Pragueress Report

I was plonked in Prague Vaclav Havel Airport still clutching my Yorkie bar (raisin & biscuit obviously).

An evening skitter over the smoothed cobbles of the old town took me past Baroque facades painted in soft ochre, dusty rose, and pistachio green to the overlapping circles and shifting colours of the astronomical clock, where I moshed in the Easter market crowds and twerked to an accordion's wheeze. After an evening of plundering Lidl for the wackiest looking pastries I could find to flake all over the floor of every tram I rode, I set back out the following morning for a full day of pursuits.

First, I hopscotched my way to St Vitus, the immense cathedral which dominates the capital's skyline. It was embellished with golden mosaics, spindly needles, and grotesque gargoyles, with its interior ribbed, and its stone soot-stained and spiky, like a recovering hedgehog from two weeks stuck up a chimney. As I skipped down the idyllic streets of Malá Strana, a man in high-vis thrust his hand across my chest, as I'd almost become an extra in the emotional climax of a Victorian period drama, near-stumbling onto set during filming (and probably being assumed as an orphan or a penny-pincher).

As my medieval monarchs audiobook prattled away in my ears, I macarena'd across Charles bridge, an iconic foot connection which arcs across the Vltava, passing the blackened fortifications of Powder Tower and arriving at the Museum of Communism just as King John is about to sign the Magna Carta. The museum was stylised in bold red banners and pro-Soviet propaganda, yet its exhibition deplored the brutality of its nation's former regime. Czechoslovakia had fallen behind the curtain post-world-war, and its four decades enduring strict censorship and suppression of liberties had clearly left it embittered.

Embittered myself by a lack of lunch, I argentine-tangoed my way back up the town towards Petrin, widening my nostrils for a hopeful whiff of Soviet badges and rusty medals as I passed a hillside market. Beneath the Petrin slope, the bronze, decaying figures of the communism memorial provoked a contemplative pause as blush-pink petals fluttered down from the blossom trees.

Then, it was back to the tracks. I boarded the red-and-white tram for one last juddery journey, looking down to find a constellation of Lidl pastry flakes still clinging to my fleece.

I ended the evening of course, by getting drunk. So drunk that, thankfully, I barely even had to taste my plate of traditional Svíčková, beef swimming in sickly vegetable sauce and topped with a bewildering dollop of cranberries.Read more