The old East

Arrived in Prague last night and got a bit of a shock. For all my praise for Terminal Five we were stuck on the tarmac and I and another British hack arrived late.

Since there was a press dinner in the evening and we’d missed the bus so we got a taxi. When we arrived the driver turned to us and asked for 300. Small intake of breath. Prague’s taxi drivers have a reputation for being scoundrels but 300 euros for a five minute taxi ride was taking things a wee bit too far.

It turns out we were suffering from Euro-centricism. The Czech Republic has yet to join the Euro zone – something neither of us had realised. It’s quite unsettling to be in a country and realise you’re down to your plastic alone and have no way to buy stuff casually or tip.

So we haggled an exchange rate, got ripped off in the process but not as badly as some, and went to dinner. Sure, we got a little bit shafted but it was a small price to pay for an excellent dinner and good company. The European IT journalistic community is a small crowd and it was good to see old friends again.

In particular a colleague from Norway was there and we spent most of dinner catching up. He has a hell of a job on these things, since Norway isn’t on any of the airline’s hub routes so the typical trip involves two or more flight changes. Nevertheless he was in good spirits and kept us entertained with stories of his children and a trip he took through Eastern Europe in the early 80s.

It’s tough to try and explain to people who don’t remember the iron curtain just how different the world was then. They were followed by secret police, carried letters to Polish families who had relatives in Norway, drank vodka with heavily armed border guards and scrounged parts for their car along the way.

The scars of soviet occupation still mar the old Eastern Europe. You can see it in the staggeringly ugly concrete buildings put up in the wake of the Red Army’s push to crush Hitler, in the food that is only starting to recover from Slavic influence and in the paperwork that is still stultifying.

Despite this the region is recovering and none more so that the Czech Republic. But to be honest I’m not sure the changes are for the better. Yes, there is more freedom, but the centre of Prague is full of sex shops and the stag weekends that come to the city are causing more and more irritation.

My hosts complained that English and German tourists seemed to think that all local women were available for purchase and it’s a sad reflection on our societies that it should be so. Plus, and I know it would have been horrible to live under communism, it’s sad that the only economic system to survive is one based on naked greed.