Relax - Czech works its golden charm

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Czech works its golden charm

By Irene Hoe, The Straits Times | Thu, Feb 4 2010

Welcome to Prague, the Czech capital and a city of glittering architecture, exciting history and romance in the air.

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[Above: Situated inside the Prague Castle, the Gothic St Vitus Cathedral is a burial place for former Czech kings.]

More than once upon a time, these lands were dominated by a foreign power.

Fast forward a few decades. They became free and independent as a single country, but split into two a few years later. Today, the smaller of the two countries has a population of about five million.

Does this sound rather close to home? No way. For here, any resemblance to the story of Singapore and Malaysia screeches to a dead stop. For this is the story of the Czech and Slovak republics. As Czechoslovakia, they went through a Velvet Revolution in 1989 led by the oft-jailed writer and dissident Vaclav Havel.

The fabric of that nation did not hold. In 1993, the Czechs and Slovaks split, in a parting so singularly amicable it has been termed the Velvet Divorce. The Czechs got to keep the flag and most of the castles. Both Czechs and Slovaks say they are each other's best friends.

If pretty is what you seek, spring is probably a better time to see the Czech and Slovak republics. But autumn, for me, proved the perfect time to visit this part of Central Europe, as it was approaching a historic anniversary.

Main square Old Town Bratislava. The old Catholic church and a town hall looms over the bars and cafes in the square.

So it was that last October I found myself in Wenceslas Square (Vaclavske Namesti) in Prague, the Czech capital. My breath was misting in the chill damp air and my creaky knees were complaining about the hours of traversing picturesque streets of uncomfortable cobblestones.

This was the symbolic heart of the shortlived Prague Spring of 1968, which was quickly snuffed out by Warsaw Pact forces. The leader of that failed attempt to reform Czech communism was, incidentally, a Slovak, Alexander Dubcek. He lived long enough to make a triumphant return to Wenceslas Square in 1989 and was elected Speaker of Parliament. He died before the Velvet Revolution.

Almost forgetting to take the obligatory photographs, I stood rapt, remembering the protesters who, nearly 20 years earlier (November 1989) had shouted down their communist masters, chanting 'Havel to the Castle'. They wanted the playwright and dissident to take over from the communist leaders of Soviet-dominated Czechoslovakia (he did).

This was the square where a Czech student, Jan Palach, had set himself ablaze in January 1969 in protest against the Soviet invasion in 1968. Back in 1918, the first declaration of Czechoslovakia's independence (it did not last) was read in this place.