Category: Prague Expat Life

The 2011 Eastern Archdeaconry Synod in Bucharest

Members of the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod outside the Church of the Resurrection, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

Once a year, the clergy of the Anglican Chaplaincies scattered across Central & Eastern Europe, together with elected lay representatives of their congregations, meet together as the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod. This year’s synod meeting took place in Bucharest, Romania, between Thursday 22nd – Sunday 25th September.

In previous years, along with Sybille, I’ve driven by car to attend these annual synodical meetings – in 2009 to Izmir in Turkey and in 2010, a somewhat shorter journey to Vienna. This year, a combination of Sybille choosing not to stand for re-election as a lay representative, together with Sam the dog still getting used to long car journeys, we decided that I would attend the synod meeting alone and fly to get there.

Malev Hungarian Airlines plane at Budapest Airport © Ricky Yates

When I finally got around to booking my flights, I discovered that the cheapest way to get from Prague to Bucharest was to fly by Malev Hungarian Airlines, initially from Prague to Budapest and then by a second flight, from Budapest to Bucharest. Unfortunately, the outward journey did involve sitting in Budapest Airport for in excess of four and a half hours whilst waiting for the onward flight to Bucharest. Fortunately, the return flight involved a far shorter wait in Budapest which nearly turned out to be too short, after the departure of the Bucharest- Budapest flight was delayed by over forty-five minutes!

One of the Churches within the Cernica Monastery complex undergoing major restoration work © Ricky Yates

The synod met in a conference centre which is part of the Romanian Orthodox Cernica Monastery, located about 20 kilometres east of the centre of Bucharest. The whole complex is situated on an island in the middle of a lake with access via a causeway. The conference centre is a fairly new development and we were certainly the first Anglicans ever to use the facilities and also the largest group for which they had ever catered.

 

Accommodation block at the Cernica Monastery Conference Centre © Ricky Yates

With daytime temperatures in the high twenties Celsius, though much cooler at night, we ate all our meals on a verandah overlooking the surrounding lake. The only disadvantages of this arrangement were an abundance of mosquitoes from the lake and many wasps who were particularly attracted by the jam served at breakfast time!

Dining on the verandah © Ricky Yates
The view across the lake © Ricky Yates

The two major items of synod business were consideration of the two issues under current debate in the Church of England and the wider Anglican Communion. The first is the proposed Anglican Covenant which seeks to make explicit what has previously been implicit as to what unites the 44 member Churches of the Anglican Communion. The second is the proposal to allow for female bishops within the Church of England and what provision should be made for those who cannot accept the idea.

Dr Walter Moberly led three excellent Bible Studies on the theme of preaching from the Old Testament. The Diocesan Secretary Adrian Mumford, gave a presentation on how the Diocese in Europe works; Canon Malcolm Bradshaw the Senior Chaplain in Athens introduced us to various resources for worship in small congregations; whilst Rev’d Jady Koch, the curate of Christ Church, Vienna, spoke about all the possibilities that are available in the area of digital communication. In his talk, Jady very kindly singled out Sybille and myself, expressing his admiration for all that we do via our Church website, this blog and our use of Facebook and Twitter. Hint, you can follow us on both 😉

As always, the reports from each of the Chaplaincies reminded me that many of my colleagues face far more difficult situations than I do here in Prague. Most notably, the Russian government is making life very difficult for the Moscow and St. Petersburg congregations. Likewise, the increasing Islamist tendencies of the Turkish government are not helping the cause of our congregations in Ankara, Izmir and Istanbul.

The charismatic auctioneer, Canon Simon Stephens © Ricky Yates

Going once, going twice..... © Ricky Yates

Whilst the synod does mean spending time in worship, learning together and discussing Church business, it does also provide for times of fellowship and fun together. One regular feature of the Eastern Archdeaconry Synod is an auction. Synod participants are asked to bring an item from their respective countries with a value of no more than 50 Euros. These are then auctioned to the highest bidder with the funds raised going to the Archdeacon’s discretionary fund. Over a few glasses of wine, this event is always most enjoyable, especially with Canon Simon Stephens, the Chaplain of St. Andrew’s, Moscow, as the auctioneer. Mainly due to his persuasive efforts, this year the sum of 1413 Euros was raised.

Archdeacon Patrick in conversation with Bishop Geoffrey. But what are they saying to each other? © Ricky Yates

 

 

 

As so often with gatherings such as these, conversations over coffee or at meal times with other synod members are most valuable and helpful. The photo here is of our Archdeacon Patrick Curran, deep in conversation with our Anglican Diocesan Bishop Geoffrey Rowell. However, I am very tempted to print out this picture and take it to next year’s synod meeting, pin it on a noticeboard and ask for suggestions as to what the Bishop is saying to the Archdeacon &/or vice versa. If anyone wants to participate in this caption competition now, contributions are most welcome by leaving a comment here.

 

 

 

The Anglican Church of the Resurrection, Bucharest © Ricky Yates

 

 

The synod concluded with all the participants joining the congregation of the Anglican Church of the Resurrection, Bucharest, for their regular Sunday Eucharist at which Bishop Geoffrey was the celebrant and preacher. During the service, David, a member of the small Anglican congregation in Skopje, Macedonia, was confirmed.

After post-eucharistic coffee and tea, we adjourned for lunch in Chez Marie, the restaurant across the road from the Church which seems to gain good business from the Bucharest Anglican congregation. After lunch, some participants headed for the airport and their return flights. However, many including myself, stayed on for a bus tour and exploration of the city of Bucharest about which I shall write in my next blog post.

Kaufland prichází! – Kaufland arrives!

Kaufland arrives! © Ricky Yates

Today, 19th September 2011, is the third anniversary of our arrival in Prague. Ever since then, Sybille and I have almost constantly lived next to, or very adjacent to, major building and construction work. In many respects, this should not be surprising as the Czech Republic bounces back from over forty years of Communist era stagnation, to now being the most economically prosperous of all the former Warsaw Pact countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

For nearly two years from our arrival, we had the fourth and final stage of ‘Residence Podbaba’ being constructed in front and to the side of our Chaplaincy Flat. As I mentioned in a July 2010 post, the dust and noise that building work constantly generated, was at times quite irritating and frustrating. More recently, at the beginning of 2011, the work on extending our tram line commenced and was only completed at the end of last month. And around the same time, work began on creating a large new supermarket on the site of a former bus depot that lies between the Residence Podbaba estate and the new Podbaba tram stop.

As you can see from the accompanying photograph, our new supermarket will be part of the German owned Kaufland retail group, who already have numerous supermarkets in Prague and elsewhere in the Czech Republic. The billboard proclaims that “Kaufland arrives” but does not yet tell us exactly when it will!

Demolition work around the former bus depot © Ricky Yates
The side of the former bus depot in February 2011 © Ricky Yates

These first two photographs were taken in mid-February this year and show the early stages of this new development. Whilst the main building with its curved roof is being retained, some rather ugly concrete flat-roofed extensions were demolished.

The cleared site around the former bus depot in May 2011 © Ricky Yates
The side of the former bus depot in May 2011 © Ricky Yates

These next two pictures were taken in May. They show how the site surrounding the main building was completely cleared. Also, if you look closely, you will see that all of the glass in the triangular shaped roof-lights has been completely removed.

Insulation, cement rendering & new construction in September 2011© Ricky Yates
Insulation & cement rendering on the side of the building in September 2011© Ricky Yates

These two pictures were taken earlier this month. As you can see, as well as the roof-lights having been re-glazed, the exterior walls have been insulated, then cement rendered and painted. Work on insulating the lower section of wall at the far end of the building was in progress at the time I took the first photograph, as it was on the higher part of the side of the building which can be seen in the second photograph. Beyond that, the framework of a new extension to the former bus depot was in the process of being erected.

The new extension under construction in September 2011© Ricky Yates

Here you can see that new extension under construction, this picture being obviously taken from a different vantage point to the previous six! Work continues and I promise to write an update with new photographs in due course.

To have this new supermarket right on our doorstep, will be a great boon. But we do wonder some times whether we will ever cease to have construction work going on around us or whether it will only all come to completion just as we are about leave and move on!

 

The tramline from Podbaba to Vítezné námestí has reopened!

Tram 8 at the new Podbaba tram and bus stop © Ricky Yates

Yesterday, for the first time in more than three and a half months, Sybille and I were able to travel from the Chaplaincy Flat to St. Clement’s Church, in one uninterrupted tram journey lasting just 17 minutes. Further to my earlier post entitled ‘Extending and upgrading our tramline’, on Thursday 1st September, the re-laid and extended section of track between Podbaba and Vítezné námestí re-opened.

Here is the new Podbaba tram and bus stop with Tram 8 about to set off for the centre of Prague and then on out to Starý Hloubetín on the eastern side of the city. The new stop is about 200 metres further on from the old one and thus slightly nearer to where we live. Travelling on the tram along the extended and re-laid section of track for the first time yesterday, I certainly noticed a much smoother ride than the one previously experienced.

Although the disruption and mess caused by all this work has been at times quite irritating and frustrating, especially for the poor souls who live nearer to works than we do, there has been a lot of attention to detail with many sections of pavement being re-laid and new pedestrian crossings created. And the area either side of the tramlines has been nicely landscaped with older trees protected and preserved and new ones planted as I hope these before and after photographs will illustrate.

The new tram turning circle under construction with archaeological work in progress © Ricky Yates

New tram turning circle © Ricky Yates

 

The new tracks of the tramline extension under construction © Ricky Yates

New tram tracks landscaped and in use © Ricky Yates

The existing tram route with old track lifted and new ballast laid © Ricky Yates

New tracks laid and surroundings landscaped © Ricky Yates

Regular and very observant readers of my blog may have noticed that each of the three photographs on the left above, all appeared in a larger format, in my earlier post entitled ‘Extending and upgrading our tramline’. In that post I also included two photographs of the previous Podbaba combined turning circle and tram stop, one taken on the last day it was in use and the second, a few days later. Below are both of those photographs, together with a third showing how the same spot looks now with new tracks going straight through and on to the new tram stop 200 metres further away.

Old Podbaba tram terminus on last working day 15th May 2011© Ricky Yates

And a few days later! © Ricky Yates
Same location on Thursday 1st September 2011 © Ricky Yates

Czenglish – an explanation?

Would you like an exclusive French female cousin? © Ricky Yates

I’ve written many times previously about this strange language that I regularly encounter in the Czech Republic which I call Czenglish. I’ve found it on menus, on market stalls, on buildings and on public notices. If you want to see other examples besides those I’ve just linked to, put ‘Czenglish’ into the search box on the top right-hand-side of this page and hit ‘enter’.

On the left is my latest example of this strange language. The Kulat’ák Restaurant here in Praha 6, is proud to offer an exclusive French female cousin to its customers. For the benefit of the proprietors of Kulat’ák, it should be ‘Exclusive Cuisine’.

And when correcting this hilarious mistake, the first statement also needs to be amended to read ‘The first Pilsner Urquell Original Restaurant’, both to correct the grammar to acknowledge that there are now other restaurants based on this concept which have since opened in Prague. In the third statement, the word ‘offer’ needs to be corrected to the plural – ‘offers’. And the last statement should read ‘Award-winning tank beer’.

The sign in my photo is of one of several identical ones that the proprietors of Kulat’ák have had made to display around the area nearby, in order to attract customers to their restaurant. They are quite substantial and no doubt each cost a considerable amount of money to be manufactured. And yet no one could be bothered to actually ensure that the English text was accurate and made sense. I just cannot understand the thinking – or lack of it – that lies behind such a decision. However, following a conversation that Sybille had a few months ago with one of the joint owners of U Topolu, a bar-restaurant that we quite regularly frequent, it finally dawned on me why so much Czenglish abounds.

U Topolu only has one copy of its menu in English as, being situated in the suburbs, it isn’t visited that often by non-Czech speakers. And to be fair, the English in the menu is relatively error free except for a few incorrect prepositions and the suggestion that you enquire as to the ‘desert of the day’. But because of the relative proximity of the Crown Plaza Hotel, which frequently has numerous German tourists staying there, on occasions a few of them are slightly more adventurous and patronise U Topolu.

Sybille therefore kindly offered to the joint owner, that if he would like to have a copy of his menu translated into German, she as a native speaker, would be happy to do it for him. His response was a real eye-opener. If he wanted his menu in German then he could do it himself because he could perfectly well make himself understood in German.

What this gentleman articulated is the mindset of almost all Czech people who have ever travelled beyond the borders of their own country. Czech is a minority language – I hope Czech people will forgive me saying so. Other than 10 million fellow Czechs together with 5 million Slovaks, nobody else understands Czech. Therefore as a Czech, if you are going to communicate outside of your own country, you have to make yourself understood in another language – usually English or German.

With the exception of a few hotels and resorts in the Greek islands that specifically set out to cater for Czech and Slovak tourists and consequently employ some Czech or Slovak staff who can then write the menu in Czech or Slovak, nowhere else would a Czech person find, or expect to find, a menu in their native language. Instead, Czech people have to have at least a limited capability in another well-known language, most commonly English, or if in Germany, Austria or Switzerland – German. Therefore they never see a menu or notice written in badly constructed Czech because nobody ever sees the need to translate anything into Czech in the first place!

Because since the Velvet Revolution, many Czech people have travelled abroad and succeeded in making themselves understood in English when ordering a meal or booking a hotel room, they therefore believe that their English is sufficiently good to translate a menu or compile a notice. But as all my examples clearly show – it isn’t! Part of the problem is that Czech people can usually speak English far better than they can write it. Hence ‘desert’ rather than ‘dessert’; ‘sunrice’ rather than ‘sunrise’ and ‘hallowed’ rather than ‘hollowed’.

Am I correct in my analysis? I’d love to hear from both expats and Czechs. And I do promise that this is the last time I will write about Czenglish – that is until I see the next example that leaves me creased up with laughter!

 

Ceský les

Footpath through Ceský les © Ricky Yates

We spent the second week of our recent holiday, Tuesday 19th – Sunday 24th July, staying as we had previously done in October 2010, in a delightfully restored house dating from the first decade of the twentieth century that belongs to Jack, an Irish member of the St. Clement’s congregation. It is situated in the somewhat unusually named village of Babylon, which lies between the town of Domažlice and the German border, in the far west of Bohemia.

The nearby range of rolling wooded hills are known as Ceský les which is sometimes anglicised as ‘Bohemian Forest’. These hills are far lower than the Krkonoše Mountains, the highest point being Cerchov at 1042 metres. The border between the Czech Republic and Germany runs along the top of the hills which are known as the Oberpfälzerwald where they extend across the border into Bavaria.

Footpath through Ceský les © Ricky Yates

Ceský les and the surrounding border area was part of the Sudetenland from which the Sudetendeutsche population was expelled following the end of the Second World War in 1945. It was never really re-populated as, following the Communist coup in 1948, it became a restricted zone where only trusted supporters of the regime such as members of the secret police, were allowed to live and work. The average Czech citizen was not allowed to set foot in this border area for fear that they might try to escape from their Communist paradise to the capitalist state of neighbouring West Germany.

One very positive consequence of this lack of human activity for a period of over forty years is that the natural flora and fauna were allowed to flourish almost completely undisturbed. Now Ceský les has protected status as a National Park thus preserving this wonderful environment whilst making it available to walkers and cyclists who can explore its beauty by following a whole series of waymarked routes that traverse the area.

 

The village of Pec © Ricky Yates

During our walks in Ceský les, we twice walked through the village of Pec, (pronounced ‘pets’) which gave us a sense of déjà vu having stayed in Pec pod Snežkou in the Krkonoše Mountains the previous week. As I explained in that post, ‘pec’ means furnace as this village also once had a furnace for the smelting of locally mined iron ore. The correct full name of this ‘Pec’ is ‘Pec pod Cerchovem’ meaning ‘the furnace under the mountain Cerchov’. Sybille actually suggested that I should entitle this post ‘From Pec to Pec’!

Mural on the side of the hospoda in Pec © Ricky Yates

Calvary in the village of Pec © Ricky Yates

Within the village we both enjoyed this mural painted on the side of the village pub or hospoda. Whilst it is five kilometres to the top of Cerchov, it is only five metres around the corner to the entrance of the pub! Which direction would you prefer to walk? Also in Pec is this Calvary with somewhat unusual artwork compared to what one commonly sees in the Czech Republic.

Church in the village of Trhanov © Ricky Yates

Another attractive village that we also walked through twice was Trhanov. In the centre of the village is this recently renovated (at least on the outside) Church. As ever, we could not access the interior as the doors were locked.

Restaurace U Svatého Jána in Trhanov © Ricky Yates

Also in Trhanov, we enjoyed liquid refreshment and, on our first visit, shelter from a sudden heavy shower, in Restaurace U Svatého Jána. This Bar-Restaurant has a most delightful location, just down from the Church and overlooking a small lake.

The Ceský les is remarkably attractive and unspoilt area and very peaceful. It does get visitors, both native Czechs and Germans from across the border. But they are not overly numerous and we only met a handful of other walkers and the occasional mountains bikers during our walks along the various waymarked trails.