The Sunday Times Magazine
January 19, 2003-01-23
88-PAGE TRAVEL SPECIAL

57 Czechoholic – Why Prague is chockfull of eastern European promise

Prag is far and away one of Europe’s most magical cities – but it’s much closer than you might think, says Philip Norman


Czechoholic

The first great discovery about Prague is its incredible nearness: just 1 hour, 20 minutes outward-bound from Stansted. If it weren’t for the roadworks that chronically clutter up the M11 between central London and Stansted, I might almost consider commuting.

We took our 12-year-old daughter there on a short late autumn break, which proved rather clever for us. The Czech Republic is now one of the most popular holiday destinations in the old communist world, its mythic capital easily as mobbed during high season as Paris or Rome. But by October the crowds had largely cleared.

A city of boundless architectural splendour and variety is contained within roughly the same area as central York or Exeter. For the serious-minded, there are specialist tours covering Prague’s religious history and second-world-war ordeal under Nazism. But the greatest pleasure is simply wandering about, something you can do comfortably and comprehensively in the space of two days. Any longer and you may start repeating yourself or turning to the satellite TV in your hotel room.

In two days, you will have visited the old town square with its pea-green and gold Grimm’s-fairy-tale houses, and watched the striking of the astronomical clock that has been going since before Columbus discovered America. You will have walked through the old Jewish quarter, browsed among the souvenir shops with their heavy bias towards marionettes and toy soldiers, and climbed to the top of the various medieval towers distributed through the city like errant portions of our own Tower Bridge.

You will have seen Prague Castle and St Vitus’s Cathedral, the Mucha Museum and the Kafka bookshop. You will have viewed the savage tidemarks of the 2002 flood, then crossed the River Vltava by the statue-lined Charles Bridge, where violins and zithers quaver sentimental Middle European airs, and alfresco jazz bands belt our Muskrat Ramble. You will have discovered that in Prague, classical music is an element second only to oxygen. Every night of the week it pours from concert hall, cathedrals, churches and crypts. During our brief visit there were performances of Carmen and The Magic Flute and recitals of Smetana, Dvorak, Handel, Bach and Vivaldi. We chose to hear The Four Seasons in the basement of the sumptuous art-nouveau Municipal House, played on antique instruments including a lute with a sound as piercing as any electric guitar. As it turned out, the ensemble gave us only two seasons and those in rather a rush, as if they hadn’t hired the hall for quite long enough.

We stayed at the Hotel Josef, two minutes’ walk from the Old Town Square, a chrome-and-white minimialist palace designed by the Czech architect Eva Jiricna. Usually I steer clear of so-called “boutique” hotels, which, like nouvelle cuisine in the 1980s, tend to provide everything you don’t need and not enough of what you do. Thankfully, however, the snobbishness and short measures of New York or Parisian boutique hotels proved totally absent from the Josef: our bed was one of the most comfortable I’ve ever slept in, the breakfast buffet was excellent and unlimited, and all the staff were charming.

The Czech Republic is set to join the EU next year. It already fully embraces McDonalds’s, Baileys Irish Cream, and is clearly straining to adopt the euro. For a more authentic Prague feel, try a hospoda, or pub, where the food is usually good in a heavy, soupy, goulashy way, but where waiting times can revive memories of the old communist era. Whether you opt for the sprauncy Pravda restaurant or just sausage and hot “grog” from a wayside kiosk, the prices seem wonderfully cheap.

We returned with a Prague spring in our step, but angry a new at rip-off London.