What’s going on here? I’m ranking my experiences in the 20 countries I’ve been to so far. Nostalgia is going to drive these explanations a bit further than #20 – 11. From there on, each country gets its own mini expose starting with #10 – France, then #9 – Brazil and now it’s…

#8 – Czechia

Visited: Prague

A bit of recency bias here, as I visited Prague in January 2019 with a good friend of mine. Prague edges Brazil because I was there for a snippet longer.

For me, the beer is the best in the world and it’s not even close. Readily available, cheap and focused on flavour over alcohol content, it’s a great foundation to have really got right.

I came into Czechia by train just as the light was fading and a light snow had begun to fall. I appreciated the honesty of the ticket-seller who advised me against taking the metro to my hostel because it was close enough to walk even with a small bag. I made my way out towards St Wenceslas square amidst its winter market sights and sounds. The snow had picked up a little and a street performer was tinkling a piano to a small crowd. I was going to like it here, I thought.

The piano was the theme of the evening. My friend had reserved our particular hostel because it had a piano within, a piano which he is more than capable of making sound good. I used to be/am in a music group with this guy and soon we had the hostel going open mic style.

Later it was time for our new group to head out and just down the road was a seriously cool site called doggbar. It’s hard to describe really but it’s a set of cellars the other side of a cage door. The mesh of chain and stone and high-up seating was just incredible and we followed from room to room to the distant sound of something resembling that song Casa de Papel (Money Heist) made famous last year.

The guitarist was insanely talented and the crowd were very into everything he was doing. A new friend asks him if I can sing and he asks me if I know the words to Hotel California. Erm…you mean the most famous song of one of my favourite bands and the song I must have sung personally at my own gig nights about 50 times by now? Yes. Yes I do.

But this isn’t just an average-at-best-Luke-Malkin-performance of Hotel California. This is him hitting all the accents from the Hell Freezes Over Hotel California that I have yet to even dream of playing that well. My jaw hit the floor. I started singing. I looked across and he nodded and smiled. To my joy, I’d passed his initiation. Everything else just flowed out for what is thankfully a pretty long song. I was loving every second.

We get to the end, the people have enjoyed it (everyone likes Hotel California, or at least can very easily pretend to) and I get back down. Then he hits Sultans of Swing. What? You mean one of the most famous songs of my actual favourite band. You have to be kidding me.

That was just night one. Every night in Prague was great. I just felt like it constantly had another trick up its sleeve. Our second night saw us joining a pub crawl with a really diverse crowd, who I wish I’d saved some contact details from.

My final night a meeting in a jazz bar led to me playing piano over breakfast in the Peruvian embassy. I would never have predicted that, and you can fill in the details here.

The days were great too- we weren’t just sleeping off hangovers. The walking tour was great, the technical museum was different and interesting. The sex machines museum was fun, even if the Victorian pornography downstairs almost made me vomit. The communist museum was…yeah it was fine too, and there was still clearly a lot left unexplored.

Prague is, by and large, a very easy city to be a tourist in. And it felt like after many years of visiting places that are much more difficult to travel in, my friend and I could really make the most of an amazing place.

Interestingly, we were reminded of the pitfalls of travelling while in a beautiful local restaurant a friend had recommended. The table wait was quite long so the two ladies ahead of us asked if we wanted to share a table for four. We did.

They hated Prague and couldn’t wait to get out of it, but their story was just one of bad travel decision after another. They’d changed their money with the first person they met at the train station (and got $3 of Belarussian currency for 200euros). They they wasted their whole day trying to get it back from various police stations.

Travelling is a skill you develop through experience. We were too nice to say this at the table, but if you’re not careful you can easily ruin your own holiday. It sucks, of course it does, and bad things always happen, but at the very least- learn from your mistakes and put yourself in a position to enjoy yourself. It has an alarmingly high success rate.