St. Paul's Within the Walls Episcopal Church (17 June 2012)

This is a Wikipedia Commons photo of the church, since I didn't get one,
but I love the stripes on it and the little blue dots and rose windows.

When I was in Rome, my plan was to go to an Anglican church on the Sunday morning.  (Anglican Churches turned out to be my go-to churches while I was traveling because they always have services in English and because they seem to often be located near big tourist centers.)  

However, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the Italians take a more relaxed approach to schedules than do the Dutch.  This lackadaisical approach extended to train, bus, and metro schedules and was quite a shock to the system.  For comparison, the Dutch Minister of Transportation got fired after heavy snowfalls disrupted train schedules in the Netherlands for too long.  In Italy, you would probably get fired for sticking to the schedule to closely--or you would run your train into the back of the train in front of you.  

In any case, after the late start from Milan, we made up some time overnight and only arrived in Rome about an hour after schedule.  It meant that I was running a bit late for church.  When you add in some confusion about the streets and things, I ended up missing church altogether.

My plan had been to go to St. Paul's Within the Walls Anglican Church, which has been having services since 1859.  It got its name, apparently, because it was the first non-Catholic church allowed to be organized in Rome, which is pretty impressive, actually.  You can see the official website here.  But if you go here you can see the facebook page (which I think you can see even without a facebook account) and if you click on the photo link, you can see a lot of pictures of the very pretty interior.

I was looking for  pictures of the church and came across this website.  It is a photography and tourism website that deals specifically with Italian churches and cathedrals.  The entry on St. Paul's Within the Walls is toward the bottom of the page but you may enjoy looking through all of the entries.  There are interior and exterior photos, as well as information about the history of the church.

More entertaining, I found a website with "Mystery Worshiper" reviews of various churches.  If you click here you can see a pretty detailed account of what it would have been like to go to church at St. Paul's Within the Walls if the trains had been a bit more prompt.

Just as interesting, I looked through the archives and found reviews of the other Anglican churches I went to while I was in Europe.  

There were loads of reviews on St. Alban's Anglican Church in Copenhagen, Denmark, where Jael and I visited (I posted about that here).  There were reviews from February 1999, November 11, 2004, August 16, 2009, and December 25, 2009.  It seemed like there were some wide variations in the quality of snacks. 

This review of St. Clement's Anglican Church in Prague, Czech Republic is from January 1, 2006, so it was almost exactly six years before I went to the church (I posted about my visit here).  I noticed that the reviewer also noticed how cold it was, except for your feet.

One of the very oddest things I noticed was that the sermons only lasted from 5-10 minutes each, with the average being about 8 minutes.  I just have to wonder what those folks would say if they accidentally wandered into one of Pastor Bradley's sermons!

A Little Bit More About Prague

I was looking through some videos and I found this one of Prague.  It lasts about three minutes and has music but it was fun looking through and being able to say "I was there!"  Most of the views are over the Vlatav River, which surrounds the old city, but it also includes interior views of St. Vitus's Cathedral.

Christmas Eve

A closed Trdelník stand.  Trdelníks are awesome.

On Christmas Eve, after I got back from my day trip to Kutná Hora, I went out to see what things were like on Christmas Eve around Prague.  I expected it to be extra exciting.  I expected in vain.  In the Czech Republic, Christmas Eve is the big day--that is when everybody gets together with their families.  So, the only folks that are out are tourists.  And there weren't even really many of those.  Most of the Christmas Markets were closed--just long, empty, closed rows of stalls.  Most of the tourists that were there were either American or Chinese.  The majority were American.  I certainly hadn't heard that much English since I got to Prague and, I am fairly certain, I haven't heard that much unaccented, American English since I left America.


I looked for a booth selling the traditional Czech Christmas Eve diner of sauerkraut soup and baked cod.  I could not find a single one.  There were several stands that were advertising "traditional Czech Ham" which was being cooked on giant spits over large pans of coals.  It smelled really good.  But, I am still not convinced that that is really "traditional"--since I've been back I've been looking things up to see if I could find anything about it and I haven't.  I am a little suspicious that this was a transparent attempt to pander to tourists because baked ham sells better than sauerkraut soup.

I was hanging around waiting for a Christmas Mass which they had at the Old Town Square Market.  While I was waiting, and because it was really cold (and because I hadn't gotten to have any sauerkraut soup) I decided to try some Grogg.  It was not nearly as tasty as one might have expected.  It was, actually, really, really disgusting.  The Christmas Mass was really just music--they didn't offer a prayer to start the show off or anything else that seemed remotely religious, although I suppose that the songs could have had some religious significance.  I suppose, though, that this is in keeping with the Czech agnosticism.

I had originally planned on going to the Midnight Mass which was being held at the Strahovský Kláster, which is in the Castle Quarter.  I ended up not going because I couldn't figure out how to get back with the night train schedules and I really didn't want to be stuck walking back from across the river.  Also, it was cold and I was tired, but that wasn't the main reason.  I ended up having to walk most of the way back to the hotel anyways because I still couldn't figure out the night trams but, on the plus side, walking was almost  enough to keep me warm.

Since I couldn't get any traditional Czech Christmas Eve food in Prague, I looked up some recipes once I got back to Rotterdam.  I realize these are Slovak recipes but they look the same and sound the same as the Czech recipes and they were convenient.  So now you can make your very own Czech (or Slovak) Christmas Eve Dinner.
Sauerkraut Soup
Potato Salad
Fried Carp

Jesuit College

The Jesuit College was a major political/religious institution at Kutná Hora.  It is in the massive, long, white building beside the St. Barbara's Cathedral.  It is now used as an art gallery.  It houses the Czech Museum of Fine Arts.  I was going to include a link to that but it doesn't display the nicest of paintings.  The Jesuit College is a UNESCO world heritage site.

  

Chrám Sv. Barbory

Chrám Sv. Barbory, or St. Barbara's Cathedral, is the major cathedral of Kutná Hora.  It is a fair walk up mountains (at least compared to the Netherlands) to get to it. and there is a very pretty approach.  It was a gorgeous view, even though it was gray and misty.  I can't even guess what it would be like if it was a clear sunny day out.  St. Barbara's is the spiky spire-filled building.  The white building is the old Jesuit College.

If you notice the terracing beside the cathedral (see, I told you it was on a mountain) that is all set up with grape vines and, if I understood them correctly, they make local wines here.  It makes it mighty picturesque place to walk around.

These are pictures of the vineyard and the valley from the St. Barbara Cathedral.

The walk up to the cathedral is lined with lots and lots of giant stone statutes.  It is impressive looking.

 

Some of the statues are more ghoulish than others. 

Front view of St. Barbara's Cathedral

There are some pretty impressive stained glass windows in the cathedral.  I don't know what the technique used was (and you probably can't really see it) but there is some pretty impressive shading and detail on the glass that make it look more like a painting than like a stained glass design.

The statue on the left is of a miner as the area was full of silver mines.  The backwards apron  is specifically so that the miner can use it as a sled to slide down into the mine.  Can you image what the climb out, at the end of the day must be like if the best way down in the morning is to sled down on special leather aprons?

The pulpit below is pretty elaborate.

        





I liked the Cathedral ceiling.  It looks kind of like an antique modified double wedding ring quilt with appliques.

Christmas Market

As I mentioned before, Prague has awesome Christmas Markets.  When I was looking up places that I should go over Christmas it looked like Vienna was the number one Christmas place to go and Prague was a close second.  Since I had already been to Vienna I decided that Prague was the best choice.

The Christmas Markets run from early December through the middle of January.  It is set up with loads of tiny little huts, mostly selling very expensive little tourist things.  Plus food.  Lots and lots of food.

There were little rolling carts selling roasted chestnuts which were good but not nearly as good as I would have thought from years of singing "chestnuts roasting on a open fire . . ."  They had carts selling warm wine (and handing out free samples) which smelled a-mazing but tasted kind of like warm wine--so kind of a disappointment.

They had stands that sold fried cheese sandwiches--which was deep-fried cheese on a hamburger bun--that's a winner, for the record.  They also sold brats.  Really, really good brats.  They had two kinds of brats:  bavorské klobása (Bavarian brats) and Václava klobása (Wenceslas Brats).  I tried a Bavarian brat the first night I was in Prague because I remember the brats from Munich (which is in Bavaria, Germany) with great fondness and had been severely disappointed by the Dutch attempt at the brat.  Well, the Czechs have it figured out.  That brat was just about as good as I remember those German brats being.  The bun wasn't quite as good as the German bun--the German brat buns are hard and crunchy on the outside and and soft and chewy on the inside and the Czech buns were just kind of soft all the way through, but altogether, it was not too shabby at all.  I am a fan.  Later, I tried the Wenceslas brat (which, I assume, means "Czech brats").  It was not too bad (though not quite as good as the Bavarian brat).  It was kind of a pale white color and the flavor reminded me a little bit of the blood sausages I had one time by accident.

A Trdlo stand, behind a horse and carriage for hire.

By far the best thing at the Christmas market, though, food-wise, was the the Trdelník or the Trdlo (these names seem to be used interchangeably).  Trdlos are traditional Czech donuts.  They are pretty awesome.  They are kind of a sugar dough (not really like a yeast donut or like a sour cream dough) which is twisted around a long skewer, rolled in sugar and cinnamon, roasted over a bed of coals, and then rolled in more sugar, cinnamon, and crushed pecans.  As mentioned, awesome.  If you look here you can see another person's blog post about trdlo.  It even includes a little video of how they make the Trdlos.  And, if you go here you can find a Trdelník recipe . . .

There were a lot of folks at the Christmas markets.  One thing that was interesting was the number of kids.  And dogs.  I looked it up and apparently the Czech Republic is in the middle of a gigantic and unprecedented baby boom.  It was pretty interesting, as well, that most of the parent looked like they were older--you would see kids that were 5 or 10 and then their parents looked like they were in the 40s.  One really interesting thing, though, was that folks swatted their kids when they needed it.  And not just sneaky little, embarrassed, half-hearted smacks, either.  A couple of different times I saw kids being obnoxious and their parent turned around and gave them enthusiastic and meaningful paddlings.  It is not something that you would expect to see in the US and it probably suggests good things about the future of those kids.  The dogs were well behaved as well.  There were tons of them and most of them were off-leash.  It was kind of an interesting experience to see people just walking around followed by everything from giant, wolf-hound-mix looking dogs to little chihuahuas, with no leashes and, apparently, nobody bothered by it.

There were also big touring groups.  Sometimes the guides would carry big yellow umbrellas or giant flowers, so that people in their group could keep track of whom they were supposed to be following.  My favorite thing, though, was that one tour company, at least after dark, would carry giant, sparkly, lighted snowflake wands.  I thought that was pretty nifty.

There was a giant Christmas tree in the square as well.  It was lit up so that, during the concert I went to, the lights blinked and cascaded in rhythm with the music.  And it almost wasn't ruined by the giant, Christmas-light advertisement at the base.  According to an article I saw, the tree uses LED lights and was good for the environment, so it was alright.

Eating with the Czechs

In the Czech Republic it is apparently traditional not to get your own table when you stop at a restaurant.  You get stuck at a table with other people.  This, if you think about it, is quite efficient from a table bussing perspective, but it does require a bit of cultural readjustment.  I had read about this in a travel guide and was prepared: "it's a great way to meet knew friends!" chirped the guide book.  So, preparing myself gladly to meet new people (you know me--always eager to talk with random strangers) and ready to eat anything but a traditional Czech tripe soup, I set off on a journey of cultural exploration.

Since I usually ate supper at the Christmas Markets while walking around (their brats FAR outstripped Dutch brats and were very nearly as good as German brats) and since breakfast was included at my hotel, I didn't really need to look for a restaurant very much.  The first restaurant I went to was the Hotel U Varhanare (which means "The Organ") which is at the top of the mountain on which Kutna Hora is located so, as I ate, I had a really beautiful view out over the valley and up the path to St. Barbara's Cathedral and the Jesuit College.  Also, I was the only one there and got to eat all by myself.

This is the name of the hotel over the doorpost, with
all appropriate accents.  On the left you can see the
hotel and, behind the tree, just the edge of
St. Barbara Cathedral.

Even though this was in a very touristy town, the food was still very cheap.  I had a Czech Sampler which showed off some of the traditional Czech foods.  There were two kinds of dumplings.  One was kind of like a dense white bread and the other was like a slightly smaller potato bread.  Then there were three kinds of meat--roasted pork, ham, and a weird looking reddish sausage that was really good.  All that was served with a large pile of "cabbage" by which they mean sauerkraut.  The sauerkraut was flavored with fennel and was very mild and went very well with the rest of the food.  It does lead me to suspect, though, that either Mom makes terrible sauerkraut or just that Americans generally do.  I don't think that anyone in the family would complain if we had this stuff--it wasn't stinky or gross at all.  So far I haven't minded German sauerkraut, have liked Dutch sauerkraut, and have really liked Czech sauerkraut.  Though, in Mom's defense, while I was in Amsterdam a bit ago, I had an "American Style Hotdog" (because it was the only close place to eat) which was served with sauerkraut and that sauerkraut was disgusting.  So maybe it is just American-style sauerkraut that is gross and it isn't Mom's fault.

I do hope that the Czechs aren't offended if you don't finish your food, though (when we went to Munich we were told that it was pretty much a mortal insult to not finish your food).  This restaurant served massive portions and I wasn't able to finish it and 1) I didn't know the etiquette for asking for a doggy bag (much less a non-idiomatic term with which to ask for it) and 2) I didn't really want to carry a juicy bag of sauerkraut around with me all day so I ended up leaving a fair bit behind.

On Saturday, I was in Prague wandering around and, at about 1:30, I got really hungry (the hotel served good breakfasts) so I decided to stop at the Restaurace Pivovarsky Dum--the Restaurant Brewery House.

This time, when I went in, it was busy so I got seated at a table with some Czech folks which, preparation for cultural distinctions notwithstanding, still felt really awkward and like a huge invasion of personal space.  Fortunately, they ignored me and I ignored them and I was sitting facing the window, so I could watch people going by outside.  One thing that the guide book did NOT mention was that general table-serving etiquette still applies in Czech restaurants so they take orders and serve everyone at the table at the same time, whether or not they are in the same party.  Which seems like a good plan.  The only thing worse than sharing tables would have to be eating your dinner while everyone else stared at you and wondered why their dinners were taking so long.  However, this time I was seated at a table where one member of the party was late.  Really, really late.  So nobody got any dinner.  After a little over an hour, I snuck to the restroom and then snuck to the front to pay for my drink and then snuck out, still without any dinner.  I felt a little sorry for myself at that point since it was after three and I still hadn't had any dinner (and also because I had been sitting at a table with random people for over an hour) but I went back across town to the Christmas Market and had a brat instead, which worked out pretty well.  Also, as a little bonus, as I was sitting at the table for that interminable period, staring out the window, I noticed the sign across the street which was kind of interesting.  The Evangelical Methodist Church was housed in the very dreary Soviet-looking building across the street.  It almost made up for that hour in the restaurant.

Walking Around Prague Even More

Prague is a very decorated place.  Besides its Baroquness, it also has statues all over the place.  Some are free standing, some are attached to buildings, some are memorials and some just seem to be for decoration.

This a monument to Czech fighters during World War II.  The inscription on one side reads 1914-1918 and on the other side reads something like "Prague's Victorious Sons".  The Czechs did pretty well after WWI and liked President Wilson because he supported them in their nationalist movement.    There are streets in different places named "Wilsonova".

The statute on the left below is in memorial of a famous Czech botanist and anthropologist.  You can see that he is examining a little branch of some kind.  At his feet is an entirely non-politically-correct indigenous person of some kind.  On the right is a someone I don't know.  

Some buildings have interesting decorations on the side.  Like 3-D semi-classical nymphs.  And some just have 3-D copper pumpkins attached, for no apparent reason.


And sometimes the decorations are gratuitous and, I suppose technically, graffiti.

On the left above, is a statue that seems to be just decorative.  On the right above is a statue of Good King Wenceslas.

On the left is a little road-side shrine with a very abstract statue.

Even the municipal light posts and gas line covers are decorated attractively.  

        

Even the security bars are decorative.

Also, cigarette advertisements are not as restricted in the Czech Republic as they are in the US.  This is an advertisement for Camel cigarettes that was in the train station.  I think it is rather pretty.