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Living as an Expat Englishman in Prague

Although I had lived in my native England for thirty uninterrupted years before moving to Prague, Czech Republic six months ago, this is not my first experience of living outside my country of birth. At the tender age of 18, I left home and family, and emigrated to Australia where I lived for nearly five years. And in my mid-twenties, I spent three years living in a strongly Welsh speaking area of West Wales which is more ‘abroad’ than many English people realise unless they’ve had the same experience.

However, as I reflect on these last six months of living as an English expat in Prague, I feel I have returned to many aspects of the way I use to live during the first 18 years of my life. These were spent in Coventry, my place of birth, the ninth largest city in England with a population of over 300,000 people. Other than 11 months spent living in London, Coventry is by far the largest city I have ever lived in until coming to Prague with its population of 1.3 million.

As a child and as a teenager, if I wanted or needed to get anywhere then I walked, rode my bicycle or caught a bus. For most of that time, my parents didn’t own a car. Because of the wonderful integrated public transport system here in Prague, if I want or need to go anywhere now, I walk a short distance to catch a bus, tram or metro. This is in complete contrast to the previous fifteen & half years where I lived in a small North Oxfordshire village with a population of 420 and almost non-existent public transport. Other than walking to the village pub, to go anywhere else meant jumping straight into the car. Now that self-same car sits for many days at a time without being driven at all.

However, there is one marked contrast between British and continental European cities and that is the nature of their respective housing stocks. Whilst there are blocks of flats/apartments in British cities, only a relatively small proportion of the population live in them. The vast majority live in houses, most of which are privately owned. Prague, like so many continental European cities has many, many blocks of flats in which are housed the majority of the city population. I now live in a second floor flat in a recent modern development. It is quite a contrast to the large four bedroomed detached Rectory that came with the previous job, or the two houses in which I spent my childhood. Do I regret the change? Not really.

There was a major downsizing job before the big move. But now there are fewer rooms to clean and no garden to maintain. And although we now live in close proximity to quite a number of people, we’ve experienced very little noise or disturbance. However in contrast, despite having numerous people living on the same staircase as us, we’ve hardly met our neighbours, let alone got to know them. Czech people tend to keep themselves to themselves.

The other major issue I face is that of language. I work with the English speaking community so it is less of an issue than it otherwise might be. But it does throw up practical issues such as explaining how I want my hair cut! However, whilst I have begun language lessons, I do suffer as every first language English speaker does, from the fact that everyone wants to speak my language. Most young Czechs would much prefer to practice their English on me rather than me try to use my limited Czech on them. Yet if I am to become a more permanent resident rather than a transitory expat, that language has to mastered – somehow!!!

This was posted as part of Golden Prague’s World Blog Surf Day. Please also visit the next Expat Blogger taking part; Michael from http://blogging.gelle.dk

A Parking Ticket with a difference!

A friendly smiley from the Czech police ;-) — A friendly smiley from the Czech police 😉

In October 2008, just about a month after we had arrived in Prague, I walked past my car, parked outside our block of flats one day, to discover I had parking ticket under the windscreen wipers. This came as a complete surprise as I had assumed that it was perfectly in order to park on the access road to the flats, as many others also did. When I told my Churchwardens and Church Council members, they too were surprised as this had never happened previously.

A few days later, I went with Gerry, a Czech speaking member of the Church Council, to the local police station shown on the parking ticket. I donned clerical shirt and collar, hoping to appear the innocent foreign clergyman. According to the young police officer that we met, it is an offence under local bye-laws, to park anywhere on our estate except in the designated parking bays. Breaking this bye-law can lead to a fine of up to 2000 Kc (over £60)! However, a combination of the dog collar and Gerry’s pleading of my innocence, got the parking ticket cancelled without me having to pay anything.

Ever since then, I have always parked the car in one of parking bays marked with a ‘P’ sign, even though it has meant, on some occasions, leaving the car further away from the flat than I would like to. And in the past few weeks, the police have been around nearly every day, putting parking tickets on any car that is not parked in the correct designated place.

Yesterday morning, I went down to do my daily duty of taking all our recyclable rubbish to the appropriate bins. As I left flats, I could see the police had already been around again putting parking tickets on every car not correctly parked. But then I noticed that there was something under my windscreen wipers too. I was parked in a designated parking bay. Surely I hadn’t done anything wrong!

The note on my windscreen was from the Prague City Police – from Police Officer 26570 to be precise. But as well as the police logo, it also had a smiley on it. It was not a parking ticket but a ‘thank you note’ for parking correctly!

The Police here are not very highly regarded. Many people say that they still operate with the same mindset as they did under communism. So they have recently launched a campaign to improve their image. Issuing parking ‘thank you notes’ with smileys on them, is apparently part of this police campaign to try to get the ordinary public to like them a bit more! What I enjoy most is the wording of the last line which assures me that parking in the correct manner is ‘a responsible approach, contributing to the improvement of order in this locality’!!!!!

Dealing with Czech bureaucracy

Twenty years ago this year, communism came to an end in the Czech Republic following the so-called ‘Velvet Revolution’ of November 1989. In 1999, this former member of the Soviet Warsaw Pact became a member of NATO, and in 2004, a member of the EU. Yet although so many things have changed massively over the past twenty years, one thing seems to have remained completely unchanged in the Czech Republic – Czech bureaucracy.

This is something that cannot be blamed on over forty years of communist government. Apparently, it goes back much further to when this country was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Although the empire was dissolved in 1918 at the end of the First World War, it’s legacy lives on in the present-day Czech Republic over ninety years later.

One of the founding principles of the EU is the free movement of people and labour between member states. Therefore, as Sybille and I are respectively, German and British citizens, we have the legal right to live and work here. But the Czech authorities do require us to register with their ‘Foreign Police’ if we are going to be here for more than ninety days, in order that they may issue us with a residency permit and a social security number. Without this proof of residence and a social security number to quote, it is almost impossible to do anything in this country except eat and sleep.

On the recommendation of my Church Council, we engaged the help of a private agency who specialise in helping non-Czech speakers achieve their registration with the Foreign Police. Andrea from the agency was very helpful at our first meeting. We were presented with a long form in English to complete, to give all the information she would need to put on our Czech application forms. The reason why some items of information were required was totally beyond my comprehension. For example, we needed to give the full names of all four of our parents including our mothers’ maiden surnames, their respective dates of birth and addresses where each of them were now living. At least the last item was a little easier than the others to answer only requiring us to write ‘deceased’ four times!

However, one question revealed a ridiculous assumption lying behind the whole of this registration process. What is your permanent address? We both immediately gave the address of our flat here in Prague. “Oh no!”, said Andrea, ” You can’t put that down”. “What is your permanent address in the UK or in Germany?” “But we don’t have an address in the UK or in Germany – we live here now and will do so for the next eight or so years. This is our home”. Whilst Andrea could see the logic of our answer, in order to gain a residency permit in the Czech Republic, you have to be able to give a permanent address outside of the country. EU law says we can reside here until we die. Czech bureaucracy still thinks that no foreign citizen will ever do so – they all must have a permanent home outside of the country!

In due course, Andrea sent us a whole batch of completed forms for us to sign. But not simply to sign – no, we had to sign in front of a notary who took details of our passports and signed and stamped (the rubber stamp is extremely important to Czech bureaucracy) to say we had done so. And we had to sign five times in total between us, at 30 Kc a signature + 19% VAT!

We also had to produce our marriage certificate. Not a problem! Ah, but it needs to be apostilled. What is that you may ask – and I did! Despite being on the government stationery of a member state of the EU, our marriage certificate had to be sent back to the UK to be stamped and sealed on the back to declare that it is a legal document. The British Foreign & Commonwealth Office will do this for you but at the cost of £33.00. Ironically, the office that does it is in Milton Keynes, twenty minutes drive from where we used to live! Now we have it back, duly apostilled, it has to be translated into Czech and the translated document certified before a notary.

The final piece of this amazing bureaucratic nightmare has produced the ultimate ‘Catch 22 situation’. We need a form, signed (and stamped of course!), by the owners of our flat, declaring that we have their permission to live here. The form also requires us to say how many rooms there are in the flat, what the area of it is in square metres etc, etc.

The flat was purchased in the name of the English-speaking parish of the Old Catholic Church in the Czech Republic, my congregation’s correct legal name as registered with the Ministry of Culture. A Czech speaking member of the Church Council found the details of our registration on the Ministry of Culture website. It shows that the person who can sign on behalf of the organisation is the previous Chaplain, John Philpott, and the organisation who can change the signatory is the Old Catholic Church.

We immediately asked Bishop Dušan if he would write to ask the Ministry to change the signatory to me so I could sign and stamp the form myself. Bishop Dušan duly wrote the letter requesting the change. What did the Ministry of Culture write back in reply? Can you please let us have a copy of Rev’d Yates’ residency permit and his social security number???????!!!!!!!!!!!

I love the Czech Republic but NOT Czech bureaucracy!

Divided by their common language?

britannia-uncle-sam

“England and America are two countries divided by their common language”. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, this famous saying is attributed in this and other forms, to George Bernard Shaw, but not found in any of his published writings. I have also heard of it being attributed to Oscar Wilde. It may well be a corruption of the following lines from a short story written by him entitled The Canterville Ghost. “We really have everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language”. However, regardless of its origins, it does highlight the fact that there are differences in words, phrases and spelling, between American and British English.

image source wikimedia commons

Having many Americans in my congregation, I try to be careful with the words I use when preaching. I try not to say ‘fortnight’ but to say instead, ‘two weeks’. To remember that a ‘mobile phone’ is a ‘cell phone’, though that one is less of a problem as it is a ‘mobil’ in Czech. And that ‘football’ to Americans is ‘American Football’, not what I know as ‘football’, which is, of course, ‘soccer’.

Like most British people, I’ve seen enough American films and TV programmes (not ‘programs’!) to understand most American vocabulary. But this past week I’ve learnt a new American phrase and also been enlightened as to how my written English could easily be misunderstood by an American reader.

Ironically, I learned my new American phrase whilst attending my Czech languages class. Our Czech teacher wanted us to practice the correct Czech words for numbers between one and twenty by playing a version of ‘tic-tac-toe’ with the neighbouring student. Fortunately, mine was a young American called Anna. When I looked blank, Anna explained to me how to play ‘tic-tac-toe’. It only took a short while for me to realise that the game was ‘noughts and crosses’. Of course, Anna had never heard of ‘noughts and crosses’!

At today’s Church Council meeting, I asked for the approval of the Council of the wording of a letter that will go out to the congregation next Sunday. The Council fully agreed with the thrust of what I had written regarding the somewhat difficult financial situation we are facing, but Mark, an American Council member, asked me to change two things. I had referred to ‘one-off costs’ that had occurred in 2008. “Americans won’t understand that,” said Mark. So it has been changed to ‘non recurring costs’. And I had used the abbreviation ‘A/c’ for account as in ‘bank account’. “Americans will think that is air conditioning,” said Mark. So it is now ‘account’ in full, to ensure there is no confusion.

However, it does work both ways. Another American member of the congregation, who is a TEFL teacher, tells me that she has learned more British English the last two years she has been teaching in Prague than in the previous fifty or so years of her life!

How to improve your spoken English?

‘The Prague Post’ is a well established English-language weekly newspaper here in Prague. Since 2007, it has sponsored an annual playwriting competition for English writers currently or previously resident in Prague. From all the entries, the three best thirty minute plays are selected by a panel of judges for actual production. After several weeks of rehearsal, all three are then performed, on four different nights, spread over a two week period.

Sybille & I, together with Karen, an American ex-pat from the congregation, went to see the third of the performances on the evening of Sunday 1^st March. Part of the attraction of going was that one of the plays, entitled ‘Early Retirement’, was being directed by Gordon Truefitt, a member of my congregation, and one of the three actors in the play was Gerry Turner, my Church Council Secretary.

‘Early Retirement’ was the first play performed. The plot is based around a British stressed out businessman, relatively newly married to his younger Czech wife, and her desire that he should take early retirement for the sake of his health. Gerry played the role of Dr Matejovksý, a slightly eccentric Czech. In real life, Gerry makes his living as a translator from Czech to English so, having to speak some words of Czech was not a problem. What he did very well was to speak English with a Czech accent, a far more difficult task for someone who is a native born English speaker!

The performance rightly got a good round of applause and set the standard for the evening. Unfortunately, from then on, things went downhill. The second play entitled ‘The King Size’, was laboured and went well over the allocated thirty minutes. And the third play, entitled ‘Forced Entry’, whilst of the designated length, was only a slight improvement.

In both cases, it wasn’t that the acting was bad – in fact it was of a high standard. The problem with both plays was the lack of quality of the plot and text of the play. In particular, what really grated with me and many others I spoke with afterwards, was the constant f…..this, f…..that and f……ing everything else that littered so much of the dialogue. Most if not all of it was totally unnecessary. I have often said that when f….ing is the only adjective somebody knows, it is evidence of both of the person’s ignorance and their lack of vocabulary. Sadly, it is my view that a similar comment could be made about both of the playwrights.

The competition is meant to provide both entertainment for English-speaking expatriates but also help Czech people wanting to improve their spoken English. However, as far as I am concerned, all the second and third plays did was to offer a very debased version of the English language.