Exploring the Czech Republic

Suspension bridge across the Lužnice River © Ricky Yates

At the beginning of 2011, I wrote a blogpost entitled ‘Why I like living in Prague’. Whilst I still stand by everything I wrote twelve months ago, I should really have also added, ‘Because it also allows you to very easily explore other parts of the Czech Republic’.

Regular readers of this blog will know that Sybille & I have spent much of our holiday time these past eighteen months, exploring various different parts of this small landlocked Central European country. And whilst Prague is wonderful, there are times when some of the central parts of the city do get rather overwhelmed by tourists. But as I hope some of my previous posts have shown, there is much of beauty and historical interest elsewhere in the Czech Republic and these places see vastly fewer visitors.

The picture above is an illustration of what I mean. This is a mid-nineteenth century suspension bridge across the Lužnice River, near the village of Stádlec, about twelve kilometres west of Tábor, which we drove across in October last year. It is a beautiful spot as well as being a fascinating piece of engineering.

When originally constructed in 1847-48, the bridge took the road from Tábor to Písek across the Vltava River, near the village of Podolí. In 1960, it was dismantled, because of the flooding of that part of the valley of the Vltava River following the construction of the Orlík Dam, and replaced by a higher concrete bridge. The original bridge was then re-assembled at it current site in 1975 to replace a previous ferry crossing.

What I hope the picture also illustrates is the beauty of the Czech countryside because so much of it is forested – about 35% of the total area of the country. This is in stark contrast to the UK where the figure is no more than 10%.

Male figures supporting a building on Námestí Svobody, Brno © Ricky Yates

Also in October 2011, I visited Brno for the first time, as part of my exploration of starting a satellite congregation in the Czech Republic’s second largest city. Although I’ve now been to Brno three times, I have still to really begin to explore all that the city has to offer. Doing so is firmly on my agenda for 2012.

In my brief walk around the city centre during my first visit to Brno, I did enjoy seeing this building, located on one side of Námestí Svobody, the main city square. In contrast to so many buildings in Prague which are supported by scantily clad female figures, here it is four extremely muscled male figures who are trying to hold up the building and hold on to their loincloths at the same time!

One area of the Czech Republic that is also on my agenda to visit during 2012 is the Orliké hory / Adlergebirge / Eagle Mountains in East Bohemia on the border with Poland. The area looks highly attractive even though it doesn’t even rate a mention in our Lonely Planet Guide to the Czech & Slovak Republics. But what has really drawn my attention is that in the heart of these mountains there is a village that bears my name – Ricky.

The village is actually called Rícky v Orlických horách, and there should be a hacek, a little hook, above both the ‘R’ and the ‘c’ in ‘Ricky, as there should be above the ‘c’ in ‘hácek’. But as I know from past experience, for technical reasons that are beyond my comprehension, if I put one in, the letter will appear as ‘?’ in the text of this blog.

‘Rícka’ means ‘stream’ and so with the ‘a’ replaced with a ‘y’, the word is made plural meaning ‘streams’. ‘v Orlických horách’ just means ‘in the Eagle Mountains’. But regardless of what it means, I’ve never previously come across anywhere called ‘Ricky’. I’m looking forward to my visit!

 

Sam – 25/08/10 – 02/01/12 – At peace

Sam © Ricky Yates

This is not the first blog post of 2012 that I wanted to write. After a long consultation with the vet, and an equally long discussion between Sybille and myself, we together took the very difficult decision last Monday morning, of having our dog Sam, put to sleep.

Unfortunately, starting in mid-November 2011, Sam began to exhibit characteristics totally out of character for a Labrador. He became aggressive towards other dogs and on occasions & without any apparent reason & with no warning, aggressive towards other humans. This culminated in him biting the hand of a very good friend who was with us in the Chaplaincy Flat on New Year’s Eve.

The vet believes that Sam had developed some serious form of neurological disorder which would be impossible to treat or to find any cure. In the previous six weeks, he had rapidly ceased to be the happy, lively dog that we had come to love since we adopted him in mid-April 2011. Instead, he had become very reactive to every little disturbance around him He was never relaxed and had long ceased to be at peace with himself.

We both treasure the good memories that we have of Sam – swimming in Slapy Lake and, particularly for me, climbing Snežka with him. Sybille also christened him ‘our weight loss programme’. Since adopting Sam, we have between us shed over 30 kg in weight! We both very much miss not having him around but at least know that Sam is finally at peace.

Christmas Eve 2011 in Prague

Tribute to former President Václav Havel in a lady’s fashion shop window © Ricky Yates

I’m writing this on Christmas Eve, just a few hours before setting out from the Chaplaincy Flat to St Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church in the centre of Prague, in order to celebrate our Christmas Midnight Eucharist which begins at 23.30 this evening. It is now dark and therefore in terms of the liturgical Church year, the season of Advent has ended and we have entered the Christmas season.

As I mentioned in my earlier blogpost entitled ‘Advent Sunday‘, this year, because of Christmas Day being on a Sunday, the preceding season of Advent has been a full four weeks long. Depending on which day of the week Christmas Day falls, in some years the fourth ‘week’ of Advent is only one or two days long. However, further to my blogpost of earlier this week, here in Prague the fourth week of Advent has been overshadowed by the death of former President Václav Havel last Sunday and the preparations for his state funeral which took place yesterday.

In that earlier post about Havel, I did say that, ‘as I previously understood it, the general consensus was that in many respects, Havel was more highly regarded outside of this country than within in it’. However, I did then go on to say that what I had then seen in the thirty hours following his death when I wrote that piece was rapidly changing that understanding. What I have observed since then has completely changed that view.

The photo above is probably the best way to illustrate what I mean. Here in the window of an upmarket lady’s fashion store ‘5th Avenue’, a whole display window has been given over to a tribute to Havel with his picture, a number of votive candles, and a large flower arrangement. Even in our favourite local bar-restaurant U Topolu where we ate yesterday evening, in one corner was a picture of Havel pinned to the wall with a votive candle in front of it. I meant to take a picture of that as well but unfortunately failed to do so.

Our Christmas Eve dinner © Ricky Yates

But with all of this going on, the city has also been busy getting ready to celebrate Christmas. Which of course raises the interesting question of when do you actually celebrate the festival. Here in the Czech Republic, the greater celebration takes place on Christmas Eve as it does in many other continental European countries. This is well illustrated by the wonderful Prague public transport system which goes onto a night timetable early in the afternoon of Christmas Eve but then runs a normal Sunday timetable on Christmas Day.

As my wife Sybille is German, having the main celebration on Christmas Eve is also her tradition. Therefore we had our Christmas Dinner this evening – a very tasty roast duck with vegetables. Appropriately, the duck had been reared and packaged in Germany but, as we frequently experience here, with a sticky label in Czech stuck over the German cooking instructions!

Veselé Vánoce – Happy Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lessons and Carols in Brno

The Prague crew, together with Katka, gathered around the organ. From l to r, David Hellam, Karen Moritz, Katka Bánová, Larry Leifeste, Celieta Leifeste, Gordon Truefit, Ricky Yates © Celieta Leifeste

As I wrote in my previous post, last Sunday evening, 18th December 2011, the Prague Anglican congregation created a little bit of history by holding the first ever English-language Anglican service in Brno. In the appropriately named Betlémský Kostel / Bethlehem Chapel, we held a Service of Lessons and Carols for Christmas.

Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic with a population of about 400,000 people. It is home to a number of high tech companies together with numerous university and research institutions therefore meaning that there are quite a large number of English-speakers living there. But unlike Prague (population 1.3 million), where St. Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church is one of eight mainstream English-speaking congregations, in Brno there are only two – a Roman Catholic one and an small Evangelical Fellowship with no Pastor. In terms of the Christian spectrum, there is a large gap in between for which there is currently no provision whatsoever.

Officially the whole of the Czech Republic is my ‘parish’ and in the more than three years I have been here, I have had a couple of enquiries from individuals spending a few months in Brno, asking if we ever hold English-language services in the city. Sadly, I’ve always had to reply saying that we don’t. In recent months, as I have talked with members of the Church Council as to how we might ‘grow the congregation’, it has often struck me that we ought to look at doing so away from Prague in places where there is ‘far less competition’ (if you will excuse that expression this context) and where there is almost certainly far greater need.

Earlier this year whilst I was pondering all of this, I had a totally unexpected phone call from a fluent English-speaking Czech young lady from Brno called Katka. I should really say extremely fluent as she makes a living as a freelance interpreter and translator. What Katka wanted was any old hymnbooks we might have, so that the Czech congregation to which she belongs, could occasionally sing a hymn in English. Taking her phone call as the prompting of the Holy Spirit, I put to her the idea I had of trying to start a satellite English-speaking Anglican congregation in Brno.

Fortunately, Katka was immediately enthusiastic and has since spent numerous hours doing research on my behalf, finding possible Church buildings to use, and helping to organise publicity, particularly via the Brno Expat Centre. The project has also involved me in two day trips to Brno by train, in order to meet people and look at venues. But all of this preparation led to the successful holding of our first ever service last Sunday evening.

I’ve also been most encouraged by the support and enthusiasm of members of the Prague Anglican congregation regarding the Brno venture. As can be seen in the photograph above, five of them volunteered to come with me to Brno for the service. All of them first came to our Sunday Eucharist at 11.00 in the morning in Prague, then managed some quick refreshment at our post-service Coffee Hour, before taking the tram for three stops to the main railway station in order to catch the 13.42 train for Brno. The return train got back at to Prague at 23.15 meaning that we didn’t get back to our respective homes until around midnight.

Larry & Celieta Leifeste at the organ with no volume pedal! © Ricky Yates

Our organist was Larry Leifeste who with his wife Celieta, only joined our congregation in August when they moved from Texas to Prague. It was obviously the first time he had ever played the organ in the Bethlehem Chapel and he found that much to his surprise, it had no volume pedal. How then did he increase the volume? By literally ‘pulling out all the stops’!

Celieta sang two wonderful solos – a setting of the Magnificat and an American spiritual ‘Sweet little Jesus boy’. David Hellam and Gordon Truefit both read a lesson and together with me, sang the individual verses of ‘We three kings’; Gordon as ‘gold’, myself as ‘frankincense’ and David as ‘myrrh’. David along with Karen Moritz also did the important job of welcoming all those who came.

Katka also read a lesson as did three other Brno people that she successfully recruited. Katka also helped to lay on some wonderful post-service refreshments giving me the chance to talk with several of those who attended.

Several of the thirty-strong congregation filled out contact forms with various expressions of interest in being part of future services. Currently, these are planned to start on a monthly basis on Sunday 8th January 2012 using a smaller nearby venue belonging to the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. More details can be found on the new Brno page of our website.

I am really quite excited about starting a satellite congregation in Brno. I suspect that we will be quite small to start with but, as Jesus said, “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18. 20 TNIV Or alternatively, ‘from small acorns, large oak trees grow’. Watch this space!

 

Václav Havel – death of a statesman

Front page of 'Dnes' - Monday 19th December 2011
 Yesterday, Sunday 18th December, was a very significant day in the life of the Anglican Church here in the Czech Republic when we held our first ever service in Brno. However, just as I and five members of the Prague congregation were leaving Coffee Hour following our Sunday morning Eucharist in Prague in order to catch the train to Brno, news reached us of the death of Václav Havel, leading dissident during the communist era, first President of post-communist Czechoslovakia and, following the Velvet Divorce, President of the Czech Republic 1993 -2003.

I returned home from Brno, just after midnight last night, to find the death of Václav Havel as the leading news story on the BBC News website – the first time in over three years of living here in Prague that I can remember a news story from the Czech Republic being so featured. However, within a few hours, the story had lost top billing to the death of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. In many respects, this is understandable as the death of the North Korean leader means there is a great deal of concern around the world as to what future leadership will emerge within that unpredictable nuclear power.

Living here as a foreigner in the Czech Republic, I have been trying to get the measure of how Czech people feel about the death of one of their most famous citizens. As I had previously understood it, the general consensus was that in many respects, Havel was more highly regarded outside of this country than within in it. Judging by what has happened within the last 30 hours or so since his death, that understanding may well be wrong.
The picture above is of the front page of today’s edition of Dnes /’Today’, one of the leading Czech national newspapers. The first section of the paper, all sixteen pages of it, is completely given over to reports about a whole variety of aspects of the life and death of Václav Havel to the total exclusion of any other news. In the second section for regional news, the first three pages are given over to describing the reaction in Prague to Havel’s death. All of that I believe, speaks volumes – newspaper editors usually know what their readers want to read.

What will be totally new territory for this nation is the organisation of a state funeral at which the attendance of numerous major figures from around the world is expected. No Czech national of the stature of Václav Havel has died since the fall of communism just over twenty-two years ago. Preparations for this event, which it is currently suggested, will happen this coming Friday, will be interesting to observe. As for the first ever English-language Anglican Carol Service in Brno, a blog post will follow shortly.