Am now in Tokyo, where i have been reacquainted with the meaning of humid. It rains pretty often here and when it's not the sun's nice and bright. But the humidity is more or less always here.

At least I can make myself understood here. Czech looks difficult to pronounce with all those consonants and far too many accents on the letters. The net effect is that when I say something and a Czech speaker repeats it to me, the two words sound like chalk and Roquefort. For instance, thank you is written dekuji (insert accents at your own discretion) and is pronounced something like yeh-ku-ii. Many can speak a bit of anglicky though, so smile a lot and give it a go. :)

For the sake of continuity, there is also an extremely ugly TV Tower in Prague. This one looks like concrete blocks haphazardly stacked on top of one another by a giant toddler. Franz Kafka has his grave in a cemetery under that thing. I wonder if that's somehow ironic? But Kafka's not dead -- how can you be when you're advertising the Prague Marathon?

By the way, I was informed that Shanghai's building an ugly TV tower too. Maybe it's an ex-Communist thing. Y'know, in denial of all those wasted years or something like that.

Yeeeeees... the legacy of Marx is bad architecture and 80's music. Everywhere I went in Prague there was 80's music on the radio. Sure I heard Czech pop. But more often that not Bananarama or early Madonna or A-Ha or Duran Duran would greet me in the shops. If I was lucky I'd get early 90's Annie Lennox. Is this Prague's way of compensating for all those lost years?

Not that it has to. The city is as beautiful as everyone says it is, even if they haven't been there. Baroque, Renaissance and Art Nouveau architecture everywhere and walking around the city is really the only way to savour the sights. But really -- would you expect less of the former capital of the Holy Roman Empire?

Is that where all the statues came from? I wasn't prepared for the profusion of statues in every nook and cranny of the churches. They even put 30 of them on the Charles Bridge, flanking the endless swarm of tourists, starving artists and pickpockets. One of the statues, of St. Jan of Nepomuk who was caught in a power struggle between the King and the Church and thrown off the bridge for refusing to reveal what the Queen confessed (probably to having had too many cupcakes at dinner), has two bronze plaques. Legend goes that if you rub the plaques you'll return to Prague someday, so as you might guess they're rather shiny. Which lends credence to my theory that it was a rumour begun by lazy cleaners.

Maybe they had thousands of tourists way back when too. I'm sure someone must have wanted to come see the original Golem. Rudolf II was a huge fan of alchemy, inviting alchemists and scholars from all over Europe (Kind of what the Singapore government's trying to do with it's biological sciences industry) but the Golem - aha! - was locally made by Rabbi Loew from the mud of the Vltava river to help people (You can see one outside a tourist agency in Josefov helping to hold pamphlets). There are a gazillion variations of this story. Some say the Rabbi realised that his creation would be used for evil more often than for good and destroyed it. Some say that the Golem is still alive, able to change its features at will and is really disguised as Cher.

Best of all to my dear Singaporean heart and wallet, is that Prague is inexpensive. One US dollar gets you about 25 koruna these days. Klobasa with mustard and a slice of rye? 23 Kr. 1.5 litre bottle of drinking water? 7Kr. 500ml bottle of beer? (and good Czech Pilsen beer at that). If you're paying 30Kr or more you must be a tourist.

Alas, got caught in the rain on my first day while avoiding Hare Krishnas and came down with a cold, so no absinthe for me. I shall meet the Green Faerie some day when I'm not drowning myself in orange juice.

Even for the non-alcoholics, there's plenty to see. Charles Bridge, the mechanically-cool Astronomical Clock in Old Town Square, the spawling Castle, the churches... Vienna's better if you like music, in my opinion. True, Prague has chamber concerts galore every day in this church or that hall. The problem is that they're small chamber groups who probably meet every weekend to drink Gambrinus beer and decide on a common repertoire. You don't need to be a psychic to predict that, for an average of 300Kr, on a random flyer for a musical performance handed to you there will be one or more of the following:

Bach - Air
Vivaldi - one or more of the Four Seasons
Mozart - Guess. Hint: initials are ELN
Dvorak - Slavonic dances
(Runner-up) Pachelbel - Guess which one? Rhymes with Ganon
The best of Broadway musicals (Not a joke).

Prague is also famous for Art Nouveau and Czech Cubism. Apparently you can only find Cubist Architecture here (I'm not surprised it didn't catch on. Multiple dimensions, prolific right angles and opposing perspectives make building things to live in a bit tricky). I really like Mucha's works, so it was a happy situation for me. I now own far too many Mucha postcards, but I love them all :)