St. Clements Anglican Church (25 December 2011)

On Christmas day, which was Sunday, I went to St. Clement's Anglican Church.  I chose this church because it was the only English-language service not officiated by a woman that I found in my "English Language Church Prague" Google search.  For the record, however, I did indeed sneak out during the Eucharist (they make that easy by making everybody go up, a row at a time, for the laying on of hands).  The service was very, very English.  The sermon was "Make Room for Jesus" which seems like standard Christmas fare.  The church was pretty full.  The pastor was happy because he said that this year it looked like the regular members had put in an appearance--apparently, last year they were outnumbered by the tourists (or last week?  All of a sudden this story doesn't make sense to me.).  They sang some old, familiar hymns, but some of them didn't have the old, familiar tunes, which was a little confusing, and they did everything out of the Prayer Book.

The church was really chilly.  They had heaters under the seats, so your feet were toasty warm but your face and hands were very cold.  The church is old quite old.  It is kind of a cross between Gothic and Romanesque architecture.  It is getting taller and the windows are getting bigger, but it has the old Romanesque arches inside.  According to the church's website, about their history, which you can read here, if you are interested, while the church is only 108 years old, the building is almost a 1,000 years old.  I didn't get any pictures of the interior but, in searching the internet for pictures of the interior, I stumbled upon a blog written by the Rev. Ricky Yates, the pastor of the church.  If you go to this link, you will see some wedding pictures which show the interior of the church.  If you go here you can go to the home page of the blog, if you want to check up on what the Czech Anglicans are up to.




This plaque is on the side of the church.  It commemorates the 500th anniversary of Jan Huss's death.

The Czech Christmas Children's Opera

The Estate Theater is one of the three major theaters in Prague.  I went to two shows there while I was in Prague and it was quite a lot of fun.  I stood in the standing section at the top so the shows were less than $2 each, which seemed like a pretty good deal.

The first show I went to was Jakub Jan Ryba's "Česká mše vánoční" or, Czech Christmas Opera, which was performed by the Children's Opera of Prague.  It was a lot of fun.  The story, from what I could tell (it was all in Czech) was the Nativity story where the village children are trying to convince the grouchy innkeeper that the little baby that was just born in the stable is Jesus.  They crossed themselves periodically and the also sang a version of the "Hallelujah" chorus at one point.  Also, I am fairly certain that some of the little children recited from Isaiah.  You could follow a little bit because some of the words sound the same--Israel, Joseph, etc.  Watching the audience was fun, as well.  There were lots of kids in the audience as well.    A lot of them were all dressed up and it was fun to see how excited they were to be there.

The Theater stage ready for the Czech Christmas Children's Mass.

There were four adults in the play/mass and a couple of dozen kids, ranging from 5 or 6 years old to their teens.  Everyone wore what I assume were traditional Czech costumes in blues and tans and whites, except Mary, who was dressed like a traditional nativity scene, including the giant halo.  The little kids were really cute.
 I found this article about the show which includes a couple of pictures and a you tube video of the opening song in the Mass called ‘Hej, mistře’.  It only lasts about 5 minutes and it is very pretty.  The article includes a little bit about the opera and about the composer as well.  Apparently, if you had been in Chicago this winter, you could have heard the US premiere of the music.  It felt very authentically Czech to go to this performance.  I had debated between doing this or going to The Nutcracker because then I would have been able to see one of Prague's other historic theaters but I am glad I decided on this.  If you want to hear the whole thing, most of it is on YouTube.

Vyšehrad

Vyšehrad is an ancient fortification and a major tourist attraction.  It is a huge compound which has a couple of restaurants, a giant cemetery, a museum, a couple of art galleries, and some large gardens.  It is a trace itallienne fort which is star shaped and which was designed to defend against cannons at the dawning of the gunpowder age.  In the picture below (which I got from Google Maps), I have outlined the walls of the castle so that you can see the modified traditional star fort shapes.  You'll see that one bit sticks out over the road and into the river.  The road tunnels through, under the cliff/castle wall.  It wasn't until I was doing this post that I realized that this was the tunnel that I rode through every time I went from my hotel to the city center.

You could walk around the castle casements, which is quite a long walk.  And walking up to the castle you have to walk up windy, narrow walled streets.










The wall and the main entrance to the castle.








There were statutes all over the place in the different garden areas.  A lot of them I did not recognize but the one below, on the right, is of Good King Wenceslas.








On the left is one of the art galleries  in the castle grounds.















The cathedral, St. Peter's and St. Paul's,  is a really pretty building.  What was really interesting, though, is that the interior is entirely covered with Art Deco  paintings.  It is pretty impressive and kind of bizarre since the structure itself is kind of a Romanesque/Gothic fusion.  I couldn't get any good pictures of the interior because you weren't allowed to use flash but the exterior, especially the doors were pretty interesting.  

These pictures over the doors are made out of tiny detailed mosaics.  The gold bits were very, very shiny.

The doors were really pretty.  I don't know what all of the pictures symbolize but they were in pretty pastels and they did not match the interior (which was rusts and tans and browns and blacks in Art Deco paintings) at all.







I went looking for pictures of the interior, because it really was fascinating, and found that apparently everyone had trouble with the photography.  I suppose that it makes sense not to allow flash photography--red pigments are traditionally the most easily lost--but it does make life harder.  If you click here there is a picture of one of the interior arches which can give you an idea of what the church looks like.  This one is by the same person but isn't quite as clear.  At floor level, there were life-sized paintings of saints in Art-Decoey style.  This link shows some of them, but they do tend to be a little blurry.

In my search, though, I found some pretty impressive collections of pictures.  This picture here is a picture from the the casements at the part of the wall that juts out into the the river (which you can see on the map above).  I would also suggest that you scroll through the rest of her pictures.  They are definitely better than mine (and, as far as I looked, entirely tasteful) and she has pictures from Petrin Hill, Prague Castle, and St. Vitus's Cathedral, as well.

If you go to this link, there is a movie panorama of Prague, taken from the top of the cathedral, which is very pretty.  I did not go up there because it was c.o.l.d.  Cold, cold, cold.  So cold that my camera was not working very well.  (Which is part of the reason that I have fewer pictures from the second part of this day.) I could take two or three pictures and then my camera would stop working and I would have to put it back in my pocket and wrap my hands around it til the motor would go again.  Even inside the cathedral, all of the ticket takers had on jackets and gloves and scarves and hats.  I went in to use the restroom and realized it was a pay toilet. (There was a lady who sat in a tiny room, maybe three feet square, with windows into the men's toilet and the women's toilet, collecting money.)  I decided that I didn't really need to go but, since it was really busy, I waited in the pay-the-attendant line for a couple of minutes anyway, just because it was so nice and warm in there.

The most interesting parts of the whole castle was the cemetery.  It was really large and had a whole lot of interesting stones and memorials.  A lot of the monuments commemorated married couples and Roman themes were really popular.

The one on the right is kind of touching, with the husband and wife holding hands as (presumably) they walk down into the underworld together.  The ones below don't look so thrilled to be stuck in eternity together.





One interesting thing about the cemetery was the number of monuments which images of Jesus on them, as opposed to images of Mary on them.  This is, apparently, a Prague distinctive (I found this out by talking to my co-tenants at the hotel) but I think that Google translate didn't really suffice to getting details about why this is so.
In both of these pictures, each of the three figures visible is Jesus.  If you look at the mosaic picture in the middle of the picture on the left, you will notice that the image has Eastern, almost Byzantine style, characteristics, which I think is quite interesting.

There were some very interesting monuments.  The one on the left reminds me of some of the monsters from Doctor Who.

It is interesting that the one thing the fellow below wanted people to remember about him was that he liked to ski.


And I don't know what the statute with the hands is supposed to represent but there is something kind of unsettling about it.















































This one is really sad.  If my understanding of Czech names is correct.  This is the tomb of a little three year old girl who died in 1897, her twenty-five year old mother, who died the next year, and her father, who died in 1902.

This one is for Dad--there were a fair number of stones with similar inscriptions.  University professors usually had their profession included on their tombs and PH DR is the Czech for PhD.  Medical doctors are MUD DR.












This one has 3-D barbed wire on it and the inscription reads "Victims and opponents of totalitarian regimes 1939-1945 1948-1989"