Praha, Czechia. Monday, 19th May 2014
After resting for a little over an hour, we set off for the first exploration of this capital of the erstwhile Iron Curtain country of Czechoslovakia(now 'Czechia').
In our school days(the mid-seventies), a particular brand - A1 - of chewing gum had become very popular among children, the primary reason being that each wrapper had the flag of a country, printed on its inside. Collecting wrappers, exchanging them with friends during breaks at school, neatly cutting out the flags and carefully pasting them in an album supplied by A1 used to be our favourite activity, lessons being put on the back burner. There was one special wrapper that did not have any flag printed on the inside, but merely the alphanumeric A1, or something similar. When one managed to get one of these wrappers, one had to mail it to the A1 company which would then mail us the album. One had to collect the flags of all the countries, stick them in the relevant place in the album; and once complete, mail the album back to the A1 company, for a special gift. The company would also return the album to us, for our preservation. The album contained basic information like the area, capital city, population and language of each country and against this would be pasted the flag.
It was a wonderful way of gaining the basic knowledge of the nations of the world for children; an equally wonderful way of gaining market-share for A1!
The purpose of my having given this detailed explanation of what was merely just another childhood hobby is that the name 'Czechoslovakia' stuck in my mind. The country with the long name and strange spelling started holding a peculiar fascination for me and this was further fuelled by the great author Capt. W.E. Johns through his extremely engrossing 'Biggles' stories. In one of the titles (Biggles follows on), Biggles - trapped in Prague - escapes his arch enemy Erich von Stalhein by running over the rooftops of the city. Since then, in one corner of my mind lay the dormant desire of visiting Prague(locally 'Praha').
I am delighted to be writing this diary entry in room no. 312 of Hotel City Central Deluxe, Sokolska 20, PRAGUE !
