Baba and Podbaba

'Residence Podbaba' with the Crown Plaza Hotel © Ricky Yates

The immediate area of Prague in which our home, the Chaplaincy Flat, is situated is known as Podbaba. The terminal station for the Number 8 Tram which we catch to travel into the City Centre to reach St. Clement’s Church, is also called ‘Podbaba’. ‘Pod’ in Czech means ‘under’ and behind our flats complex lies a steep wooded ridge between the Vltava and Šárka valleys which is called ‘Baba’. Hence we live in Podbaba – ‘under Baba’.

We regularly walk up the tarmac pathway through the woods, which leads from our flats complex up onto the Baba ridge. From the ridge, there are some wonderful views which I hope these three accompanying photographs help to illustrate.

In the foreground of the first photograph is our flats complex that the developers like to call ‘Residence Podbaba’. You can follow the link to the English version of the sales website. Our flat was built as part of the first phase of the development and my predecessor as Chaplain, John Philpott and his wife Margaret, moved into it just over four years ago in January 2006. It is located in the building immediately below the orangey-red square patch in the middle of the photograph.

The orangey-red square patch is on a building directly opposite our main balcony and is part of the fourth and final phase of the whole development. This has been under construction for the whole of the nearly 19 months we have lived here. Fortunately, the building work is now almost complete with the laying of paths and landscaping being undertaken in the last few weeks.

The tall building behind the ‘Residence Podbaba’ flats development is a wonderful example of the architectural style usually known as ‘Stalinist Baroque’.  It is based on the design of Moscow University and was originally built during the communist era, as a hotel for visiting senior military personnel from Warsaw Pact countries. These days it functions in a more capitalist manner as the Austrian owned ‘Crowne Plaza Hotel’. However, Sybille always refers to the star on the pinnacle of the tower as the ‘Star of Stalingrad’!

Podbaba Lock with the Hydrological Station and sewage works © Ricky Yates

The end of the Baba ridge directly overlooks the Vltava River which runs through the centre of Prague. As I have written previously, the River Vltava is navigable from where it leaves the Labe/Elbe at Melnik, all the way to Prague and onwards to the Slapy Dam. This picture shows Podbaba Lock with Hydrolologický Ústav (the Hydrological Station) in front of it and Prague’s main sewage works behind. Amazingly, we have never experienced any foul smells despite the sewage works being in such close proximity.

View across Prague from the Baba ridge © Ricky Yates

This next photograph shows the view looking towards the centre of Prague. In the foreground is ‘Residence Podbaba’ with part of the orangey-red patch just visible on the right. In the middle-distance left is the distinctive tower of the Crowne Plaza Hotel. In the far distance on the left is St. Vitus Cathedral which lies within the walls of Prague Castle. On the right in the far distance, is Petrin Hill, with a smaller version of the Eiffel Tower on top.

Not only does the Baba ridge provide wonderful views across Prague, it is also the location of a fascinating model housing exhibition dating from the early 1930s. The construction of the Baba Ideal Housing Estate, as with similar ones in Vienna and Budapest, was inspired by the success of the Weissenhofsiedlung, a housing exhibition that had been mounted by the Deutsche Werkbund (German Work Federation) in Stuttgart in 1927. The Werkbund was a group of enterprising architects and designers founded in Munich in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius. Somewhat similar to the Viennese Wiener Werkstätte and the English Arts and Crafts Movement in their production of quality products, they differed in being unopposed to reaping the financial rewards made possible through industrial mass production.

In September 1932 the Czech Werksbund mounted their own model housing exhibition under the guidance of the Modernist architect and town planner Pavel Janák. They selected the Baba ridge as the location for their exhibition and thirty three houses, by a variety of architects, were erected. Set side-by-side so their qualities could be judged comparatively, they are strung out along the sloping terrain so as to maximise the view from each building. The houses were individually and specifically designed to provide simple, and affordable yet innovative living spaces for ordinary families.

Bauhaus-style house © Ricky Yates
Bauhaus-style house © Ricky Yates
Bauhaus-style house © Ricky Yates
Bauhaus-style house © Ricky Yates

Meant to be only temporary, the geometric Bauhaus-style houses, which still appear modern today, were ultimately bought up by the Czech avant-garde, having proved too expensive for the original target market. In more recent times, many have been divided into two or three flats.

Bauhaus-style house © Ricky Yates
Bauhaus-style house © Ricky Yates
Bauhaus-style house © Ricky Yates
Bauhaus-style house © Ricky Yates
Bauhaus-style house in need of some renovation © Ricky Yates

Whilst most of these architectural gems are in good order, a small number are in need of rescue and renovation. This one is an example of one that could do with a little bit of tender, loving care.

Vesele Velikonoce – Happy Easter!

Painted eggs hung on ribbons decorate a Czech garden © Ricky Yates

I’ve just re-read the blog post I wrote in April 2009 entitled ‘My first Holy Week & Easter in the Czech Republic’. Inevitably last year was a fairly steep learning curve both in understanding the way Easter is marked by the predominantly secular society here in the Czech Republic as well as finding out how best to celebrate the Christian festival with an English-speaking, predominantly ex-pat congregation. Overall, I think the experience gained and lessons learned from 2009, have helped me through this recent rather busy time from Palm Sunday through to Easter Day.

One of the really attractive Czech traditions at Easter is to use ribbons to tie decorated eggs to trees in gardens or attach them to sticks and place them in window boxes or pots containing spring flowers. I’ve chosen to illustrate this post with some examples photographed in the immediate surroundings of our Chaplaincy flat.

Czech Easter garden gate decoration © Ricky Yates

Many Czechs also attach Easter wreaths to their front doors in a similar manner to the more common practice in the UK and elsewhere, of attaching a wreath of greenery & red berries at Christmas. As you can see, the photograph I’ve included here is of a wreath attached, not to the front door, but to the front garden gate of a house on the Baba estate.

As I mentioned in last year’s blog post, unlike in the UK, Good Friday is not a public holiday in the Czech Republic. Instead, for most people is an ordinary working day. But Easter Monday very definitely is a public holiday. And it results in some interesting contrasts with what happens over the Easter weekend in England.

Since the law regarding Sunday trading in England and Wales was relaxed in 1994, large supermarkets and stores have been able open for up to six hours on any Sunday except Easter Day. However, here in the Czech Republic, both of our local supermarkets, (‘Billa’ and ‘Albert’), were open on Easter Sunday for the same number of hours as on any other Sunday in the year. But today, Easter Monday, both are completely shut as they were on Easter

Czech Easter decoration of a small tree © Ricky Yates

Monday last year. Contrast this with England where on Easter Monday, most large supermarkets will be open at least between 9am and 6pm if not for longer hours.

As a Church, we marked Holy Week and Easter with a similar pattern of services to last year. We held a Maundy Thursday evening Eucharist to commemorate our Lord’s Last Supper. On Good Friday evening, I led a devotional service which included reading the Passion narrative from the Gospel of John with times of silence for reflection and prayer. Whilst both services were appreciated by those who attended them, the overall numbers doing so were relatively small. And yet for me, the joy of Easter Day is always so much more meaningful if I have first sought to enter into and tried to understand the pain of betrayal and suffering that Jesus experienced that first Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

Our Easter Day Eucharist, though not quite as well attended as last year, still drew a large congregation. Whilst some of our regulars, particularly some who either teach in or have children in one of the International Schools here in Prague, were away in their home countries for the Easter break, we lose far fewer than we do at Christmas or during July and August.

In reverse, some of our regulars have family and friends who come to visit them for Easter. On Palm Sunday, the children of one of our newer worshipping families proudly told me that Grandma was flying in from England to stay with them at Easter. Yesterday morning, I was duly introduced to Grandma who joined the whole family for Easter Day worship.

Probably about half of the congregation were visitors, enjoying a long weekend visit to Prague and pleased to be able to worship in English on Easter Sunday. There were fewer Brits and more Americans than in 2009, together with a couple from Melbourne, Australia and a female lawyer from Canada amongst those who told me about themselves at the door after the service. Most interestingly, there was a Turkish family, the daughter now resident in London and who spoke fluent English, who wanted to experience being part of a Church service on Easter Day.

Czech flowerpot decorated for Easter © Ricky Yates

Afterwards, the young lady told me that her father in particular, had found the experience ‘quite moving’.

As I increasingly like us to do, we sang hymns which were a mixture of traditional and modern. For me, you cannot really have Easter Sunday without singing ‘Jesus Christ is risen today, alleluia’, which we did as our opening hymn. We also sang the traditional hymn ‘The strife is o’er, the battle done’ to the Palestrina tune ‘Victory’. But, as far as I am aware, we also sang for the first time at St. Clements, the Graham Kendrick song ‘Led like a lamb to the slaughter’. I was pleased that there were sufficient members of the congregation who already knew it and, even those who didn’t, soon caught on to the rousing chorus declaring ‘You’re alive, you’re alive, you have risen! Alleluia!

We ended the service with the twentieth century hymn, ‘Thine be the glory’, to the tune ‘Maccabaeus’ by Handel. The English words of the hymn are a translation from the French by Richard Hoyle. The original is ’À toi la glorie’, written by the French-speaking Swiss, Edmond Budry. But as I told the congregation before we sang it, it was not the first time that Easter Day that the Church walls had re-echoed to the hymn. For whilst standing outside the Church in advance of our service, waiting for our host congregation, the Evangelical Church of  Czech Brethren to finish theirs, what did I hear but the joyful singing of the self-same hymn – in Czech!

Alleluia. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!

A ferry across the Vltava

Ferry boat moored at the ferry terminal at Podbaba © Ricky Yates

I’ve written previously about the wonderful integrated public transport system here in Prague. It consists of buses, trams and the metro. They do all interconnect and allow access to every part of the city. Not only are services frequent and reliable, unlike in the UK, they don’t stop functioning as soon as it snows!

And travel on the whole system is so remarkably cheap. Sybille and I both buy an annual season ticket. The Chaplaincy kindly pay for mine. Each annual season ticket costs 4750 Kc which at current exchange rates is about £168.00. A combination of this great value, together with the extreme winter weather which has only recently finally relented, may explain why I haven’t put petrol in my car since December 2009!

Ferry crossing the Vltava © Ricky Yates

However, not only does the integrated public transport system include buses, trams and the metro, it also includes three little passenger ferries across the River Vltava. Two of these lie relatively close to where we live and help overcome the fact that there is no road bridge across the river after Most Baríkádníku just north of the city centre at Holešovice, until the town of Kralupy, many kilometres further north of Prague.

One ferry terminus on our side of the River Vltava, is just a short walk or two stops on the bus from the Chaplaincy flat. It goes across to Podhori on the other side from where it is only a further short walk to one of Sybille’s favourite places to visit – Prague Zoo. Last month, I crossed to river on the ferry and caught the connecting bus on the other side, in order to travel on to the hospital in Bohnice to make a pastoral visit to one of the congregation. The journey took no more than twenty minutes. Not using the ferry, it would have taken nearly an hour.

Despite being rather small, not only are foot passenger transported across the river by ferry, but also bicycles and children in pushchairs and buggies.

Ferry crosing the Vltava, seen from the Baba ridge with the paneláks of Bohnice on the opposite hillside © Ricky Yates

The Royal Visit – as it happened – part two

The Order of Service for Passion Sunday

When the ‘Official group from the UK’ visited St. Clement’s Church on Saturday 16th January 2010 in order to begin planning the details of this Royal Visit, I was asked  what form our normal 11am Sunday service took. I replied that, as it was the only service we had on a Sunday, it was a service of Holy Communion or ‘Sung Eucharist’ as we normally call it. I was then asked how long the service lasted and I replied that it was normally around an hour and a quarter.

The emphasis of all our discussions was the desire that the Royal Couple should be able to join with the regular congregation for their normal Sunday service. However, I was asked whether, because of certain timetabling constraints, I could keep the service to about an hour and I gave the assurance that, with a little bit of judicious trimming it would be perfectly possible. It was on this basis that I planned the liturgy for the day together with an appropriate emphasis on it being Passion Sunday.

Therefore, it came as a considerable disappointment when in the late afternoon of Thursday 11th March, I received a phone call asking that, because of time constraints, the Church service should be non-eucharistic. It was further suggested that in order for me to fulfil the requirements of Canon Law, the ‘Ministry of the Sacrament’ could then follow shortly afterwards as a separate service for all who wanted to stay on and receive Communion.

Therefore the service attended by our Royal Visitors was a Service of the Word but it included all the elements that would have been in our normal Sung Eucharist from the beginning of the service stopping short of the Peace. We had the set Bible Readings, four hymns, Gerry led our Intercessions and I preached. And as it was,  we completed all of this in just over forty-five minutes,

In the end, everybody seemed to enjoy both services. Prince Charles in particular obviously enjoyed the hymns. And the vast majority of people stayed after the Royal Party departed, for the celebration of the Eucharist. Many of them also came on to Coffee Hour in Klimentská 18 including all of the Dutch young people.

I complained in a previous post about the lack of coverage of the Royal Visit to Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic by the BBC in particular, as well as by much of the British media. However, with great delight Gerry Turner phoned me this morning alert me to this article and photograph that has appeared in this morning’s ‘Daily Telegraph’. I have to say that it is a ‘first’ for me to have my photo appear in a British national newspaper.

As always, one can pick holes in what the journalist has reported. To say in the sub-title, that we were joined by two ‘unexpected worshippers’, is somewhat exaggerated. I’ve known for two months and the whole congregation has known for over two weeks that our Royal Visitors were coming. The congregation is far from being just ‘British and American ex-pats’. Each Sunday, the number of nationalities in the congregation always runs into double figures. The Czech Republic always likes to be described as being part of ‘Central Europe’ rather than ‘Eastern Europe’. And our Sunday School is for children who are 4+ and upwards in age not ‘three and four-year-olds’.

As for the closing quote, Gerry agrees he used the word ‘chuffed’ though not exactly in the manner that it is reported. However, it certainly true, that the Americans who rebelled against and kicked out Prince Charles’ forbears, were some of people most thrilled by the presence of our Royal Visitors at St. Clements last Sunday!

The Royal Visit – as it happened – part one

The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall arrive at St. Clement's Church accompanied by the British Ambassador Sian MacLeod (far left) © Sybille Yates

Further to my previous posts entitled ‘A forthcoming Royal visit’, ‘Three days to go…….’ and ‘Only 12 hours to go…..’, today was the big day when, as part of their official visit to the Czech Republic, Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, joined the regular St. Clement’s Church congregation for our Sunday morning worship.

I set the alarm for 6am, just to be sure I had plenty of time to have a shower, eat breakfast and collect everything together, ready to travel into the city centre. In fact, the four-legged alarm clock called Oscar, landed on my bed before 6 am. I think he knew I had to get up early!

The 9.34am Number 8 tram duly carried Sybille and I from Podbaba to Dlouhá Trída in the 18 minutes it was scheduled to do, meaning that we arrived outside of the Church at about 9.55am, more than an hour before the Royal Party was due to arrive. However, the streets around the Church were completely clear of cars and numerous policemen were already patrolling. Only when I pointed to my clerical collar was I allowed to walk across the road and stand nearer to the Church. This rather confirmed my worst fears that the security concerns of the Czech police might prevent some regular members of the congregation actually getting to Church.

Our host congregation, the Ceskobratrské Cíckve Evangelické /the Evangelical Church of  Czech Brethren, were having their normal 9.30am service. As I stood near the door I could hear their hymn singing and the voice of Pastor Eva Halamová. However, Pastor Eva had previously promised that she would try and shorten their service a little and, true to her word, they finished at 10.15am, a full 10-15 minutes earlier than normal. As I entered the Church, Pastor Eva and I exchanged a hug as I thanked her for her cooperation and she wished me well for our service.

I was followed into Church by several Czech security personnel and a couple of sniffer dogs as the whole premises were carefully searched to see anything untoward could be found. Only  Churchwarden Gerry Turner, Sacristan Marshall Johnson and Welcomers Peter Morpuss and Amanda Neill, were allowed in until the search was completed.

Once the congregation were allowed in, the Church began to fill rapidly. It was good to see that many of the regular congregation had heeded my instructions and had come to Church in good time rather than dashing in at the last minute. And there were quite a number of somewhat unfamiliar faces who had obviously mainly come to see our Royal Visitors though many were friends and family of regular members of the congregation.

I was fortunately in the vestry when my mobile phone rang at 10.35am. It was Sher, an American member of the congregation saying that she and several other people were across the street from the Church but were being prevented from getting to Church by the police. I charged down the aisle still talking on my phone and was very helpfully followed by Gerry Turner and a couple of British diplomats from the Embassy. Between us we sorted things out and hopefully nobody who wanted to come to Church in the normal way was prevented from doing so.

However, one of my most abiding memories of today will be of an angry Gerry Turner telling a Czech policeman in no uncertain terms in Czech, that he was behaving like the police used to during the latter years of the Communist regime! Gerry can speak from experience having lived in Prague for ten years during the Communist era. I don’t think the policeman concerned was quite expecting that!

Gerry Turner and me waiting for the arrival of the Royal Party © Sybille Yates

By 10.50am, the Church was virtually full with only the reserved pews empty and the rarely used seats along the side walls also occupied. Sitting in many of these were a group of over twenty young people who I assumed had just come to see our Royal Visitors. My assumption proved to be completely wrong. They were a group of young Dutch Christians who had taken part in a competition which involved travelling in pairs and hitchhiking from Utrecht to Prague. They came to Church to worship totally unaware that we were expecting special guests!

Soon after 10.50am, I spoke to the congregation reminding them of the note in the front of the Order of Service about turning off mobile phones and that no photography or videoing of any of the service was allowed. I then went to the main door to wait with Gerry Turner, for the arrival of the Royal Party.

We stood and waited opposite a large group of accredited press photographers which included Sybille. There were quite a large number of people gathered to watch on the far side of the street and many locals looking out on proceedings from the windows of the surrounding apartment buildings.

Right on time at 11am, preceded by numerous police cars all with blue lights flashing, the Royal Party arrived. The accompanying photographs taken by Sybille, illustrate the event far better than my written words.

Elise, better known as 'Pixel' with her posy of daffodils for the Duchess, together with Mom Susanne, Dad Mark and Gerry Turner © Sybille Yates

Me greeting Prince Charles whilst the Duchess and Gerry Turner look on © Sybille Yates

The Duchess of Cornwall with her flower posy, together with the Prince of Wales, walk towards the Church entrance watched by Peter Morpuss, Church Council member and welcomer for the special occasion, together Pixel's parents and Gerry Turner © Sybille Yates

Amanda Neill, the second welcomer on this special day, looks on as the Prince, the Duchess and the British Ambassador approach the Church door © Sybille Yates

Once I had escorted the Royal Party to their pew, the service started and, I am very pleased to say, ran remarkably smoothly. But more of that in my next blog post…….