Prague Expat Life

TEFL Teachers – Caledonian School and Broken Promises

Longstanding readers of my blog will remember that, back in May, I wrote about Karen and Anna, two American TEFL teachers from my congregation who were forced to leave the country because of the failure of their employer, the Caledonian School, to obtain work permits and visas for them. The original posts entitled ‘More Problems with Czech Bureaucracy’ and “Update on my previous post ‘More Problems with Czech Bureaucracy'”, can be found by clicking on these titles.

I gained a certain amount of notoriety because of these posts and as a result, received an invitation to meet with Monika Kubátová, the Executive Director of the Caledonian School, so she could explain to me all that they were doing to try and resolve the issues I had blogged about. This meeting took place on Thursday 21^st May. I wrote a further blog post after the meeting in which I recounted what I was told by the Executive Director as well as expressing my own personal opinion regarding what and why all this had happened. Entitled ‘Discovering the Power of Blogging!!!’ it can also be found by clicking on the title.

In that third blog post, I famously said that I believed that “Caledonian have now got an agreed framework for visas with the Foreign Police that should work in the future” but I qualified my remark with the well known saying that “the proof of the pudding will be in the eating’. Sadly, all the assurances given to me by Monika Kubátová have proved worthless – the pudding has left a very foul taste.

Anna flew from Prague to Croatia and spent some time on the beach before travelling on to the capital Zagreb. Here, being outside the Schengen area, she reapplied for her work permit and visa at the Czech Embassy before travelling on to Bosnia, Montenegro and then Turkey. She is currently working as an au pair in Istanbul until the end of September.

Karen returned home to the USA and spent sometime with her daughters. Slightly later than Anna, she reapplied for her work permit and visa at the Czech Consulate in Chicago.

Whilst we were ourselves on holiday in Croatia in July, we received an email from Anna saying that she had heard that day from Caledonian School that her second visa application had been denied. There was no great clarity as to why this should be other than some vague reference to overstaying her original 90 day tourist visa. Then on 19^th August, Karen finally heard that her second visa application had also been denied. You can read her own brave blog post, written a week later ‘The Czech government denied my visa’ by clicking on this title.

To say I’m angry would be putting it mildly. I feel so annoyed that a combination of incompetence by the Caledonian School and bloody-mindedness by the Czech Foreign Police, has completely messed up the lives of both these ladies. Karen in particular, has let her house, disposed of many of her possessions, in order to live and work in the Czech Republic for a number of years. She did all of this based on promises given to her by the Caledonian School which they have totally failed to fulfil.

I am also angry because I have effectively been made to look a like a fool. The reason I was asked to meet with Monika Kubátová back in May was because my first two blog posts were being found by prospective TEFL students and had begun to generate bad publicity for Caledonian School. By posting a third time, in part regurgitating what I was told by Monika Kubátová at my meeting with her, that bad publicity was counteracted. Yet what I was told – yes promised by her, has proved to be without foundation.

When I heard about Anna’s second visa application being refused, I wrote to Monika Kubátová to ask why all her reassurances had proved worthless. It took nearly three weeks, together with a reminder email, before I got a reply. The blame was inevitably put on the Czech Foreign Police. “The system is changing before our eyes“ was the lame excuse which was a wording effectively copied and pasted from an email reply I received from Caledonian back in April, when I first raised the matter.

At this point in time, poor Karen and Anna do not know what they can do. Both of them have belongings still sitting in Prague but cannot ascertain whether they can return, purely as tourists, to collect them. If they fly into Prague airport, will they be admitted?

In the meantime, I offer the following advice to any English-speaking, non-EU citizen who is thinking of coming to Prague to teach English as a foreign language. By all means plan to come – despite the economic downturn there is still a considerable demand from business people and others, who want to learn or improve their English. But don’t come to Prague on a tourist visa to undertake a TEFL teacher training course at one of the language schools here. Instead, take a TEFL course in your own home country, USA, Canada, Australia etc.

Once you have a TEFL teaching qualification, apply to work for one of the schools here. Once you have a job offer, then apply for a work permit and visa whilst still in your own home country and don’t try and travel here to work until it has been granted. Caledonian and and the other language schools will not like me saying this because they make good money from people paying for their TEFL teacher training courses. Not all students pass and, even some who do, decide not to stay on and teach. And that is where the various schools make quite a bit of money. They don’t just make money from providing English language classes.

At the present time and from my recent experience, I would not trust any promises made by Caledonian or other language schools about coming here to train as a TEFL teacher on a tourist visa and “we’ll help you get a work permit and permanent visa once you are here”. Let the experience of Karen and Anna be a salutory lesson.

A Trip up the River Vltava

Dam and Hydro-electric plant on the Vltava at Vrané © Ricky Yates

As most people who know me will already be aware, I have had a lifelong interest in canals and inland waterways. I was therefore delighted to discover that the Vltava, the river on which Prague is situated, is navigable. Engineering works, begun in the nineteenth century, have provided locks, navigable cuts and a sufficient depth of water to allow quite sizeable craft to reach the city.

The Vltava (or Moldau in German) leaves the Labe (Elbe in German) at Melnik, about 50 km north of Prague. From Melnik, it is possible to travel downstream along the Labe/Elbe all the way to the North Sea at Hamburg as well as connecting with canals and rivers that lead to Berlin and other German cities. Upstream of Melnik, the Labe is also navigable as far as the Czech city of Pardubice.

Not only is the Vltava navigable, it still carries quite a considerable amount of commercial traffic as far as Prague. From my observations, this mainly consists of bulky materials such as sand and gravel. The use of river transport in this way saves the surrounding roads from a large number of additional truck journeys which would otherwise be required to shift these goods.

In the centre of Prague, the Vltava is populated by many passenger vessels offering tourists trips along the river to view the city sights or to enjoy a meal in a floating restaurant. Most of these vessels rarely pass a lock, confining themselves to the section of the river between Hlávkuv most (just east of St. Clement’s Church) and to just south of Karluv most (Charles Bridge). However, a few months ago, I was delighted to discover that one company does offer a far longer trip upstream on the Vltava, all the way to the head of navigation at Slapy, nearly 40 km south of Prague city centre.

Pražská Paroplavební Spolecnost only run this trip on Saturdays and Sundays between early May and mid September. As Sundays are out because of my profession, if I was going to make the trip this summer, it was going to have to be on a Saturday. And having my sister Jenny staying with us for ten days recently gave me the perfect excuse. Here was a day out that we would both enjoy! So having for once, completed the Sunday sermon on Friday, on Saturday 15^th August we set out early from the flat, travelled by bus and metro to Palackého námestí, bought our tickets from the office on the quayside, all ready for our departure upstream at 9am.

The boat was smaller than I was expecting and was quite packed with standing room only. However, so far as I was aware, Jenny and I were the only non-Czechs on board. This trip clearly appeals to Czech people who want to head out of Prague into the surrounding countryside but clearly doesn’t normally appear on the agenda of visiting foreign tourists.

Small pleasure boats entering lock at Vrane © Ricky Yates — Small pleasure boats entering lock at Vrané © Ricky Yates

The initial part of the journey out of Prague goes past the Staropramen Brewery on one side of the river and the twin spires of the Church of St. Peter & St.Paul at Vyšehrad on the other. Then follows the southern suburbs of the city, together with passing our first lock at Modrany. Soon afterwards comes the confluence of the River Berounka and then the Vltava enters an ever increasingly beautiful wooded valley at Zbraslav.

About 5 km further on lies the next lock at Vrané. This is situated at one side of a fairly substantial dam built across the river to generate hydro-electric power. Beyond this dam and lock, the river is wider because it is effectively a ribbon lake.

Lower gates of Štechovice Lock © Ricky Yates

After cruising for over three hours and nearly 30 km, we arrived at the town of Štechovice. Here passengers both got off and on before we set out on the final leg of the journey. Ahead lay a much higher dam, also generating hydro-electricity, and therefore with a far deeper lock alongside. In fact the lock is monstrous – certainly the deepest lock I’ve ever passed through. The mind boggles as to how much water it takes to fill it! But eventually, our boat rose out of the bowels of the lock for a further forty minutes of cruising past beautiful wooded hills until we reached journeys end, the quay at Nové Trebenice, immediately below the very impressive Slapy Dam.

The Slapy Dam was built during the Communist era between 1949 – 1955. Like the earlier smaller dams we passed, it also enables the generation of hydro-electricity as well as helping to control the river flow, hopefully helping to prevent flooding further downstream during times of heavy rainfall. But for unknown reasons, no lock or boat lift was provided when it was built and the dam therefore prevents through navigation. The lake behind the dam is extremely popular with small yachts and pleasure boats. But none of them can cruise down the river to Prague because the Slapy Dam blocks the way.

After a quick lunch at a bar-restaurant in Nové Trebenice and a walk out on top of the dam, it was back to the boat for the return journey. This was fortunately less crowded as a number of people only did the journey one-way and got the bus back to Prague. It thus enabled me to more easily take the photographs that accompany this post. We arrived back at the quay alongside Palackého námestí at 6.30pm somewhat tired and a little sunburnt but having had a most enjoyable day.

My first Czech Wedding

Lea & Petra at Bouzov Castle © Ricky Yates

Earlier this year I received an email from an English young man called Lea, asking if there was a Czech language version of the Anglican ‘Common Worship’ Marriage Service. He was planning to marry a Czech young lady called Petra, at a venue near her home town of Olomouc in the east of the Czech Republic, and this was the liturgy that they wanted to use. As there would be both English and Czech speakers attending the wedding, they wanted the text in both languages.

One of the many helpful things left by my predecessor John Philpott, was a ‘Word document’ containing exactly the text that Lea had asked for. I forwarded it to him but wrote an accompanying note asking who was going to use it? If they were going to be married by an English-speaking minister from one of the Czech Churches, then surely that minister would want to use his/her own Church’s liturgy. On the other hand, if they were going to have a Czech civil ceremony followed by a Church service conducted by an Anglican priest imported for the occasion, then it was common courtesy for me, as the Anglican priest for the area concerned, to be consulted.

In reply, Lea and Petra explained that they didn’t yet have anyone to use the liturgy. But they had booked their wedding venue, the ‘chapel’ in Bouzov Castle, and that they had met with the local registrar and were in the process of completing all the necessary preliminaries to enable a legal wedding to take place. Once I explained that, because of my status as a priest in the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, I could legally marry them, then they promptly invited me to do so. Thus on Friday 3^rd July, I conducted my first Czech wedding and my first wedding of any variety since mid-August 2008.

Olomouc is a historic city in Moravia, part of the Czech Republic that neither of us had previously visited. Although it should only take about two and a half hours to drive there from Prague, we decided not to risk it and drove down on the Thursday evening in order to ensure we reached the wedding venue in good time the next day. Some good internet research by Sybille found us a very comfortable double room in the Poet’s Corner Hostel, an extremely interesting establishment owned and run by an ex-pat Australian.

Our ‘Lonely Planet’ Guide to the Czech & Slovak Republics describes Olomouc as ‘Prague minus the tourists’ and it is an apt description. We ate our evening meal in an open air restaurant on the square in the historic centre of the city. The architectural views surrounding us are reminiscent of Old Town Square in Prague. However, other than a small amount of German, we heard no other language spoken that evening except Czech and were far from being surrounded by hordes of people.

The next morning, after leisurely breakfast, we put on our best clothes and set off on the forty minute drive to Bouzov Castle. The castle is situated in the small village of Bouzov set in the rolling wooded hills of Moravia. It was a spectacular sight to see as we drove towards it. After parking in the official car park, we walked up to the main entrance to await the arrival of the wedding party. We had been warned that we would need to be admitted as one group all together to avoid any confusion, as the castle is also open to paying visitors. Eventually, everybody arrived and we were all escorted over the castle bridge and up the stairs to the the ‘chapel’.

As we had discussed back in April when I had met Lea & Petra for the first time, everybody had an order of service with the English liturgy on one side and the Czech translation on the other, using the very material that had been the subject of Lea’s original enquiry. Whilst I conducted the service in English, I did manage to greet the congregation at the beginning in Czech. I was assisted by a wonderful lady called Ivana, who helped Petra make her vows in Czech after Lea had made his in English. She also translated my short address into Czech.

My greatest fear was getting the registration of the marriage wrong. In advance of the service, I had filled out a four-page form all in Czech, which being part of Czech bureaucracy, inevitably required an immense amount of detailed information about the bride and groom, their respective parents, both witnesses and me. This included full name and address, date and place of birth, birth number for Czechs, passport number for non Czechs! Fortunately, John Philpott had also left me an annotated version of this form with guidance as to how to fill it out. Having completed it following his instructions, I got the ever-faithful Gerry Turner to double check what I’d done in Czech, before we set out for Olmouc.

It is this form, rather than two sets of Church registers, that is signed during the wedding service. Again, as I have explained previously in this blog, not only signed but, much more importantly, stamped!! As I raised my hand above the stamp that declares us to be the English-speaking parish of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, I said in English & Ivana said in Czech, “This is the most important part of a Czech marriage service!” Everybody smiled and laughed as I very firmly slammed the stamp down. It is this signed and stamped form which must be returned to the local registrar within two working days. The registrar will then issue the happy couple with their marriage certificate.

The service over, we were all escorted back out of the castle and then the newly married Lea and Petra walked down from the castle bridge hand-in-hand. As you can see, you cannot really have a much better setting than Bouzov Castle for your wedding photographs. An evening reception followed back in Olomouc.

Breakfast & Study at Bohemia Bagel

Bohemia Bagel in Old Town, Prague © Ricky Yates — Bohemia Bagel in Staré Mesto/Old Town, Prague © Ricky Yates

This morning, I had my last ‘working breakfast’ for nine weeks when our Breakfast Prayer & Study Group met for the final time before taking a summer break. A small group of us gather at 08.15 each Tuesday morning to share breakfast together and enjoy a lively discussion, usually ending with a short time of prayer.

We meet in a wonderful location in centre of Staré Mesto/Old Town Prague at Bohemia Bagel. It was only today, when taking this photograph in anticipation of writing a blog post, that I realised that it is ‘Bagel’ singular and not what everyone says which is ‘Bohemia Bagels’. This café, founded in 1996 by a team of American and Czech entrepreneurs, was responsible for making the bagel, long popular in the west, available to Czech people for the first time. There are now five branches of Bohemia Bagel in Prague, the branch where we meet being the original one.

They do a wonderful breakfast special of a bagel (several varieties to choose from) filled with a fried egg, bacon & melted cheese together with a bottomless mug of coffee or soft drink. All this for 89Kc (just under £3). This breakfast more than compensates for the early start attending the meeting involves! The food, together with the central location, makes it the ideal venue. The only disadvantage is the background music which can often be described as ‘interesting’ and isn’t always conducive to quiet prayer!

For the past several months, we’ve been discussing successive chapters from a book by the American Presbyterian Minister, John Ortberg entitled, ‘When the game is over, it all goes back in the box’. The ‘game’ of the title is the ‘game of life’ though the author uses many examples from various sports and board games, to illustrate what he is trying to say. Inevitably, the ones taken from American football and baseball were totally lost on me! Today we completed the book by discussing the last two chapters.

Ortberg was an author I had not come across previously. However, some longer standing members of the group had previously read and discussed another of his books entitled, ‘If you want to walk on water you’ve got to get out of the boat’ and recommended that we tackle this new one. And I’m glad we did! Ortberg’s main thrust is the need to live our lives being ‘rich towards God’ which should be the object of the ‘game’, recognising that the true prize is the one that unlocks the gate to the Kingdom of God.

Over these past months, we’ve had many discussions as to how practically we can live being ‘rich towards God’ and what that should mean for each of us. How do we avoid adopting secular values, especially in making choices and judgements in our daily work? And today we considered the need to recognise our own mortality and to live in the light of that immutable fact.

We plan to resume on Tuesday 1^st September and study the Letter to the Hebrews from the New Testament. Whilst it is good to have a summer break I shall look forward to our Tuesday morning meetings restarting in September, both for the fellowship and stimulating discussion and for the most enjoyable bagel breakfast!

Check this Czech car out!

This morning, I walked out of the offices of ‘Praha Hlavní Mesto’ in the centre of Prague with an incredible sense of satisfaction. I had achieved what I had been told so many times, by a whole variety of people, was impossible to achieve. In my rucksack were Czech number plates and a Czech registration document for my previously British registered right-hand drive (RHD) car. Today my red Renault Megane Scenic has legally become a Czech car!

It should really be what we have achieved as I would never have managed to do this without the help and support of Sybille, the knowledge of the whole variety of procedures to obtain the appropriate protocols which came from Adrian Blank of Nepomuk, together with being accompanied through the final stages by Gerry Turner speaking in Czech on my behalf.

In my previous post entitled “Driving on the ‘right’ side of the road”; I explained how Gerry & I had gone to the imposing offices of the Czech Ministry of Transport on Wednesday 3^rd June, to submit my application and accompanying papers for a ‘Certificate of Exemption’ for my RHD car. Adrian of Nepomuk had said that I should receive the certificate a week to ten days after submitting the application. When after two weeks, I had neither heard nor received anything; Gerry made a phone call asking what was happening. “Oh it will be in our system and we can take up to four weeks to process it” was the somewhat unhelpful answer given to Gerry. However, on Monday 22^nd June, a registered letter arrived at our flat containing the certificate of exemption. The fact that the certificate was dated 17^th June 2009, the date of Gerry’s phone call, does seem a little more than coincidence!

On the afternoon of Monday 22^nd, I duly delivered the certificate to the Magistrát office in Vysorany, Prague 9 where all my other papers were already lodged. I had to return to the office on Tuesday to put two signatures onto the completed paperwork. Then it was a third visit in three days to collect the completed file on Wednesday. On this third occasion, Gerry accompanied me to ensure I discovered correctly what to do next.

We were told to go to the offices of ‘Praha Hlavní Mesto’ in the centre of Prague, pay 3000 Kc (about £100) environmental fee as my emissions are only ‘Euro 2 standard’, and there I would finally be issued with a Czech registration document and Czech number plates. We hopped on the tram, changed onto the Metro and arrived at the correct office. Through the good offices of Gerry, we explained to the lady on the information desk, what I had come to do. She checked through all the papers giving her approval to everything I had until she asked, “Do you have your insurance certificate with you?” What was the one thing I had not got with me????

So it was that Gerry and I reconvened at the offices of ‘Praha Hlavní Mesto’ at 9.30am this morning. We took our numbered ticket and waited for our number to come up on the electronic board to tell us which kiosk to attend. After about a half hour wait we were summoned.

The lady at kiosk 35 was perfectly friendly. We presented all my papers, including my insurance certificate. “Did I have my passport and residency document with me, not just the photocopies in the file?” Fortunately I had anticipated that one! “Had I personally imported the car?” This question reflects the concern of the Czech authorities of a glut of cheap second-hand British RHD cars being brought into the Czech Republic by unscrupulous dealers. “Did I have 3000 Kc to pay the environmental charge?” I went off to the cash desk, handed over the cash and returned with a receipt.

Then the magic moment came. Number plates were produced from a drawer. Stickers were attached, marked to show the end date of the validity of my mechanical and emissions protocols. A registration document in two parts, showing my new car registration number and my full name and address, came out of the computer printer. All these were presented to me. As a parting gesture, the lady then said to me in Czech, “May God bless you”. Gerry replied by telling her in Czech, how appropriate her words were as she had just said them to the English-speaking Anglican Priest in Prague. The poor lady nearly fell off her chair both with shock and with laughter!

This afternoon, the car underwent it’s transformation from being a British car to being a Czech car. Off came the British number plates and the ‘GB’ sticker. Using the British plates as a template, I successfully drilled two holes in each of the Czech plates and then proudly screwed them onto the car before, of course, posing for the photograph!