By Ricky, on July 16th, 2014
Our heating & hot water plant © Ricky Yates
Visitors to the Chaplaincy Flat, when they look out from our main balcony, often ask exactly what is this industrial building, with its very tall chimney? The answer is that it’s a plant that produces hot water and heating for a large number of buildings in the immediate vicinity.
Judging by the utilitarian nature of it’s architecture, the plant clearly dates from the communist era. But it was obviously built with a far greater capacity than was necessary when first constructed. For now, the whole of ‘Rezidence Pobada’ is also supplied with heating and hot water from it. ‘Rezidence Pobada’, where the Chaplaincy Flat is situated, has been developed over the last ten years on the site . . . → Read More: A week of cold showers
By Ricky, on July 7th, 2014
The ‘Winged Lion’ monument © Ricky Yates
As I mentioned at the beginning of my previous post, I had a most interesting week in advance of my laptop computer lock-out problems. The highlight was attending two interrelated events on the afternoon and early evening of Tuesday 17th June.
The first event was the official unveiling of this monument, entitled ‘The Winged Lion’, by Sir Nicholas Soames MP, grandson of Sir Winston Churchill. It commemorates the nearly two and a half thousand Czechs and Slovaks who escaped from Czechoslovakia after the country was occupied by the Nazis in 1939, and served in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War.
As this BBC news article explains, the idea for the memorial . . . → Read More: Celebrating brave Czechoslovak Airmen and the Official Birthday of Her Majesty the Queen
By Ricky, on June 12th, 2014
My passport photograph from 1974
Do you recognise this man? Yes, believe it or not, it is Yours Truly – the photograph being the one that appears in my first-ever British passport, issued to me forty years ago in 1974, by the British High Commission in Canberra, Australia. It dates from the days when you were actually encouraged to smile and show your teeth in a passport photograph, something that is now no longer acceptable or allowed 🙁
It was with this passport, that in 1975, I travelled from Australia, where I had lived for the previous four and a half years, back to my country of birth, the United Kingdom. After flying from Sydney, to Kathmandu in Nepal, the rest of that journey was overland, taking a period of two and a half months. . . . → Read More: Forty years on – how the world has changed
By Ricky, on August 24th, 2013
Memorial to the victims of the Soviet invasion of August 1968 © Ricky Yates
This past week saw the forty-fifth anniversary of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Soviet Red Army, which brought to an abrupt end, the short period of liberalisation known as the ‘Prague Spring’. On the night of 20th – 21st August 1968, around 200,000 Soviet troops poured over the borders from surrounding Warsaw Pact countries, supported by airborne troops, equipped with artillery and light tanks, who were flown in via Prague Airport. Along with the Soviet forces, there were also contingents of troops from Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and East Germany.
Whilst Alexander Dubcek, the Czechoslovak leader who had sought to introduce, ‘socialism with a human face’, called on his people not to resist, many ignored his advice and over one hundred citizens were killed and many more injured. This memorial . . . → Read More: The Soviet invasion of 1968 and its aftermath
By Ricky, on July 27th, 2013
Diesel car ‘Verunka’ © Ricky Yates
The Czech Republic has one the most dense rail networks in the whole of Europe. One of the very few benefits of over forty years of communist rule is that nearly all of it is still in existence and in use. Unlike in the UK, where over a third of the rail network was made redundant in the 1960s by Dr. Beeching, no one in the Czech Republic ever saw any part of their rail network as being ‘uneconomic’ and therefore needing to be closed down.
On Friday 28th June during our recent holiday in the Orlické hory, we walked around fourteen kilometres from our hotel in Rícky v Orlických horách, all along a waymarked footpath which follows the valley of the Rícka and Zdobnice rivers. At the end of our walk, we arrived in . . . → Read More: The joys of Czech public transport
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