LOOKING OVER MY SHOULDER IN PRAGUE

The streets here are mostly dark, with mounted torchlights on the older buildings and cobblestone streets reflecting writing in an undecipherable language off the facades of storefronts.

As I walk at night I see spies in the alleyways and I sense ghosts above and behind me. You know if you are being followed as the only sound except for the occasional heavy metal coming from basement bars is the sound of the person walking behind you or, if you are lucky, toward you clomping along on the uneven stones.

But I am wonderfully safe here despite the blocks of Soviet architecture and the 1950’s concrete.

I am in Prague, in the Czech Republic, a city that needs to be courted and dined before she rewards you with her first kiss. The sense that you are in a spy movie with lots of young artists as extras makes walking an intense experience. How to figure this place out – how to explain it. How to assure myself that my clients can penetrate the layers of old-style bureaucracy? I need another week here, perhaps another year. Even Anthony Bourdain seemed a bit confused about this place – but he loved it and so, I am finding, do I.

This is a city I want to converse with, I want to hear about all that she has seen. There were several centuries of Bohemian Kings, then invading Nazis had their way with her, and years later the Soviet tank brigades drove her streets.

Earlier today I tried to pay homage to her past. I started at Prague Castle, referred to in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest “coherent” castle complex in the world.” Now if the factual basis that underpins your knowledge of the world comes from a beer company database, that is really saying something.

It is an amazing building and probably worth the Delta non-stop from JFK just for a peek. We think it was built around 880 by one Prince Borivoj of the House of Premyslides. But you mustn’t think this magnificent structure or any of the other major structures in Prague are falling apart. It still serves as the seat of the head of state and is, of course, the place where the crown jewels are kept.

Prague is a city of crown jewels, mostly in the former of buildings from other eras that have managed to survive and even thrive,

Now, as I walk, I am looking for high ground, for angles where I can see this city of a thousand spires.

You can, of course, see the Castle from the 14^th Century Charles Bridge – a walking link to the city’s past covered with tourists by day and best visible as the sun comes up or later, in the middle of the night with the lights of the city in the background. Clients have to be warned about the bridge because it is said that Europe’s most gifted pickpocket professionals are concentrated on the bridge when daytime traffic is often packed with people. So in Prague, the trick is all about timing and avoiding the crunch of tourists who want to visit what many view as “Europe’s best preserved ancient city.”

For starters, I recommend going up to the Castle in the late evening (it doesn’t close until midnight) and then walking down for a moonlight passage along the golden passage leading down to Mala Strana. This is “lesser town” a fantastic neighborhood of winding alleyways, lush small gardens, a collection of Baroque Palaces, and surprisingly accessible cobblestone piazzas.

Insider’s know about a small neighborhood called Novy Svet, a lane not far from the Loretto Church consisting of miniature homes, many of which have been turned into art galleries and artist studios. It is a wonderful stroll as the sun is setting.

Prague has this neo-Communist aura punctuated by new modernism. This is contrasted by a visit to the small Museum of Communism, a place that provides a wonderful backdrop for what is to come. That Prague is no longer a Communist state is evidenced by the museum’s placement on top of a McDonald’s restaurant and right next door to a casino.

In addition to a Kafka Museum there is, of course, a beer museum. One of the first things one hears from a guide in Prague is the proud boast that the Czech people are the world’s largest consumers of beer, a rather amazing 142 liters of beer for every adult in the country each year. The Czech’s feel that they invented Pilsner and you can have a wonderful local brew for about 50 cents anywhere you might wander. Perhaps equally amazing is the fact that the world’s second largest collection of per capita beer drinkers on earth are the residents of The Seychelles. But that is another column altogether.

I was in Prague prior to our annual client trip. My wife and I would be escorting 62 clients on a river cruise along the Danube from Nuremberg to Amsterdam on the Scenic Amber.

But before boarding, we wanted to get a “Real Life” sense of Prague. We did that with some Contemporary Lifestyle touring, seeing neighborhoods off the traditional tourist maps and hearing about the quality of life, social services, along with the hopes and aspirations of locals. To see the neighborhoods we designed a “Foodie Walk” enabling us to taste small sandwiches, pastries, and local beers in venues patronized by locals. On our second day in the city we ended up in the basement of a popular beer stube/restaurant where we had goulash and home-made strudel prepared for our guests along with a variety of local brews.

We had invited a guest, a young woman of considerable intellectual strength who had married a Czech man, moved to Prague, where they now have two children. She writes about the city for several major publications and works for CNN. I thought her conversation with our clients might be revealing and I was not disappointed.

There is a real talent drain in “Central Europe”. That is the way locals refer to their location – they do not say Czechoslovakia. Doctors and nurses have left in record numbers for greener financial pastures in Germany and Austria. The public buildings, the schools, and the hospitals, are “not what you have in the States”. They are mostly concrete bloc Stalin-era buildings, she pointed out. “But things still tend to work well and education is actually quite good and the Czech’s cherish their literary heritage and it shows in their commitment to education.”

At the end of her talk, one of our guests asked if, given the opportunity, she and her family would welcome the opportunity to move back to New York or some other large American city.

She thought about the question for a while – and then responded that, no, she probably wouldn’t. She has two young children and they now receive free medical care and free university. She felt that those two things were worth making the decision toward remaining. It was an eye-opening response.

On my second day I opened up the local Prague Tourism magazine in my hotel room. It would, I imagined, feature the usual “highlights” information. Instead, I found an extremely well written editorial decrying the situation in money exchanges in the popular Wenceslas Square area of the city. The Editor explained that he had, on at least ten occasions, witnessed these exchanges charging tourists 27% commission when they changed their Euros and Dollars to Koruna’s. And who travels Europe with Koruna’s?

The editorial ended “This is the 21^st Century. Prague is one of the top tourist cities in the world. It is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Surely the powers that be can find a solution to the money-changing problem. If they don’t, much of the good work will become undone and first time visitors will never return.”

That, then, is the other side of this tourism success story. Will they blow it? Will the crowds at the Castle and on the Bridge become unmanageable, will petty crime continue unabated, and will guests to the city feel badly ripped off when they try to change money?

The answers linger in the city’s past, just around the corners, in the shadows of the night.