flat – Page 3

On holiday – but in Prague!

The yellow spire of St. Clement's Church seen from Letna Park © Ricky Yates

Once again, I have to start by apologising for not having posted anything here on my blog for over a month. The main reason for this has been a real sense of uncertainty about my situation because of the financial difficulties the Prague Anglican Chaplaincy has been facing. However, things are now looking a good deal more secure, not least due to some generous additional funding being immediately provided by the Intercontinental Church Society (ICS) and the likelihood of further help from one or two other sources.

However, as Sybille’s and my contribution towards keeping costs down, we chose not to attend the ICS Chaplains & families conference which took place in Sussex, UK last week, as the Chaplaincy would have had to meet both the cost of the conference and our travel costs to get there. This decision also meant that our original plan, of spending two weeks of my annual leave in the UK immediately following the conference, also had to change. So instead, after celebrating the Eucharist on Sunday 4^th July at St. Clements, I’ve been on a stay-at-home-holiday (vacation to my US readers) here in Prague.

One of the real difficulties of being a clergyman living on-the-job is that it is very difficult to be ‘on holiday at home’ without work inevitably intruding. However, other than answering a variety of emails and fielding a couple of phone calls, I’ve managed pretty well so far. And next week, I am going to the UK, but just for a long weekend – more about this in due course.

These past five days, I’ve set about trying to completely clean our flat, room by room. I don’t just mean running the vacuum cleaner across the floors and giving the furniture a quick wipe with the duster. I mean giving every room a really thorough clean! Therefore I’ve had my stepladder up from the cellar to enable me to reach and dismantle all the light fittings to remove a variety of dead insects and dust. It has also enabled me to clean the tops of wardrobes and the ledges above doorways.

For the first time since they were made and hung in January 2006, I’ve taken down the curtains a room at a time, in order to wash, dry, iron and re-hang them. They now seem several shades lighter, hopefully due to losing dirt rather than colour from the fabric! As I feared, the curtains have also shrunk a little. Fortunately, it is nothing too dramatic and no doubt they’ll drop a little in the next few weeks now they’ve been re-hung.

One very good reason for carrying out this cleaning exercise now is that finally, we are no longer living next to a building site. Our flat was built as part of the first stage of what the developers describe as Residence Podbaba. Ever since we moved here nearly two years ago, the fourth and final stage of the development has been under construction in front and at the side of our apartment block. Cleaning anything, especially the outside of windows or our balconies, was virtually a waste of time as within twenty-four hours, everything would once more be covered in dust from the building site.

About a month ago, the building work finished, paths were laid and the grounds landscaped. Therefore, whilst the curtains have been down, Sybille has been busy cleaning the windows and I’ve washed down all three of our external balconies.

As part of this cleaning exercise, we have also tried to look once more at our possessions, especially things that have gathered dust through lack of use. Have we used this item in the nearly two years we have been here? Are we likely to use it in the coming months? Jesus’ words recorded in Luke 12 v15 have been resonating once again. “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed: life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”

Two rooms remain to be tackled as part of this major cleaning exercise – the kitchen and our joint office. The latter is the most cluttered and therefore the most difficult to both clean and sort out. I promise to provide a further progress report in the next few days…….

Prírodní Park Šárka – Lysolaje

I am often asked, both by old friends in the UK and by new friends here in Prague, whether there are things I miss now that I live in a European capital city rather than the Oxfordshire countryside. I usually respond by saying that the only thing I miss is being able see fields and hedgerows directly from the windows of my home. But although I now live in an urban rather than a rural environment, the countryside is not very far away. Just behind the Pat’anka flats complex where we now live is Prírodní Park Šárka – Lysolaje, the Šárka Valley Nature Reserve, an amazing steep-sided wooded valley which once you enter it, seems a million miles away from the busy city environment even though it isn’t!

The main way to explore the Šárka Valley is on foot. There is a network of paths many of which are waymarked. Thus, aided by a 1 : 50 000 Turistická Mapa, we have begun to explore this beautiful green oasis that lies on our doorstep. Probably the most interesting route is the ‘red route’ waymarked by red & white marks very similar to the French balises that mark long distance footpaths in France.

The complete ‘red route’ is circular but we haven’t yet managed to walk all of it in one go. However, since Easter we have walked nearly all of it in different sections. Twice we have taken the tram almost the complete length of Evropská, to the terminus appropriately called Divorká Šárka (Wild Šárka). This lies at the western end of the valley and the ‘red route’ passes just below the tram terminus station. The other extremity of the ‘red route’ lies at the top of the hill behind our flats complex. So we have been able to walk in either direction along the waymarked route and arrive back at our flat. The great advantage of going out to Divorká Šárka and making our way back is that the last part of the walk is always downhill!

In many ways I now have the best of all worlds – all the amenities of this wonderful capital city yet with this beautiful green wooded reserve almost on my doorstep.

Footpath in Šárka Valley © Sybille Yates

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’!!!!!