Prague
21 t/m 26 April 1998
Tuesday, 21 April 1998
We leave in the early 
afternoon from Schiphol
Amsterdam Airport for Prague. The weather has been not been too good so far, so
we fear for the worst. Once in Prague it's not all that bad. Mild springtime
sunshine greets us. We take a shuttle bus to the city centre and from there a
tram to our hotel, the Parkhotel. The hotel is some 10 minutes from the city
centre by tram and comes with all possible conveniences. When we've settled into
our room, we make back for the centre again stroll about a bit. We inevitably
end up on the Old Town Square. It's very busy. We have a drink at a side walk
café before we return to the hotel. At night we find a cheap little restaurant
in Mala Strana, the quarter on the "other side" of the Charles
Bridge.
Prague gay life doesn't reveal itself easily.
After a lot of walking we get to a place, we thought to be a bar, which turns
out to be a restaurant. It's located in a cellar and we have to ring a bell.
Inside everything is very neat, be it a tat old fashioned and we have a beer.
Then we move on to the next thing. We're near "Sam", an old fashioned
leather bar. But on a Tuesday night there's not much going on.
Wednesday, 22 April 1998
Today we're going to do the first of three walks we've planned. The first, the so called Royal Walk takes us through the old town, approximately along the route the Czech Kings took on their way to their coronation. It starts at the beautiful Art Deco Community House or Obecni Dum near the Republic Square. The community House houses a grand cafeteria, where we have a coffee and cake. Next door is the gunpowder tower. We go on through the Celetna Street (THE shopping precinct of Prague) towards the Old Town Square with the town hall and the famous astronomic clock. Hundreds gather to watch it play on the hour. A pickpocket's gold mine!! We cross the Moldau via the famous Charles Bridge. The bridge is awfully crowded. Lots of tourists, "painters" and hustlers with any kind of garbage. We head on uphill for the Prague Castle. The Castle is being guarded by handsome and handsomely uniformed guards. The president still has his official offices here. Inside the Castle you can visit a couple of museums, a couple of old state rooms and even a Cathedral, the St Vitus. The view from the Castle on the city is magnificent. Within the Castle walls we also find the "Golden Lane", where Franz Kafka lived briefly and wrote a novel. Also Nobel Prize winner Jaroslav Seifert lived here. We go back to the city centre.
At night we eat in a small, but refined restaurant, specialising in game: U modre Kachnicky.
After that we head for the bars again. We discover Stella. A bar located in a cellar (again) in a street where you least expect to find anything. Inside it's nice and busy. The atmosphere is easy going, the prices rock bottom. You have to make an effort to pay, because the bar tender seems to have a blind trust in all his guests.
Thursday, 24 April 1998
Now
it's time for our second walk. This one takes
us through the old Jewish Quarter, Josefov. Prague had until World War II a
large and thriving Jewish community. There is not much left of that. The walk
starts in the Maisel Synagogue, part of the Jewish
Museum. Most impressive is
th
e Jewish cemetery. The Nazi's spared the cemetery as a monument for a "exterminated race". Now it's a memorial for the victims of the holocaust. You enter the cemetery through a synagogue, now serving as memorial. On the walls you can rea
d all the names of the Czech and Slovak Jews who did not survive the German occupation.
In the afternoon we do a bit of shopping in the old town. I climb the stairs of the Town Hall tower. The view from there is not to be missed. You have a good view over the red tiled roofs of old Prague and you can watch the crowds gather for the astronomical clock.
Prague has one gay pub that is open during the day. We obviously have to see it. It's located at street level and the doors are wide open. It 's reasonably nice. Many come and go on their way home from work taking a large and cheap beer. Half a litre for only 30p!!
At night we have dinner in the cheap restaurant we used two days ago. Again we're about to explore Prague's gay scene. We start out at U Petra Voka, which is still very quiet in the early evening. Apart from us there is not a soul about. The same applies to Connection. Both places look ok, perhaps a bit old fashioned, but it they're so quiet!!
Friday 25 April 1998
Today we make yet another walk. This time in a
more modern part of the city. We start at the famous
Wenscelas Square with a cup
of coffee and cake in Hotel
Europa. A magnificent Art Nouveau building, that
aged gracefully. Unfortunately we can't say the same for the cake, which is
awfully stale. Wenscelas Square owes its fame from a number of relative recent
historic events. In 1918 the Czechoslovak Republic was announced here. In 1968
the student Jan Palach set fire to himself here, in protest against the Warsaw
Pact invasion that put an end to the 
so-called
"Prague Spring". A small plaque reminds us of him and other victims of
communism. In 1989 Vaclav Havel and Alexander Dubcek spoke to the gathered crowd
from a balcony, announcing the end of communist rule. We walk on to the Estates
Theatre, one of the oldest of Prague, where Mozart's "Don Giovanni"
had its premier performance in 1787. Next is Havelska, Prague's main open-air
market. We end up again at the Old Town Square, with its dominating statue of
Jan Hus, the Czech's own church reformer.
After the walk we take the underground to Visegrad. According to legends, here stands Prague's cradle. We find some remnants of a fortress, which preceded Prague Castle. There is also a state cemetery for famous Czechs - a kind of Czech Père Lachaise! Most of the famous dead are unknown to us, but Dvorak we do know. Today is the most overcast day of our trip and once in Visegrad it starts raining. We take a tram back into town. Once there it starts raining even harder. We buy T-shirts and have a couple of drinks in the gay pub.
At night we have an excellent dinner in U Patrona at the foot of the Charles Bridge. A very good restaurant, where you have a good view of the kitchen if you have a table on the first floor. We watch carefully, because there is lot to see(!).
After dinner we head for Stella, our favourite pub in Prague.
Saturday 26 April 1998
Our last day in Prague. We stroll around in the old town and take in some last impressions of this lovely city. Around two PM the shuttle takes us back to the airport.