Days 14 15 and 16

This morning Phil preached for 45 minutes.  Teresa and the boys were very gentle about letting him know that it was a couple of illustrations too long.  In Phil's defense, much of the time was dedicated to translating into Czech, which was done seamlessly by Pastor Milan.   Phil preached on Hebrews, chapter 11.  Church, which begins at approximately 10:00 AM was over before 12:00, which Pastor Milan assured us was perfectly normal and the sermon was not too long.   Those who know Phil know he has always had difficulty being brief.

Ok, now a little more history.  As we wrote about earlier, many of the people around here speak at least some German.  Before WWII, there was a large community of Germans living in the Czech Republic.  Clearly, the war did not ingratiate the Czechs to the Germans, and at the end of the war most Germans were forcibly expelled from the then Czechoslovakia.  It was not until the end of communism in 1989 that Germans were once again welcomed in the Czech Republic.  This time they came as investors as German industry came to open factories in the Czech Republic where labor costs are lower. 

Tachov is now the home of several large factories, most which supply parts for automobiles built in Germany and other western-European countries.  In fact, these factories have become the major employers in and around Tachov.  This is a significant change from the communist days, when the uranium mines near here were the primary employers.  The mines have since closed.

As with everything around here, if you wait long enough, you will find a personal connection to the history here.  That occurred again today when Milan and Dana invited us to spend the afternoon at the vacation cottage of Dana's dad and his wife.  To get there you go east for about 45 minutes in the direction of Plzen on increasingly smaller and narrower roads until you find yourself on a two-track farm path used primarily (or perhaps exclusively) by tractors.  You go another couple of kilometers and you arrive at a small settlement of about 10 homes bordered by a forest on one side and endless fields of rapeseed and wheat on the other.  Rapeseeds have traditionally been used to make vegetable oil, and more recently for biofuels.  We spent a delightful afternoon with Milan and his family and with Dana's dad and stepmother.

It turns out that this small settlement used to be a German community.   After the Germans were evicted, the Czech government allowed Czech families to purchase the land for weekend cottages.   Dana's family was able to get one of these cottages.  Now, here's where the history gets interesting.  After the fall of communism, several of these German families (or their children) returned to this community to see what had happened to their former homes.  Dana's parents have gotten to know one of these families, and have befriended them.  They now regularly visit one another, and share a bond forged by their common history on this small patch of land.

About a week ago we also had the opportunity to visit Plzen, the closest larger city to Tachov.  Plzen is perhaps best known for Pilzner beer.  Apparently Pilzner beer uses a special brewing method that involves three cycles of boiling the malt, as opposed to one or two cycles used for many other beers.  We know this because we toured the factory of Pilzner Urquell.  The extensive tour took us all through the brewery, the bottling plant, the beer cellars, and most importantly for Eric - on a bus ride between the various parts of the factory!

We also climbed the 301 steps to the top of the Plzen Cathedral, and we allowed ourselves to be sucked into the Plzen ghost museum - a giant among tourist traps.  The pouring rain did not dampen our spirits, though it did dampen our bodies.

Tomorrow the English Evenings begin for the next four nights, so Teresa is feverishly cooking American macaroni salads, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (yes, we found peanut butter yesterday!) and preparing apple crisp to feed the assembled students.  The theme for tomorrow is food, so we will be playing the fruit game, learning idioms like "cool as a cucumber" and "flat as a pancake" and discussing how to order food in a restaurant in English, how to navigate a grocery store, and how to do all the things we wish we could do in Czech.

Some photos:

The boys at the Namesti Republiky (Republic Square) in Plzen:

 The Sunday School classroom in the church: 

Teresa and the boys in the beer cellar at the Pilzner Urquell brewery in Plzen: