Last Sunday evening, one week later than usual, I officiated at the English-language Anglican Service of Evening Prayer, hosted by the Frauenkirche in Dresden. At the beginning of the service, I welcomed all those attending, explained who I am, and then made three announcements.
The first was to apologise that, once more, my troublesome front crown, having managed to stay in place for the three previous months, had again become loose and then fallen out on Sunday morning. Besides making me look goofy, this also meant that speaking publicly was difficult as numerous speech sounds are made by putting your tongue to your front teeth and it is therefore somewhat difficult to be articulate, if there is a big gap 🙁
Secondly, I thanked everyone for attending, being very aware that the service had coincided with a rather important football match 🙂 Germany were playing Slovakia in the last sixteen of the Euro 2016 football competition, the match kicking off at exactly the same time as our service began.
But thirdly I said, I just wanted to clearly declare that, ‘Last Thursday, I voted to remain!’ The congregation of native English-speakers from around the world, together with English-speaking Germans, erupted in sympathetic laughter the like of which I’ve never experienced previously when officiating at the Frauenkirche.
I was originally going to write about the theme of the service and how I tackled it in my sermon, which had very clear resonances with the referendum result. But instead, in order to get this post published tonight and to keep it reasonably short in length, I just want to tell you of a conversation I had following the service, which encapsulates one very unpleasant aspect of the recent referendum campaign.
As I explained in a previous post, following worship, a small number of the regular Dresden congregation, gather for a drink in a nearby Bierstube, the Augustiner an der Frauenkirche. It being warm and dry, we were able to sit outside, enjoying the evening air and hearing a loud cheer from a nearby establishment, when Germany scored a third goal part-way through the second half of their match.
We were joined for the first time by an Anglophile German couple – Stephan and Kornelia. Stephan explained to me that he was a GP and had undertaken some of his medical studies in the UK, including his GP training, and had then worked as a GP for a few years in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, before returning to Germany. He added that one of the reasons they had started attending the monthly English-language service was to ensure they didn’t lose their English!
But they then told me how their daughter had just finished her studies at Gymnasium, and had arranged to have gap year, before going to university. She had been accepted to work for a UK charity based in London, starting in July, providing respite care for the parents of handicapped children.
Hearing the outcome of the referendum on Friday morning, she had expressed to them her fear, that she might not now be able to do this. And even if she did, she was concerned as to how she would be perceived and received in current British society.
The ‘Leave campaign’ has released a very unpleasant current of xenophobia and racism meaning that a German young lady who wants to give something very positive to British society, is now left feeing very uncomfortable and wondering whether her chosen path was wise. Messrs Johnson, Gove and Farage – you have an awful lot to answer for!
Today, I have been struck by the irony of David Cameron and his Conservative Party, ‘winning’ the UK General Election by over 63% of the electorate NOT voting Conservative, coinciding with the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War – VE Day. The reason for the Conservatives ‘winning’ the election by gaining less than 37% of the vote, is because of the antiquated, absurd and completely undemocratic ‘first-past-the-post’ (FPTP) electoral system under which the election was conducted. The irony of this I’ll explain shortly.
Although I live in the Czech Republic, as a British citizen, I had the right to register to vote in this election but I chose not to do so. My reason for not participating was purely the FPTP electoral system. If I had chosen to register to vote, I would have been registered in the parliamentary constituency in which I last lived in the UK. In that constituency, even if the Conservative Party had put up a blue monkey as their candidate, s/he would have been elected. My vote would have been meaningless.
I’m sure many British politicians, particularly those in the governing party at any time, wonder why they are not held in very high esteem by the British public. There are many reasons, but one important one is that, as in yesterdays election, nearly two thirds of those who voted, have ended up with a government they didn’t vote for. David Cameron will claim that he has a mandate to govern the UK for the next five years. The reality is that he hasn’t.
Sadly, I see no likelihood of change in the foreseeable future. The Conservative Party in particular, but also the bulk of the Labour Party too, do not want to abandon the FPTP system because it makes it much easier to, sooner or later, be elected with a parliamentary majority enabling it to form a government, with only needing to persuade 35-36% of the electorate to vote for them. Both parties believe in what is proverbially known as ‘Buggins Turn’. Basically, neither party believes in real democracy.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, today is also the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War – VE Day. It has been marked in ceremonies all across Europe, including one in London attended by David Cameron, as well as by two, now ex-party leaders 🙁 Here in the Czech Republic, it is a public holiday. My photograph taken this evening, once more shows the statue of Marshall Ivan Konev, surrounded by recently laid floral tributes. His Soviet Red Army troops liberated two thirds of what is now the Czech Republic, in April and May 1945.
However, just under thirteen years earlier, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party, gained just over 33% of the vote in the German Election held in November 1932. But despite only having the support of one third of the German electorate at the time, he was made Chancellor a few months later. We all know far too well, the consequences that followed.
Whilst not suggesting that David Cameron will be like Hitler, the similarity of their respective levels of support is striking. When only around a third of the electorate actually votes for you, pushing through your favourite policies which are not supported by two-thirds of the electorate, is a recipe for trouble. Witness Margaret Thatcher and the poll tax.
Four years after the end of the Second World War, in 1949, the Western allies – France, the United Kingdom and the United States, returned what became West Germany, to self-rule. But they imposed a strict form of proportional representation into the electoral system, in order to prevent a recurrence of a minority imposing its will on the majority, as Hitler and the Nazi Party had done. There are plenty of other examples of the UK in particular, imposing truly democratic systems of proportional representation on former colonies, before granting them independence. The one I’m most familiar with is that used in Australia since becoming independent in 1901.
The truly democratic systems enforced on Germany post-1945, judging by its recovery from war damage and the strength of its economy today, have done it no harm but instead, an awful lot of good. But successive UK governments, be they Conservative or Labour, react in horror at the thought of adopting an electoral system such as that used in Germany. Why – is the question I ask?
One inevitable consequence of the General Election result today, is that in two years time, there will be an in/out referendum on whether the UK remains part of the European Union. If the UK were to withdraw from the EU, the economic consequences would be disastrous. But it would also affect my position as a British citizen, freely living and working in another EU member country as I do at present.
In 2007, when Sybille had major battles with German bureaucracy, trying to renew her passport as Sybille Yates, after our marriage in October 2005, she threatened to become British, before next needing to renew her passport again. However, if Cameron and his supporters, aided by UKIP, take the UK out of the EU, I may just have to consider becoming German!!!
I hope my regular readers will forgive me for tackling a current political issue. However, as Ukraine is almost on the doorstep of the Czech Republic, I thought it appropriate to reflect on how the current crisis is seen here, and the impact the crisis may have in the near future.
Before proceeding any further, I should point out that it is not quite as close as one American TV news channel tried to illustrate. MSNBC successfully reinvented Czechoslovakia, a country that ceased to exist on 31st December 1992, and showed it as bordering Ukraine as can be seen in this link. Just to confirm, whilst Slovakia does border Ukraine, the Czech Republic does not.
What may surprise many people is the fact that Ukrainians are by far the largest group of immigrants by nationality, living and working in the Czech Republic. According to the 2011 census, there were 118,000 Ukrainians resident here. The same census also registered 36,000 Russians as being present in the Czech Republic. However, there is quite a contrast in what each nationality group does here.
Most Ukrainians do what many relatively newly arrived immigrants do in so many countries around the world. They do the jobs that the host countries own citizens don’t want to do. In the Czech Republic this means that they work as building labourers, street cleaners or washing up and cleaning in bar-restaurants. Often they send home some of the money they earn, to support their families living back in Ukraine.
In contrast, most Russians living here are quite wealthy. As I’ve written previously, they are mainly responsible for parts of the more seedy side of life here such as Herna (gambling) Bars and prostitution. Of course there are Russians living in the Czech Republic, whose main purpose in being here is just to keep well clear of Putin. Inevitably, all Russians get tarred with the same brush, especially during this current crisis.
There is a general, considerable Czech dislike of Russians, because of past history. Czechs quite rightly, see little difference between the former communist-led USSR and present day Putin-led Russia. Both are seen as wanting to dominate and control the neighbouring states of Central and Eastern Europe, either by military or economic means – often a combination of both.
The current situation in the Crimea peninsula, has many echoes of the events of August 1968 here in the Czech Republic. By the will of the people, there is a change of government to one that is not to the liking of Moscow. So the troops are sent in to seek to reimpose Russian control and influence. In 1968, certain members of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party are supposed to have invited the Soviet Red Army to invade the country. In 2014, Putin’s government claim that former President Viktor Yanukovych, invited Russian troops to intervene in Ukraine, before he was deposed.
There are also wider historical echoes to the origins of the Second World War, with lands that are part of the present-day Czech Republic, being central to the dispute that eventually led to the outbreak of hostilities. As I’ve previously written, when the new nation of Czechoslovakia was established in 1918, the country included many people of German ethnic origin. According to a census taken in 1921, just over three million Germans lived in Czechoslovakia accounting for around 23% of the country’s total population. The areas where Germans formed a majority were known as Sudetenland and the people themselves as the Sudetendeutsche.
During the 1930s, Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler, actively encouraged dissent among the Sudetendeutsche, hoping to provoke a reaction from the Czechoslovak authorities. The aim was to provide justification for military intervention, ostensibly to protect ethnic Germans. This is exactly what Putin-led Russia is doing presently in the Crimea peninsula. Putin claims he is only protecting ethnic Russians but at the same time, he is actively encouraging confrontation with Ukrainians, hoping to provide justification for his actions.
Hitler got his way without needing to forcibly invade. Because of the policy of appeasement adopted in Munich at the end of September 1938, by Neville Chamberlain and his French counterpart Édouard Daladier, Nazi Germany took control of the Sudetenland, without needing to fire a shot. To most Czech people and to me, the parallels are very apparent. Allowing a Putin-led Russia, to take control of the Crimea peninsula because it has a majority ethnic Russian population, will not solve the problem. Instead, it will embolden Putin, to seek to take control of further territory, with the ultimate goal of effectively re-establishing the USSR as an enlarged Russian Federation.
Whilst I thoroughly disapprove of the actions of President Putin, Western leaders, particularly those of the USA and the UK, have a serious problem. When either President Obama or Prime Minister Cameron, point out that Russia has invaded a sovereign country in breach of international law, Putin responds by pointing out that the USA and the UK did exactly the same thing, when they invaded Iraq in 2003. Neither side can claim to hold the moral high ground.
So far, both the United States and the European Union, have adopted a series of economic measures to try and force a change in Russian policy. Fortunately, the weather is helping them. The main economic lever the Russians have, is that much of Central and Eastern Europe relies on Russian natural gas and oil, for heating. But because of the most mild winter of recent memory, stockpiles are high and the winter is coming to an end. With the Russian rouble at an all time low, Putin may be forced to make concessions to keep Russia economically afloat. We shall see. All one can be certain of is that a period of great uncertainty lies ahead.
It is a month and a day since I’ve published a blog post and I’m sure some of my regular visitors will be beginning to think that I’ve disappeared off the planet. Rest assured – I haven’t! However, I have been absent from Prague for 23 of those 31 days only returning to the Chaplaincy Flat on the afternoon of Tuesday 27th October having left on the afternoon of Monday 5th October. Over the next few weeks I’m going to write about what I’ve been up to, hopefully making up for the lack of news during most of October.
As the title of this post says, Sybille and I have travelled to Asia and back and we’ve done the whole journey by car! I’ve driven 4,500 miles/7,200 kilometres and we’ve visited twelve countries in total. The trip has been part work and part pleasure – let me explain.
St. Clement’s Anglican Episcopal Church, Prague is part of the Church of England’s forty fourth diocese, the Diocese of Gibraltar in Europe. As with the other 43 dioceses that make up the Church of England, the Diocese in Europe is divided into Archdeaconries. My previous group of parishes were part of the Archdeaconry of Oxford, one of the three Archdeaconries that together form the Diocese of Oxford.
The Diocese in Europe is divided into seven Archdeaconries. Even the smallest of these, the Archdeaconry of Switzerland, covers the whole of one country. And Prague belongs to the largest of the seven, the Eastern Archdeaconry, which consists of everything eastwards from Poland, Czech Republic and Austria, including all of the former Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and all the former Soviet Union except for the Baltic States.
Once a year, each Archdeaconry has an Archdeaconry Synod where the clergy, together with elected lay representatives, meet to discuss and report on issues facing our scattered congregations, to pray and to study, as well as to make decisions regarding the common life of our chaplaincies. Because of the distances involved, the synod meetings have to be residentiary. This year, the synod meeting for the Eastern Archdeaconry took place between the afternoon of Thursday 8th and lunchtime on Sunday 11th October and was hosted by the Izmir Chaplaincy in Turkey. In their wisdom, this year’s Annual Meeting of the Prague Chaplaincy elected Sybille as one of their two lay synod representatives. So we decided that it would make good sense to combine our attendance at the Synod with my remaining annual leave.
Once we had decided to do this, I was very pleased to be able to arrange for Rev’d John Dinnen from Northern Ireland, accompanied by his wife Jane, to come and take up residence in our flat and for John to be locum chaplain for the three Sundays I would be away from Prague. John had been the first locum chaplain in April-May 2008 after the retirement of my predecessor John Philpott. What is more, Jane likes cats so they needed no persuasion to agree to also look after Oscar.
Because we would be on holiday once the synod meeting finished, rather than flying to Izmir, I thought, why not drive there? Instead of two airfares, there would only be the cost of petrol and overnight accommodation and we would have the car to explore Turkey and various chosen places on the way back. So it was that, at 2pm on Monday 5th October, we set out to drive from Prague in Central Europe to Izmir on the Asiatic west coast of Turkey.
Monday 5th October 2009
That afternoon, we headed south east out of Prague on the motorway towards Brno. Just before reaching Brno, we turned south and entered Slovakia, passing around the capital, Bratislava. Then it was into Hungary by which time it was beginning to get dark. So we ended our first day’s travel at Györ, an interesting historic city about an hour’s drive short of Budapest.
Tuesday 6th October 2009
The following day, we drove towards Budapest before heading south across the Hungarian plain to the border with Serbia, near the Hungarian town of Szeged. Here we left both the EU and the Schengen area. Entering Serbia, we had our passports stamped to show our date and place of entry and were also asked to produce our insurance green card for the car.
“You should also be aware that some parts of the motorway between Novi Sad and Belgrade have two-lanes with a hard shoulder on only one side. Some drivers use the ‘middle’ lane to overtake, thus forcing the ongoing traffic onto the hard shoulder. We advise you to take additional care when driving on these stretches”
In fact, it is mainly the section from the Hungarian border to Novi Sad that has these characteristics. Frequent memorials at the side of road were a constant reminder of those who had previously failed to heed the wise advice of the FCO! Serbian police lurking under bridges were also an effective visual aid!
We crossed the Danube for the third time on our journey near Novi Sad, (having previously crossed it in Bratislava and just south of Budapest), and drove on to Belgrade. From Belgrade, there is a good dual carriageway/four-lane highway motorway passing through ever increasingly attractive scenery, all the way to the southern Serbian city of Niš where we spent the second night of our journey.
Wednesday 7th October 2009
That morning, we headed east from Niš, now on an ordinary single carriageway road, eventually reaching the border with Bulgaria just over an hour later. Here the Serbian border police stamped our passports, this time to show when we had left the country. They also took the cards, dated and stamped by the hotel where we slept in Niš, which proved where we had stayed during our time in Serbia. Apparently, the Serbian authorities can be difficult if you don’t have the proper evidence to show where you’ve been in their country! Entering Bulgaria, we re-entered the EU (but not Schengen!) and headed further east on a good road until we reached the outskirts of Sofia.
It was here that we experienced the worst section of road during the whole of our journey – the Sofia ring-road. Clearly dating from the Communist era, it is single carriageway nearly all the way around the city. Each crossing with a road heading out of Sofia is controlled by traffic lights with no roundabouts or flyovers. Because of the impact of heavy trucks, the road surface is severely rutted in many places. Unfortunately, we followed a large slow moving truck for the whole of our journey around it. Eventually, the last little section suddenly became three lanes each way and then joined the motorway enabling us to head east towards Turkey.
We had lunch at a motorway service/rest area in an establishment called ‘Happy Bar & Grill’. The food and service were good and reasonably priced and with our complete inability to speak Bulgarian, it was most helpful to have a waitress who could speak English. But the abiding memory we both have of our visit, is of the outfits worn by our waitress and all her colleagues which featured the shortest miniskirts you are ever likely to see!!! Some internet research since reveals that ‘Happy Bar & Grill’ are the largest and most successful restaurant chain in Bulgaria. I wonder why??!!!
After an enforced detour around a section of motorway still under construction, we eventually reached the border with Turkey. Leaving Bulgaria was easy but successfully entering Turkey was another matter. At the first of numerous check points, we had our usual problem of explaining why a Czech registered vehicle had right-hand drive whilst the two occupants produced German and British passports! The Turkish passport officers were all smiles once we’d explained everything but they then forgot to stamp our passports or tell me where to go to pay €15 for an entry visa.
When we got to the next check point, this time for the car, I duly produced my Czech registration document and green insurance card, together with my passport, in order that a record could be made of the car being brought into Turkey. It was then that the failure to obtain my visa and have both passports stamped came to light. We had to park the car, go to the cash office, buy the visa, go back to passport control, get both passports stamped and then return to vehicle control!
There I got a lecture about why I must not try and sell my car whilst in Turkey but instead, export it again when I left the country. Why anyone in Turkey would actually want to buy a nine year old right-hand drive Czech registered car is beyond my comprehension!!! However, a record of my car was duly entered in my passport and woe betide if I dared try to leave the country without it.
We returned to the car in order to reverse back to baggage control when the car, for reasons known only to itself, refused to start! Eventually we had to ask someone from baggage control to come to us and then get a nearby coach passenger to help push the car in order to bump start it. Next it was customs and another check of documentation before finally, over an hour after we had arrived at the border, we were actually allowed to drive into Turkey.
The absence of part of the Bulgarian motorway, together with the Turkish border delays, meant we were somewhat behind my anticipated schedule. However, Turkey then produced the first of several surprises. I had expected the first section of motorway from the border to, & then around the city of Edirne, to be good. But when we left the motorway to head south towards the Gallipoli peninsular, I discovered that what I had expected to be a single carriageway road, was in fact a dual carriageway/four lane highway or well on the way to becoming one. Throughout our time in Turkey, time and again we were to be impressed by the standard and quality of the roads we drove on.
Eventually, after experiencing a wonderful sunset across the nearby Aegean Sea and driving for another hour and a half in the dark, we reached the town of Eceabat on the Dardanelles. As we drove slowly into the town, we saw a hotel sign and at the same time, two men sitting outside the building almost jumped out in front of us to flag us down. Seeing our foreign number plate, they suspected we were looking for somewhere to stay and were very keen to find more paying customers for their hotel. So it was that we booked into the somewhat eccentric but very pleasant Aqua Hotel in Eceabat.
After putting our overnight bags in our room, we went back downstairs to the restaurant. We were told that the menu was on the far side of the restaurant. When we got there, it was not a printed menu nor written on a blackboard on the wall as one might have expected. Rather, it was a glass fronted refrigerated unit! Within it was a selection of fresh fish, no doubt caught in the waters immediately outside the hotel, a variety of meat including kebabs, together with a selection of side dishes from which to choose. Basically we pointed to what we wanted and it was taken out, cooked and delivered to our table.
We chose a large fish to be cut in two & shared between us, together with some side dishes and a salad. All this we washed down with our first Turkish Efes beer. The meal and the liquid refreshment were most welcome after two and a half long days of driving.
After breakfast on the terrace by the sea, we drove about 3 km further along the road to the little port of Kilitbahir. Here we boarded the ferry that would take us on a short journey across the Dardanelles but also one that would take us from Europe to Asia. As you can see from the photograph, we were the first car on the ferry & therefore needed to be the first one to drive off on the other side in Canakkale. Fortunately on this occasion, the car started first time!
The journey from Canakkale to Izmir along the Turkish Aegean coast is one that I had made in reverse as part of a coach party, nearly 35 years previously in April 1975. For Sybille, it was her first time in Turkey or anywhere in Asia for that matter. Whilst the views and scenery were as beautiful as I remembered them, what I couldn’t help but notice was the scale of development of hotels and apartments all along the coast to support a tourist industry which was only in its infancy when I last passed along this self-same road. Also, as noted previously, there was a considerable improvement to the road itself.
So finally, after three days and nights, 1300 miles/2080 km of driving, just after 2pm, we arrived in the city of Izmir. There then followed a rather interesting 45 minutes or so whilst we tried desperately to find our way to the Kaya Prestige Hotel, the venue for our synod meeting. No, we don’t have a GPS/Satellite navigation system and guess who forgot to print out a Google map? However, assisted by the proprietor of another hotel who answered our crie de coeur by hopping in the front seat of the car to direct us around the one-way system, we finally arrived, two hours before the synod meeting was scheduled to begin.
On Monday 6th July, we drove right across Austria via Linz in the north to Klagenfurt in the south. As we did so, the rain got heavier and heavier so that, as we headed towards the steep mountain pass that would take us into Slovenia, it was positively tipping it down. The weather was no better on the Slovenian side of the border. However, as we joined the motorway to head south towards Ljubljana, (having purchased an expensive vignette to travel relatively few km of motorway), the rain slowly started to ease. And having bypassed Ljubljana and travelled on to Postojna where we left the motorway for the somewhat windy road that leads to the Croatian border, the sun came out as though to welcome us to our holiday destination.
At the Slovenian – Croatian border we had our passports checked for the first time on our journey. I couldn’t help but reflect on the irony of the situation and how the political geography of Europe has changed in the last twenty years. We had crossed from the Czech Republic to Austria and from Austria to Slovenia where, in both cases, border controls are now non-existent because all three countries are EU members and also part of the Schengen agreement. Yet now we were having our passports checked at a border that used not to exist until the beginning of the 1990s with the break-up of Yugoslavia.
It was also as we had our passports checked on the Croatian side of the border, that questions about our somewhat complex identity first raised their head as we tried to explain why a Brit and a German were travelling in a car with Czech number plates! This was the prelude to two cases of mistaken identity that occurred the following day.
We spent Monday night in the small Croatian coastal town of Senj. On Tuesday morning, after the secession of an early morning thunderstorm, we set out along the winding coastal road towards Zadar with wonderful views across to nearby islands. As we drove, we passed three motorcycles parked at the side of the road. Their riders & pillion passengers who were having a mid-morning break, waved to us in a very friendly fashion. We waved back and soon realised that the reason they were waving was because they were Czech and thought they were waving to fellow Czechs. Suddenly their friendly smiles turned to very quizzical looks when they noticed that my steering wheel was on the ‘wrong’ side!
Later in the day as we approached Zadar, we used a short section of motorway. As we turned off the motorway to drive into Zadar, we had to present our ticket and pay a small toll. Sybille wound down the car window and gave our ticket to the young man in the toll booth. ‘Pet’ he said, which is the word for ‘five’ in Czech. (There should be a hacek over the ‘e’ to lengthen the sound but most computer browsers won’t cope with it if I put one in and will instead render it as a ‘?’)! He seeing the Czech number plates was trying to be helpful and tell us in Czech, that we needed to pay five kuna, bearing in mind that both Czech and Croatian are Slavic languages with similar vocabularies. He couldn’t understand our blank looks until he saw where my steering wheel was located. ‘Five kuna’ he then said, and we paid!
