I’m flying to Prague and thinking about Shakespeare. He coined the phrase, ‘The world is mine oyster’, but I reckon he’d be mind-blown at the ease with which we all globe-trot these days. It’s all become so easy, hasn’t it? When planning a trip, most people simply ask the questions, ‘where do I want to go?’ followed by, ‘and can I afford it?’ Then it’s off to the travel agent, or a good hour’s Googling, and the job’s done.
So, for most people, the answer is not usually dependant on the criteria, ‘well, how many days will it take to drive there, really quite slowly?’ followed by, ‘and do any mountain ranges stand between me and it?’ Welcome to my world, folks. To be fair, this world only covers Europe while we’re in Georgie: she’s a bit too large and low of belly for Tibetan hills or Indian roads. But that still leaves us with more than enough to be going on with.
Before we began our travels, we made up a rule: if the weather was hot when we disembarked at Calais, we’d go north; if it was cold, then south; and otherwise we’d carry straight on. So with this in mind, and a departure date of early May, we settle on Prague as a good point to aim for. Two weeks easy drive, stopping when we want and no major mountains.
Plus, neither of us has been there before (thus fulfilling the most important criteria of all – that of being unknown), and it will also give us a chance to do some more English teaching with Angloville. This Company runs courses a couple of hours drive away (read more about our experiences with Angloville here).
Prague gets a thumbs-up 
We duly sign up to do two Anglovilles; one in the last week of May, and one at the end of June. Our son, Sam, also volunteers for the June one (note, this was before his accident, which I’ve written about in Broken), and we look forward to having him with us and to exploring Prague as a family. But, you know – plans! Can’t think why we bother.
Instead, we end up staying in Britain, with Steve working for a few months to top up our emergency money. He arranges to take the time off for the Anglovilles, though, leaving me with the lucky dip that is finding last-minute bookings for both flights and Airbnbs. But some nimble fingered Googling, and we’re all set: time to just be tourists again.
Prague
Here’s a tip for you: stand anywhere in Prague and yell, ‘Hey, Jana!’ and at least thirty women will turn to look at you. I think it might be the Czech girl equivalent of Dave. Consequently, nearly all the flats we stay at, are owned by someone of that name.
Jana 1’s place
After our first Angloville at the end of May, Steve and I meet Jana 1. She is extremely nice, and the annexe we’ll be staying in is beautiful. It’s my birthday, so we dump our bags, and head into town looking for somewhere to eat. As long as my meat course doesn’t come with squirty cream on top (a weird Czech speciality) then I’ll be happy. But then, oh joy, my first ‘present’ comes in the form of the Prague underground, which appears to have walls made out of recycled Daleks. Nice.
We go to Café Louvre, which is a froth of Art Nouveau architecture and was once frequented by the likes of Einstein and Max Ernst. We have a nice meal with lots of cocktails, and then take a walk around the city.
As we pass the Opera House, the doors open, and the street is flooded with excited young girls in party frocks and little boys in bowties. They all have very tidy hair. A ballerina comes out onto the steps, and gracefully pirouettes and poses en pointe. The children, enchanted, queue up to have their photo taken with her. The Chinese tourists have to hold themselves back from nudging the kids out of the way.
Our flight doesn’t leave until quite late in the evening the following day, giving us a little time to see Prague before we go. Learning of this, Jana 1 offers to give us a lift into town, and then look after our bags at the designer clothes shop she owns near the castle. We can just swing by and pick them up on our way to the airport. How kind.
On the drive into Prague the next day, Jana tells us about being part of the student demonstrations in Wenceslas Square, in 1989. She was just seventeen at the time. The country had been under Communist rule for over forty years, and she and about 500,000 others, managed to reject and dismantle the regime in a matter of six weeks, in what became known as the Velvet Revolution. Respect, lady. I was useless at seventeen.
Jana 2’s place
On our second trip to Prague at the tail end of June, Sam and I arrive a few days before Steve, who’ll join us at the weekend for the next Angloville. We meet Jana 2: who may not be old enough to have risked her life for her country, but she has been out and bought fresh bread for us. And put food in the fridge, so she gets gold stars for that too.
Sam’s room is nice and has it’s own balcony, where he can go to vape. His room also has monkeys on the wall, and there are toys and games for him to enjoy. Sam is twenty-seven.
Amber nectar
Of course it’s beer that Prague is famous for, and Sam feels it’s his duty to test this out. Obviously, I could have done this for him, but you know young ‘uns – they won’t be told. We have lunch at Lokal, and Sam tries to work out the system on what he thinks is a loyalty card. Two of the pints of beer on it have been ticked: two out of one hundred and ten.
He haggles with the waiter about how many he has to drink to get a free beer. The waiter says all of them, and on the same day, so he won’t want a free beer – because he’ll be dead. I refuse to let Sam rise to the challenge (despite the example set by all the stag parties clustering around the Sex Machine Museum).
Not a loyalty card. 
Later, we fare much better at the student bar, Indigo. Here the music is loud, the clientele is pierced and the cocktails are cheap. We sample enough of them to desperately require Tex-Mex food on the way home.
Heroes
Because I grew up in the sixties, Sam and I decide to visit the John Lennon wall. When John was shot, some grief-stricken fan (feeling compelled to mark the tragedy) raced up to a wall and stencilled a picture of him on it. For years the authorities painted over the tributes to John, but he just kept reappearing, so in the end they gave up.
These days it’s a little harder to find all the Beatles references, as many tourists seem to think it’s just a place to graffiti their names in neon colours. John is still there, though, and I quietly sidle up and scrawl, ‘Say hi to Brian’ in biro, because that’s all I have.
We head off into town to buy T-shirts, when Sam stops dead and it’s obvious he isn’t going to move. His eyes have gone quite shiny. ‘I need you to take my picture with Optimus Prime,’ he says, devolving instantly from twenty-seven years old to being six again.
Fine with me, I can relate: I become six whenever I’m within ten feet of a guinea pig, a really good puddle, or the prospect of a pedalo shaped like a swan.
Here’s Optimus Prime (and his new mate, Sam), standing outside The Gallery of Steel Figures – a touring exhibition of superheroes and supercars, fabulously constructed out of used car parts. One car alone took 80,000 man-hours to complete, what with all the polishing of cogs.
Sam plays it cool: I don’t. I can’t – they have everything from dining furniture with the Alien bursting out, to Disney characters and movie icons. Seriously, who can be cool around that?
Art
Sam and I go and stare at the usual suspects: Dali, Mucha – all very nice but nothing spectacular. Then we stumble across this exhibition: Standing Water, by Mat Collishaw. It is in the beautiful Rudolphinum, down by the river, and the poster is nice, so we give it a go.
The standout piece of the show is a 3D-printed model of a temple full of little white figures. It depicts the slaughter that tore through Bethlehem when King Herod condemned all the male babies to death. Admittedly, the subject matter is rather gory, but the piece itself is quite fabulous.
Sam realises that it’s actually a giant Zoetrope, and we start walking around it, trying to get a sense of movement and progression. But we needn’t have bothered, because the lights suddenly go out, a strobe starts flashing and it begins to spin. It is astonishing – YouTube has a video of it doing it’s thing here.
Angloville
Angloville organises a guided tour of the city before each course starts. It’s a nice way to meet the new group of volunteers, and it breaks the ice a little. Unfortunately, I nearly get beaten up on the Charles Bridge, for taking a photo of this begging mouse without putting money in the box first. Not the good first impression I’d hoped for, as a furious Czech chases me over the bridge.
The next day we all head up to Hruba Skala for the course, and return to Prague a week later, tired, happy, and with a bunch of new friends. Several of the younger ones are staying in the city for a day or two before heading home.
Naturally, Sam wants to spend time with them all before they disband. And, as one of them is a rather lovely girl, called Katie (who, incidentally, writes the brilliant solo travel blog, Just Chasing Sunsets), I barely see him for several days.
Walkabout
I find my way down to the very wibbly Dancing House: an example of the Deconstructivist style, and championed by Vaclav Havel, who used to live next door. It was originally named Fred and Ginger, but now everyone just calls it The Dancing House. The sculpture on the roof is called Mary. I’ve genuinely no idea why.
Then I cross the river, and head off to a gallery showing the work of Cecil Beaton, famous for his photographs of Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, and our Queen. An odd mix, but who cares, the man was a legend. Outside the gallery – to the delight of the children, and the confusion of the Chinese tourists – are a group of extremely strange sculpted figures. I dub them The Creepy Crawlies, because, well, look at them!
And if that wasn’t weirdness enough, then further along I pass the Franz Kafka museum, where this fountain with swivelling hips and hypnotic willies catches my eye for a while. Quite a long while, actually.
Moving on, I nearly miss a street so narrow it has it’s own set of traffic lights (I blame Kafka – because how many times in my life will I get to say that?) The lights are meant to prevent people trying to pass each other, and getting jammed together in the middle. I wonder how many times that had to happen, before they went to all the expense of traffic lights? I have restrain myself from charging down it and actively trying to get stuck, just to see what they’ll do.
I catch up with Sam and Katie in one of the parks, where we eat cherries and have a stone-spitting contest (I win), then meander down to Malostranska, and show the pretty Asian girls posing on bridges how it’s supposed to be done (I win this too).
Good. 
Better. 
Best.
Animals
On our last day, Sam and I visit the zoo. I’m not a big fan of animals in cages (especially the big cats, that end up bored and pacing), but I’ve no problem with decent-sized spaces, and secure breeding programmes for endangered species.
Prague Zoo is nicely laid out, has fairly good habitats, and contains one of the two original statues of Radegast (Lord of the Rings fans, take note). The elephant area has little temples, and the African section is like a film location – all boulders, rocks and twisted trees.
On Lemur Island, I try to interest a moody primate in posing for a selfie with me, but with little success. Up-the-nose is not my best angle.
I do better snapping the eyelash-fluttering Hippo, which surfaces less than a metre from where I’m standing (thankfully, behind a glass wall).
There is also a bat cave (I know) with free-flying bats. As we leave the enclosure, we see that one of them has swooped out into the daylight: it’s become disorientated, and is totally losing its shit. With the help of some of the other tourists, we guide him back into his nice, dark, home. Ha, bat-herder – my newest skill.
. . . . . . . . . .
Then there’s just time for one last beer before we head off to the airport, leaving this lovely city behind.
But Prague hasn’t done surprising us yet. On our way to the underground we find this chap, who’s plugged himself into the subway wall in order to charge up his laptop!
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