I have twice previously written and posted about Pruhonice Park, a magnificent landscaped park that lies just south-east of the city of Prague. Sybille and I first visited Pruhonice Park in the summer of 2012 about which you can read and see numerous photographs here. Then in May this year, we re-visited in order to see the amazing display of flowering rhododendrons for which the park is particularly famous.
Last Monday, on my regular day-off, we made our third visit in order to see Pruhonice Park in Autumn and were not disappointed. Once more, there were remarkably few visitors and we were able to thoroughly enjoy the wonderful Autumn colours on display. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, so this post will be more pictures than words.
During our visit, I took about seventy photographs and I’ve had great difficulty choosing a small number of them, with which to illustrate this post. But I hope those that follow, will give some impression of the beauty of Pruhonice Park in the Autumn.
I had not realised until I checked the park website, that it too, had suffered from the floods of early June 2013. However, as we explored the park last Monday, we saw several examples such as the one in this photograph, of trees which had been completely uprooted and fallen sideways, presumably because of floodwaters washing away the soil around their roots.
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 good week in which several positive things occurred.
On Thursday 20th June, TelefonicaO2 finally reconnected our landline phone and internet access at the Chaplaincy Flat, a few hours short of seventeen days from when it ceased to function. To once more have reliable internet access with a reasonable download speed, was a welcome relief for which we are both very thankful. Of course, now we are away from the Chaplaincy Flat, internet connections have once more become a little more intermittent 🙁
The same day, I drove out to Horažd’ovice, to meet up with my good friend Adrian Blank, in order to help me get the ‘Carly’ through its STK, the equivalent of a British MOT Test. It did eventually get through but, at the expense of two new front tyres and some work to re-align the front wheels. Adrian reckons, probably quite rightly, that hitting a few Czech potholes was probably the cause of the problem. But at least the ‘Carly’ is now deemed fit to be driven on Czech roads for another two years.
The third thing of note was our worship and post-services activities last Sunday. Not only was our Sung Eucharist extremely well attended, we also had the privilege of having a guest preacher, Rev’d Dr Peter Walker. Peter and I trained for ordained ministry together at Wycliffe Hall, between 1987-1989. After serving his title in a parish in Kent, Peter has had an academic career, including a spell back at Wycliffe on the teaching staff. He is now Professor of Biblical Studies at Trinity School for Ministry, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. His challenging sermon, which has now been uploaded to our Church website, was widely appreciated by the congregation.
Following worship, many of us migrated to the nearby park on Lannova, a street that lies between the Church and the Vltava River, for our annual summer Picnic-in-the-Park. The picnic is always a good opportunity for fun & fellowship before many in the congregation are often away from Prague for several weeks, visiting family and friends in their home countries. Peter and his wife Georgie were able to join us for the picnic and very much enjoyed meeting and talking to members of the St. Clement’s congregation.
Last week was also notable for some very hot and sticky weather, in stark contrast to all of the rain earlier in the month, which was responsible for the very serious flooding in Prague and elsewhere in the western half of the Czech Republic. Fortunately the weather turned a little cooler at the weekend, but still dry except for a few spots of rain – ideal conditions for our picnic. Ideal weather, so I thought, for our walking holiday commencing the next day.
Unfortunately, Monday 24th June dawned cold, grey and with light rain. And when we set out late that morning on the Prague-Hradec Králové motorway, we drove through a positive downpour! However, just before reaching Rícky some three hours later, the rain stopped, allowing us an enjoyable short circular walk around the somewhat scattered settlement, after we had checked into the hotel.
But that dry couple of hours proved illusory. It was followed by forty-eight hours of continuous rain, meaning a couple of expeditions in the car but no walking in the hills. The rain finally stopped on Wednesday evening, so our walking holiday in the Orlické hory finally began today. Watch this space!
The Lahovice interchange south of Prague where the ring road crosses the main road south from Prague city centre. The top photo is how it should be; the bottom photo is how it was on Monday 3rd March 2013
Last Monday evening (3rd June), just as I was uploading photographs to illustrate a draft blog post about the serious flooding we were experiencing in Prague, our connection to the internet died. I soon discovered that the cause of the problem was that our landline phone was also dead – our broadband internet connection is via the landline.
Awaking on Tuesday morning, to find that we still did not have a functioning internet connection, I contacted Gordon the Church Treasurer using my mobile phone, to explain the problem. Although the contract with our service provider O2, is in my name, the monthly bill is sent electronically to Gordon, for him to settle directly from the Church account. Gordon assured me that O2 had an English-speaking helpline and he would contact them and let me know the outcome.
When Gordon contacted O2, the English-speaking helpline offered a recorded message saying that ‘no English-speaking operators were available’, whilst the Czech helpline, upon entering our phone number, produced another recorded message saying that there were ‘technical issues in our area’ but with no indication as to when these ‘technical issues’ might be resolved. The only contact Gordon or I have had from O2 was a Czech text message to my mobile phone last Friday afternoon, promising that compensation for loss of service will be included in next month’s bill.
Having no internet access in my office in the Chaplaincy Flat for six days, has been utterly frustrating. It has also made me very conscious of how reliant I am upon being able to send and receive emails, at little more than the click of a mouse.
But it isn’t just the restrictions that this situation has placed upon me, but also the expectations of those I serve. The assumption that if someone sends me an email, they will receive a prompt reply. Within a couple of days, I had a phone call on my mobile from one of the congregation, most surprised that I hadn’t replied to his email – a simple request for a contact name and phone number to which I would have normally have replied within a few hours.
Fortunately, the purchase of a new laptop computer just over a year ago, has meant that I have managed to make a connection with the internet from time to time, by going to various local bar-restaurants more frequently than normal 🙂 in order to avail myself of their wifi. So I’ve learned to write emails and save them in my drafts folder, and then send them once I get to the pub! But it isn’t the most ideal way to work. Honestly!
Sybille has a fairly common response whenever I ask her something. If she doesn’t immediately know the answer to my question, then she firmly tells me to ‘google it!’ But of course, I cannot ‘google it’, if we have no internet connection. Likewise, when compiling the ‘Weekly Bulletin’ for Sunday worship this past week, I couldn’t click onto the Church of England website and copy and paste the Collect of the Day – I ended up typing it word by word from a book instead. And trying to update the Chaplaincy website 🙁
All along, we have assumed that the ‘technical issues’ to which O2 referred in their recorded message, related to the serious flooding of recent days – that flood-water had got into their system somewhere. So when on Saturday morning, I met Jana who lives on the ground floor of our apartment block, I asked her if she had the same problems with phone and internet as we do. I was surprised when she said she had experienced no interruption to service at all.
Then yesterday evening, about an hour before I got back from Brno from officiating at our regular monthly evening service there, Sybille decided to ask Kamila who lives across the second floor landing from us, if her phone and internet were working. She too, had not had any problems. Even better, Kamila kindly gave Sybille the log-in details to her wifi network, to allow us to piggyback onto her system until O2 get around to resolving their ‘technical difficulties in our area’. So after six long days, both Sybille and I are finally back online.
Kamila’s network only works in our sitting room so I’ve had to temporarily migrate from my office, to the dining table. But her service provider, who also seem to be used by many others in our immediate neighbourhood, say they only need an existing phone landline, in order to provide broadband internet. Therefore, when we do finally get a functioning landline once again, O2 will promptly lose a customer. But when that will be is anyone’s guess. By the time I post this, our landline will have been dead for a whole seven days, and still counting 🙁
This was written and should have been posted late in the evening of Monday 3rd June. However, as I was uploading the photographs, the internet connection to the Chaplaincy Flat died, along with the landline phone. Nearly four days later, we are still without internet or phone. Our provider O2, tells us in a recorded message that they have ‘technical issues in our area’, with no information as to when these ‘technical issues’ will be resolved. We assume that floodwater has got into their system somewhere. I have finally managed to complete this post using the wifi connection in Bar-Restaurace U Topolu whilst eating my lunch 🙂
I have previously written on this blog, about flooding in Prague. I wrote that post from a historical perspective and illustrated it with some photographs of flood level markers that can be found on several buildings near to the Vltava River, as flows through the centre of Prague. At the end of my post, I remarked that, as serious flooding seems to have occurred with one hundred year intervals, and the last very serious floods were in 2002, I didn’t expect there to be another occurrence during my lifetime. That was until the events of the past few days.
As well as being cold and miserable, as the weather has been throughout most of May, during the last week it has also been raining pretty consistently too. The inevitable consequence has been a rise in river levels which reached dangerous heights over the past forty-eight hours. This was the scene that greeted us after we walked down to the side of the Vltava after Church on Sunday morning. Normally you can walk along here and there is reserved parking for customers of the Botel Albatross in the distance – hence the ‘P’ sign sticking out of the water.
Just beyond the Podbaba tram terminus, on our way home to the Chaplaincy Flat, we were greeted with this view, with the main road completely blocked because of flooding in the underpass beneath the Prague-Dresden railway line. I should add that this flooding has got considerably deeper in the past twenty-four hours.
We returned to the city centre later on Sunday afternoon, to get an idea of how severe the flooding was likely to be. At that point in time, it was still possible to walk across Charles Bridge from where I took this photograph which shows the first flood defences having already been erected on Kampa Island. In the foreground, one of the wooden barriers which are meant to protect the buttresses of the bridge, is almost completely submerged.
The photographs that follow were taken by me this morning, Monday 3rd June. I hope they help to illustrate the flood situation as it currently is. Obviously, the situation is fluid if you will excuse my bad pun.
Whilst we were travelling back into the centre of Prague on Sunday afternoon, we heard (and understood !!!) an announcement in Czech, that a a sizeable section of the Metro was being closed until further notice. Basically, any station near the Vltava River has been closed, with flood barriers erected around the entrance, to try to prevent any part of the system being inundated, as here at Malostranská.
Whilst we had been able to walk across Charles Bridge on Sunday afternoon, later that evening, it was closed to the public. Here the fire service, aided by a mobile crane, are trying to remove large trees and other debris building up against the bridge parapets.
Some buildings that are so close to the Vltava cannot be protected from flooding such as these in the photograph above or this riverside bar in the photograph below.
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 gap in the high concrete wall, allows road access to the riverside during times of normal river levels. But should water levels rise rapidly, then a sunken metal barrier can be raised between the two sections of the wall, blocking the road, but preventing floodwater from going any further.
The second picture shows the view alongside the river, at right angles to the first picture. The concrete wall with pillars on the left, is the continuation of the concrete wall in the first photograph. Again, there are sunken metal barriers between the pillars which can be raised in time of serious flooding. But when river levels are normal, the barriers are left down, allowing more light into the car park immediately behind the wall and the into the houses beyond.
The second pair of photographs were taken in the suburb of Hanspaulka, a little further west from where we live. The housing in Hanspaulka mainly dates from the first four decades of the twentieth century. However, the suburb also contains a number of examples of blocks of flats built in the early years of the Communist era, to provide much needed additional housing for the growing population of post-war Czechoslovakia.
Much grandiose Communist era artwork on buildings in the Czech Republic has quietly been eliminated and destroyed. But this somewhat quaint piece above the doorway of a small-scale three or four storey block of flats, has survived. As it says, it dates from 1951, only three years after the Communist coup of 1948. It celebrates two archetypal labourers working in heavy industry, ironically located in a suburb where such heavy industry has never existed!
The second photograph puts the artwork in context, showing where it is located, above the entrance to the flats built to house the hardworking proletariat. It also shows another feature found on many buildings across Prague – the provision of metalwork, located immediately below the street number of the building, to allow the display of two flags. As I explained in an earlier post about public holidays in the Czech Republic, in the Communist era this was for the display of a flag of Czechoslovakia, alongside the flag of the country’s fraternal friend, the Soviet Union. These days, two Czech flags will be displayed!
