AUTHOR’S NOTE
THE EVENTS IN THIS SECTION ALL TOOK PLACE IN 1986
THINGS ARE DIFFERENT NOW.
THE BULK OF THE TEXT IS AS I WROTE IT THEN – SLIGHT ADJUSTMENTS HAVE BEEN MADE IN THE AID OF CLARITY NOW.

Friday, August 1st, 1986

Distance travelled 164 kilometres

To say I slept badly would be to understate things. In retrospect, I think that I had become more than a little bit paranoid. I had always felt shielded by the wording in the front my Passport which requested those reading it to allow me to pass freely – and it was fairly obvious that on the eastern side of the “Iron Curtain” those words cut very little ice. It was also quite clear that not actually having done anything wrong was not a defence – and that merely being a “westerner” was grounds for hostility, suspicion and worse, by any organ of the State.

As soon as it was light enough to see, I rode back to the motorway and headed towards Prague.

The first half hour or so passed in almost blissful peace. In deference to my ruined suspension, even in the smoother outside lane, I was not going very fast and I was able to enjoy the lovely countryside on either side of the road. Then, a white and yellow VB car detached itself from an on-ramp, turned on its roof light – and the whole circus started all over again.

It was pure antagonism, nothing more and nothing less. Out with the list, a quick or slow check on it, repack the panniers and off I went. It did not happen at every junction, but it was not far from that and, by the time I crossed the high Nuselský Most (Nusle Bridge) at the edge of Prague’s centre, I had been checked 41 (Yes, FORTY-ONE) times since I entered the country – this included once while I was filling up with petrol only two minutes after the previous time. All in all it amounted tp almost once every eleven kilometres. I did stop, on the bridge and take a picture. The skyline was quite impressive – but I was again, in retrospect, let down a little by my camera. I felt that, at any second, even that very simple act could get me into difficulties.

More by luck than by conscious judgement, I found myself in Wenceslas Square where the king of that name bestrode a lofty charger at the top of the slope in front of the National Muzeum. Of course, merely stopping to take him in resulted in search number 42 from two passing policemen.

I resolved to find myself an hotel in short order so I could park and hopefully become less conspicuous. I turned onto a side road off of the square and there was the Palace Hotel. (It is still there, but now known as the Art Nouveau Palace Hotel Prague (Panská 897/12, 110 00 Nové Město))  It looked a bit shabby and faded but was obviously quite a stylish place and had a lot of dark marble and oak fittings). Despite my appearance, which probably, with the exception of the marble and the oak. matched the same description of the hotel that I just gave, my request for a room was granted. I am sure the sight of the dollars in my wallet had nothing at all to do with that. My room, in what appeared to be the attic, was small, but comfortable and, most importantly, the BMW was placed out of general view in the hotel’s capacious underground garage.

I spent two nights there, I paid them 20 USD – and I am fairly certain that I never appeared on the register …..

I wanted to do two things.

The first was to just go to sleep because I had just endured two very harrying days and a night without any sleep to speak of.

The second was, obviously, to take a look at Prague. I was of an age to remember the sight of tanks in Wenceslas Square in August 1968, when the “Fraternal forces” of some other Warsaw Pact members arrived to put a peremptory end to the “Prague Spring”. As a schoolboy I had watched the grainy black-and-white footage with some foreboding as those were still the days when we were always being told that, one day, the Russians would probably arrive upon our own doorsteps.

In any case, despite my weariness, I went down in the lift and out into the sunshine. There were a lot of people around in Wenceslas Square but they were ordinary Czechs. I had the feeling there probably was not much tourism. I passed the same two policemen, who had so enthusiastically rousted me less than an hour before but, without the BMW I obviously blended in better and they did not so much as look at me.

I walked around the streets in the warm sun. The city had an air of faded grandeur and, I have to say, it looked pretty shabby and neglected in a lot of places. Here and there, quite crowded trams passed by and there was hardly any normal traffic. What cars there were visible were principally the tiny Trabants or the slightly larger Wartburgs, both from East Germany, which emitted clouds of blue smoke from what were obviously two-stroke engines. There were also some old Škoda cars that seemed to be universally orange.

Having already crossed the river by the National Theatre, an imposing and very tall building with an ornate roof, I crossed back over again further upriver. Then I walked along the river bank and explored the Old Town Square. A statue of Jan Hus, who fell foul of the Pope and was burned at the stake for it in 1415, glared at me across the cobbles. Not much seemed to have changed for the people of Prague in the ensuing five hundred and seventy years.

I sat in a café and got myself a beer. It was a princely four crowns, probably because, having learned the word “Pivo” in Bulgaria, that is what I said. I suspect that, had I asked in English, it might have been a multiple of that. In the end, I had another beer, but that just about finished me off. I was fading fast, so I managed to locate my hotel and, although it was only early evening, I was soon in dreamland.