The Only Living Boy in Prague

... Hell, we were nearly in Dresden. So it goes.

The captain came on to announce about an hour into the flight that our chances were 50-50 thanks to fog. Some start, I hadn't been expecting to take in Yossarian's Dresden but as the minutes ticked by I was getting quite comfortable with the thought. I started to make a mental list of things that would go wrong on this trip at some point and funnily enough, diversion due to weather was pretty high on that list. Checking it off this early would be a bit ridiculous but so it goes.

We managed to get in however, the peculiarly Irish custom of raucous clapping when the plane came to a halt was suffered and once we got a 'follow me' car to find the terminal we were off.

Greetings to one and all and welcome to update number one of this wonderful journey that is being brought to you from lovely downtown Prague and an inscrutable czech keyboard.

Accommodation is good, the 'best room in the hotel' according to Otto the night porter (not his real name, I just made it up), well if this is the best room then I'd hate to see the ... You get the picture. But clean, functional and now that the english stag party have left, pretty hospitable.

The taxi ride into the hotel complete with fog, icy roads and maniac driver all lent the start of the trip proper an authentic kind of eerie atmosphere.

Then to really get the pulses racing I set about negotiating Prague by night. First off I made it to Wencelas Square and the National Museum. The cross in the ground signifying the position where Jan Palach had lain prostrate in 1969, his body having been ravaged by flames of his own creation gave me my first death tourism success. Buoyed by this I continued on, found Old Town Square and the Astronomical clock and proceeded to have a hell of a time trying to find a certain pub, which is now my favourite watering hole. The Marquis De Sade. But it eluded me on that first night and as the fog closed in and midnight approached I took sanctuary in an overpriced Irish Pub on the corner of the Old Square safe from the clutches of the strange men who stand in the freezing cold all night long to bring you to Strip Clubs.

Then the first reverse!

Man Utd lost to Blackburn.

I've had, to a degree, my fill of Prague at this point. Obligatory sights such as The Castle, Charle's Bridge have been done but it's a magnificent city just to stroll around in, particularly in the snow. I'm going to take the memory of the snow flurry I watched from the Riverbank looking across at Charle's Bridge as something special from this trip.

I've enjoyed augmenting the usual sights with my own personal interest and that's taken me to Namesti Jana Palacha and the Rudolfinium to see the death mask that was made of Palach as he lay in the mortuary. The Museum of Communism was an experience, despite the particular slant given to the exhibition thanks to it's American patron, and the Revolution Walk this morning was again a highlight.

I then took my death tourism to it's ultimate zenith or final nadir, depending upon how you look at it and took a trip to Olsany Cemetary this afternoon to visit the grave site of Jana Palacha. It's not hard to locate but easy to miss in what is a spectacular locale. Olsany, under a carpet of snow has all the same feel of Pere LaChaise in Paris but with only incomprehensible czech instructions as a guide. Nevertheless, I persevered and found it after an hour. Spending a moment in silent contemplation of this man's desperate act at the age of 21, this act of protest against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 that was designed to awaken a kernel of strength in the nation and which came to ultimate fruition in the Velvet Revolution and 1989, I was approached by an aged czech woman.

She spoke to me briefly in a sad voice gesturing at the grave, I explained to her as best I could that I had no czech but that didn't deter her. Finally she left. And I was alone with my thoughts once again.

It's full of contradictions Prague, you can sense that the rush to the free market has left a somewhat bitter taste and the explosion of strip clubs and english stag parties is not something the older people counted on. Mira, the guide from the Revolution Walk, tells us that her children don't want to travel. She never had their freedom but the children can't see that opportunity for what it is worth. Repression bred great culture, rock, art and music underground and there it thrived. Now driven overground and kidnapped by capitalism it's been subverted into something else. A town sqaure of KFCs and crass commercialism where great sacrifices both personal and national once took place. Now mere footnotes that are more often than not glossed over.

I was asking the receptionist about trams for Olsany Cemetary this morning. 'Why? What is there?' I mentioned Palach and the look she gave me was one of incomprehensibility. The new generation of Czechs and Slovaks seemingly enjoyed a velvet divorce from their own history.

Random thoughts:

- My czech factor is quite high, plenty of people have assumed I'm czech though there was a Dutch and an American thrown in there.

- Nobody I speak to for any significant period turns out to be czech, usually they are slovaks. Mental note to check Bratislava for evidence of same phenomenon.

Here I am.

The Only Living Boy in Prague.

And tomorrow, we punch the sky.