At 08.00 CEST tomorrow, I’m setting off to drive to Köln/Cologne, Germany to attend a Clergy Pastoral Conference and won’t be back in Prague until late on the evening of Friday 25th September. The conference will bring together all the Anglican clergy who serve in the vast Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe. This is only the second time this has ever happened, the first occasion being four years ago.
We are meeting at Kardinal Schulte Haus, a Roman Catholic conference centre just outside Köln/Cologne, and our theme is ‘Entertaining Angels – Hospitality as Mission’. There will be about 150 clergy present with our Diocesan Bishop Geoffrey Rowell & his Suffragen Bishop David Hamid, together with various visitors and speakers. It should be an enjoyable and stimulating few days. But it does mean that I won’t be able to add to this blog or moderate any comments until I’m back at the office computer next weekend. I hope that regular visitors to the blog will understand. However, I will write about the experience once I’m back.
Today, Saturday 19th September 2009, is a significant date. It marks the first anniversary of my arrival in the Czech Republic, together with my wife Sybille and Oscar the cat. In the late afternoon of Friday 19th September 2008, we arrived outside our Chaplaincy flat in Prague 6, at the end of a two day, 885 miles/1416 km drive across six countries + an English Channel ferry crossing. One year on, I’ve spent the last few days doing a little bit of reflection about how I feel about the move and all that has happened these past twelve months.
Firstly, I have no regrets about making the move. Fifteen and a half years was long enough to spend looking after ten Churches in North Oxfordshire. If I’m honest, probably two or three years longer than I would have wanted to be there. But God has his timings and I am convinced now, difficult though it was at the time, that it was worth waiting for the right move even though I had to wait more than two years and several interviews before being appointed to a new post. I’m also pleased that, nearly twelve months after I left, my former parishes finally have a new Rector. May she, (Yes – I’ve been suceeded by a lady!) take those parishes forward, building on what, under God, I and my Ministry Team colleagues, began.
Secondly, it is wonderful to no longer have responsibility for ten mediaeval Church buildings and their associated churchyards. Despite what so many people think, the Church is not a building or even an organisation. Rather, it is the people of God. Of course, mediaeval Church buildings do speak of God – they are holy stones and places where people do find space to be quiet and to pray and to worship. And I’m not a Philistine – such buildings need to be maintained and preserved. However, sometimes the conservation lobby needs to be reminded that Churches were built for Christian worship which should remain their prime purpose, rather than insisting that they become museums to the whims of the way Victorians thought they should look.
Here in Prague, the building we worship in isn’t ours – it belongs to the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren Ceskobratrské Církve Evangelické. The CCE are a joint Lutheran – Reformed denomination formed in 1918 and are by far the largest protestant grouping in the Czech Republic. Their congregation meet for worship at 9.30am each Sunday hence our service is at 11am. We pay them a modest rent for the use of their Church building and the facilities at Klimentská 18. In 2008, this amounted to around 48,000 Kc (about £1,600.00). As a result, we have no heating or electricity bills, no building insurance to pay, and no building repairs and maintenance to have to be concerned about. Instead, we can get on with being ‘Church’ without any concerns for the Church building.
However, just occasionally I do get frustrated at not owning our own Church building. Back in May when a member of the congregation died, it took two whole days before I could get confirmation from our hosts, that I could have the use of the Church building for a particular time and date in order to conduct a funeral service. The next of kin were left in complete limbo whereas, back in Oxfordshire, I could have immediately confirmed a date and time without reference to anyone else.
More recently, when our Sunday School was due to resume meeting on Sunday 6th September after the summer break, we discovered on the day, that our Sunday School room in Klimentská 18 was unavailable. Our hosts hadn’t thought to tell us earlier! But these minor irritations aside, to be able to spend time and energy on people rather than buildings, is a great joy.
What lies ahead? That is a big question. There is a saying amongst clergy that when you move to a new parish or situation, “The first year you can’t do anything wrong – the second year, you can’t do anything right!” So far, people have, almost without exception, been very supportive. But I’m about to enter my second year……! Watch this space!!!!
Although Saint Clement’s Church is located in the centre of Prague, it does lie slightly away from the streets most frequented by visiting tourists. It is situated in Klimentská, the street taking its name from the Czech form of Saint Clement, Svatý Kliment. Klimentská is accessed from Revolucní, which runs from Námestí Republiky to the River Vltava. Whilst Námestí Republiky is bright and busy, particularly since the opening in October 2007 of the Palladium Shopping Centre, Revolucní has always struck me as being a little run down, with a number of empty premises at street level.
It was therefore a most pleasant surprise a couple of months ago, when alighting from the Number 8 tram at the Dlouhá Trída tram stop on Revolucní, to see that one of these vacant premises directly alongside the tram stop, had been transformed into a new Bar-Restaurant entitled U Slabé vule. A quick examination of their menu and price list displayed in the window convinced us to try it out for Sunday lunch after our service.
For their city centre location, prices at U Slabé vule are remarkably reasonable. 0.5l of Staropramen is 25 Kc (£0.90). Meal prices range from 120 – 150 Kc (£4.00 – £5.00) with generous portions very nicely presented. Their printed menu, in Czech, German and English, is most notable for the almost complete absence of ‘Czenglish‘.
The premises themselves are large, reaching through as far as the street parallel to Revolucní to the west. It is almost divided in two by the kitchen and bar with the whole of the section on the Revolucní side being ‘non-smoking’, a rare provision in the Czech Republic. What is more, they enforce it!!! In several other bar-restaurants we have frequented, whilst there is nominally a non-smoking area, as soon as a smoker lights up, rather than telling him/her to move, the waiter brings an ashtray. At U Slabé vule, the customer is told to move to the smoking area – Halelujah!
The last two Monday evenings, U Slabé vule has become the venue for a new activity in the life of St. Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church – Czech conversation classes led by my native English, Czech-speaking Churchwarden, Gerry Turner. Over a glass or two of various varieties of liquid refreshment and a simple nicely presented meal, a small group of us are trying to lose our inhibitions and converse in Czech. Will I be successful or will I have what the name U Slabé vule actually means which is – ‘The Weak Will‘!!
PS – As you will see from the photo above, vule should really have a kroužek (ring) above the ‘u’ which is meant to lengthen the vowel sound by 30%. As with many other diacritics, most web browsers can’t cope and would render it as ‘?’, hence I’ve had to leave it out.
The imposing fortress and small town of Terezín lies about 80 km north of Prague. It is situated at the strategic location of the confluence of the Labe (Elbe) and Ohre (Eger) rivers and was constructed on the orders of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor Joseph II in order to keep the Prussians at bay. It was formerly known as Theresienstadt in honour of the Empress Maria Theresa. On the eastern side of the Ohre lies the original small fortress whilst on the western side there is a far larger fortress within which there is a small town with a sizeable central square and a grid iron pattern of streets.
In 1940, soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, the Gestapo took over the small fortress to use as a prison. A year later, the resident population of about 3000 people were evicted from the town inside the main fortress and the whole complex was then turned into a transit camp for European Jews as part of Hitler’s ‘final solution‘.
Over the following four years, more than 140,000 Jews passed through Terezín. Around 33,000 died here because of the appalling cramped conditions. At one point, there were over 58,000 inmates in a town that previously had a population of 3000! More than 87,000 were sent on to their death in concentration camps further east, in particular to Auschwitz. Only around 17,000 survived and some of these died from an outbreak of typhus around the time the camp was liberated by the Red Army in May 1945.
Ironically, despite the horrific role Terezín played in the Jewish holocaust, it was also used as a vehicle for Nazi propaganda and portrayed to visitors from the International Committee of the Red Cross as a self-administering ‘Jewish Refuge’. Despite the awful conditions, there was an amazing amount of community life with plays and concerts being performed and artwork and literature produced.
The Terezín Memorial was established in 1991 in order to retell the story of what happened here, to preserve and display art and literature produced by those interned, and to preserve numerous buildings including the crematorium, a fascinating Jewish Prayer room with Hebrew inscriptions from the Psalms on the walls, together with the whole of the small fortress, little changed from how it was in 1945.
Terezín had been on Sybille’s and my list of places to visit since we moved to the Czech Republic. Therefore when my sister Jenny stayed with us recently and also expressed an interest in going there, we took the opportunity to do so. It is not an enjoyable day out – far from it. Rather it is quite a sobering experience but certainly one I’m very glad I’ve experienced.
There is an excellent museum in two parts. The Ghetto Museum itself tells the story of Terezín and puts it in the context of the wider events of the Second World War. Then within the nearby Magdeburg Barracks there are displays of the amazing cramped conditions in which internees were forced to live, as well as displays of artwork, music and literature, all of which was produced in these appalling circumstances. You can then walk around the town to visit the other sites including exploring the whole of the small fortress. Everything is explained in four languages, Czech, German, English and Hebrew, and for once, the English is excellent with hardly any examples of that peculiar language I call Czenglish.
Terezín is a slightly eerie place and it must be somewhat strange for the nearly 3000 people who once again reside in the town to be surrounded by all this horrific relatively recent history. But as the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of World War Two is currently being marked in Poland and elsewhere, it is important that all that happened at Terezín is preserved and re-told to the next generation.
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 21st 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 19th 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.
