Day Six - Prague

The sun streaming in through the window wakes us early, which is good, because there is a lot of Prague to see.

We start by picking our way between the throngs of tourists crawling over the Charles Bridge. As I pick my way carefully between sweating Americans and their pudgy, wheezing children, I can imagine what a spectacle the bridge would be when empty. I make a mental note to get up before dawn tomorrow, before immediately scribbling it out.

The Hlad, or Prague castle sits atop a vertiginous bank, occupying the highest point of the city. It is continually visible as you meander along Prague's cobbled alleys and serves as an oddly reassuring presence, as if casting an old and sagacious eye over the lugubrious goings-on of the townsfolk.

Midday sees the changing of the guards at the castle gates, performed by dour looking men in ill-fitting blue uniforms. They march to a tune astonishingly similar to the theme from Thunderbirds.

The Museum of Communism is underwhelming, the highlight of which is a video documenting the lead up to the Velvet Revolution. Narrated in Czech with English subtitles, it helped to add a human realist element to the story's of bravery I had heard so much about. These streets were, until very recently, swarming with baton-happy police and and dissent, even peaceful, would result in intimidation and often imprisonment.

That the museum of Communism is located next to one of the larger McDonald's I've seen provides some well-needed comic relief.

We head out to Prague III, where the 'real' Czech pubs are to be found, far away from tourist eyes. Up a steep incline to the east of the city centre are rows of houses and tower blocks, plaster crumbling and graffiti-tagged several times over. These suburbs sit under the watchful glare of the Communist TV Tower, so grey as to be almost indistinguishable from the clouds that had enveloped the city. Its alien hum provides a monotonous soundtrack for our walk up the hill.

We find some excellent, if a little frosty local bars and before long we are exchanging toasts with the barman in a blues pub, deserted but for a clutch of men playing an increasingly acrimonious card game.

We leave to Tina Turner's dulcet tones and decide on an early night. If the man in the bed next to me snores tonight, I decide, I shall smother him and hand myself in at the earliest opportunity.