo featuring on the sun awning and sign of the street-side bar-restaurant!

Triumphal Arch, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

Side street in Central Bucharest with a Staropramen Bar © Ricky Yates

However, as in Prague and the other capital cities of the former Warsaw Pact countries of Central and Eastern Europe, you cannot avoid seeing the impact of over forty years of Communist rule. Below is a photograph of Casa Presei Libere/Press House, a wonderful example of Stalinist-Baroque architecture, completed in 1956. During the period of Communist rule, all print media emanated from this building, hence it was always known informally as the ‘House of Lies’.

Casa Presei Libere/Press House, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

This building in the photograph below, is a large Communist era Conference Centre, built to facilitate the holding of Communist Party Congresses.

Communist era Conference Centre, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

The Communist Party leader of Romania from March 1965 until he was overthrown in the revolution of December 1989, was Nicolae Ceausescu. Following a visit to North Korea in the early 1970s, Ceausescu embarked upon an extraordinary scheme to refashion an entire section of Bucharest according to his own megalomaniacal vision. As part of the scheme, about one sixth of the capital’s buildings were demolished, many of considerable historicity including thirteen Churches.

The pinnacle of Ceausescu’s scheme was the construction of the second-largest building in the world (after the Pentagon in Washington), now known as the Palace of Parliament. Started in 1984 but never completed, it has 12 storeys and 3100 rooms and covers an area of 330,000 square metres.

Palace of Parliament, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

From the Palace of Parliament, a four kilometre-long boulevard was created, deliberately designed to be a few metres wider than the Champs–Élysées in Paris. All this was done to satisfy the egotistical whims of Ceausescu and his wife Elena, around whom was built a major personality cult.

The boulevard leading from the Palace of Parliament, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

Ceausescu was overthrown in the revolution of December 1989. Still under the delusion that he was popular with the Romanian people despite a revolt in the western city of Timisoara, Ceausescu tried to address the crowds from the balcony of the headquarters building of the Central Committee of the Communist Party on 21st December 1989. A few minutes into his speech, instead of cheers and applause, the crowd began to boo and heckle him. Unable to control the crowd, he withdrew from the balcony into the building.

The former headquarters of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Bucharest with the balcony from where Nicolae Ceausescu made his last speech © Ricky Yates

The crowd outside was broken up by military force using live ammunition which resulted in the death of many of the protesters. The following day, Ceausescu tried again to address the crowds who had once more gathered outside the building. This time, they responded by throwing rocks and missiles and eventually broke into the building, forcing him, together with his wife Elena, to flee by helicopter from the roof. A couple of days later, the couple were arrested, put on trial for two hours before an Extraordinary Military Tribunal, given death sentences and then shot by a three man firing squad.

Memorial to those killed in the December 1989 revolution outside the former Communist Party HQ © Ricky Yates

Fortunately, despite all that Ceausescu and his regime did to the city of Bucharest, many Orthodox Church buildings have survived. Here are two examples that I was briefly able to visit and photograph.

Cretulescu Church, Bucharest © Ricky Yates
Romanian Orthodox Church, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

And finally, here is a third example which, as you can see, is currently undergoing restoration work. This Church belongs to a Romanian Orthodox Convent and where several of us had the privilege of listening to a small group of young nuns sing Vespers on the evening of Sunday 25th September.

Romanian Orthodox Convent Church under restoration, Bucharest © Ricky Yates