Weekend in Prague

Other than being 4,600 miles away from home in a temporary dwelling in a different city where everyone talks funny, our weekend in Prague, Czech Republic, was fairly normal.  We slept late, cooked a big breakfast, and teased each other good-naturedly around the table as we lazily started our Saturday.  By mid-morning the sun was bright, and from the open windows, the cool fall air filled our flat while we stuck to our routine of schoolwork, writing, and research.  Having learned our lesson in Normandy where Sunday grocery store closures forced us into survival measures, Deena and I walked to the neighborhood market with a substantial list of needed supplies for the weekend and aspirations of cooking fancy meals at home.  For the next hour, we haunted the aisles of the Tesco Express loading our cart with staples and searching for harder-to-find items like canned black beans and a can opener, which was the only appliance our kitchen lacked.  I would challenge anyone in the world to walk into a grocery store in the roast duck and cabbage-loving Czech Republic and locate a package of fajita seasoning—it took us an hour, but we found one package at the back of a lower shelf that I’m sure had been languishing there since the Velvet Revolution.  Our two weekend dinner recipes called for chicken broth, and we couldn’t find it anywhere to our dismay.  I stood in the aisle and typed in a Google search for the Czech translation of chicken broth but kept getting directed to articles written by world-class foodies lamenting over the non-existence of chicken broth in the Czech Republic.  

We finally gave up, grabbed a few packages of chicken cup-a-soup as a substitute, and spread all our items on the checkout counter for purchase.  The cashier was friendly, and after she scanned our items, she kept pointing over my shoulder and repeating something in this other language they keep speaking here.  I just stood there and gave her the pleasant “I have no idea what you’re saying smile” and handed over my money.  I realized a few moments later that she was pointing at a poster of a Tesco loyalty card behind me and was asking if I had one to scan.  One cannot buy anything in the United States without suffering through a ten-minute interview at the register while the cashier asks for some form of a “valuable customer” card leaving one to feel like a second-class citizen if a card isn’t produced, and one will be sure to hear,   “Well, you could have saved five percent today with a card. Are you sure you don’t want to apply for one?”  They leave off “...so we can track your shopping habits under the guise of member savings and send you advertising based on your past purchases so we can control your life and eventually rule the world.”  The citizens of Eastern Europe think they’ve won their freedom, but they’re sadly mistaken—Tesco is gaining control of their lives, and for once I was glad I couldn’t speak the language.  

We searched for chicken broth one more time at another store on the way home with no success, but we did find a can opener that set us back three dollars.  There is a convenience on the corner of our street run by a friendly Vietnamese family. Knowing it would mostly milk, bread, beer and snacks, we considered going in there on a last ditch effort to find chicken broth but decided against it thinking we would be greeted with, “Good morning!  Today we have sale on chicken broth, everything must go!  Free can opener with purchase!”

By 2:00 we were hungry and ready to get out of the flat; so we boarded a tram and headed back to Wenceslas Square and the fall festival to which we had vowed to return.  In the square, which was packed with people enjoying a beautiful fall day, we all stood in separate lines to wait for our food of choice.  I scored a chicken kebab right off the grill, placed in a fresh baguette; Deena and Deveny split a steaming sausage; and Joseph walked up grinning over a plate full of roast pork shaved right off the spit.  The food was delicious and cheap, and we had money left over for cinnamon-covered chocolate-filled doughnuts—good thing we’re walking a lot on this trip. We spent the next hour back in the fabulous Old Town square and waited with the throng to see the astronomical clock chime the hour and put on the show.  After another stroll through the Jewish Quarter, we boarded the tram back to the flat where we made a successful pot of taco soup with our fake chicken broth and twenty-five year old fajita mix.  Deena sat me in the middle of the floor and gave me my third haircut of the trip while the kids caught up with their friends on social media.  We had a fun Saturday, and we looked  forward to attending church across the river on Sunday.

The Square

Krispy Kreme doesn't have these

Fall Festival

A little internet research led us to the website of the Faith Community Church of Prague, an English-speaking congregation located across the river and up the hill in the area of the Prague Castle.  The church website listed brief biographies of the ministerial staff, and we read that three of the five pastors attended Reformed Theological Seminary back in our hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina.  Churches in Europe have services in the afternoon, a practice we hope will catch on in the States one day, and we chose to attend the 4:00 worship experience.  

We boarded our trusty number 18 tram and settled in for the thirty-minute ride through the heart of Prague.  About half way through the journey, two young men in their early twenties staggered aboard the tram, one clutching a bottle of beer, both very drunk.  They were dressed in black—one had a shaved head and a few days worth of stubble on his chin, and the other one wore a flat-billed ballcap and mirrored sunglasses.  They spoke to each other loudly in English with thick accents, and we determined that they must have hailed from different parts of Europe and shared English as a second language.  They stood in the aisle next to us and for the next fifteen minutes through a high-volume, profanity-laced conversation, we learned they were roommates with gambling and alcohol addictions; they had struggles with money and family issues; and one had seen so much evil in his life that he had to consume large amounts of drugs in order to sleep at night.  I was angry that my family was subject to their lack of consideration for others, and I breathed a sigh of relief as the tram reached their stop, and they staggered back to the streets of Prague.  As I sat there during the remainder of our ride, my anger quickly turned to concern for these young men, and I considered the masses of young people across the globe who lack hope, purpose, and direction and use alcohol, drugs, and other vices to fill in the gaps as they drift along.  As a fifty-year old man with a wife and kids and thirty years of hard work in the rear view mirror, it’s sometimes hard to remember when I was young and not much different from the two men that were standing next to me a few minutes before.  I bowed my head and prayed that God would forgive my cold-heartedness, and that he would show Himself in a powerful way to the young men I saw on the the tram and to people everywhere who need hope and direction.

We found the Faith Community Church building with relative ease arriving with twenty minutes to spare before the beginning of the service.  To my delight and hearty approval, they had coffee available from a large silver urn, and I filled up a big cup before joining my family in the small sanctuary.  The room looked like a large fellowship hall with chairs arranged around a small lectern and a guitar plugged up to a sound system in the corner.  There were large open windows down the length of the wall behind the lectern, and they were closed before the start of the service to drown out the sounds of passing trains.  One of the pastor’s wives, Shanna, welcomed us and was curious to hear about our travels.  The service started, and for the next hour and a half we sang, prayed, and listened to Pastor Jake preach a compelling sermon from the book of Micah about the faithful promises of God.  We traveled back to our flat thankful for new friends in this warm congregation.  

Our homemade dinner of pan-fried chicken with a white wine and green onion reduction, rice, and buttered carrots was a huge success, and we listened to the Carolina Panthers lose to the Minnesota Vikings while we ate.  After a few Facetime sessions with family back home, we called it a weekend in Prague and went to bed ready to start a new week of our journey.

Faith Community Church