Day Five - Berlin to Prague

It's a bit of a jerk to have to leave Berlin. The city is so clean, organised, laid-back, fun-loving and historically rich that in comparison to London, the English capital loses hands down.

Berlin has that unusual mixture of genuine cultural and historical artifacts and stories and solid and sustainable economic robustness. One could go and live in Prague and love its culture but find it difficult to make any headway in global marketplaces. I imagine. The closest I've had to a job recently is running the hoover across the lounge to placate my sister.

Anyway, Berlin is brilliant. So go.

Out of the Hauptbahnhof we cram onto a delayed train to Vienna. Every other moving shape is a backpack. The train is so packed with interailers that it begins to feel like one massive and very chaotically organised tour of Europe.

There are also at least two stag do parties, bedecked in generic matching tops documenting how the stag probably once raped a tramp when drunk. They are bound for the beautiful, inspiring and culturally deep city of Prague. And so are we.

The station of Praha Holcevice - a concrete slug manned by unrelenting female security guards - looks abandoned and, were it not for the scrambled English of the train's conductor, we would have attempted to stay on to Prague's main terminus. Which would have been a mistake, because the trains don't actually run there.

A dawning realisation sweeps our faces (and wallets) when all the prices are laid out in Czech crowns; in spite of the country's hurtling progress (of sorts) towards the Eurozone, the euro is not accepted in all but the swanikiest hotels. Which we had little intention in frequenting.

Prague itself is almost impossibly picturesque. Adimttedly, the first building you see as you surface from the Metro is a huge, American style shopping mall and the main boulevard leading upto Wenceslas Square is flanked with gawdy neon-spewing outlets - as if to reiterate the Czech Republic's embrace of retail economy since the Velvet Revolution.

But the rest of it is stunning. As you venture closer to the river, the soviet concrete blocks gradually begin to dissolve to a more antediluvian frontage with facades and trellises with aesthetically pleasing proportions.

From the Old Town Square where the horror-story Gothic steeples of Tyn Church (1256) jostle for your attention with the wedding-cake St. Nicholas Church and the sprouting Astronomical Clock, which entertains revellers on the hour with a mechanised play, to the soaring grandeur of the old castle set as the backdrop to the bustling Charles bridge, Prague is a comprehensive example of Baroque and Gothic intermingling to inspiring and tasteful effect.

As it's a Saturday night we decide to drink in some of Prague's more traditional bars, to good effect. Czech is a difficult language to get your tongue around, but even the smallest effort to communicate reaps full reward with bar staff who are used to braying stag-parties barking orders in an English with the volume turned up.

Czech cuisine is suspiciously close to German, but that doesn't stop Claire polishing off the biggest pork knuckle conceivable - tastefully advertised on a translated menu as "knee pig". They are big on meat; my dumplings had bacon in them despite being served with pork chops and vegetarian menus include such dishes as "fried cheese with bacon" and "mashed potatoes with fat". Yum.

With enough Czech beer inside us - which is some of the best and freshest in the world, and roughly 80p for 0.5l - we wandered south of the Old Town Square to find an 80's club.

If you do wander out of the nostaglic comfort blanket of the old town on a Saturday night, expect to be confronted by lots of drunken men shouting at one another. They will be British, and you will positively beam with national pride as you witness them urinate and vomit on the cobbled streets once pounded by the likes of Kafka and Dvorak.

Suddenly more than a little ashamed of our presence, Claire and I skulked off to a quiet sidestreet bar and talked in muted tones over the sounds of smashing bottles and laddish hawking.