Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall Visit St. Clement's Church in Prague

  photo copyright Sybille Yates 2010

Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall

Prague is one of those cities that seems to host important figures from around the world.  This week Prince Charles came through Prague on his Central European tour and Charles and Camilla (or C & C as my friend and chaplain Ricky Yates affectionately refers to them in shorthand) chose to attend Sunday service at St. Clement's Anglican Church in Prague. As you can imagine the amount of coordination required is extensive and Ricky should be proud as a British citizen for keeping the Prince's visit a secret when diplomatic sources did not!

I respect Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall for visiting St. Clement's church.  If you were looking to get splashed all over the headlines, you probably wouldn't pick going to church as the activity to do it.  But to the people involved at the church it makes a difference.  Expat churches are incredibly hard to sustain financially as there aren't big endowments and the members are constantly coming and going.  By attending services, Prince Charles brought all kinds of great publicity to St. Clement's (including his own web page), doubled the normal attendance and helped the budget of a fantastic community of Christians.

If you want to read more about the Prince's visit, I invite you to enjoy Part I  of the royal visit on Ricky Yates blog here:

http://rickyyates.com/the-royal-visit-%E2%80%93-as-it-happened/

Part II follows! One of the coolest parts about the Prince's visit is I'm sure they don't let just anybody preach to the Prince.  Go Ricky Go!

Original Thinking in Olomouc: A Grain Silo Reborn

The New York Times featured a very interesting home in Olomouc, Czech Republic today. It looks like a beautiful home to live in and look out of; Olomouc is said to be very old and very beautiful so I can just imagine how breathtaking it is to see the entire city from above.

I wonder if the neighbors feel this home is as beautiful to look at as look out of? Regardless, I have to give it to this family for original thinking. Click on my title to read the article and see the slide show of their home.

Thanks for reading!

This month brought me the best gift of blogging.  I guess I should say, the second best gift of blogging because the first gift is the wonderful, wonderful friends I have made in real life due to my blog.  This month I have just had amazing conversations with a couple of my blog readers ~ and what a stimulating group they are! Thank you for reading my blog and giving me your feedback.

It's so exciting to hear about the adventures and thoughts of people who read what I write because I get feedback not only on what I've said but I get to see who enjoys it.  Keep reading and writing to me!  I love it.

This month my very best friend from 2nd grade, Nancy, now living in Atlanta, Georgia in the United States, hosted a Czech night at her book club.  She served mead and had Central European food and her entire book club read Bohumil Hrabal's "I Served the King of England" based on my recommendation.  If any of Nancy's book club members are reading my blog for the first time, welcome!  Thanks for cherishing my good friend Nancy and sampling the gorgeous literature of the Czech Republic.  I feel like I did my bit to spread Hrabal's name in America where he is virtually unknown.  Nothing could make a librarian happier!

 I will begin writing longer posts again shortly.  Life is so beautiful and I can't write down fast enough all of the things that fascinate me. Until next time, ciao!

How I Travel: A BootsnAll Resource

If you're interested in starting a life of vagabonding or setting out to see the world and do any kind of internet research, you quickly discover the internet resource "BootsnAll." The site bills itself as the ultimate resource for the independent traveler. BootsnAll offers all of the usual traveler money-making resources like tickets, tours, insurance, and lodging.  What really makes it interesting, however, is all of the travel writing content. I love to read about other people's travel experiences!  The forums, where independent travelers discuss their finds and look for tips from the person who was most recently there, are inspiring in their spontaneity!

 

Me hanging out in Berlin

 "How I Travel" is a new BootsnAll interview series publishing every Tuesday in an effort to look at the unique and diverse travel habits of some of the world's most well known and proficient road warriors. Here's the travel writer, Rolf Potts, who first empowered me to hit the road, plus a couple of other columns to enjoy. 

 

Rolf in Ethopia

How I Travel: Rolf Potts
author of the wonderful travel book "Vagabonding"

 

Don Wildman on the Road

How I Travel: Don Wildman
host of the History Channel show "Underground Cities"

 

Stephanie Izard making friends in Honduras

How I Travel: Stephanie Izard
Chicago chef and winner of the Top Chef competition

BootsnAll writer Steve Bramucci is interested in hearing from you.  Who would you like to see spotlighted in a future "How I Travel" interview? You can tell him here.  I'm nominating one of my favorite expat bloggers for a column: MaryAm from the gorgeous design blog My Marrakesh.  Her last business trip took her to Kabul.  Now don't you want to know how she travels?

Who Will Be the Czech "Jamie Oliver?"

There are two spheres of life in the Czech Republic that are wide open for the right talent to walk into and call their own - giant gaping voids that just scream "opportunity!"  The first sphere would be politics which I've written about in other posts.  The second sphere of life in the Czech Republic that is in need of new voices, new talent, & new thought is cuisine.

 

            

         

British Chef
Jamie Oliver

  

Where is the Czech "Jamie Oliver?" He's the British chef who said "we could make our national food and cuisine and what we serve our kids healthier." The Czech Republic is in bad need of this kind of culinary cultural leadership.

Food author

Michael Pollan

It's interesting to compare what needs to be fixed in American diets and what needs to be fixed in Czech diets.  My hero, author Michael Pollan, writes extensively and entertainingly that Americans eat a lot of "edible food-like substances" rather than real, actual food. He has said Americans are unconscious when they eat processed food.  It's not really "real food." It's an "edible, highly-processed food-like substance" that has been created because processed food adds more profit to ag companies than commodities.

Americans are so guilty as charged! Pollan says it would be hard to create an eating culture that resulted in more heart disease, obesity, and chronic disease than our own, but we Americans have managed to do it.  Most likely, because each one of those health problems is a profit opportunity for someone. So ag companies can make profit on creating unhealthy food and drug companies can make profit on fixing all the health problems created.  You are not a person - you are a profit delivery system for large companies in the American food landscape!

So Michael Pollan asked all of his readers ("The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food" were each chosen as among the top ten titles in the year they were written - both of them are fantastic) to send him their family "food rules" so Americans could begin to develop an eating culture that would not poison them. It has resulted in his new book "Food Rules," a collection of the rules people sent in.

The most well-known food rule people sent is this: Don't eat any food your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize.

Ewwwww.

Pork knuckle.

What a conundrum. Everything Czech people eat is food their great-grandmother would recognize! If we were doing manual labor on a farm it would be the perfect cuisine: bread and potato dumplings, deep-fried cheese, piles and piles of potatoes, loads of beer (and not light beer either), and inexpensive cuts of beef and pork (did you know pork had knuckles? Pork knuckle is a famous Czech dish). So far, the Czech people look pretty skinny.  But I was seeing the pedestrian Czechs for the most part - not the driving Czechs.  Now that Czechs are beginning to buy cars, I wonder how long they'll stay skinny.

I say the opportunity is right for an inventive Czech chef to update Czechs to the beautiful, wondrous, variety of vegetables out there beyond cabbage and potatoes.  Communism is dead! Czech people, you don't have to eat like a communist or a member of the A/H Empire anymore.  You deserve vegetables in every possible color, not just white. You deserve high-quality meat! There are more exotic things for you to discover beyond bananas!

This mythical chef could possible update gender roles a bit too.  In America, every man I know proudly kicks ass in the kitchen.  Czech men have no idea how fun it is to cook!

Travel Channel host and chef

Anthony Bourdain

Tonight, Anthony Bourdain's American travel show "No Reservations" travels to Prague to see how cuisine has evolved post-communism.  I'm so excited to see what he has to say.

Related posts:
Armchair Traveling With Tony
What Flavor Do You Associate With the Czech Republic?

What Flavor Do You Associate with the Czech Republic?

Quick.  What flavor or spice do you associate with India? The clock is ticking...oh you didn't need any extra time, did you? Most people answer "curry." What's flavor do you associate with Japan? The clock is ticking...everyone may not answer this one the same way. I would say "wasabi."

What flavor would you associate with the Czech and Slovak Republics? Before arriving in Prague, I would have drawn a blank.  Today I would say: "honey."

Do you like honey? Let me tell you about two fabulous Czech specialties that are delicious!

The first product is an alcoholic beverage.  It's mead! How can an American learning about other cultures resist a beverage with such a long and storied European history and medieval name.  It sounds like something one should be served at a Renaissance Fair along with a big fat turkey leg.  Mead is wine made out of three ingredients: honey, water, and yeast. If you want to call it by it's Czech and Slovak name, it's marketed as 'medovina.'

I discovered the joys of medovina one night when I had arrived at a friend's flat, cold and shivering, and my friend offered me a cup of warm medovina to take the chill off. I sat down with a deliciously warm, yummy glass of medovina and fell in love with the taste.

I wish I had noticed the brand name at the time (it came in a clear bottle) because ever since then, I've been tasting different brands of medovina to try and reproduce that exact memory of deliciousness. It's easy to find medovina that is sickly sweet and needs to be watered down.  This wine tasted like a gently sweet, low-viscosity form of honey. Try it. If the first brand is too sweet, give another brand a try.  Mulled mead (doesn't that sound medieval?) is available at Christmas time.  It has additional spices and fruit flavors added.

Are you more of a show-stopping dessert type? I'm not as much.  But I remember one of my fellow teacher's reaction to Medovnik, an exquisite honey cake served everywhere in Prague for dessert.  She was in utter rhapsody! She loved it so much she tried to make it at home.  "Don't bother," she reported after her attempt. "It's not for amateurs.  It's w-a-y-y-y too much work." So I guess she's back to turning heads in cafes with those moans of ecstasy as she consumes her medovnik.

Communist Art in the Prague Metro

Andel Metro Stop

When I first arrived in Prague, I would get off at the Andel Metro Stop every morning to go to class.  The Andel station is beautiful, firstly, because it's all done in different shades of pink and cream marble. The colors gave it warmth and femininity.

 Bronze reliefs

mounted in the walls

Nothing made me appreciate the leap I made more than seeing the Communist art embedded in walls of the Andel station in Smichov.  I liked being in a place where the ideology was different than mine, the history was different than mine, the aesthetics were different than mine.  That's the whole point of travel, isn't it? To challenge our thinking! And maybe, to be a little scared, to push ourselves into experiencing new things.

 

I hope Czechs never remove this art from the station. Originally, the whole station had been designed by Soviet architects.  Andel (Angel) used to be named in honor of Moskevska (Moscow). The Soviets built this station and one back home in Moscow they named in honor of Prague. The Czech couldn't change the name of the station fast enough after the Velvet Revolution.

Czechs don't appreciate these period pieces now.  Americans do.  It's Orwellian art. I felt the privilege it was to get to see it.  Czechs are just grateful not to be living it anymore.

 All of the art in the Andel Station

celebrates the "friendship" between

the Czech and Soviet peoples.

 

 Mir - the Russian word for Peace

 

 My name for this:

"The Happy Cosmonauts"

No Art Represented My Image of Communism

More Than This

-Everything For the Glory of the State!

 

There's a gorgeous city

out there waiting to be explored.

I'm glad I made the leap.