Copyright © Tanya Piejus, 2000

Sunday 14th May 2000

The city has just gone wild to the sound of car horns, raucous cheers, a blasting trumpet and a frantic waving of red, white and blue flags. The reason? The Czech Republic has just beaten Slovakia at ice hockey and the citizens of Prague are making sure that everyone knows all about it.

When we arrived late morning at Starometske Namesti (The Old Town Square) on a minibus from the airport, we knew something was happening in the square but assumed it was a musical event, part of the Prague Spring festival that's just got underway. Now watching the screaming convoys circling Wenceslas Square below our hotel window we're in no doubt as to what it's all about! We are in the Grand Hotel Evropa, halfway up the famous square and right in the heart of where it's at. The hotel is grand indeed, being an art nouveau edifice that still retains its elegant curlicues, square-paned chandeliers and hand-painted walls. We are in room 205 with double windows, an arched recess with white doves and 'UNITI' at its apex, a candy striped chaise longue and a bath of unusual depth. It's all original turn-of-the-century and it's fabulous.

We couldn't claim our room when we arrived so wandered off down Wenceslas Square to seek lunch. After mooching up and down a side street, we wound up at the Kevelo Cafe at the end of a shopping arcade, an Italian-influenced eatery where we had big, tasty salads and freshly squeezed orange juice.

After marvelling at the Gothic monolith that is the National Museum and the '20s Communist office block next door, we checked into our hotel room, put on our shorts to cope with the rising temperature and set off the explore.

We crossed back into Starometske Namesti and soon realised that the TV screen and waiting sports fans bedecked in tricolour shirts and face paint were waiting for the start of the hockey match. We took a few pictures and carried on towards the Charles Bridge. The Rudolfinium is a fine, well-proportioned building and we crossed the River Vltava via the Mansuv Most adjacent to it in order to approach Charles Bridge from the Mala Strana side. There was an absolutely clear, translucent blue sky overhead, the sun was glowing on the pastel-tinted stonework and the city was alive with soft colour. Charles Bridge has a simple, well settled elegance about its gently-angled sweep across the river. The statues of tortured saints are well spaced and aloof from one another so as not to overpower the medieval cobbled thoroughfare that is now home to artists and buskers. We added extra polish to the already well-rubbed relief of St John of Nepomuk, much revered for his power to bring luck. The assorted saints gaze sagely down from the parapet of the bridge as they have done for centuries, spun about with spiders' webs and gently crumbling with age. The occasional copy or restoration looks anachronistic amongst the time worn and blackened, soft-cornered sandstone of the majority.

Climbing the tower of the Stare Mesto bridge tower, we had a superb view of the full span of the bridge and the people swarming over it with their long, dark shadows dancing over the cobbles beneath them. Yellow pedaloes dotted the deep blue of the river and the whole scene had a pleasing sense of organised calm amongst the bustle of tourists and touts. I lay on my back on the parapet of the bridge at the foot of the Pieta and drank in the heat and the peace. It was bliss.

We had tea at an Icelandic street cafe on Karlova and I picked up information about the marionette theatre and their current version of 'Don Giovanni' playing twice a day which I'd like to see on my birthday in Tuesday. We'd been looking in glass shops at the Bohemian crystal and have found some beautiful and original pieces amongst the more conventional glassware, as well as some downright tat. I bought an embroidered T-shirt and we have seen lots of pretty things which will be good to take home, including a not-so-pretty big marionette of a witch, complete with mechanical clacking mouth and she only costs about £13. I am tempted...

Passing back through the main square, we found confirmation of the sporadic cheers we'd heard throughout the afternoon. The Czech Republic were licking Slovakia 4-1 in the hockey. The square was packed with eager fans, all eyes on the big TV screen, who even cheered when a national statue briefly came on the screen. The match finished soon after, which is when Wenceslas Square began to fill with celebrating crowds.

After a bath and a change of clothes, we walked the short walk to Restaurant Maria Theresie and tucked into some hearty, meat-heavy Czech fodder and big glasses of beer. It is now 10.15 and the square is still wild with revellers whose enthusiasm for their win has strengthened, not dwindled, no doubt aided by large quantities of alcohol. I imagine this is what it'd be like in London if England won the World Cup. It's going to be a noisy night.

Monday 15th May

The revelling carried on until well into the early hours, not that I knew anything about it. I put my ear plugs in and was dead to the world, having been up since 4.30 yesterday morning. Breakfast in the hotel was surprisingly varied after what I'd read in the Rough Guide - cold meats, cheeses, bread, yoghurt, cereals, even cake, plus two types of fruit juice, lemon tea and coffee. I took some photos of art nouveau bits before eating. The breakfast room was the best part. It has he most fantastic light in the middle and is very Charles Rennie Mackintosh in styling. Every detail is original and perfect.

After a bit of a cock-up on the public transport front (we got off the clean, functional Communist metro a station too late), we eventually made our way to the famed castle. On the way, we meandered down some lovely streets and stopped to admire the facade of the Loreta church and some of the other edifices. The history museum is a particularly odd-looking, Nazi-built affair quite different from the other Rococco and Baroque buildings.

The castle entrance was heaving with tour parties taking photos of each other next to the blue-uniformed guards on the gate. We joined the throng and made our way through the plastered-over medieval fascias to the front of St Vitus cathedral. A ticket for 120kc lets you into the best parts of the cathedral, the Mihulka tower, Basilica of St George and a picture gallery. St Vitus cathedral is too oppressed by other buildings to get a real appreciation of its size and grandeur but its blackened Gothic towers are a little reminiscent of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The high, narrow nave is elegantly simple and the modern shattered glass-effect of the painted windows gives a splash of colour amongst the mass of pale stonework. The older far end of the cathedral is more elaborate and there is a truly monstrous monument to St John of Nepomuk, the local hero. It is all in silver and adorned with cherubs, one of whom points cheekily to St John's severed tongue on a silver platter, or a naff enamel replica of it at least. The whole is overhung by thick, red velvet drapery, held at each corner by more plump cherubs and the effect of the whole is of deep affectation. I'm sure a simple soul such as St John's is believed to be would be horrified at the totally kitsch nature of his tomb. It's a shrine to rampant tastelessness and I'd just love to take it home!

The crypt of St Vitus holds the remains of Charles IV of Charles Bridge fame and much more besides, including a box containing all four of his feisty wives. Rudolf II and other kings are also under there. Charles IV was reburied in a 1930s sarcophagus which looks bizarrely modern amongst the ancient ostentation of Catholicism all around him. The Czechs don't seem to have much idea of what goes and what doesn't when modernising. The exception to this is the Basilica of St George which is in early Romanesque style but has a beautiful set of Baroque steps totally in keeping. It also has an exquisite ceiling in the side chapel.

The Mihulka tower contains a selection of alchemy equipment and some mention of Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler but the labels are all in Czech so I couldn't glean any more. The Queen's Palace consists mostly of a huge indoor, vaulted jousting hall with steps wide enough to ride a horse up and a set of chambers from the windows of which two men were thrown after a political argument. They didn't die, however, their fall being broken by a dung heap.

We walked down the steps at the eastern end of the castle once we'd had out fill of the sights. There is plenty more to see there but it gets pretty tiring after a few hours and the crowds were still milling. Needing a rest, we headed for the Kampa, a long park by the river, and sat on the grass for an hour in the shade. It reminded me of Hyde Park in its bald grass and random trees but it was a nice enough place to take some time out from the sightseeing.

Carrying on along the north bank of the river, we then crossed the next bridge down from the Charles and arrived at the National Theatre, pollution-stained monster of a building with a gold crest and rampant horses threatening to gallop off the top. Behind it is a modern, Communist-built extension of gold glass bricks which looks like one of the flash units on the early '80s point-and-press cameras. According to the Rough Guide, one Praguer said it looked like 'frozen piss' and I can see why. I'm sure Prince Charles would put it in the 'monstrous carbuncle' category.

The road from the bridge took us back to Wenceslas Square so we dropped off our bags, cooled our aching feet and headed off to one of Prague's famed teahouses to write postcards. I had Java Fancy tea in the simply-decorated Pink Tea House to the sound of modern jazz and folk music. It's not the hippy hang-out of years gone by but it was a pleasant place to pass an hour or so and was conveniently near the main post office.

We decided to dine in the Evropa's basement restaurant where hearty Czech cuisine is served for very little money. I had Czech onion soup (totally unlike the French version), goulash and dumplings and chocolate cake, washed down with Radegast beer. And all for about £6. We played Scrabble on the hotel terrace and I drank Slivovice until we got turfed off at 10.

Tuesday 16th May

Today is my 29th birthday. Happy birthday, me. I opened my cards before getting out of bed. Enough people had remembered that I'd be on holiday to give me cards before I left which was good of them. I put them on the mantle that covers the radiator.

Another hot, sunny day found us toddling along to Starometske Namesti, tourist hotspot no. 1, to seek out a sightseeing ride but no-one was about at 9.20 so we decided to crack on with our walking tour of the Jewish Quarter before the tour buses arrived. 480kc buys you tickets into a handful of synagogues plus the Old Jewish Cemetery. Sight no. 1 was the Maisel Synagogue, a small, elegant building housing the first part of the Jewish museum's collection. Much of the stash of torah shields, menorahs and such like is there, ironically, thanks to Adolf Hitler himself who decided that he'd gather all Jewish paraphernalia from the ghettos of Europe in Prague and create an 'Exotic Museum of an Extinct Race'. Fortunately, he didn't quite succeed in his sick plan to wipe out the Jews and the Prague community has a fine collection of silverware to show for it.

Next stop was the Spanish synagogue. Outside, it's quite a plain, though distinctly Moorish-looking, building but inside the southern influence really comes to life. It has the most gorgeously-decorated interior I think I've ever seen. Only a chapel at Hampton Court Palace comes close. Every possible surface is covered in red, gold and green with touches of blue and black, and nearly every pattern is based on the Star of David. It is truly divine.

We had a brief look at the exterior of the Jewish town hall after a break at the sophisticated Dolce Vita film cafe. The town hall is icing pink now and has a rather fetching four-faced clock tower. Next to it is the oddly-named Old-New Synagogue, still the centre of worship for the current community. It was built by monks in the thirteenth century and it shows in the simple but pleasing monastic design. The interior is plain and functional but has an unadorned beauty about it. It has the quality of aesthetic simplicity that I find very attractive and which Catholicism gets so wrong with its gold, Baroque sculpture and general overkill. I find synagogues far more spiritual places than churches which is probably why I am a non-believer despite a broadly Anglican up-bringing.

By the time we left there were tourists swarming everywhere, especially parties of German schoolkids. They looked somewhat bemused by the Jewish accoutrements and history, like they know what their forefathers did but have no modern point of reference in their own lives.

The Pinkas Synagogue is deeply moving. Little of the original place of worship is left from the Holocaust, but the rebuilt synagogue is adorned, floor to ceiling, with the names of all 77 000 Prague Jews who perished in the Holocaust. It is a strikingly simple and effective memorial. I wished to be there when it's empty of the hordes of German teenagers and middle-aged Yanks and just stand in the bimah, listening to the haunting music and the souls of the persecuted singing from the walls.

The Pinkas Synagogue is accompanied by another building which houses a collection of paintings and drawings done by children in the Terezin ghetto between 1942 and '44 when most were deported to Auschwitz. The most telling were not those of dark shapes reaching out for the innocent pencil figures or the matchstick boats tossed on stormy seas, but the subconscious images of a deserted table or a hot air balloon rising above the poverty and fear. Some showed real artistic talent that was snuffed out in the death camps when the artists weren't even in their teens.

The Jewish Cemetery is a riot of misaligned and crowded headstones, moved higher and higher and crammed ever closer together with successive layers of burials in limited space. The dappled sunlight through the scattered lime trees gave the whole a chaotic effect that belies the usually peaceful air of remembrance in a churchyard. It's like they are all still fighting to be seen with the many more below them who have no marker, pushed down and forgotten by centuries of oppression and persecution, even in death. I found it oddly disturbing to be there even though I normally find burial grounds to be places of great calm.

The whole former Jewish area has become a weird tourist trap now, but I suppose that if it means the Holocaust is remembered and learnt from, it can't be an entirely negative thing. We tried to have lunch in the Franz Kafka Cafe, being complete tourists ourselves, but they didn't really do lunch so we ended up Cafe Halia on Starometske Namesti with salads, sandwiches and ice cream.

A Czech called Robert runs a 40-minute sightseeing tour in his maroon 1929 Vets Praga car, so we engaged his services for a birthday drive. He took us round the places we'd seen already but it was a civilised way to travel to them and all the tour group kids had their jaws hanging open as we passed, giving them a regal wave.

On returning to Starometske Namesti, we went to the Tyn Church, the Dracula's castle of a place which glowers over the square, but couldn't go in as they're doing some reconstruction work on it. I wanted to see Tycho Brahe tomb in one of the pillars - he of astronomical acumen, brass false nose, dwarf servant and outrageous reputation - but that'll have to wait for another visit. Instead, we went up the Old Town Hall tower for an excellent view of the city. It put all the ground-level geography neatly in place as a whole and I realised where the picture on the front cover of the Rough Guide was taken from. The Czechs haven't quite got over their Communist stroppiness and do tend to have a somewhat surly way of dealing with their visitors, we've noticed.

Mum wanted to buy some crystal glasses and a bowl so we re-found the shop on Karlova where she'd seen them, then headed away from the crowds to find another teahouse. It's run by trainee Buddhists and has a cool, soothing ambience that is the perfect antidote to the heat and chaos of the main drag to the Charles Bridge. I had Moroccan-style mint tea called Desert Dune and Mum had Edward Lear tea which is flavoured with chocolate making a dark, quite bitter brew. Refreshed, we wandered back to Karlova so that I could go to the National Opera Marionette Theatre. I joined the gaggle of other holidaymakers in the scaled-down theatre for the 5 pm performance of 'Don Giovanni'. It was an imaginative piece of staging using puppets of about two and a half feet in size and flip-up pieces of set to change the scene. I'm not familiar enough with the opera to know how much was cut out or what their interpretation was like, but I enjoyed it all the same. It was light-hearted and fun and they messed around with scale at a couple of points, using a costumed human to carry the Don off down to Hell at the end which worked very well.

For my birthday dinner, I'd picked out the Municipal House's restaurant, Francouska, in Namesti Republiky. According to the Rough Guide, 'the Art Nouveau decor in this cavernous hall is absolutely stunning' and they're spot on. We thought the Evropa was pretty special but the Municipal Hall (Obecni dum) is something else. It benefits from having been repainted and looking pristine whereas the hotel has a faded, rather gloomy, feel in its originality. The restaurant was bright with thousands of drops of crystal glass, polished brass and pastel blue and white walls. There's a magnificent clock at one end and huge, elegant lights hanging down half the height of the vast ceiling. With the sparkling cutlery, wine glasses and DJed waiters, the whole thing had the refined sumptuousness of a '20s grill room in its prime. I wanted to put on a beaded dress and the gorgeous hat we saw in an Art Nouveau shop near Wenceslas Square, get the pianist playing some cool trad jazz and eat asparagus in melted butter with my fingers. As it was, I went for the Bohemian gourmet set menu of potato soup, roast dusk with cabbage and dumplings and a selection of local desserts or cheese. When the maitre d' offered a glass of champagne as an apéritif, I said yes, please as it's my birthday. I had my suspicions that they had something up their sleeves when Mum was asked whether she wanted the sweet dessert or cheese on her Alsace menu, but I was given no choice and a cake fork. The lights dimmed, the pianist struck up the first few bars of 'Happy Birthday' and my pudding arrived with a candle neatly placed in a round of mousse in the middle.

After eating, we took what was left of our ready cash and sat at a table on the street outside the cafe adjacent to the restaurant which is just as gorgeous in its decor. I'd been wondering exactly what 'grog' on the cafe menus really meant so ordered it, presuming that it had something to do with rum and indeed it does. It's a tall glass of hot water with a tot of rum in it and an optional slice of lemon. It was great to be able to sit out on the street at night and not feel cold. That just doesn't happen in England, especially not on my birthday.

Wednesday 17th May

Mum was in search of narrow, cobbled streets for her camera, so we spent the day on the other side of the river in Mala Strana. This area is actually quite small but there are some pretty streets and gardens below the castle and between Petrin Hill and the river. There's a lot of building and conversion work going on in this area and it's easy to see that it's rapidly becoming highly des. res. The pretty but less fancy buildings around the Malostranska Namesti are fast becoming home to those who have benefited from the commercial opportunities that have opened up since the fall of Communism.

Tucked away in a little square in the back streets is the former Grand Priory. On the wall of its garden is a graffiti shrine to John Lennon. The youth of Prague, and undoubtedly many visitors too, have daubed messages of love, peace and hope in psychedelic colours all over the wall, including a picture of Lennon himself drawn by a talented artist, testament to Prague's entrenched Bohemian attitude even under the heel of Russia.

We lunched in Kaverna Malostranska in the shadow of the impressive St Nicholas church, a favourite haunt of Kafka and chums in the '20s.

Once we'd had our fill of cobbles and backstreets, we took the funicular railway up Petrin, a big public park that tumbles down the wooded hillside adjacent to the castle. We took a breather in a lovely little water garden before trying to find a wooden church transplanted from the other side of Russia. It took some finding amongst the thickness of trees but when we did eventually locate it, it was unfortunately locked. The exterior is a very Russian-looking collection of bulbous spires and gables, like a mini St Basil's. There were very few people on the hill and it was good to have a break from the M25-like tourist trail down in the city.

We worked our way down the hill back to street level and crossed back over the river by National Theatre again. We stopped off at the Cafe Slavia for a cup of tea and to get out of the rain. The weather has taken a turn for the worse today but I suppose we've been lucky to have had it so good up till now.

I wanted to see the Charles Bridge and other parts of the city in their night-time guise so we headed back towards Stare Mesto for dinner and wound up in a cheap cafe on Michalska. The food was fine and under £5 a head including a glass of very tasty draft Budvar. From there, we arrived at the bridge while there was still some light left in the sky and took a few pictures of the statues and castle frame by pink-tinged clouds.

A busker and born entertainer was playing a 'glass harp' which consisted of water-filled crystal glasses tuned regularly by adding the odd squirt of fresh water. He was playing an eclectic selection of tunes from Bach to 'Stairway to Heaven' and had attracted quite a crowd.

When the lights came on, everything was bathed in a soft yellow light that reflected on the water of the Vltava. The Czechs still haven't got round the Communist no-waste ethic so there is no over-lighting of buildings and bridges. This is no bad thing as there isn't the neon overkill of London, just a warm glow of street light that half illuminates and leaves the rest to imagination.

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