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Why I like living in Prague

St. Vitus Cathedral from Petrin — St. Vitus Cathedral, Prague photographed from Petrín Hill on New Year's Day 2011 © Ricky Yates

“Do you like living in Prague?” This is a question I’m frequently asked by Czech people once they discover that I’m not a tourist but that I’ve actually chosen to live and work here. Many Czechs cannot understand why someone from Western Europe might actually want to come and permanently reside in their country.

The same question is also frequently posed by English-speaking visitors who join us for worship at St. Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church and by family and friends when they write or speak with me. So for my first post of 2011, I’m going to set out some of the reasons why I enjoy living particularly here in Prague and more widely in the Czech Republic. Some of these I’ve mentioned in previous posts so there are an inevitable number of links to things I’ve written previously in this blog.

Jiriho z Podebrad — Metro station at Jirího z Podebrad © Ricky Yates

Public Transport

Prague has the most wonderful public transport system consisting of buses, trams, the Metro and even a number of little ferries. Why is it wonderful? Because it is:

Incredibly cheap – Last week, Sybille and I went to renew our annual season tickets for the Prague public transport system. It cost each of us 4750 Kc – at current exchange rates, just over £160.00 / €193.00 / US$250.00. For this sum we can travel anywhere in Prague, at any time, for a whole year! The Church reimburses me for my season ticket – we just have to pay for Sybille’s.

Escalator on the Prague Metro © Ricky Yates

Integrated – Each part of the system links to the other. At Dejvicka, the current terminal of the A/Green line of the Metro and the nearest Metro station to our flat, you walk out of the station and immediately in front of you is place where buses depart to take you out further into the suburbs or to the airport. The Dopravní podnik hravního mesta Prahy or dpp for short, have a wonderful website that speaks Czech, English and German. Put in the starting point of your journey and your destination, the time you either want to start or arrive and then click. Out comes a journey plan with times, where to transfer from one form of transport to another, etc.

Frequent – If you know where you are going and you are travelling on a weekday between 07.00 and 19.00, there is no real need to visit the dpp website. Once you reach your point of departure you will only need to wait a few minutes at the most. Even on Sunday mornings, there is a tram every twenty minutes which will take us from the Podbaba tram terminus near our flat, all the way to Dlouhá Trída, just around the corner from St. Clement’s Church.

Reliable – there is a timetable and nearly always, it is adhered to. Sometimes buses and trams do get delayed by other vehicular traffic, but usually only at peak periods. And when it snows, everything keeps running – it doesn’t grind to a halt as in Britain.

It isn’t just within the city of Prague. The Czech Republic, along with Slovakia, has the densest rail network of any country in the whole of Europe. One member of my congregation lives in Milovice, about 50 km from the centre of Prague. But in 45 minutes, he can travel by train into the city centre and then have a 10 minute walk to Church. I don’t exactly know what his rail fare is for the return journey but he assures me it is extremely reasonable.

Eating and Drinking

Prague has an abundance of bar-restaurants. And provided you avoid the expensive tourist traps in the city centre, ‘eating out’ can be remarkably inexpensive. As I’ve written previously, some single people tell me that it is often cheaper for them to ‘eat out’ rather than buy food from the supermarket and cook for themselves.

Large Beer — Half a litre of Kozel beer © Ricky Yates

The photo on the left is of U Topolu which, since it’s refurbishment in July 2010, has become our favourite local place to eat and drink. A main course here, even with a side dish, costs no more than 150 Kc / £5.00. The quality is excellent and portions are generous.

The further great attraction at U Topolu is the beer. As well as Pilsner Urquell and Gambrinus, they have Kozel beer, directly from the tank. It is light, fresh and costs 26 Kc for half a litre. In British terms that is under £1.00 a pint! What more do I need to say?

Architecture and Buildings

As I’ve previously written, Prague suffered remarkably little structural damage during the Second World War. And whilst many historical buildings suffered years of neglect during the Communist era, since 1989, great effort has been put into restoration. What is really pleasing is how well restoration work has been done.

Restored Building — Restored building in Vinohrady © Ricky Yates

This photograph is of a building just around the corner from where my dentist has her surgery in the suburb of Vinohrady. It consists of residential flats on four floors with retail outlets on the ground floor level. But as you can see, all the intricate detail above the windows on each level has been lovingly restored, together with the ironwork that forms the railings to each balcony. Likewise, the render on the outside of the building has been repaired before being attractively painted.

These buildings are typical of those which form much of the inner suburbs of Prague. Yes – there are still ones like these that are crumbling. But increasingly they are a minority. And rather than wholesale demolition, buildings like these are being preserved and their interiors sympathetically modernised.

I could write and illustrate several blog posts about the architecture of Prague which I promise I will do during the coming months. But for the time being, just let me say that walking the streets of the centre of Prague, together with the inner city suburbs, is always a delight to the eyes.

Not too big but not too small

Prague only has a population of about 1.3 million people. Therefore, as cities go, it is relatively small meaning that the nearby countryside can be easily reached. Yet because it is the capital of the Czech Republic, (10.3 million population), it has all the assets and facilities of a capital city.

There are many more things that I could list as to why I like living here in Prague, but this post is probably long enough already. And yes – there are also a small number of things that I don’t like. But they are minor irritants compared to the joy of living in this delightful city.

Silvestr – New Year’s Eve

Zoo 3. — In the bleak mid-winter..... © Ricky Yates

Today is 31^st December – New Year’s Eve. In Czech it is known as Silvestr as we discovered last year when the car park attendant at our local Billa supermarket wished us ‘hezky Silvestr’ as we gave him our ticket at the barrier. Sybille immediately knew what he meant as today is Silvester in German. And the reason for the name? In the Roman Catholic Church, today is the feast day of St. Sylvester/Pope Sylvester I who died on 31^st December 335.

This post is really just a quick update on the things I’ve written about in my three previous December blog posts.

Weather

Not only did winter, with considerable snowfall, come early to Prague this year – it hasn’t gone away! We had a white Christmas with snow already on the ground and more fine powdery snow falling as we travelled to Church for our Midnight service on Christmas Eve.

Zoo 1 — Emu in the snow at Prague Zoo © Ricky Yates

Yesterday, rather than being cold and cloudy, it was fine; cold but sunny. So we went to visit one of Sybille’s favourite places – Prague zoo. The weather was perfect for the polar bears, North American bison and other animals used to snow and below freezing temperatures. However, I did feel somewhat sorry for this emu though I believe he was outside by choice.

Since well before Christmas, we’ve been planning to take the car to our good friend Adrian of Nepomuk in order to have four new ‘winter tyres’ fitted and a couple of other minor things fixed. But unfortunately, the weather has been so bad we just haven’t felt able to undertake the journey. Therefore, the poor ‘Carly’, as it has become affectionately known, continues to sit outside covered in snow.

Zoo 4 — The 'Carly' in the snow © Ricky Yates

‘On the Feast of Stephen’

Our broadcast service on BBC Radio 4 on 26^th December had been very well received. As well as complimentary emails from various persons, known and unknown, one other very interesting statistic has emerged. Our Church website normally gets 10 – 15 hits a day. On Sunday 26^th December it got 153 hits!!! If you haven’t yet heard the broadcast, you can still do so during the next two days by visiting the Radio 4 Sunday Worship website.

Christmas Carp induced flooding

We’ve dried out and all the electrics are working. However, we are still awaiting a visit from our neighbour’s insurance company’s appropriately named ‘liquidator’!

Happy New Year!

Zoo 2 — Frozen waterfall in the grounds of Prague Zoo © Ricky Yates

Christmas Carp induced flooding

Carp 1 — Street stall selling Christmas carp © Ricky Yates

This post should have two sub-titles. One is the well known English saying that ‘Truth is stranger than fiction’. The second is ‘It could only happen in the Czech Republic’.

The traditional Czech Christmas delicacy is carp. They are raised in fish ponds, particularly around the town of Trebon in southern Bohemia. Then in the week before Christmas, carp sellers set up stalls in the streets of Prague where you can choose and purchase your carp as they swim around in large tubs of water. The picture above is of one such stall and you can see from the picture on the left that the price this year was 79 Kc per kilo.

Display board showing the price per kilo of Christmas carp © Ricky Yates

You can have your chosen carp killed and gutted on the stall and this ‘delightful’ practice will often leave a stream of carp blood running down the nearby street gutter. But many people, especially those who buy their carp a few days before Christmas Eve when the price this year was cheaper at 73 Kc per kilo, take there carp home still alive in a bag of water. At home, the live carp is allowed to swim in the family bath until the time comes for it to be cooked and served.

On the afternoon of Tuesday 21^st December, Sybille and I were both working in the Chaplaincy flat office when Sybille remarked that she could hear water dripping. Having checked that it wasn’t our shower which does occasionally drip, she looked around and discovered that what she had heard was water dripping from the ceiling in one corner of our hallway, adjacent to the doorways that lead into our two bedrooms. It was obviously coming from the flat immediately above us so Sybille shot upstairs to see if anyone was there. The flat above ours is occupied by a father who we now know is called Mr Tuma, together with his two teenage sons. Fortunately, one of the sons was at home and who does speak a reasonable amount of English. He was already aware that water had overflowed in their flat and he assured us that he had already stopped the flow. But then followed his incredible explanation of what had happened.

His father had bought a carp and they were keeping it alive swimming around in the bath until Christmas Eve. Their bath is like ours and has a lever tap, (as in the adjacent photo), which is raised to let water in and then is moved from side to side to increase or reduce the temperature of the water. Whilst the son was elsewhere in the flat, the carp had leapt in the bath water, flicked the tap lever and turned the tap on thus causing the bath to overflow! Hopefully, any reader will now understand the title of this piece and my suggested two sub-titles. It really was beyond belief!

Assured that the source of the water flow had been stopped and leaving a tea towel to catch and soak up the remaining drips from our hallway ceiling, we went off into the centre of Prague as we had previously planned to do. Unfortunately, when we got home a few hours later, we found more water on our floor and when Sybille tried to turn on our bedroom light, it threw the trip switch for the electricity for the whole flat.

Carp 5 — Damp patch around the ceiling light fitting in our bedroom © Ricky Yates

More water had found its way through from the flat above and chosen the easiest route to exit. This was the respective holes where the electric wiring for main light in each of our two bedrooms passes through the ceiling. And because under each light is a saucer shaped frosted glass shade (IKEA’s best!), water had gathered in the saucers and then overflowed onto the floors and beds below.

We once more called on our neighbours and fortunately by now, the father was at home. Mr Tuma speaks better German than English but in a mixture of the two languages, gave us the details of his insurance and profusely apologised for what had happened. He also assured us that the offending carp was now dead!

The next day he called again, this time with a phone number and reference number for us to make our claim on his insurance policy. We were also presented with an attractive 2011 calendar and a very nice bottle of wine and yet more grovelling apologies. Fortunately after 24 hours, everything appeared to have dried out and all our electrics are currently working properly again. We are now awaiting a visit from the insurance company’s ‘liquidator’ to sort out getting the damage to plaster and paintwork put right.

The one final funny part of this story of Christmas carp induced flooding in our flat came when Mr Tuma gave us his business card with his name and contact phone number. As he sheepishly admitted, it also revealed what his occupation is – Water Engineer!

Carp 4 — Water damage to the ceiling and walls of our hallway © Ricky Yates

Winter comes early to Prague

December snow 4 — Riverside Primary School in the snow © Ricky Yates

This winter will be the third one we have spent in Prague. In both 2008 and 2009, we had a dusting of snow before Christmas which soon rapidly melted. In both years, the really serious snow which settled and remained unmelted on the ground, didn’t arrive until January. However, this year, the snow has come early and hasn’t gone away since!

This winter, the first snow started falling during the night Sunday 28^th – Monday 29^th November. On the morning of Monday 29^th November, I was booked to conduct assembly for Riverside Primary School which fortunately is located not far from the Chaplaincy flat. Normally, I hop in the car and drive there. Seeing the snow, I decided that discretion was the better part of valour and took the bus instead. Unlike in Britain, public transport in Prague doesn’t grind to a halt as soon as snow falls!

As it was the day after Advent Sunday, I spoke to the children about the Advent season and how we can use it to prepare ourselves for the coming of Christ. I also explained why Advent had begun the previous day and not on Wednesday 1^st December when every commercial Advent calendar producer thinks it does! Here are the school children enjoying their break time out in the snowy playground immediately following my assembly. I’m sorry that the picture is a bit grey and grainy – it was still snowing when I took it!

December snow 2 — My Renault Scenic in the snow © Ricky Yates

The snow continued to fall leaving large accumulations. The photo above shows the front of my car twenty-four hours later.

December snow 1 — Overhanging snow & loose downpipe © Ricky Yates

Last week, we did have a couple of days when the temperature rose above 0 degrees and some of the snow began to melt. Besides causing some lying snow to turn to slush underfoot, a far more serious problem was accumulations of snow suddenly sliding off roofs and landing on unsuspecting individuals below.

I took this photo from our office in the Chaplaincy flat, looking across to the neighbouring block of flats which has recently been completed as part of the fourth and final stage of the Podbaba development. As you can see, a serious amount of snow is about to come off the roof! The sheer amount of snow also dislodged a piece of downpipe which has since crashed to the ground, along with the snow.

Then, just as I thought that all of the snow would melt, the temperature dropped below freezing again and earlier this week, yet more snow fell. The accumulation of snow hasn’t quite reached the proportions experienced in January this year, but it is rapidly heading in that direction.

In the midst of all this snow, life continues quite normally. Up the hill, behind the Podbaba flats complex, is a sports stadium. It is the home of Dukla Praha football team who currently are top of the Czech second division. Sensibly in view of the weather, they are currently on an extended mid-winter break and, having last played on Sunday 7^th November, they are not due to play again until early in March 2011.

The football pitch is surrounded by a running track together with a variety of all-weather pitches and facilities. The stadium is also used for other events. Quite what event was being staged there last Tuesday evening I do not know? But what ever it was, it ended with a spectacular firework display. The Czechs seem to need little excuse for having a firework display and clearly, a serious amount of lying snow wasn’t going to stop them!

December snow 3 — Firework display at the Dukla Praha Stadium © Ricky Yates

‘On the Feast of Stephen’

BBC Recording 1 — The Czech Radio recording truck outside St. Clement's Church © Ricky Yates

‘Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen’. So goes the opening lines of the well-known Christmas carol, the words being the work of the nineteenth century hymnwriter John Mason Neale. The carol is based on the life of the historical Saint Wenceslas, Duke of Bohemia (907-935), who is known in Czech as Svatý Václav, the patron saint of the Czech Republic.

Out of the blue, on Thursday 4^th November, I got a phone call from Canon Stephen Shipley, Senior Producer for BBC Radio Religion & Ethics, saying he wanted to record a service, to be broadcast by BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 26^th December 2010 – the Feast of Stephen. His idea was that the service should focus on the twin themes of St. Stephen and St Wenceslas. And because there is a large statue of the Czech saint at the far end of Václavské námestí / Wenceslas Square and he is buried in St Vitus Cathedral, he wanted to record it in Prague.

The following days were marked by a whole series of phone calls and emails, back and forth, as we tried to pull the project together. But by the end of the evening of Wednesday 24^th November, we had successfully recorded sufficient material to turn the concept outlined in Stephen’s original phone conversation with me twenty days earlier, into a reality that will be broadcast ‘On the Feast of Stephen’.

As well as speaking with me about his concept for this recorded service, Stephen Shipley had also made contact with a Czech Ecumenical Choir called Naši pevci / ‘Our voices’, who had been recommended to him and were very keen to be part of the project. As the choir normally practice on a Wednesday evening, this seemed to both them and me to be the best day of the week to record the service and two Wednesdays in early December were both pencilled in as being suitable.

But we then discovered that the technical crew from Czech Radio, with whom the BBC have a reciprocal agreement, could not do either of these dates. Thus the recording had to be far earlier than originally envisaged, eventually taking place on the evening of Wednesday 24^th November. Fortunately the Church was available that evening which was another piece of the jigsaw which had to be fitted in.

Whilst I could find volunteers from the regular congregation to read and lead intercessions, one thing I struggled with was Stephen Shipley’s request that there be two different voices leading the service – one to give some short reflections on the Biblical passages and the lives of St. Stephen and St. Wenceslas, and one to link the various parts of the service together. And he was quite keen that one of them should speak English with a Czech accent!

It was during one of our phone conversations, little more than a week before the recording was due to take place, that I suddenly had a brainwave – why not ask Petra Hanova? Petra is a Czech former member of the St. Clement’s congregation who went forward to train for ordination in the Church of England. I had never met her but many longer-standing members of the congregation spoke highly of her. All I did know was that she was now married to a fellow Anglican priest Guy Elsmore, and was working in the Diocese of Liverpool.

Fortunately, Stephen liked the idea and agreed to phone Petra to see if she was willing to take part and also be willing to write three or four reflections for the service over the weekend, thus leaving me to be the link person holding everything together. Amazingly, despite the short notice, Petra was very happy with our idea and agreed to fly to Prague on Tuesday 23^rd November to be ready for the recording the following day. Petra’s parents still live here and she was able to stay with them and combine the recording with a family visit.

On the evening of Monday 22^nd November, I drove out to the airport to meet Stephen Shipley who flew in from Manchester. He stayed in the guest bedroom of the Chaplaincy flat for the next three nights and from the following morning until the middle of Wednesday afternoon, we worked continuously putting the various pieces of the jigsaw together into a coherent service.

As well as ‘Good King Wenceslas’, to be sung by both choir and congregation, there were several choir items in both Czech and English, two other congregational carols, three Bible readings re-telling the story of Stephen, intercessions, together with four reflections from Petra. Initially, the various items all seemed rather disparate. But slowly, Stephen was able to sort them into a coherent running order. Having done so, I then had to write the text that I was going to use to link the whole service together.

It was little more than hour before we needed to leave the flat in order to reach St. Clement’s Church and let the Czech Radio technical guys into the building to set up for the recording, that I finally finished printing off ten copies of the complete text of the service, together with running orders and hymn sheets for the congregation. I would be lying if I didn’t say that it was all a little stressful!

Stephen and I got to St. Clement’s Church just before 4.00 pm to find the Czech Radio technical crew waiting and ready to go. Fortunately, they had previously recorded a Czech service in the building and therefore had a fairly clear idea how to set things up to obtain a good sound balance. Once they were happy that they had access to everything they needed, Stephen and I were able to disappear for a quick coffee and a final check through the text of the service.

BBC Recording 2 — Rev'd Petra Elsmore nee Hanova © Ricky Yates

We returned to the Church around 5.45 pm to find Petra Elsmore sitting quietly in the pew waiting for us. Very soon afterwards, Lucie Nováková the organist and Lydie Härtelová the Choir Director arrived. Lydie is not very fluent in English but, because her husband is German, speaks German very well. She thus pushed my ‘bisschen Deutsch’ to the limit trying to communicate! Fortunately, very soon afterwards Magdaléna Stamfestova, a soprano from the choir and a fluent English-speaker, arrived and took over translation duties.

I had asked the congregation to be at Church by 7.00 pm but many of them came earlier and enjoyed listening to the organist and choir practising and to the readers, intercessor, Petra and I doing voice tests. Soon after 7.00 pm, we had a practise of the congregational hymns and following some final instructions from Stephen and me, all was ready to begin recording.

Everything was done to try and make the recorded service a continuous act of worship without interruption. However, one clear instruction was that if any participant fell over their words or made a mistake, they were to stop, leave a pause, and then go back to the beginning of the sentence in which the mistake was made and start again. This was to aid post-service editing when all our mistakes and stumbles would be eliminated! Petra also had to stop and start again whilst reading one of her reflections when a choir member suddenly had a coughing fit!

It was just before 9.00 pm that we finally finished recording. Even then, Stephen made us do three or four things again because he wasn’t totally happy with one or two aspects of the recording. One complaint was the lack of a good congregational ‘Amen’ when I gave the blessing at the end of the service. Consequently the congregation ended up going out having been doubly blessed!

Once all of this was done and the congregation, choir and other participants were free to leave, I still had to stay on whilst the all the Czech Radio recording equipment was dismantled and put away. Only when the last electric wire was coiled up into the back of their van, was I able to shut the main Church doors and lock them. It was 10.10 pm – more than six hours of hard work and concentration. Very fortunately, Stephen and I found a nearby Italian restaurant that was still willing to serve us where we both enjoyed some well deserved sustenance.

Last Friday, I received an email from Stephen Shipley saying, “I have now edited the programme and I’m very pleased with it. Inevitably there are things I wished we had time to do again, but considering the short notice and the earlier than expected recording date, I think it’s come out very well”. He has promised me a CD of the recording which I’m hoping will arrive in the next few days.

The service entitled ‘On the Feast of Stephen’ will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Sunday 26^th December 2010 starting at 08.10 GMT which is 09.10 CET here in the Czech Republic. It will be possible to listen to it online and there should be ways of downloading it or listening to it later. I’ll post an additional note about this here, once I know more.

BBC Recording 3 — Lydie Härtelová, Choir Director & Magdaléna Stamfestova, soprano and translator © Ricky Yates

Update – 16^th December 2010

If you click on this link, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00wqkvd it will take you to the BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship website with details of the forthcoming broadcast.

Update – 11th January 2011

The service as recorded, has now been uploaded to our Church website. If you follow this link, scroll to the bottom of the page, and then click the link there, you can listen to it.