By Ricky, on August 11th, 2011
Footpath through Ceský les © Ricky Yates
We spent the second week of our recent holiday, Tuesday 19th – Sunday 24th July, staying as we had previously done in October 2010, in a delightfully restored house dating from the first decade of the twentieth century that belongs to Jack, an Irish member of the St. Clement’s congregation. It is situated in the somewhat unusually named village of Babylon, which lies between the town of Domažlice and the German border, in the far west of Bohemia.
The nearby range of rolling wooded hills are known as Ceský les which is sometimes anglicised as ‘Bohemian Forest’. These hills are far lower than the Krkonoše Mountains, the highest point being Cerchov at 1042 metres. The border between the Czech Republic and Germany runs along the top of the hills which are known as the Oberpfälzerwald . . . → Read More: Ceský les
By Ricky, on July 27th, 2011
Rübezahl outside Hospoda na Peci in Pec © Ricky Yates
Right across the Krkonoše Mountains, there are many carved wooden statues all depicting a friendly giant known as Rübezahl (German) or Krakonoš (Czech), who according to legend, inhabits the area. As the origin of the legend is Germanic, I hope my Czech readers will forgive me calling him Rübezahl throughout this post.
Whilst there are numerous fairy tales about Rübezahl, the most well known is the one that also explains the origin of his name. One day, Rübezahl abducted a Polish princess with the intention of marrying her. She complained that she was lonely without her court being with her so Rübezahl promised to recreate the members of her court from the turnips (German Rübe) that he was growing. Whilst he was out counting (German zählen) the turnips, the princess escaped!
Whilst Rübezahl is the name . . . → Read More: The Legend of Rübezahl
By Ricky, on March 20th, 2011
New flood defence at Troja © Ricky Yates
On Mondays (my day off), and sometimes on Saturdays if I get the sermon finished in time, Sybille and I like to walk and explore different parts of Prague. Here are two pairs of pictures taken during two walking forays into different parts of the city during February 2011.
These first two pictures were taken in Troja, a suburb located on the other side of the Vltava from where we live and close to Prague Zoo. They show newly constructed flood defences, designed to protect the neighbouring housing and also the nearby zoo, from future flooding should the Vltava rise to levels similar to those experienced in the catastrophic floods of August 2002. These defences are quite new – when we were last here a few months earlier, major construction works were still underway.
The . . . → Read More: Flood defences and Communist artwork
By Ricky, on May 23rd, 2010
Statue of Marshall Konev in Námestí Interbrigády, Prague 6 © Ricky Yates
The statue pictured on the left here, is an extremely rare sight in the present-day Czech Republic. It stands in Námestí Interbrigády, a large square on one side of Jugoslávských partyzánu, the main thoroughfare leading from our nearest Metro station at Dejvická to Podbaba where we live. The reason that it is such a rare sight is because it portrays a Marshall of the Soviet Red Army, Ivan Stepanovich Konev.
As you can probably imagine, following the Velvet Revolution at the end of 1989, steps were rapidly taken to rid Czechoslovakia, (since 1st January 1993, the Czech Republic and Slovakia), of anything that celebrated the preceding nearly 42 years of Soviet imposed communist rule. Anything that was part of the so called ‘normalisation’ that followed the crushing of the Prague Spring of 1968 by the . . . → Read More: A rare sight in Prague
By Ricky, on January 18th, 2010
Town Hall, Klatovy. The two plaques referred to below are either side of the bottom left window. © Ricky Yates
When I moved to live and work in the Czech Republic in September 2008, I believed I had a pretty good grasp of European History. I had studied the subject for many years at school and it was one of the three subjects I read, along with Geography and Theology, during my first year as an undergraduate student at university. However, during these past 16 months, my historical knowledge and understanding has been greatly increased as I’ve sought to understand the Czech people and this country which has become my current adopted home.
Good students of history do not just learn dates and places when and where certain events took place, such as knowing that the Battle of White Mountain occurred in 1620 on a hill . . . → Read More: Correcting History
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