The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (to give my home country its full official name), does not have a National Day as such. Some of the constituent parts of the UK do have their own special day with the Welsh making much of ‘Dydd Dewi Sant – St. David’s Day’ on 1st March and the Irish, both north and south of the border, celebrating St. Patrick on 17th March.
The nearest we get to a National Day is the Queen’s Official Birthday. This is usually celebrated on the second Saturday of June each year. Queen Elizabeth the Second’s actual birthday is 21st April but she has her official birthday in June in the hope the weather will be better for events put on to mark the occasion, most notably, the Trooping of the Colour ceremony in London.
The occasion of the Queen’s Official Birthday is used by British Embassies in foreign capital cities around the world, as a very good excuse to host a diplomatic reception. So it was that on Thursday 11th June, Her Excellency Linda Duffield CMG, the British Ambassador to the Czech Republic, hosted a Reception marking the official birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, and we were invited to attend!
The British Embassy, like a number of other foreign embassies, is situated in Mala Strana, the ‘Little Town’ or ‘Lesser Town’, an area of wonderful architectural delights that lies immediately below Prague Castle. It occupies a building originally known as Thun Palace which has a history going back to mediaeval times. You can read more about it on the embassy website here.
Having passed the inevitable security check and climbed up several flights of stairs through the embassy building, we arrived in the embassy gardens that lie immediately under the walls of the castle, to be formally welcomed by the ambassador. I had previously had an hour-long meeting with Linda Duffield back in January. But Sybille had never met her before so I introduced her to the ambassador and remarked that as a German citizen, Sybille was surprised to be invited to a reception marking the British monarch’s birthday! In reply the ambassador pointed out that the German ambassador was actually immediately in front of us!
The guest of honour at the reception was the President of the Czech Republic, Václav Klaus. His official residence in Prague Castle effectively overlooks the British Embassy garden and jokes about looking down on the ambassador and her embassy were an inevitable part of his speech. This followed the ambassador’s speech in which she spoke of good Czech – British relations over the 90 years since the first ambassador of the UK to the newly formed nation of Czechoslovakia, presented his letters of appointment to President Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk in 1919. The speeches were followed by the playing of ‘God save the Queen’ and the Czech national anthem.
The Reception was an interesting mixture of things British, with Pimms being one of the drinks served, and things Czech, with a large tent where Pilsner Urquell was freely available. Strawberries and cream were served along with cheese from both Britain and elsewhere. Despite several strong gusts of wind, no marquees or gazebos blew over and the rain just about managed to stay away.
When all the guests arrived, we were duly piped in by two Scottish pipers playing the bagpipes. The Reception was officially meant to finish at 7pm. At 7.15pm, those of us still present were given a pertinent reminder that it was time to leave by the same pipers striking up to pipe us out of the embassy garden and down the staircases of the embassy building and back out into Mala Strana.
One of the joys of living in Prague is being able to ‘eat out’ in one of the very many bar-restaurants that abound here. Provided you avoid the expensive ‘tourist traps’ in the centre of the city, prices are extremely reasonable, so much so, that some single people have told me that it is often cheaper for them to ‘eat out’ rather than try & cook for themselves at home. However, there are noticeable cultural differences between Britain and the Czech Republic in the way that you order, are served and pay for your drinks &/or meal.
As in Britain, most bars also serve food. But even if you go to a bar-restaurant just for a drink, do NOT go to the bar itself and say “I’d like two beers please”. No – go in and sit down at one of the free tables and wait until the barman/lady comes to you. If you just want a beer, taking a beer mat from the container in the middle of the table and putting it down in front of you, will indicate fairly clearly what you want. And if you forget to do this before your beer arrives, then the barman/lady will do it for you, before placing your beer in front of you. In the Czech Republic, beer glasses have to be placed on beer mats!
Do not try to pay for your beer when it is served to you. No – wait until you have finished drinking and are ready to leave. This may of course, be several rounds of drinks later. However, the person who has served you will have kept track of what you have had, either behind the bar or on a strip of paper left on the table on which the number of beers served will be marked. Saying “Zaplatim prosim” (may I pay please), will produce a bill which you then settle.
If you want to eat, do exactly the same as you would if you just want to drink. Go in, choose a vacant table and sit down. Only in slightly more upmarket restaurants will you be met at the door, asked how many people there are, and then be directed to a suitable table.
Czech menus have a number of interesting characteristics. For any meat dish, the exact weight of the meat will be specified such as 200 grams of pork, or 150 grams of chicken. There is of course, no way to check whether you actually are served 200 grams of pork rather than 191 grams of pork as scales are not provided! Often a meat dish will be served with little else other than a small salad garnish. Therefore you need to go to the ‘side dishes’ section of the menu where various forms of potato, together with other vegetables, will be listed. The advantage of this system is that you can choose almost exactly what you want to eat.
Prague is a city that is geared to visiting tourists. Therefore nearly every bar-restaurant has their menu not only in Czech, but also in English, German & sometimes also in Russian. But this is where you encounter a wonderful language which I have christened ‘Czenglish’. Very rarely do Sybille & I visit a new restaurant without descending into fits of laughter at the interesting English used to describe certain dishes. The menu on a Prague restaurant window shown in the photo at the head of this post left us creased up with laughter when we saw it last Monday. Clearly the bread to accompany the potato soup had been taken to Church and blessed prior to being served!
Czech people tend to be very particular regarding their own language and quickly correct anyone who dares to conjugates a verb or noun incorrectly. Yet they seem oblivious to the multiple mistakes that are contained within the English version of so many menus. My English Czech-speaking friend & Churchwarden Gerry Turner told me that he offered once to correct the English on the menu of a restaurant he regularly frequents in return for a free meal. The offer was refused point blank as the restaurant owner could see no reason for doing so.
There are two other cultural peculiarities that I experience every time I eat in a bar-restaurant in Prague. The first is the absence of place settings. Instead, soon after you have placed your order, a plate or upright container will be brought to your table containing your cutlery and paper serviettes. You take what you need from the plate/container and create your own place setting. The second is that, as soon as one person has finished eating, immediately a waiter will appear and whip their empty plate away, regardless of the fact that other people sitting with them are still eating. The reasoning behind this practice I have yet to discover but it happens everywhere we eat.
Normally in the UK, once everyone has finished their main course, the dirty plates and cutlery will be removed from the table and the dessert and coffee menu will be offered. Yet here in the Czech Republic, despite desserts (often the Czenglish ‘deserts’!!) being available, the opportunity to order them is rarely offered. If you want to have a dessert, you often have to specifically ask for the return of the menu in order to be able to decide what you want and place your order.
This post is my contribution to World Blog Surf Day being organised by Sher. Please read the next expat blogger in the chain by going to empty nest expat who is my friend Karen, currently back in the US of A but hopefully returning to Prague very soon once her work permit and visa problems are resolved. I am also asked to link to Anastasia Ashman who is an American cultural producer based in Istanbul, and is a creator of Expat Harem, the anthology by foreign women about modern Turkey. Her Tweetstream focuses on women, travel and history and she shares resources for writers/travelers, expats, Turkophiles & culturati of all stripes.
Continental Europeans, together with Americans & Canadians, are quick to tell British people that they drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road. To them, driving on the right is ‘right’! Some British people can be just as bad in reverse, complaining that if they take their car across the English Channel, they have to drive on what to them is also the ‘wrong’ side of the road.
Like many British people, I have regularly taken my British registered right-hand drive (RHD) car to continental Europe both for holidays as well as for shopping trips to Calais. I personally have no real problem with driving a RHD car on the right (as in the opposite of left) side of the road. In the past few years I’ve twice driven from the UK to Galicia in the far north-west of Spain, as well as to southern Bavaria, to Switzerland and in June 2008 to Savona in northern Italy & then by ferry to Corsica.
Once you have driven well away from the French Channel ports and the popular coastal holiday areas of France, a British registered RHD car can attract considerable interest and attention. Last year, we drove slowly through a Corsican mountain village, the car windows wide open because of the heat. We passed the village bar with several men sitting outside enjoying a lunchtime drink. Spotting the RHD and the GB sticker, they stared at us in utter amazement until one of them called out rather slowly, “Do you speak English?” Sybille and I just descended into fits of laughter on hearing him. It was almost as though we had arrived from outer space!
Exactly a year ago, immediately before our holiday in Corsica, I accepted the invitation to be the next Anglican Chaplain in Prague. One of the many decisions that we then had to make was what to do with my car. Should I sell it and buy a left-hand drive (LHD) model in the Czech Republic. Or should I take it with me even though it would have the steering wheel on the ‘wrong’ side.
I soon decided that I would take it with me and that when we moved, we would drive all the way to Prague. My reasons were numerous
Selling my car for cash in the UK would never produce sufficient funds to buy the equivalent or similar model in the Czech Republic. I’ve since discovered that second hand cars here are considerably more expensive than in the UK.
I bought my current car, a Renault Scenic, from my local garage in Oxfordshire in January 2004. They have looked after and serviced it ever since and I was on first name terms with the owner and his staff. Buying a car in Prague without being able to speak Czech and with no way of knowing a vehicle’s history was a risk I was not prepared to take.
Driving in the car from Oxfordshire to Prague, enabled us to bring many things with us which we could not have put on a plane nor sent with the rest of our belongings which were transported here as a part container load. Chief amongst these was Oscar the cat, along with various plants, including a bay tree and an olive tree. We were also able to bring a computer and monitor and numerous other things that enabled us to live fairly normally before being reunited with the rest of our belongings some four weeks later.
As the Czech Republic is now part of the EU, I assumed that I would not have too many problems registering the car here. After all, there are an increasing number of LHD cars being driven around the UK with British number plates. These have either been brought into the UK by citizens of other EU countries now resident in Britain or by Brits themselves who have returned from living in continental Europe and have brought their LHD cars with them. That was, of course, before knowing what I now know about Czech bureaucracy!
My initial enquiries were all met with the same negative response. Yes, you can import a car but it must be LHD. There is no way to get a RHD car registered in the Czech Republic I was told. It was then that we first discovered the value of thewebsite expats.cz. Searching the forum soon brought us to several threads dealing with cars. And with regard to getting a RHD car registered, the answer each time was, ‘Talk to Adrian of Nepomuk‘.
Adrian is a Brit married to a Czech and now works for his ‘in-laws’ truck and car servicing business in Nepomuk, south of Plzen. Early one Monday morning last December, after various phone & email exchanges, we made the one and a half hour journey out to Nepomuk. The main alteration necessary to the car was the headlights being changed so that they dip in the correct direction for driving on the right. Temporary stickers on the headlights are fine for short term holidays but not acceptable if the car is to be registered here. Fortunately, no other changes were necessary as my Renault Scenic already has functioning rear fog lights on both sides and a speedometer that is calibrated in kph as well as mph.
After that, we set off with Adrian to nearby Horažd’ovice where before and after lunch, the car was tested both mechanically and for it emissions, very much along the lines of the annual British MOT test. The tests were successfully passed and produced two protocols for me to take away. Adrian also arranged for us to go to another test centre in Prague some ten days later, in order to have the car mirrors checked to prove that the driver’s rear vision is not impeded by virtue of the car being RHD. This duly produced protocol number three.
Armed with these protocols, I successfully found a firm of English-speaking insurance brokers who kindly arranged third party insurance for the car, essential as my British insurer would only cover me for the first 90 days after leaving the UK. But jumping through the final hoops and getting the car registered with Czech number plates, had to wait until we had being granted our residency permits proving where we live. My previous blog entries entitled ‘A 21st century defenestration of Prague‘ and ‘Dealing with Czech bureaucracy’ will explain that long drawn out procedure.
However, yesterday morning, accompanied by the ever-faithful Czech-speaking Gerry, I went to visit the imposing offices of the Czech Ministry of Transport alongside the Vltava River in the centre of Prague. Gerry took great delight in informing me that, prior to 1989, the building had been the headquarters of the Communist Party! There I presented all my numerous protocols, a copy of my UK car registration document, my passport and my Czech residency document and a signed statement in Czech and English declaring that my Renault Scenic is only for my own personal use and that I will not sell it on to anyone else in the Czech Republic. I also completed and submitted an application for a special exemption for my RHD car. Once I have my certificate of exemption, I can submit it with all the self same papers to another office in Prague and finally get a Czech registration document and Czech number plates. I’ve already paid the necessary fees.
What is so funny is the reason why in Czech law, it is possible to get an exemption for a RHD car. The explanation is that until 1939, the Czechs drove on the left side of the road using RHD vehicles! The rules of the road were changed overnight by decree when Hitler and his Nazi forces marched in. Therefore all cars made in and for driving in Czechoslovakia prior to 1939, are RHD. It was for these vintage cars that the original exemption provision was incorporated into Czech law.
The evidence of history is very easy to see in the historic centre of Prague today as in the photo above. Numerous individuals and companies offer visiting tourists guided drives around the main sites in vintage cars and nearly all of them are RHD because they date from the 1920s & 1930s. The odd one that is LHD is an import from Germany. My red Renault Scenic may not be a vintage car, (though it is now 9 years old), but it very soon will be a legally registered right-hand drive car in the Czech Republic.
I started this blog, mainly as a way to keep friends and family up-to-date with what my new life in Prague is like. It also has proved to be quite therapeutic and has helped me clarify my thinking by having to write things down in a form that others can read and understand.
From the outset, I have been very conscious that I am a public figure (albeit a minor one) and that what I post on my blog promptly appears in the public domain. Therefore, I have always tried to be accurate with my facts and distinguish clearly between what is fact, over and against what is my opinion. But I never really expected it to be read much beyond my former parishioners in Oxfordshire, UK, various family members and friends, and now increasingly by members of my Prague congregation. It has also been discovered by a small circle of expats living in various corners of the world.
However, in the last ten days, much to my surprise, I have discovered the power of blogging. Simply by writing about how two TEFL teaching members of my congregation have been forced to leave the country because the Caledonian School failed to obtain work permits and visas from the Czech Foreign Police, within the required time limit of 90 days, I am suddenly in demand! It is not just the power of blogging but also the power of Google! Put ‘Caledonian School, Prague + TEFL’ into the Google search engine and guess what pops up on the second page of results? My blog!
On the afternoon of Friday 15th May, I received an email from the TEFL Course Coordinator at the Caledonian School, offering me the opportunity to meet with the Executive Director of the School so that we might discuss the current visa situation and what the School are doing to sort out and resolve the recent problems. That’s when I knew this blog had been found!!!
So it was that last Thursday, Nanebevstoupení Páne (Ascension Day for those who can’t read Czech!), I had an hour-long meeting with Monika Kubátová, the Executive Director of the Caledonian School at their headquarters in the suburb of Andel. To her credit, she did not dispute any of the facts contained in my blog posts about what had happened to Karen & Anna. So in turn, I promised her that I would post in my blog, how the Caledonian School understood the situation and what they have been doing since Karen & Anna’s forced departures, to try and put things right for the future.
The following is therefore a summary of the main points that Ms Kubátová made to me.
Caledonian knew about the official rule that a work permit & visa has to be obtained for a non-EU national within 90 days of that person arriving in the Czech Republic. However in the past, this rule had always been quietly ignored by the Foreign Police with regard to language schools because they understood the difficulty of doing it in 90 days, especially as the Schools don’t want to start the process until TEFL students have successfully completed their one month training course. Ms Kubátová claimed that they had no warning that this rule was suddenly going to be strictly enforced with effect from the beginning of 2009.
Caledonian are embarrassed & upset about what has happened to Karen, Anna & the others in their group & what is likely to happen to those in the two following groups. The whole business has cost Caledonian money (having to pay air fares), and upset some of the companies who buy their services. Both Karen & Anna were known as good teachers and the students liked them!
Despite the economic downturn, Caledonian still have plenty of companies & individuals who are buying their services. Therefore they are keen to retain good TEFL teachers.
The Owner of Caledonian has had a meeting with the Head of the Foreign Police 10-14 days ago & is having a further meeting this coming week which Ms Kubátová is also attending. The Head of the Foreign Police has promised that all non-EU TEFL Teacher applications from Caledonian will in future, be processed within 60 days. In turn, Caledonian have instituted new procedures, getting trainee teachers to complete paperwork whilst they are still undertaking their initial one month course, so that applications can be submitted immediately the course is finished therefore giving 60 days for the visa process.
Caledonian want both Karen & Anna back as soon as work permits & visas have been obtained & there are jobs waiting for both of them on their return. Ms Kubátová claimed to be in email communication with both Karen & Anna and that by them submitting visa & work permit applications from outside of Schengen, there should now be no problem in getting them approved within 60 days.
The Czech Tax Department & the Foreign Police do not talk to each other or share information. However, it is a serious offence not to pay tax & therefore Caledonian start deducting tax from salaries of TEFL teachers before they have work permits, to avoid that the teachers or Caledonian get into trouble with the tax department.
These are the facts as the Caledonian School understands them. What now follows is my opinion.
I do still believe that the Language Schools were warned by the Foreign Police at the beginning of 2008, that the official rules were going to be enforced in future & they were given 12 months to get their act sorted out. There are references to this in the forum of the expats.cz website. Caledonian, (and also the James Cook Language School), just didn’t believe that the Foreign Police would do it. I also believe that leaving it 7 weeks between completing the course & applications being submitted just made the situation worse.
I also believe that because of what has happened to Karen, Anna & their colleagues, Caledonian have been forced to change their procedures. The ‘proof of the pudding will be in the eating’ as the saying goes, but I do think that Caledonian have now got an agreed framework for visas with the Foreign Police that should work in the future.
Whilst I do think Caledonian are now trying to make amends for their past mistakes, I do note (and pointed out to Ms Kubátová) that both Karen and Anna have suffered financially as a result of all of this & whilst it is great that there will be jobs waiting for both of them on their return, they still have to support themselves over the intervening 60+ days since they were forced to leave the Czech Republic. Also, they both lost the flats that they had here in Prague. I did get an acknowledgement from Ms Kubátová regarding this point.
Not only have I had the hierarchy of the Caledonian School after me, I have also been contacted by an American student who has signed up with Caledonian for a TEFL teaching course in August this year and by a College Career Counsellor from an American University. You can see their respective comments on my previous posts. I’ve written back by email, offering what information and help I can to them both.
So it is that, much to my genuine surprise, what was originally planned as a newsy update for friends, relatives and former parishioners, has also created a few ripples both here in Prague and the USA. I’ve discovered the power of blogging!!!!
I am often asked, both by old friends in the UK and by new friends here in Prague, whether there are things I miss now that I live in a European capital city rather than the Oxfordshire countryside. I usually respond by saying that the only thing I miss is being able see fields and hedgerows directly from the windows of my home. But although I now live in an urban rather than a rural environment, the countryside is not very far away. Just behind the Pat’anka flats complex where we now live isPrírodní Park Šárka – Lysolaje, the Šárka Valley Nature Reserve, an amazing steep-sided wooded valley which once you enter it, seems a million miles away from the busy city environment even though it isn’t!
The main way to explore the Šárka Valley is on foot. There is a network of paths many of which are waymarked. Thus, aided by a 1 : 50 000 Turistická Mapa, we have begun to explore this beautiful green oasis that lies on our doorstep. Probably the most interesting route is the ‘red route’ waymarked by red & white marks very similar to the French balises that mark long distance footpaths in France.
The complete ‘red route’ is circular but we haven’t yet managed to walk all of it in one go. However, since Easter we have walked nearly all of it in different sections. Twice we have taken the tram almost the complete length of Evropská, to the terminus appropriately called Divorká Šárka (Wild Šárka). This lies at the western end of the valley and the ‘red route’ passes just below the tram terminus station. The other extremity of the ‘red route’ lies at the top of the hill behind our flats complex. So we have been able to walk in either direction along the waymarked route and arrive back at our flat. The great advantage of going out to Divorká Šárka and making our way back is that the last part of the walk is always downhill!
In many ways I now have the best of all worlds – all the amenities of this wonderful capital city yet with this beautiful green wooded reserve almost on my doorstep.
