The one thing I've enjoyed about Prague is our hotel: it's comfortable, my room-mate Jean-Marc doesn't snore, and it's right next door to a decent gym. After our usual buffet breakfast (with yucky scrambled eggs and even yuckier sausages), we headed out for our last tourist jaunt of Prague, the short trip by Metro to see the famous "Dancing Building" along the river. I'm not sure it was worth the trip. It might have seemed a daring building when it was built, but now it seems rather ordinary compared to so much stuff that's going up now.

The Dancing Building

We walked along the river, stopping in a gallery to see an exhibition by a Czech photographer: beautiful, large-format photos of various natural features around the world. It also served as a crash course in the Czech language: I'm coming to the conclusion that if you just append "ska" to any English word, you have a twenty percent chance of getting it right. Hence, Portugal becomes Portugalska.

Walking along the river. On the right behind me is the National Theater

We made one last stop in our favorite Prague place, the gay Down Town Cafe near our hotel, for a snack. They seem to work their poor staff to death: it's always the same three or four people day and night; and all (this being the Czech Republic) universally unfriendly and unsmiley, or, in the words of my guide book, "famously indifferent". Our waiter's cell phone, by some ill chance, used exactly the same, rare ring tone that Ben's cell phone uses. Everytime it went off, I felt a pang of desire and longing. Okay, enough, I'm boring you to tears with how much I'm missing Ben.

At the Down Town Cafe. Note the clueless, straight, elderly couple having lunch behind us.

The afternoon was devoted to making sure that there wasn't a single item of fashionable clothing in Prague that I hadn't tried on. This is easy to do since the Prague fashion scene is as meagre as the Prague night life (of which I'll speak more on later). I did find that single item of clothing: a neat pair of pants by Josef Sloboda. This makes the fourth pair of pants or jeans I've bought on this trip.

I got back to the hotel tired after my shopping endeavors; but a shower put me right, and I fortified myself with a cappucino before going to the gym for my third workout in three days. We were intending to go out clubbing in the night, so after a quick dinner, we retired back to the hotel to rest, and, in my case, organize all the photos from the trip.

We didn't have the highest of hopes for Prague nightlife. But we hoped that enough people had arranged to come for the cancelled circuit party that maybe there'd be some life. Shortly after eleven we were walking down a dimly lit street right opposite the police station, trying to find Friends, a reputedly happening bar. It was listed on their flier as being at no. 11, but that seemed to be an apartment building. Fortunately, one of the rare friendly Czech residents pointed us about a hundred yards down the street, where there was a door into Friends and no street number. I guess you had to know. It turned out to be a large place with three rooms, and various rather unappetizing Czech men sitting around at tables staring at everybody who walked in. I'm always a little self-conscious in such situations, being so tall, since my height attracts such attention. I accidentally knocked someone holding a glass of beer, and a little of it spilled. I apologized profusely, but no trace of a smile came across that Czech face. So we had a drink there anyway (absinth and red-bull in my case), and departed as soon as we decently could.

We ended our evening at Gejzee (if I'm getting the spelling right), the big gay club. On first sight, it wasn't as bad as I expected. There was already a reasonable crowd, and the place was large and interestingly laid out. We nursed a couple of drinks for over an hour before we felt there was enough of a critical mass to go on the dance floor. But apart from one song, the music was dire, and by 1.30 I think, we were on our way out the door. The highlight of the evening was the chicken-and-onions snack I picked up on the way back to our hotel. So it's official: I don't like Prague, and doubt I'll ever come back here. In fact, given the choice of going back to live in Newcastle, my home town in North-East England, or Prague, I think I'd chose the former: at least I'd have good soccer to watch. And the people there crack open a smile with the least encouragement.