Czech Republic 1998

Each autumn since 1987 I've joined theTramway Museum Society's Annual trip to look at trams (as well as to do the odd bit of sightseeing). Of course there are those who assume this to be an outing dominate by Thermos flasks and anorak-wearing, notebook carrying hairies with rucksacks full of pens and discarded Mars Bar wrappers. Of course this isn't the case at all. Well, not quite.......

Friday 6 November

We depart for Dover (the story of my joining this tour is too long to recount. Suffice it to say that it is a tale of Greek epic proportions. ) Late evening arrival at the Holiday Inn, Antwerp. Dinner followed by a quick nocturnal tram ride.

Saturday 7 November

Full day travelling across Germany to Jena. Dinner at the Holiday Inn, followed by several nocturnal tram rides with 86 like-minded people. (And to think, this is my idea of a *holiday*! I must *need* a psychologist!)

Jena, like many places in the former East Germany, has changed a lot in the three years since we were last here. Vast sums of money are obviously flowing in.

Sunday 8 November

Travel over the Czech border to Chomotov, a polluted industrial hell-hole, full of concrete blocks of flats designed under the ancien regime, comrade!

There's a trolleybus system there, so 87 of us descend on one trolleybus and attempt to buy tickets from the hapless driver, all with large denomination Czech banknotes! The trolleybus takes us onto - would you believe - the motorway! We reboard the coach at the quaintly named "Jirkhov" (!) and head off to Most, our base for one night.

Most is a large industrial town which, in the sixties, was found to be lying on top of vast quantities of lignite coal. With characteristic Eastern Bloc planning, the authorities totally demolished the town to gain open-cast access to the coal. A new "Most" was built nearby between 1965 and 1974. Constructed in that era, you can imagine what the town looks like!

The hotel (called the Hotel Murom) is - unsurprisingly - the only hotel in town: a vast concrete edifice, typical of the time and the place. The curtains don't draw, because they're made from the same material as the bedspread, and that's as wide as the bed but not, sadly, the windows. There are now sink plugs, but light bulbs are still rare. None of the wooden surfaces are properly finished and the bathroom light switch is mounted on a metal doorframe inside the bathroom! Lunch and dinner, though, are superb.

There's an interurban tramway from Most to a neighbouring petrochemical works (more pollution). This passes the 2 mile wide hole where the old town of Most used to stand. A church from the told town was mounted on rails an repositioned 850 metres away to protect it. Unfortunately, they put it on top of a polluted underground lake, so water was to be pumped out at a rate of 15 litres per second to keep the thing standing. It's the only old building for miles!

Monday 10 November

Full day travelling across the Czech Republic to Brno, the second city.

We spend two nights there at the Holiday Inn. The guide book tells visitors not to dismiss Brno, as it's "better than Birmingham or Bradford". This, as you can imagine, brasses me off no end!

However, it was quite a pleasant little place, with lots of trams, some Bauhaus houses in one of the suburbs and an lovely old Radice (=Town Hall; I must be getting the hang of Czech by now!).

We also see the "Brno Dragon" (actually a stuffed crocodile, apparently a gift from the Turks when they were busy conquering the vicinity) and the "Brno Wheel". This was made by a wheelwright who bet the locals he could fell a tree, make it into a wheel and roll it 15 Km to Brno between sunrise and sunset. He managed it but - no happy endings I'm afraid - everyone thought he'd been in league with the Devil and boycotted his business! He died in poverty.

Brno is also famous for its (excellent) beer and its history of armaments production. (The "BR" in "Bren" gun comes from Brno; the "En" - of course - standing for "Enfield".)

Tuesday 10 November

We have a day trip to visit the tramways in Olomouc and Ostrava.

Olomouc is a delightful mediaeval town with a "Plague Column" (common in these parts) and an astronomical clock. This was damaged in the war but repaired afterwards. In the place of the mediaeval traders and craftsmen, the Communist-inspired restoration has proletarian workers and scientists! We engage in some debate about whether or not it's year 2000 compliant!

Ostrava is big, industrial and - during out visit anyway - very, very wet! There was a frightening amount of poverty there and we saw how the Romanies get treated. No wonder so many of them kept heading for Dover after that Czech TV documentary extolled the virtues of a discrimination-free lifestyle in Britain last year.

Wednesday 11 November

Armistice Day sees us with a free morning in Brno (anywhere selling hardback books about trams for 32p is worth an extra half day to me!) travelling to Prague. We arrive at the Czech capital quite late in the day and just have time for a quick trip into the centre on the (very Russian looking) metro.

Thursday 12 November

A full day free in Prague. Despite having worked there a couple of times earlier in the year, I'd never really seen the place as a tourist. It is truly stunning. (Helped by the fact that this was the first dry and sunny day we'd had.)

We do the Stare Mesto (Old Town), take the funicular to the viewpoint and lunch in the Josefov, the old Jewish Quarter. Hitler had intended to turn the Josefov into a "Museum of a Defunct Race", so the ghetto survived in Prague in a way that it didn't in - say - Warsaw. The old Jewish Cemetery, the Synagogues and the Ghetto's own Town Hall are all crammed together in this tiny (and increasingly touristy) bit of the capital.

We then take a look at Wenceslas Square (yes, that Wenceslas was King of Bohemia) where the 1989 "Velvet Revolution" took place.

It's election time in the Czech Republic at the moment. The ODS, the "Civic Forum" party have an unusual election slogan:

"Walking the essential tightrope towards Thatcherism".

Catchy, isn't it?!

We round off the day with some tram riding and a quick visit to the Castle at sunset. We notice how many Tesco branches there are in the Czech republic. They're more than supermarkets, too, very high quality department stores, in fact.

Friday 13 November

Friday 13th! Good job I'm not (too) superstitious.

Again, we are left to our own devices (some people have gone off to Liberec), so we fit in a little more tram riding and then head back up to Hradny (the Castle, also housing the government buildings and the delightfully-dedicated Cathedral of Saint Vitus!).

This evening dinner isn't included, so we dine in style near the famous Charles Bridge. No-one makes dumplings like the Czechs, believe me! The meal was - of course - very expensive, being in a good restaurant in a popular and picturesque part of town. But I mean expensive by Czech standards. With drinks and a generous tip, we paid £12 each! (Remember that the average Czech salary is around £110 / month, though).

Saturday 14 November

We leave Prague at 0730 (yawn) and spend three hours doing the tramway system in the town on Plzen (once the Germanic Pilzen). Needless to say I don't mention that I come from the same city as Neville Chamberlain.

Plzen, we discover, was also the original home of the Kroc family, who eventually emigrated to the USA. One of their descendants, Ray Kroc, was responsible for building up the McDonald's empire, so you can imagine how many busts and commemorative plaques there are on the (inevitable) Plzen McDonalds.

On a more cultural note, the town boast an amazingly beautiful synagogue, with almost Kremlin-like "onion domes".

Plzen's tramways are supplemented by (modern) trolleybuses and we sample a little of each before embarking on the longest leg of the journey.

We head direct and non-stop from Plzen to Bonn. This takes more than eight hours, two hours longer than planned, because we encounter a great deal of snow on the Czech/German border. When we eventually arrive in Bonn, the Tour Manager has to tell us that the hotel are 8 rooms short. If ever I felt sympathy for someone, I felt it for this chap (who was also called Ian, by the way!). Still, all was sorted out. (The hotel staff were too dim to know what rooms they had; a scenario I have witnessed before, as it happens!)

Anyway, we have another early start tomorrow, so it's off to bed.

Sunday 15 November

So our final day dawns with a long, non-stop trip through Germany, Belgium and France to the ferry at Calais.

We gain an hour putting our watches back to good old GMT at Dover and then it was "up country", to where I leave the tour in (a very dark and wet) Staffordshire.

And would you believe, we even see a tram in England on the way home?! One of the new vehicles for the Croydon Tramlink system was parked next to the motorway on the South side of the Dartford Tunnel. Trams? Can't get enough of them!