Public Transport

Some aspects of village life in Stará Oleška

I promised back in May that, having moved from Prague to Stará Oleška, I would now write and reflect on my new life in North Bohemia. So here is a post about some of the practical aspects of village life, often in stark contrast to my experience during the previous eight and a half years of living in Prague.

Public transport

Stará Oleška lies on the 436 bus route which provides a service from the village, into the centre of Decín, terminating at the main railway station – Decín hl.n. In the opposite direction, it is possible to travel further into the hills to Jetrichovice and occasionally slightly further, to Vysoká Lípa.

In typical Czech fashion, the first bus of the day arrives in Stará Oleška at 04.43 and will deliver any passengers into Decín some thirty minutes later. The Czech Republic still has a culture of starting work very early in the morning which this service is clearly designed to meet. How well used it is I do not know as I’ve never been up at that ungodly hour to see 😉 However, I have heard it pass my house more than once – from my bed 🙂

Then throughout the day, there are regular services, allowing people to go shopping in Decín and return home an hour or two later. But unfortunately, you cannot have a night out on the town and get back to Stará Oleška by public transport. The last bus of the day leaves Decín at 18.43. And the fare for Stará Oleška – Decín? CZK 21, slightly less than one euro..

A nice touch that I have observed, in marked contrast to the UK, is the willingness of bus drivers to drop passengers off at the most convenient point, not necessarily an official bus stop. There is a home for adults with learning disabilities here in Stará Oleška and some of the residents travel into Decín for sheltered employment, returning on the bus in the early afternoon. The bus always stops to drop them off at the top of the driveway to the home, rather than taking them on round the corner, to the next stop. Likewise, when I was travelling on the bus through the neighbouring village of Nová Oleška, the driver stopped a couple of times to drop returning schoolchildren, directly in front of their homes.

On some services, clearly indicated on the timetable, provision is made for the transport of bicycles in the form of this trailer, towed behind the bus. It allows people to go biking in the hills without having to cycle all the way back to return to civilisation!

Veselé pod Rabštejnem railway station © Ricky Yates

Stará Oleška does not have its own railway station, but there is one, two kilometres from the village centre, provided you are prepared to walk 🙂 It takes a lot longer to get there by road. Taking the blue waymarked route, alongside the large lake, Olešský rybnik, and continuing up the hill, on the footpath, through the forest, will bring you to Veselé pod Rabštejnem station. For the train to pick you up, you have to stand on the platform and put your hand out. If you want to get off, press the buzzer on-board to tell the driver to stop.

Train at Veselé pod Rabštejnem station © Ricky Yates

Ceská pošta van heads off having delivered my post © Ricky Yates

Postal service

As in Prague, there is postal delivery here in Stará Oleška, once a day, Monday to Friday. But that is where the similarity ends!

Living in the Chaplaincy Flat in Prague, I would frequently get a chit in our mail box on the ground floor of our block, saying that there was an item that needed to be signed for, or a package that was too big for our mail box, that I had to go to the Post Office to collect. The chit always stated that our post lady had tried to deliver the item but there was no one at home to receive it when she called. This of course, was a complete lie. Usually one or both of us were at home, but the post lady chose not to bother to try and deliver the item as it was much easier not to carry it and instead, just put a note in the mail box.

My shiny new mail box on the front gate of Stará Oleška 44 © Ricky Yates

The contrast here in Stará Oleška could not be greater. If there is an item to be signed for, when the post lady arrives outside the front gate in her Ceská pošta van, she gives a couple of blasts on the horn. When I reach the front gate, she is there with her clip board, indicating where I have to sign. Once signed, the item is handed over with a smile. Only when I genuinely have not been at home, has a chit been left in my mail box. The post lady also dresses in typical Czech fashion, wearing her blue and yellow pin striped Ceská pošta polo shirt, teamed with a matching blue mini skirt 🙂

Even when I do have to go to the Post Office, there is a great contrast. In Prague, after taking a numbered ticket, I frequently had to wait up to thirty minutes before being served. Whilst here, I do have a slightly longer journey to the Post Office in Markvartice, once arrived, there is rarely more than one person in front of me and collection is completed in a few minutes.

Refuse truck parked up around the back of Bar-Restaurace U Soni © Ricky Yates

Refuse collection

My grey wheelie bin for household rubbish, is emptied weekly, late each Wednesday afternoon. But as the refuse truck passes along my street, it first has to stop at Bar-Restaurace U Soni, ostensibly to collect their rubbish. The truck is driven around the back to where the bins are, but is then parked up there for at least the next half hour.

As far as I can observe, the three-man crew are then duly fed and watered at what I would describe as the Stammtisch (German), Stammstul (Czech), a table set up around the back of the premises, where the male half of the couple who own the business, often sits in the evening, having a few beers with his close friends. Whether the refuse truck crew are fed and watered free-of-charge, or in return for certain favours such as collecting commercial refuse and deeming it household waste, I do not know. But it could really only happen in a small village 🙂

My Liebster Blogger Award – part one

A month ago yesterday, this blog was nominated for another award – A Liebster Blogger Award. This is an award given by fellow bloggers, to show appreciation for other blogs that they enjoy reading and think deserve to be highlighted and receive some praise.

My blog was nominated by Emily aka Writergem, whose own blog Czechesotans, is also about living as an expat in Prague; in her case, from the viewpoint of being an American teaching in an international school here for the past year. In her nomination of my blog she says, ‘Consider yourself educated after reading this one’. I did say in reply that I clearly needed fresh polish for my halo after receiving such praise 🙂

As part of the nomination process, the nominator sets a series of questions that each nominee has to answer in a subsequent post. Emily has set me eleven questions and this post is my attempt to answer the first five of them.

1. If your blog was a song, what would it be and why?

I must admit that I had to think hard and long about this one. Then I suddenly had a flash of inspiration. Why not a hymn? So my answer is, ‘Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation’.

My blog is predominantly about my experience of living and working in Prague and the wider Czech Republic. For the most part, I very much enjoy my life here and I’m very thankful for the opportunity of spending the last eight and a half years of my full-time public ministry as the Anglican Chaplain.

The words of the third verse of the hymn are particularly appropriate:

Praise to the Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee,

surely his goodness and mercy shall daily attend thee:

ponder anew

what the Almighty can do,

if to the end he befriend thee.

There are two other associated reasons for choosing this hymn. It was originally written in German – Lobe den Herren – and my wife Sybille is German. And when Sybille and I got married nearly nine years ago, we walked into Church to the congregation singing this hymn, and we made them sing two verses auf Deutsch!

2. What is one thing you reeeeally like about the town where you live?

There are so many things that I like about living in Prague and have previously written all about them on this blog. But if I am only allowed to choose one, then it would have to be public transport. It is efficient, frequent, integrated and incredibly cheap, even more so now I’m deemed to be ‘Senior’ because I’m over sixty 🙂

PS – for the benefit of David Hughes and other commenters who spot my very occasional spelling mistakes, the spelling of ‘reeeeally’ in the question above is exactly as Emily posted it on her blog – and she teaches English 😀

3. What are you doing this summer?

I could start this answer by pointing out to my nominator that, unlike teachers in international schools, I don’t get a two month holiday/vacation during July and August 😉 However, it is true that Church life is usually much quieter during these months, especially as this year I do not currently have any weddings to conduct.

The other big difference this summer is, as most followers of my blog already know, since 9^th June, Sybille has been on pilgrimage, seeking to walk from Prague to Santiago de Compostela. To her great credit, before setting out, she did what she has been promising to do and completely sorted out all of her papers that were scattered across her desk and in collapsing boxes under her desk. In the week before her departure, my paper shredder worked overtime and I paid several visits to the paper recycling bin 🙂

Sybille's empty desk & the clear floor beneath © Ricky Yates — Sybille’s empty desk & the clear floor beneath © Ricky Yates

Sybille’s desk is in one corner of our sitting room and with it and the area beneath it being completely clear, it has given me the incentive to try and ‘Summer clean’ the whole flat. The sitting room is already complete, including taking down the curtains, washing, drying and ironing them, before rehanging them once more. Whilst they were down, I cleaned all the windows, inside and out. The increased light and the improved view are most noticeable 🙂

I’ve also washed, dried, ironed and then refitted the covers on both settees; taken down every picture, polishing the glass at the front and removing the cobwebs from the back: taken all the books off three different bookcases, dusted both books and shelves before replacing the books. I then moved every item of furniture to enable me to first vacuum and then wash the wood-laminate floor, section by section. The collection of cobwebs and dead insects under one of the bookcases was a sight to behold! What am I doing this summer? Giving every other room in the Chaplaincy Flat a similar treatment. My office should be very interesting 🙂

However in August, I do have two weeks of annual leave and I shall spend them walking with Sybille. The exact logistics of how this will happen has been the subject of discussion between the two of us during the past few days. Sybille is deliberately not walking to a set timetable and cannot promise to be at a particular location in just under four weeks time. So I’ve got to decide very soon, where might be the most suitable place to fly to. Currently, this looks like being Geneva. Then a day or two before I set out, we will have to agree exactly where we are going to meet up and I will then plan to make my way from my arrival airport, by public transport, to that agreed location.

There is then also the issue as to where we will stay overnight whilst we are walking together. Sybille has already rightly pointed out that we won’t both fit in her one woman tent 🙂 Hopefully we will be walking together in France where there is often good provision of Gîtes d’Etape accommodation for walkers. I’m sure we will work something out and you can be sure that there will be a blog post about it!

4. Name a place you’ve travelled that you’d recommend to others and why.

One of the great joys of living at the heart of Central Europe, has been the opportunity it has given us to explore a whole variety of fascinating, new (to both of us) places, many of which I’ve written about here on this blog. As I am only allowed to choose one, then it has to be the Croatian island of Dugi otok, where we spent a delightful ten days in July 2009.

The name ‘Dugi otok’ means ‘Long Island’, highly appropriate as it is forty-five kilometres long but never more than four kilometres wide. It lies a one-and-a-half hour ferry journey from the port city of Zadar and has a resident population of no more than 1,800. You can read more about our time there in this post and the four that follow it.

Why do I recommend Dugi otok? It has all the facilities for a relaxing summer holiday, but is sufficiently off-the-beaten-track, not to be overrun with visiting tourists. Sitting at an outdoor restaurant table, alongside the harbour in the port of Sali, enjoying a meal, accompanied by a cool glass of something, whilst watching the sun slowly setting, was an experience we enjoyed on many evenings and of which I still have vivid memories. The remote beach at Mala voda on the uninhabited west coast of the island – very difficult to find a more pleasant spot for sunbathing and enjoying a swim in the warm Adriatic Sea.

Ever since our 2009 visit, we’ve spoken many times about going back to Dugi otok. I suspect we just might in 2015.

5. Who is someone you look up to?

John the Baptist. He lived a simple lifestyle with a rather interesting diet and fashion sense. He wasn’t afraid to be outspoken and challenge hypocrisy, including calling some Jewish religious leaders, ‘a bunch of poisonous snakes’! Showed great humility as he spoke about Jesus and, once Jesus began his public ministry, stepped out of the limelight. Openly criticising the immorality of Herod Antipas cost him his life. What not to admire?

Watch for my next post when I’ll try and answer the other six questions.

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.

The joys of Czech public transport

Diesel car 'Verunka' © Ricky Yates — Diesel car ‘Verunka’ © Ricky Yates

The Czech Republic has one the most dense rail networks in the whole of Europe. One of the very few benefits of over forty years of communist rule is that nearly all of it is still in existence and in use. Unlike in the UK, where over a third of the rail network was made redundant in the 1960s by Dr. Beeching, no one in the Czech Republic ever saw any part of their rail network as being ‘uneconomic’ and therefore needing to be closed down.

On Friday 28th June during our recent holiday in the Orlické hory, we walked around fourteen kilometres from our hotel in Rícky v Orlických horách, all along a waymarked footpath which follows the valley of the Rícka and Zdobnice rivers. At the end of our walk, we arrived in the village of Slatina nad Zdobnici. How did we get back to our hotel without retracing our steps? By a wonderful combination of train and bus.

The railway station at Slatina nad Zdobnici © Ricky Yates

At the western end of Slatina nad Zdobnici is the village railway station. Here it is in all its glory 🙂 Yes, there is grass growing on the platform and between the railway tracks. But trains still run regularly along the line and a clear timetable was on display. We had a bit of a wait as we had missed the previous train by about fifteen minutes. But right on time, the 14.37 service to Rokytnice v Orlických horách, duly arrived.

As on many branch lines of the Czech rail network, the service was provided by a single diesel rail car. Each one has a name and the one we travelled on was called ‘Verunka’. As the station at Slatina is unmanned, the procedure is to buy your ticket from the guard, once you are on board. Here is ours for the grand sum of 34 Kc – £1.12 at current exchange rates. And yes, that is for the two of us – £0.56 each! The ticket also declares the distance to be travelled – nine kilometres.

When we reached Rokytnice v Orlických horách, which is also the end of the line, we could have virtually straight-away caught a bus from outside the station, all the way back to Rícky v Orlických horách. Instead, we walked a short distance to Penzion Rampušák in the centre of the town, in order to have a well-deserved late lunch and do a little supermarket shopping. But at 17.13, right outside the supermarket, along came the next local bus service, to take us the six kilometres back to Rícky, also for the grand sum of 34 Kc. The joys of Czech public transport – regular, efficient and remarkably cheap!

Diesel car 'Verunka' at Rokytnice v Orlických horách station © Ricky Yates — Diesel car ‘Verunka’ at Rokytnice v Orlických horách station © Ricky Yates

A snowy weekend in Prague

Kostel sv Kliment / St. Clement's Church in the snow © Ricky Yates — Kostel sv Kliment / St. Clement’s Church in the snow © Ricky Yates

Last weekend, we had the heaviest snowfall here in Prague, since early January 2010. It started snowing late on Friday 22nd February and rarely stopped until just before Sybille and I left the Chaplaincy Flat to go to Church on Sunday morning. To give you a visual impression, here is a picture showing what Kostel sv Kliment / St. Clement’s Church looked like last Sunday, covered and surrounded by freshly fallen snow.

But in contrast to the UK, where everything seems to grind to a halt as soon as any snow falls, here in the Czech Republic, that just does not happen. So it was that Tram 8 arrived on time at 10.07 at the Podbaba tram stop, and whisked us off on our sixteen minute journey to Dlouhá trída, two minutes walk from the Church.

Tram 8 arrives at the Podbaba Tram Stop © Ricky Yates

But although public transport almost always keeps going when it snows in Prague, I generally believe that ‘discretion is the better part of valour’, when it comes to trying to drive the ‘Carly’ when it is covered in this amount of snow. The irony of having finally obtained my new Czech driving licence just a few days earlier, was not lost upon me 🙂

The 'Carly', deep in last weekend's snow © Ricky Yates — The ‘Carly’, deep in last weekend’s snow © Ricky Yates

After Church, Sybille and I took Tram 26 to Letenské námestí and had a celebratory lunch for Sybille’s birthday, in Fraktal Bar-Restaurace. Then we walked home through Stromovka Park where some park visitors were not put off by the snow, but were sitting out on deckchairs, enjoying liquid and other refreshments from the Slechtovka Restaurace, located in the middle of the park.

Deckchairs in the snow at Slechtovka Restaurace in Stromovka Park © Ricky Yates

Cross-Country skiing in Stromovka Park © Ricky Yates

Others were taking full advantage of the late winter snow, to practice their cross-country skiing.