Moravia

Kostel sv Martina/St Martin’s Church, Markvartice

Today saw the reconsecration of Kostel sv Martina/St Martin’s Church in the nearby village of Markvartice. For the somewhat irreligious Czech Republic, renovating an abandoned Church building and bringing it back into liturgical use, is quite an event.

Whilst there has been a Church on the current site since the thirteenth century, the building in its present baroque appearance, dates from a rebuilding between 1701-04. It started falling into disrepair following the end of the Second World War, a result of the expulsion of the majority Sudetendeutsche population in 1945-6 and the communist takeover of power in Czechoslovakia, shortly afterwards.

The Church was last used for liturgical worship in 1966. By the late 1980s, all that was left standing were the perimeter walls – all of the roof had collapsed. Apparently, in 1989, the communist authorities issued an order for the demolition of the building, but fortunately, the Velvet Revolution took place before the order could be carried out.

Work to restore the Church began fifteen years ago, in 2002. Whilst funds to carry out the restoration have been raised locally, considerable finance has come from various German Roman Catholic dioceses. There has also been financial support from the regional government and from the Czech Ministry of Culture. This governmental support whilst welcome, is more about preserving what is seen as the country’s cultural and architectural heritage, rather than directly supporting the Roman Catholic Church.

Markvartice is about eight kilometres by road from Stará Oleška. Earlier this week, after I first read about today’s reconsecration, I drove across there to visit the Church. Last minute work to get everything ready for today’s celebrations, was taking place, but I was able to explore and take the photographs that follow.

Interior of Kostel sv Martina/St Martin’s Church © Ricky Yates

As you can see, the very baroque interior has been completely restored to a very high standard and a modern forward altar and lectern installed. One rather ‘interesting’ feature is the coloured light under the front of the new altar. It changes between the different liturgical colours, avoiding the need for different coloured altar frontals 🙂

Inscription over chancel arch © Ricky Yates

The inscription above the chancel arch clearly reflects the fact that German was the language of the majority population at the beginning of the eighteenth century until 1945.

A rather elaborate pulpit from which to preach 🙂

The churchyard on the north side of the Church, has been almost completely cleared with the damaged remains of memorials, moved and placed alongside the boundary wall.

John 14. 6 in German & Czech © Ricky Yates

However, this memorial, with its bilingual inscription underneath a large cross, has been renovated and preserved. It is also an example of how much longer it takes to say something in German than in most other languages 🙂

Statue of the Virgin Mary being carried in procession © Ricky Yates

Today’s celebrations began with this statue of the Virgin Mary being carried in procession through the village. The procession started at the railway station, located at the southern end of the village, and proceeded to the Church, located at the northern end.

At the head of the procession, along with a processional cross and four banners, was a small brass band who I’m almost certain had travelled from Germany. There was quite a German presence with many German registered cars parked in the various temporary car parks that had been set up.

Hence this bilingual sign! There were also coaches which had brought people from elsewhere in the Czech Republic, particularly from Moravia which is the more Roman Catholic end of the country. Therefore whilst the Church was packed for the 11.00 mass of reconsecration, I do wonder how well attended it will be by local people, Sunday by Sunday, once all the visitors have left.

Farmer’s Market on Saturday – Worship on Palm Sunday

Market 1 — Crowds at the Farmer’s Market © Ricky Yates

In early March, after a two-and-a-half month winter break, the Saturday morning Farmer’s Market at Vítezné námestí resumed. So now nearly every Saturday, we take a short bus or tram journey from the Chaplaincy Flat and explore what the market has to offer. As you can see, we are not the only ones who do so and at times, it can get quite crowded!

There are a number of stalls that we regularly visit each week for supplies of bread, eggs and potatoes. Whilst we can buy such things from our very convenient Kaufland supermarket, the produce from the Farmer’s Market does always seem fresher, is often cheaper, and one can be almost certain that the producer obtains a far better return for their labour.

Stall selling Moravian wine © Ricky Yates

Another of our favourite stalls is this one, selling Moravian wine. Whilst they do sell it by the 0.75l bottle, you can also have a plastic bottle filled from the tanks behind the counter. Two litres of extremely quaffable white wine costs around CZK 150 (just under £5.00 at current exchange rates).

The senior proprietor, (the gentleman behind the stall on the right in the photograph above), is Czech. However, he also speaks reasonably fluent German and has some English. So we frequently conduct business with him in a mixture of all three languages! When we are about to depart, his farewell words are almost always to wish us ‘Ein schönes Wochenende‘ 🙂

Flower stall at the Farmer's Market © Ricky Yates — Flower stall at the Farmer’s Market © Ricky Yates

Czech people do love their flowers and there are always numerous stalls that sell them. I couldn’t resist photographing this colourful stall yesterday which, as you can see, was doing a thriving business.

In the centre of the market area, there are various stalls selling freshly cooked food with tables & chairs where you can sit down and eat. And you can usually do so to musical accompaniment such as this young accordion player/singer was providing yesterday morning.

Our visit to the Farmer’s Market at Vítezné námestí yesterday morning, when all the accompanying photographs were taken, marked the beginning of a busy but enjoyable weekend. Today, not only did we have our Palm Sunday Eucharist, but the service was to be followed by that significant event – our Annual Church Meeting.

Just a few minutes before worship was due to begin at 11.00 this morning, we suddenly had a problem of the nicest sort. We completely ran out of copies of the Palm Sunday Order of Service as the congregation became double the size for a normal Sunday. The cause was a large number of visitors, mainly Americans but also including a delightful Indonesian couple. The biggest visitor group was a party of high school students from Connecticut, along with their teachers. We solved the problem by me asking from front, for people to share, so that everybody could follow and join in the liturgy. Fortunately, we just had enough palm crosses to go around!

After reading the Palm Sunday Gospel – Matthew 21. 1-11, I led the congregation in a procession outside, all around the Church as we sang ‘All glory, laud and honour, to thee Redeemer King’. Fortunately, when we re-entered the Church, we were still just about in time with Professor Michal Novenko on the organ 🙂 Some of those living the apartment blocks that overlook the Church got a bit of a surprise, but at least they were made aware that today was Palm Sunday!

As for the Annual Church Meeting, it was much better attended than in a number of previous years, and despite the serious financial difficulties that we face, there was a real desire expressed to work together to overcome them. Both our worship and the Annual Church Meeting have certainly helped prepare me to enter Holy Week, and with Jesus, once more walk the way of the cross.

Wedding at Bouzov Castle

On Monday 29th July, I conducted my first wedding of 2013, when Daniel, the British bridegroom, married Iva, his Czech bride, at Bouzov Castle. The castle lies in the rolling wooded hills of Moravia, about thirty minutes drive north-west of Olomouc.

As long-standing readers of my blog may know, this was not the first time I have conducted a wedding at Bouzov Castle. For I conducted my first-ever wedding in the Czech Republic at this same venue just over four years ago, also between a British bridegroom, Lea, and his Czech bride, Petra. You can read all about it and see the photos, here.

It was finding this post about Lea and Petra’s wedding on my blog, that prompted Daniel to contact me earlier this year, asking if I would be willing and available to conduct their wedding. As with Lea and Petra, Daniel and Iva had met whilst both living in the UK, but were very keen that their wedding should take place near to Iva’s Czech family home. What I really liked about Daniel’s initial email enquiry to me was his declaration that, ‘Faith is an important and growing part of our lives’, and how he then went on to explain that they were attending an Alpha Course being run by their local Anglican Church on the the Staffordshire/Cheshire border, where they currently live.

I was able to meet with Daniel and Iva earlier in February this year, whilst they were visiting Iva’s family, following a week of snowboarding down the Austrian Alps! But a lot of planning for the wedding service has taken place by email, over the past few months. As with both of my English-speaker to Czech weddings in 2012, it was very important to make sure that both the English and Czech speakers could understand and follow the service. So I was most grateful that my friend and Brno service coordinator Katka Bánová, was able and willing to help me on the day.

It has to be said that my journey from Prague to north Moravia, got off to the worst of possible starts. My plan was to drive there, following our Eucharist in Prague on the morning of Sunday 28th July. Daniel had already booked and paid for me to stay overnight in a hotel on the outskirts of Olomouc, where many other guests were also staying in advance of the wedding.

Additionally, I had arranged to drive on further on Sunday afternoon/evening, to Kuncice pod Ondrejnikem, in order to meet a Czech young lady called Dagmar, who currently lives and works in Portsmouth, but was home visiting her family. Dagmar is currently exploring a possible vocation to train for ordained ministry in the Church of England and has been in email contact with me. This was to be our first chance to meet in person, rather than just online.

Therefore, instead of travelling into St. Clement’s from the Chaplaincy Flat by public transport, as we normally do, I instead drove in by car, with all my necessary gear for being away for two nights, to which I was to add my cassock-alb and stole, following the Prague service. Unfortunately, just after crossing the Vltava River and waiting to turn left into Lannova, where it is possible to park the car free-of-charge on a Sunday, the car engine died!

Four police officers kindly pushed the car to a parking place outside the nearby Clarion Hotel and told me to go and ‘take my mass’ 🙂 and then come back to the car afterwards. So I duly did, but was at a total loss as to how I was to then fulfil my commitments both to Dagmar and to Daniel and Iva.

Aided by a member of the congregation and one of the hotel staff, we were able to push the car to a nearby parking place where it was free-of-charge to park until 08.00 on Monday morning. Then, to cut a long story short, I eventually combined my hanging clothes with my cassock-alb and stole over one arm, and put all my other belongings in a bag and carried them in my other hand, and headed by tram to Prague’s main railway station.

All this happened during one of the hottest and most humid periods of weather I have ever experienced in Prague. Therefore on arrival at the railway station, I happily paid CZK 20 (£0.66), to avail myself of a toilet cubicle, in order to change out of my black clerical shirt which was covered in white perspiration stains, into something dryer and more comfortable. I also did get my money’s worth and used the facility for the purpose for which it was primarily intended 🙂

Such are the joys of public transport in the Czech Republic, that even on a Sunday, there is an hourly train service between Prague and Olomouc. Thus I arrived safely in the centre of Olomouc just before 18.00 that evening, and a short taxi journey took me to my hotel. En-route, I texted Dagmar, to apologise for not being able to meet her.

The next morning, I made contact by email and phone, with an English-speaking staff member of our local Renault Garage. He kindly organised a tow truck to pick up the car before it got a parking ticket, and even arranged for the truck to call first at the Chaplaincy Flat, to pick up the spare car key from Sybille. With that all finally sorted, I was then able to concentrate on the wedding.

The wedding party in front of Bouzov Castle © Ricky Yates

Katka kindly picked me up from the hotel and drove us both to Bouzov Castle in advance of the rest of the guests who were travelling there by private coach. This gave us plenty of opportunity to talk through how we would conduct the service and sort out all of the practicalities, well in advance of the event. Consequently, the service went extremely smoothly. As with both my English-speaker to Czech weddings in 2012, I had many guests afterwards expressing enjoyment of the service, especially Czech speakers who appreciated all that had been done to ensure they understood and could follow what was being said.

Daniel and Iva feeding each other soup © Ricky Yates

The reception took place under a marquee within the castle courtyard. This was possible because of the wedding taking place on a Monday when the castle is closed to the public. The couple were made to fulfil various Czech marriage traditions, some of which I’ve written about previously. One is the requirement to feed soup to each other from a single bowl, while protected by a sheet. The idea is to encourage cooperation between the newly married couple.

Daniel enjoying his wedding cake © Ricky Yates

Other traditions are more universal in nature such as cutting the wedding cake. As you can see, not only did Daniel enjoy cutting the cake, he also enjoyed consuming some of it!

Despite all of the hassles I experienced on the Sunday, I still did enjoy being part of Daniel and Iva’s special day. The happy couple are hoping to relocate to the Czech Republic in the not so distant future and have assured me that they want to become part of either the Prague or Brno Anglican congregations.

As for the car, the problem was the failure of the alternator, meaning the engine was no longer charging the battery. Combined with the replacement of both metal straps under the petrol tank, work strongly recommended when the car passed its STK in June, together with being towed, I ended up with a bill for CZK 11,157 (approx £372.00). The better news is that I still managed to meet up with Dagmar, as she came to Prague to see her cousin and we managed a chat over a couple of beers, last Friday evening.

Boskovice

On the morning of Easter Monday, Sybille and I set off from Brno, to spend the first few days of my post-Easter break, exploring some more parts of the Czech Republic we have not previously visited. We drove about 40 km north from Brno, to the town of Boskovice. Despite seeing ever-increasing amounts of snow lying on the surrounding countryside as we drove into the hills of the Moravský kras, the main roads were fortunately perfectly clear.

We parked the ‘Carly’ in the somewhat snow-covered Masarykovo námestí, the main square in the town centre, which is dominated at the west end, by the impressive Kostel Sv. Jakuba Staršího/Church of St. James the Great. From there, we set out to discover two of Boskovice’s main landmarks. A large Zámek/Chateau, which dates from the early nineteenth century and is built on the site of a former Dominican monastery.

Zámek/Chateau at Boskovice © Ricky Yates

The ruins of Boskovice Castle © Ricky Yates

And the quite substantial ruined remains of a 13th century castle. Unfortunately, despite a sign indicating that the castle would be open because it was Easter Monday – a public holiday, we discovered at the end of our walk up a snow-covered hill, that it was closed. We suspect that this was due to the adverse weather conditions. This was a shame as I understand that there are excellent views from the castle, across the surrounding countryside.

For several centuries, there was a large Jewish population living in Boskovice. The Jewish quarter of the town, is among the best preserved monuments of Jewish culture in the whole of the Czech Republic. In 1942, during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, 458 Jewish men, women and children, were deported from Boskovice, initially to Terezín, and then on to concentration camps such as Auschwitz. Of those deported, only fourteen survived.

The interior of the restored former synagogue in Boskovice © Ricky Yates

The main synagogue was built in 1639 and was altered and extended over the following centuries. During the eighteenth century, the interior walls were decorated with frescos, the work of Polish Jewish artists. Having been neglected and used as a warehouse during the Communist era, following the Velvet Revolution, restoration work began with the synagogue being reopened to the public in 2002. Whilst many of the frescos at lower levels have been lost, no doubt due to rising damp, those at higher levels around the ladies gallery, are remarkably intact.

Having seen a note on the door of the synagogue during the morning of Easter Monday, that it would be open from 13.00 that afternoon, we returned there after a late lunch at 14.50. We were greeted by the lady in charge who fortunately spoke fluent German. She explained that the synagogue had again been closed for several months over the past winter in order for further restoration work to be undertaken. Monday 1st April was reopening day and we were the first visitors of 2013. I duly christened the 2013 page of the visitors book!

Interior of the restored synagogue in Boskovice © Ricky Yates

Interior detail of the restored synagogue in Boskovice © Ricky Yates

Fresco artwork on the interior walls of the restored synagogue in Boskovice © Ricky Yates

Frescos on the ceiling of the restored synagogue in Boskovice © Ricky Yates

As well as the synagogue, the lady in charge also took us across the road to the basement of a house, where there is a restored private mikve for Jewish ritual washing. This mikve is a relatively recent find, following the ownership of the house changing hands. The new owner decided to clear out the rubbish & rubble from the basement of his house, and made this remarkable discovery!

Headstone with text in Hebrew and German in the Jewish cemetery in Boskovice © Ricky Yates

At the south-western end of Boskovice, there is the third largest Jewish cemetery in the whole of the Czech Republic, containing around 2500 headstones. As in this example, inscriptions are usually in both Hebrew and German.

Boskovice does not even rate a mention in our ‘Lonely Planet Guide to the the Czech Republic and Slovakia’. Fortunately, I had come across a couple of snippets of information about the town elsewhere, which is what prompted our visit. Seeing the amazing artwork in the restored synagogue and private mikve, were the highlights of an informative and fascinating day.

Jewish cemetery in Boskovice © Ricky Yates

A ‘White Easter’ in Brno

Komin, Brno in the snow — The view across Komin, Brno on Easter Monday 2013, with snow on the hills & the rooftops © Ricky Yates

With Easter Day being quite early in 2013, and with Northern and Central Europe experiencing one of the coldest months of March on record, I did rather expect our Prague Easter Day congregation not to be quite as large as it was in 2012. Added to these two factors, was the change to Central European Summer Time (CEST) during the previous night, another discouragement &/or confusion to add to the mix. In view of the weather, the term ‘summer time’ did seem somewhat inappropriate 🙁

Despite all of this, we did still have a large congregation for Easter Day worship in Prague with a very good turnout of our regular congregation, a few of our ‘lost sheep’ reappearing, and being joined by a good number of English-speaking visitors from around the globe. Amongst the latter were several young Christians from India, all of whom are currently studying at various universities in Germany, who had organised to spend the Easter weekend together in Prague, and had made attending Christian worship on Easter Day, a central priority of their trip.

Having on Easter Eve, put the third member of our family, Oscar our elderly black & white cat, into the care of Hellam family for a few days, it meant that Sybille was able to travel down with me to Brno and attend worship there for the first time. So after fellowship and post-service refreshments in Prague, we set off together in the ‘Carly’, along the D1 – the Prague-Brno motorway.

We stopped for a late lunch at a service area some 60 km out of Prague, which advertises itself as serving the largest rízek/schnitzel on the D1 🙂 As I was eating mine, so snowflakes started falling outside. And as we drove on after lunch, across the Vysocina/Highlands, so the snow got heavier. Fortunately, the motorway remained relatively clear, but we arrived to see Brno covered in snow. Apparently, it had been snowing there for most of the day. So in Brno on Sunday 31st March 2013, I experienced the first ever ‘White Easter’ that I can remember.

Unfortunately, the adverse weather discouraged a small number of people from attending our evening Eucharist in Brno. But I was thrilled that Phil and Lenka, an English-Czech couple whose wedding I conducted in September 2010, came along to boost the regular congregation. They are currently having a house built for themselves, just south of Brno, with a view to moving there permanently from the UK, later this year. Two more future members of the Brno congregation!

Even better was the news that Phil & Lenka had taken note of what I had said in my sermon at their wedding. I had spoken about the Christian understanding of marriage as outlined in the preface to the Marriage Service in ‘Common Worship- Pastoral Services’. In the preface it states that the third reason that marriage is given is, ‘as a foundation of family life in which children may be born and nurtured’. Yes – Lenka is pregnant and is expecting their first child in August this year!

After post-service refreshments, Sybille & I drove out to Komin, a former village that is now a Brno outer suburb, to stay overnight with Katka, my chief Brno service organiser, and her husband Josef. The photo at the beginning of this post, is of the view from their guest bedroom window that greeted us on Easter Monday morning. Please note the snow on the nearby rooftops & the surrounding hills. Bing – I’m not dreaming of a ‘White Christmas’ or a ‘White Easter’ – I’ve just experienced one!