A week in the Czech Republic

The annual prayer retreat of the international pastors was to be held in Brno. There are no direct flights from Bordeaux to Brno and the best way to get there is to fly to Vienna and take the short train ride to Brno. There are no direct flights from Bordeaux to Vienna at this time of year, and the best way to get there is to take the train from Bordeaux to Paris, then cross the city to CDG and fly on to Vienna. So the journeys were less straightforward than they could have been.

For reasons I won't go into I ended up staying overnight in Vienna on the way to Brno. This gave me the opportunity to meet Froim's parents for a meal - they picked me up from the airport, reminding me of the book "Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part" by Anna Gavalda, which I have never read. I ate a pork Wiener schnitzel. The next day I had a few hours to run amok in Vienna and inspected the Stephansdome and the Peterskirche, where I met George from southern India who had a very technical job in India but now is the sacristan at the Peterskirche, cleaning the place and preparing the holy masses. The Peterskirche has a chapel devoted to Opus Dei. Fancy!

The train ride to Brno was very pleasant. We were welcomed by a steward who greeted people and lifted their bags up the ladder into the train. I shared my compartment with a Galician couple from Santiago de Compostela who were on their way to Prague.

In Vienna I stayed in a crazy hotel near the museum quarter. It was so clean. I was hospitalized overnight recently and even the hospital wasn't as clean as that hotel! Breakfast was prohibitively expensive, however, but I did get a very good lunch there before checking out and heading off to Brno. The accommodation in Brno was a kind of youth work centre / hotel - very comfortable with chairs in the room.

People were there from Bordeaux, Budapest, Brno, Grenoble, Kandern, Lyon, Madrid, Marseille, Monaco, Nice, Prague, Saint-Paul de Vence, Split and Florida.

We spent the week praying for various situations and needs in the churches and discussing further opportunities in Europe. My life after 2025 came up for discussion, too, and I think I see the future a little more clearly.

My journey back to Bordeaux was all done in one day, and quite a long one it was. I began to wonder if all my connections would work, but they did. I had one mad dash at Munich airport but when I arrived at the gate and asked "Have you boarded?" I was told that boarding would begin in five minutes time. Needn't have rushed! I was glad to travel light - just.a small rucksack. It makes check-ins and transfers so much easier.

8:30 tram to Brno station. A very friendly Czech student told us our tram was direct.

9:22 train to Vienna

11:12 train to Vienna airport

13:55 plane to Munich

15:35 plane to Paris

Cross Paris by RER and metro

19:49 train to Bordeaux, arriving at 22:50

I was glad to get home.

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