Last month three Belgians were beaten up when they refused to pay an exorbitant fare. Merrill and I exchanged glances: we knew it was in Czech.The next day I arrived late for the Kafka tour, so I joined the Velvet Revolution tour instead. In the bitter cold, Tomas, in his peaked Donovan cap, gave us the history of the nation."We Czechs, we do not know who we are," he said. "We are not passionate or religious like Hungarians or Poles We are phlegmatic and funny But no more Skoda jokes, please.

Now we are part of Volkswagen."As I walked into the beautiful old town square the sound of clucking was on the air: toy chickens were being sold by men in floppy Renaissance hats. With half an hour before curtain up I secured a box seat for The Magic Flute at the Stavovske.I shared the box with Ellen and Merrill, two New York matrons, aficionados of opera they assured me. But the avant garde production was too much for them and they swept out "Why are they singing in German anyway?" Ellen asked. Lunch in the Czech Republic refers more to the size of the meal than when you eat it, so I had lunch - pork and dumplings - at six.The barman leaned conspiratorially towards me, all sweaty forehead and sunken eyes.

"You know these trendies, they want to drink absinthe, like Hemingway in Paris So we give it to them and they fall down. But it is only bark dipped in spirits, not real wormwood." He told me that tourists had driven Czechs from the centre, but that "even the Yanks were leaving now". "The real place to drink beer is in the suburbs," he said.Rubbish bins are Prague's unofficial what's on guide. Fly posters advertised Jesus Christ Superstar, Hair, and a marionette theatre version of The Yellow Submarine. The statues had seen it all before, but I thought it was magical.A Staropramen beer cleared the dust in my throat, and so did the next one.

St Vitus stood out in shimmering green, the castle in stark yellow, the baroque dome of St Nicholas in warm pink. I looked for the John Lennon memorial but in the gathering dark couldn't find it, only day-old graffiti and broken Budweiser bottles Still I hadn't met an American, let alone a stoned hippie Another thwarted exploit I thought of Kafka's Joseph K, but rejected the comparison This wasn't a trial. Was it?Accordion players squeezed out the last drops of the day as I walked on to Charles Bridge. And the simple mystery of the 12th-century romanesque basilica of St George (restoration complete), was silencing even the Italian children.With dusk falling, I followed Mozart's footsteps down the murky streets of the Mala Strana.