All in the month of April

Cross © Ricky Yates

Oh dear! April is gone and I haven’t written or posted anything here for nearly a month. So finally, an update, explaining what I’ve been up to.

Worship

The first few days of April were the latter days of Holy Week, leading to Easter Sunday. As I’ve previously written, Easter Day is the Sunday when we normally have the biggest congregation of the year. However, 2015 proved exceptional with a total attendance of 136, (121 adults and 15 children), the largest ever during my seven Easters in Prague.

The additional encouraging thing is that a higher level of numbers attending worship has been maintained post-Easter. Low Sunday, (the Sunday after Easter Day), was far from being ‘low’ and on the following Sunday 19th April, the congregation numbered 74, nearly . . . → Read More: All in the month of April

Happy Fifth Birthday to my blog

A rare sight – Charles Bridge with hardly any tourists! © Ricky Yates

Tomorrow, Tuesday 4th February 2014, this blog will be five years old. My first ever blog post, entitled ‘Episcopal Taxi Service‘, was published here on 4th February 2009. Five years later, this is post number two hundred & fifty eight.

In some respects, I’m a little disappointed with myself. Two years ago, I set myself the target of publishing fifty-two blog posts in the year – an average of one a week. As I explained twelve months later, I eventually only managed fifty. This year, having set myself the same target, I have again fallen short as, with this post, I have only managed to publish forty-six.

On the positive side as I look back over the past five years, I am quite pleased with what I have . . . → Read More: Happy Fifth Birthday to my blog

Discovering the Way of Saint James in the Czech Republic

Svatojakubská cesta – the Way of Saint James © Ricky Yates

As Sybille and I have, at different times, both made a walking pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, ever since moving to Prague more than five years ago, we have sought to discover more about pilgrimage routes that lead from the Czech Republic, via Germany and Switzerland, to link with the well-established paths in France and Spain.

Soon after we arrived in Prague, we managed to purchase a guidebook in German entitled, ‘Der Jakobsweg von Prag bis Tillyschanz/Eslarn‘. It describes a route starting at Kostel sv. Jakuba / Church of St. James, located in the Old Town centre of Prague, heading in a roughly south-westerly direction to the German border at Tillyschanz, a small village four kilometres from the Bavarian town of Eslarn. The guide is the work of three Germans and one . . . → Read More: Discovering the Way of Saint James in the Czech Republic

November – a time of change

Prague Castle & the Vltava River © Ricky Yates

As October has become November, so many aspects of my life and the situations around me with which I interact, have changed. I’ve therefore decided that this provides an overarching theme for a new blog post 🙂

As all across Europe, overnight between Saturday 26th and Sunday 27th October, our clocks changed, going back one hour. I write this, partly for the benefit of my British son-in-law who some months ago, famously remarked, ‘I don’t suppose the clocks change where you are?’ Well yes – they do! At the same time as the United Kingdom was moving from British Summer Time (BST), back to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), here in the Czech Republic, we changed from Central European Summer Time (CEST), back to Central European Time (CET). This means that we remain one hour ahead of . . . → Read More: November – a time of change

Ricky has returned to Rícky

Ricky at Rícky v Orlických horách © Ricky Yates

I am writing this, sitting in the bar/dining room/lounge of Hotel Konšel, located in the small settlement that bears my name, Rícky v Orlických horách. Yes, after our short, very snowbound visit in early April this year, Ricky has returned to Rícky 🙂

This time, Sybille and I are here, hoping to spend the first eight days of two weeks of my annual leave, enjoying a walking holiday in the Orlické hory. And, if the hotel’s slightly dodgy wifi internet connection had allowed me, I would have posted this on the evening of Wednesday 26th June, as my first ever blogpost not posted from my office in the Chaplaincy Flat in Prague.

We arrived here on the afternoon of Monday 24th June, following a . . . → Read More: Ricky has returned to Rícky