!!! Important notice !!! / Důležité oznámení

It´s quite difficult to add pictures to this blog and that´s why I am pleased to inform you that I found a way, how to solve this problem. Clicking on this link you will be sent by your internet browser to my new web album with new added pictures. I hope you will enjoy my pictures and I will try to update as much as possible. :-)

Pro anglicky nemluvící a nerozumějící: Na těchto stránkách najdete nově vytvořené webové album s fotkami (více či méně aktuálními). Budu se snažit album aktualizovat co nejčastěji, tak se tam občas jukněte. :-)

Autumn in Bratislava

Despite the weather forecast I had quite a warm and sunny weekend in Bratislava. Unfortunatelly I got cold on Thursday and I couldn´t spend much time outside visiting places of my interest. On Saturday I walked through a park which is situated not far away from the hotel I am staying in. Although not many tourists are nowadays in Bratislava ships have been sailing in direction to Vienna. Maybe there is a stop in Devin (castle near to Bratislava).

Autumn is my favourite season. It´s no more such a hot weather, but if it´s not raining and the sun is shining, you can hardly stay home without going outside for a walk. I took lots of pictures not only of coloured trees in the park but also of Bratislava castle touched by sunlight. The sunset was very nice too, but it´s difficult to take pictures directing your camera against the sun...
Sunday morning I went to the Baptist Church where I know members of musical group MATUZALEM who I met during our stay in Canada 4 years ago.
Btw. we have started prepearing for our holiday in Canada which will start 26th October. We are going to Toronto and we will stay by Lenka´s uncle for two weeks. Well, that´s all for now, I will go on few days later.

Funeral of our grandmother

On Saturday 29th September we had a funeral of our grandmother in the church in Velká Lhota. It was a opportunity for families of all grandmother´s children to see each other. From the picture you can see we were quite a big group (niece Vladka from Dolny Kubin was already on her way home, thus you cannot find all of us on the picture). We had a nice time together although the reason for our meeting wasn´t so joyful. We could feel God´s presence among us and seeing ouf friends and talking to them was something what helped us in difficult moments.
It´s very comforting to know that our life is not over forever when we pass away. The shorter part has gone, but the longer one, which will last forever (according to our faith in Jesus) is in front of us and we can be expecting the ever-lasting future together with our God and our friends who died in Jesus´name.

Announcement

Today morning Lenka´s grandmother, Jarmila Vrajová, has passed away. God has taken her to heaven at the age of 78. The funeral will take place on Saturday 29th of September at 2 pm at our church in Velká Lhota.

Visit of R+P+M Šrámkovi

Our friends Petr & Rebeca Šrámkovi came together with their daughter Magdalena for a visit two weeks ago. It was probably our last time spent together before their flight to the USA at the end of October. We had 2 days at our disposal and we were spending them not only with drinking coffee and eating sweets, but also with walking and visiting our church in Česká Skalice. On Saturday we went to Opočno. It´s a small town with a beautiful castle and even more beautiful garden. We all enjoyed it very much and Magdalena seemed to be satisfied too. :-)

Sunday afternoon Šrámkovi went home to Prague and I started packing my things to go to Bratislava in the evening. Our weekend was over. You can enjoy a small piece of our atmosphere from the pictures at least.

Vysoké Tatry 2007

From the 1st to the 9th September we spent a nice week in Vysoké Tatry, together with Marta and Michal. It is often said the weather is the best in September, but unfortunatelly it wasn´t our case. The first two days we could mostly enjoy nice views of the mountains, but the rest of our holiday we couldn´t visit places of our interest, because it had been raining very much and the temperature was approximatelly 3 degrees above zero. In the second part of the week it had even been snowing! In spite of this fact we had been enjoying time spent together and we had much fun (playing table-tennis in the hotel room, playing cards, going to the sauna, playing bowling, tennis etc.)

Next time we will probably try to come earlier than in september. Attached you can find few pictures from our stay in Slovakia. I hope you will like them.

Vacation in the mountains - Česko-saské Švýcarsko

We had been enjoying lovely nature last days as we were in the nothern part of our republic for vacation. Place of our interest was full of wood, rocks and nice trails. The weather was very friendly to us (except of our last day as it had been raining for couple of minutes and we didn´t have any poncho with us).

It was our first vacation this summer, it was great, but too short. Fortunatelly we are expecting September 1st (not only because of our wedding-anniversary). We are going to spend 7 days in Vysoke Tatry together with Marta and Michal and that´s why we had chosen such a touristic vacation in order to do a small "training" for hard tracks in Slovakia. :-)

Infos for czech speaking friends :-)

Po urgencích jedné nejmenované osoby z českoskalického sboru jsem se rozhodl pro kosmetickou změnu týkající se mého blogu. V průběhu příštích několika dní umístím na tento blog odkaz na českou verzi stránek. Nenajdete tam otrocký přepis anglických textů do češtiny, ale čas od času nějaké fotky, komentáře apod. Vaše připomínky k blogu vítám a vynasnažím se, aby aktualizace byly častější než jen jednou měsíčně. Tento blog plánuji zachovat v anglickém jazyce, ať mají i anglicky mluvící za oceánem možnost zjistit, co se tu děje.

First 2 weeks in Bratislava

After almost 3 weeks I will add up some news about me. At the end of May I left Germany and after spending a week at home I went to Bratislava, which becomes my "home" for following 4 months. My first two weeks were very busy. I can really not compare my "business life" in Slovakia with business tasks in the Czech republic. I have a lot to do and I am getting much new experience every day. I am sure my stay in Bratislava will have a very positive effect for my future career.

I will try to go home every two weeks, because it´s not so far away. If there is no delay I can be in Jaromer in 4 hours. But the first journey back to Bratislava from the last week showed me it wouldn´t be easy to come on time. My train was more than 60 minutes delayed and I came to Bratislava almost at midnight.

Today I have spent few hours in the city center and I have visited the castle. You can see a picture above this text. I will probably have no time for visiting any places within weekdays, because I usually come from the office not before 7 pm.

Regarding my colleagues I must say they are very friendly. Last Thursday we went to the pub together with few of them and it was the first possibility for me to get to know the city center.

Leaving Germany !!!

Tomorrow noon I am leaving Germany and I´m going back to the Czech republic. I have spent 4 nice months here and now it´s time to change the place. I will stay few days in Jaromer and then I will move to Slovakia for next 4 months.

The time spent in Germany has brought much effects for me and not only that ones regarding business. I had plenty of time for visiting nice cities and parks, I was in Frankfurt, Munich and in Bratislava as well. I will really miss the city park in Fürth!

Well, another place is comming soon and I am looking forward to getting new experience there. I will try to keep my blog updated as much as possible.

May God bless you!

My stay in Germany is slowly moving to its end

Starting tomorrow I will probably have no internet access for the next two weeks and that´s why I cannot update this blog. I am moving from my hotel room to another one, which is in another building and probably no WLAN is available at that place. I will spend there the rest of my time (two weeks) before I go home for a week and then to Bratislava.
You can still use my email address, but I won´t be able to check it ten times a day.

Lenka´s visit in Fürth

At the end of April Lenka came to visit me in Fürth. She spent 4 days here, in which we wanted to see as much places as possible and I think we had been quite successful. Most of our time we spent outside, because the weather was very nice and it was quite hot. We visited not only Nürnberg and Fürth, but as well München, which we liked very much. Lenka was very suprised at the Olympiacenter. We couldn´t remember the year in which the Olympic Games in München took place, but we had been tipping 1972 and now I know it was a right tip. Not far away from the city center there is the "English garden", where a lot of people were spending their free-time. Compared to parks in Nürnberg these weren´t so clean and from time to time we could find some garbage on the grass. But it was a very nice place for having rest after busy weekdays.

Our final stop was in Nyphenburg. It´s a castle not far away from the center. It´s very large and a lot of tourists came to visit it on Sunday. Close to this you can find a nice garden with few fountains. We finished our trip in a restaurant close to the main railway-station and there we tasted a glass of beer or two. :-)

Trip to Frankfurt - 14.4.2007

Middle April I went to Frankfurt for a whole day and I took a lot of nice pictures there. Some of them you can have a look now. It was sunny all the day. I also visited "Main Tower", which is more than 200 meters high. It was a lovely view from there, I could see the whole city center and a lot of places outside Frankfurt as well. Frankfurt has a very large airport, it is said to be the second largest one in Europe, but I didn´t like it very much. Airport in Nürnberg is much nicer (but much smaller as well). Few people from Nürnberg told me Frankfurt is not a nice city, but I liked it. In Germany there live lots of foreigners and in Frankfurt it is much more than in Nürnberg. I don´t know exact figures of foreign inhabitants of these two cities, but my feeling in Frankfurt was there had to be much more Non-Germans than in Nürnberg.

Sunny weekend in Nürnberg

I was very pleased about weather at this weekend. The forecast was not so good, it should have been raining quite a lot, however especially Sunday was sunny all day long and I could leave my hotel room and visit a wood-park and the centre of Nürnberg again. I wanted to visit Sunday´s service in the church, but I went to bed quite late last night and I overslept! Fortunatelly I didn´t miss my breakfast in the hotel at least! I went to the final station of local subway and from there I started my tour. I would never say there can be such a nice wood so close to Nürnberg. Everything smelled so springy, not a few people were jogging there. This park lies in the southern part of Nürnberg (at least I think it´s still Nürnberg) and it´s quite close to a crossing of two highways. People live usually in slab blocks there, but they look much nicer than the czech ones.

I will surely go there once again at least when it´s real spring and flowers and trees are flourishing. It must be a nice walk there.

Well, it´s enough for today. My second month in Germany has already started and this means I have more than 25 % of my trip behind me. In the rest of my time here I will try to keep my blog updated at least in the frequency I am doing it now.

May God bless all of you!

Second weekend in Germany

On Saturday I went for a long tour inside Fürth and Nürnberg. I went to the final subway station in Fürth in the morning and from there I started my tour to Nürnberg. The weather wasn´t very nice, it was even raining in some moments, but it didn´t discourage me from my idea to go. I spent 6 hours on feet at least and finally I came to the center of Nürnberg. I was totally tired out after coming back to the hotel and I promised myself not to go for any walk on Sunday.

Of course I went outside on Sunday again. In the morning I visited the same church as last week and I stayed there for lunch. In the afternoon I went to Nürnberg again, but this time I gave up walking in closed parks and I went to the castle. It was a lovely view of the city from there. Although it was a weekend, there were not many people outside and I appreciated this fact expecially at the castle, because I could see the panorama from many places without pressing with other people.

I´m starting to enjoy my stay here, but I miss the czech language a little. On Sunday I met an older man in the church, who moved to Germany 1969. I was wondering about his accent - it sounded like a typical czech one, although he has had been living in Germany more than 30 years!

Regarding my job I feel every day better and better. I am getting some tasks which are good not only for practising controlling skills, but also for communicating with German colleagues and that´s probably the key effect for me.

Well, I will stop now. I will be expecting some mails from you - you are little bit lazier than I thought :-).

Nothing special happened during last week

Days are going very fast and my second weekend in Germany is comming soon. During last days nothing special happened. I had no time for sightseeing and most of time I spent in the office. Things started to move and I got used to working with german colleagues sooner than expected. Sure it´s not easy to understand everything especially when they start talking with their dialect, but finally I have no problems to express what I want to say and they seem to understand me at least.

On Wednesday I visited few people in a "bible lesson". We were 9 people including me, but only 4 were Germans. A young couple from Burkina Fasso from Africa has been living in Germany for 4 years and they became members in the church I visited last Sunday. One lady from Iran who has been staying in Germany for couple of years came to the "bible lesson" too. She tries to serve among Iranian community. Finally a lady from Germany who has moved to China, came for few weeks back home and was talking about her serving in China. It was a really amazing time last evening and it was very encouraging for my faith too.

Well, I have no special plans for this weekend, I hope weather is gonna be fine and I will be able to learn to know new places in Fürth and Nürnberg. I would like to visit München (Munich) sometimes, but it´s more than 200 kilometres far from here and train ticket is not cheap at all.

Thank you very much for your prayers and I really enjoy reading your emails. Keep on it!

Sunday´s service and my trip to Nürnberg

Today I spent a very nice day, although it wasn´t such a nice weather like yesterday. In the morning I visited a service in an evangelic church in Fürth. It has approximately 150 members, but there must have been much more people today. Not only Germans visit this church, some people from Iran, Burkina Fasso (Africa) and India were there and one "boy" from the Czech republic as well. :-)

In the afternoon I went to the airport to enjoy "airport atmosphere" for few moments. I love everything regarding aircrafts and the airport is quite close to the centre, so why not to go there? Then I moved to the centre of Nürnberg and I was walking for couple of hours there. Because I had been hungry, I visited a Chinese restaurant and ordered pork with rice. It was very funny to hear Chinese staff speaking German. I think my German is much better than theirs. :-) If they don´t understand or are not able to answer your question, they start smiling.

Nürnberg is a very old city, almost at each corner there is a church. I could see lots of turists in the center, but it couldn´t be compared with Prague. I was very suprised at following: Almost all stores are closed on Sundays and not only stores, but some restaurants too. People probably want to devote their time to their families or..... . I really don´t have another explanation for this. Anyway it´s not good for you if you have nothing in your fridge Saturday evening. :-)

Well, I will stop now. Tomorrow my second business week gets started and I have "only" 16 weeks more. Thank you for your prayers and I will be looking forward to reading your emails in my mailbox.

First weekend in Fürth

Today my first weekend in Germany has started. After breakfast I went out for a walk into the center of Fürth. It was a lovely weather in the morning, the sun was shining, but it was quite cold and windy. I took my camera with in order to make some pictures.

There were a lot of people in the town center, probably because of nice weather. Near to my hotel there is a city-park which I would like to visit in the afternoon or tomorrow. There should be a river nearby too. The center looks really nice, all around you can see old buildings (they seem to be old at least) and the architecture is very nice too. The traffic is quite heavy although it´s Saturday, but it´s valid just for highways. I have seen some SKODA cars here, but BMW is dominant. I wanna go to Nürnberg as well soon, but first I want to see as much as possible from Fürth. It´s not difficult to go Nürnberg from here, because these two cities are connected with a subway and lots of buses. I have a subway station two minutes from my hotel and it takes only 20 minutes to come to the mainstation, which lies in the town centre. Well, I will stop now and I will add more information in the evening or tomorrow.

First days in Germany !!!

Yesterday I finally arrived at Nürnberg and 4 long months are in front of me. I am staying in Bavaria Hotel in Fürth.

What about my first feelings after arriving at this hotel? I was little bit sad first, because I had been expecting better accommodation (window in the bathroom cannot be closed, some lights in my room are not working properly, all the things around me look like beeing very old etc.). Today after spending the first night in the hotel I am slightly changing my view.

What about food here? Breakfast was really good and my lunch at our company kitchen was delicious. I am really looking forward to having lunch tomorrow again. :-)

I started working in a head-quarter of our company. I have a colleague in the office, he´s really nice. Our department consists of 5 people (incl. me). It´s a really small amount for such a big company, isn´t it?

I will add further experience tomorrow, because it´s Friday finally and I have a weekend in front of me. :-). Attached I am publishing a picture of my hotel room so that you can make your own opinion of my "living standard in Germany".

Lenka´s birthday celebration - 14.1.2007

In the middle of January we celebrated Lenka´s birthday. My parents and my sister with her boyfriend Michael came for lunch and we had spent a very nice afternoon together.

Preparations for my business trip to Germany

Starting February 1 I am going for a long-lasting business trip to Fürth, Germany. I am going to stay there till May 31. Fürth is a town laying near Nürnberg. I am leaving the Czech republic January 31.

Which places are you visiting this website from?

My graduation - March 2006

10. March 2006 - picture from my graduation at the University of Economics in Prague (you can see all members of my "large family").

(from left: father in-law, my sister, my mum, my father, ME, my wife Lenka, my mother in-law, my sister in-law)