As I mentioned at the beginning of my previous post, during my recent UK visit, as well as attending the Ordination of Deacons service in Sheffield Cathedral, I was also able to spend time with both my adult children and their families. This is a brief photographic family blog post before returning once more, to writing about life in my new home in North Bohemia.
The last time I was with my son Phillip and daughter-in-law Lisa, was on their wedding day, eleven months previously. They have since then, actively taken notice of the third reason that marriage is given, according to the liturgy of the Church of England, ‘as the foundation of family life in which children may be born and nurtured’. This photograph was taken at lunchtime on Lisa’s last day at work before going on maternity leave 🙂
Likewise, I hadn’t seen my daughter Christa, son-in-law Ian and grandson Finley, since the wedding ceremony on 30th July 2016. Whilst Finley had inevitably grown since I last saw him, what I most noticed was how vocal and talkative he had become, even if he struggled at times to know what to call me 🙂
As well as these two photographs of Finley, for the first time in many years, I managed to get a photograph of Phillip and Christa together, seen here sitting on a bench in the garden of Christa’s home in Daventry.
Finally for this post, to bring everything right up-to-date, on Wednesday 2nd August, I became a grandfather for the second time, when my daughter-in-law Lisa, gave birth to Pearl Yasmin Yates. Below are a couple of photos of my new granddaughter whose acquaintance I look forward to making, later this year.
I spent from Thursday 29th June – Tuesday 4th July in the UK, staying with my son Phillip and daughter-in-law Lisa, at their home in Nottingham. I was able to spend time with them both and also with my daughter Christa, son-in-law Ian and grandson Finley, at their home in Daventry.
However, on the morning of Sunday 2nd July, I set off early to drive up the M1 to Sheffield Cathedral, in order to attend a service for the Ordination of Deacons. One of those to be ordained was my Czech friend Dagmar Wilkinson.
Dagmar comes originally from Kuncice pod Ondrejníkem in North Moravia but has been living and working in the UK for about seven years. She discovered the Church of England whilst working in a pub which was adjacent to Portsmouth Cathedral. She started worshipping there and in due course, became Head Server.
Dagmar first found me via this blog over four years ago, at the time when she was beginning to explore the possibility of a vocation to train for ordained ministry. It has been my privilege to support her through the various hurdles she has had to jump through, culminating in being recommended for training following her Bishop’s Advisory Panel (BAP), earlier in 2015.
Dagmar has spent the past two academic years, studying theology at Ripon College, Cuddesdon, just outside Oxford. She was very fortunate in being to arrange for her four-week long summer placement in July 2016, to be at Westminster Abbey. But one thing not allowed by this Royal Peculiar, was for her to preach, something that is normally part of a long summer placement – see my post about Lea Williams and his time in Prague.
Therefore at the suggestion of her Placements Tutor, Rev’d Dr Jane Baum, Dagmar asked if would be possible for her to preach at St. Clement’s, Prague, whilst in the Czech Republic visiting her family. So on Sunday 7th August 2016, Dagmar was the preacher at our Sung Eucharist that morning. She also willing agreed to help me with a bilingual wedding the previous day, between William (English man), and Kristýna (Czech lady), held at Chateau Trebešice, near to her brother’s home in Caslav.
Having been released by Portsmouth Diocese, Dagmar found a training parish for her curacy lying between Sheffield and Rotherham – the Benefice of Aston-cum-Aughton with Swallownest and Ulley. Hence her Ordination as Deacon, took place in the Diocesan Cathedral in Sheffield.
The ordination service was a wonderful occasion featuring hymns and music across the Christian spectrum – from Graham Kendrick’s ‘Restore, O Lord, the honour of your name’ to ‘Veni Creator Spiritus – ‘Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire’. I very much enjoyed meeting members of Dagmar’s family who had flown over for the occasion, along with several of her UK friends. Equally enjoyable was meeting Dagmar’s training Incumbent, Rev’d Frances Eccleston and discovering amongst other things, that like me, she was born in Coventry. And it was to the day, the twenty-eighth anniversary of my own ordination as a deacon on 2nd July 1989.
Three doors down the road from my new home in Stará Oleška, is Bar-Restaurace U Soni. It has been a real find and an absolute godsend since moving here. But if you go online, you will be hard-pushed to find any reference to it at all. It doesn’t have its own website. The building does not appear as a bar-restaurant on any online map.
The one reference I could find, gave the address incorrectly as Stará Oleška 76 when it it should be Stará Oleška 86. Putting the incorrect address into an online map will send you to the completely wrong location. To find the correct location, click on this link.
This blog post is therefore my small attempt to rectify the lack of information about Bar-Restaurace U Soni and give it a bit of publicity that it so richly deserves!
Let’s start with the beer. The one in the photograph on the left is the first on the list below – for my UK readers that is £0.74 for 0.5l, which is very slightly less than a pint. Even the most expensive offering is still less than £1.00 a pint!
As for the food – the photograph below was taken on either our first or second visit, a few days after arriving in the village, and shows both our meals. Total cost CZK 310 – £10.00. As you can see, each dish comes decorated with raw vegetables and fruit, a far healthier offering than in most Czech restaurants 🙂 And the portions are copious!
As my cooking facilities in the house are quite limited, until I get the kitchen refitted which will hopefully happen in July, I have become a regular at U Soni. As a reward for my patronage, I have recently twice been presented with a free dessert. Below is the second of these from two nights ago.
Late in the afternoon on Wednesday 31st May, after I had been successfully connected to the internet, I went for a walk in the hills behind Huntírov, in part to find the exact location of the communication mast from which my wireless signal is obtained. But as I looked northwards, beyond Stará Oleška, I became fascinated by this towering conical mountain.
A perusal of my walking map of the area, revealed it as Ružovský vrch, (Rosenberg auf Deutsch), 619m high. My map also indicated that there was a waymarked path to the summit which then descended down the other side. An attitude that dates from my teenage years came to the fore. If there is a mountain there, it needs to be climbed 😉 So two days later, that is exactly what I did.
On the afternoon of Friday 2nd June, I drove about five kilometres to the village of Srbská Kamenice. Here I parked the car, and set off up the yellow waymarked route. This initially passed through grassland with patches of woodland.
Ružovský vrch forms the southernmost extremity of the Czech/Bohemian Switzerland National Park which stretches from here to the Czech – German border. It is relatively rare to see a notice in English – normally signs are only in Czech and German in this part of the world.
But because of the tree cover, the views are somewhat limited. There was once a viewing tower here but it was damaged by fire in the 1930s and never replaced. However, when beginning the somewhat steep decent on the far side of the mountain, I did get this view, looking towards the Czech – German border.
One concern I had from the outset of deciding to purchase my new home in Stará Oleška, was whether I would be able to obtain easy internet access. Ever since having an email address and joining the world-wide web, I have always done so via a broadband connection as part of having a landline phone – through British Telecom in North Oxfordshire and via O2 in Prague.
Therefore, back in mid-April, I enquired of Real Estate Agent Martin Tonder, whether the elderly owners of the house, had a land line phone line through which internet access could be obtained. In reply he wrote, ‘Sorry there is no land line, but there should be very reliable wireless service from JAW.cz’.
The website of JAW.cz is unfortunately only in Czech. But helped by Google translate, I got a good understanding of the service that they offer. I therefore sent off an email to their generic email address info@jaw.cz, with a brief Czech introduction, but with the rest in English, asking about whether they could provide an internet service to my new home and at what cost. Being a hi-tech company, I didn’t think it unreasonable to assume that there would be someone competent in English, who could reply.
I sent similar emails twice, but was greeted by total silence. Therefore it was a few days after I had moved into the new house and was in Martin Tonder’s office in Decín, resolving a couple of other issues, that I mentioned to him, this lack of response from his recommended company. He was most surprised at this and promptly rang JAW.cz. His call resulted in the promise that a technician would call to assess the situation on Monday 22nd May at 14.30.
The technician duly arrived at the appointed time. Whilst he didn’t have a word of English, he pointed out the communication mast on a hill four kilometres away from which a signal could be obtained, and told me that Bar-restaurace U Soni, three doors down the road, obtained their internet access from the same source and that he personally, had installed their wifi system. Bar-restaurace U Soni, has been my main means of accessing the internet since moving to Stará Oleška, so it was a good recommendation. The technician further assured me that he would get an English-speaking staff member to phone me, to take the matter forward.
Unfortunately, I was once more greeted with silence as no phone call materialised. Therefore on the morning of Monday 29th May, I braced myself and went in person to the office of JAW.cz in Decín. The young lady on the reception desk had very limited English. But between her very limited English and my very limited Czech, we made progress.
Putting my name into her computer immediately revealed details of the technician’s visit a week previously. Somebody could come and complete the installation the next day she promptly told me. Unfortunately I had a medical appointment back in Prague that day, but we agreed on Wednesday 31st May at 14.00. But why no one had followed up the technician’s previous visit, I never did discover.
On Wednesday 31st May, more than hour before he was due, the promised installer arrived. He happily went up the ladder into the upstairs front room and then climbed out the window onto the roof of the verandah. He fortunately discovered that the receiving dish for the wireless signal, could be attached to the base of the existing TV aerial. He also managed to bring the wire from the receiving dish into the house, through the existing hole for the TV aerial wire, without needing to drill a fresh one.
A power point located adjacent to the top of the ladder into the upstairs was the perfect place for the router and, in a relatively short period of time, my new internet connection was up and working. Cost CZK 1800/GBP 60.00, together with a monthly payment of CZK 319 / GBP 10.60.
