Destination: Prague

Prague, which escaped the bombs of last century’s wars, is one of Europe’s best-preserved cities. The Czech capital’s nickname is “the golden city of a hundred spires.” And beyond its striking facades, it’s an accessible city with a story to tell and plenty to experience.

The city is filled with exuberant architecture and slinky with sumptuous Art Nouveau. With music spilling into the streets and colorful pubs serving up some of the best beer in Europe, it’s a city thriving with visitors.

I just spent a week in Prague capturing the magic of the city in a new TV show. (Producing a new series is a two-year project. And we’re just finishing things up. A dozen great new shows will debut nationally in October.)

I enjoyed touring the city with our Prague audio tour. It’s the newest tour on my free Rick Steves’ Audio Europe app, and it was a delight to simply stroll through the city with a recorded narration so I could focus my sensory energy on just being there with a steady stream of information pouring into my ears. The tour works great, but I want to tweak it by adding some Czech music during the walks so it can be played from start to finish without pausing.

Prague is the best-preserved Baroque city in Central Europe (where most big cities were bombed flat in WWII). Its castle stands high above the Vltava River, and everything seems designed to wow the visitor.

While filming in Prague, I connected with old friends (like tour organizer Lída and leader of the greatest little street orchestra in Europe, Josef). They were both featured in our first show on Prague from 12 years ago, and we brought them back for this new show. Palling around with friends like Josef and Lída, I’m reminded how connecting with real people is what carbonates your travel experience. Whether leading our tours or helping travelers with our guidebooks, it’s the people — like Lída and Josef— that make the experience rich and memorable.

While in Prague, I dropped by my son Andy’s apartment. I expected a simple little flat. But it’s a lavish top-floor-under-skylights pad with sleek furniture, an inviting hammock, and all the comforts a block behind the National Theater. He crashes here when he’s in town, and pays his rent (and a little more) by renting it out on Airbnb at other times. (For the latest on Andy’s student tour company, see wsaeurope.com.)

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s an old clock! I love this scene on the main square in Prague at the top of the hour, when everyone gathers to see the crude little mechanical show that the astronomical clock puts on.

I met my Czech friend, Lída, as a guide in Budapest back in communist times. It was 1988, and things were just starting to loosen up. Lída was leading a group from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, which was the place communists went for a wild escape and a little whiff of the West. Budapest had just opened the first McDonald’s behind the Iron Curtain, Lída was hell-bent on having a Big Mac, and I had the dubious honor of taking her there for her first American hamburger. I’ll never forget waiting an hour — in a line that stretched around the block — for American “fast” food. That evening, we went to hear Bruce Springsteen at the local stadium. With 50,000 rock fans, you could feel freedom ready to combust all around.

Even back then, Lída was crazy about dancing tango. She learned Spanish and began leading tour groups to Argentina to pursue her passion. I remember conspiring with her to mail her American dancing shoes, as the ones in communist Czechoslovakia were second-rate for a serious dancer.

We connect each time I’m in Prague, and now most of Lída’s tour guiding is at home as a mom. But she is still evangelical as ever about her tango.

In this clip, Lída describes the wild romance of dancing all night, greeting dawn in a sweaty dress and roughed-up shoes, savoring the freshness of the new day, and sleeping to the sounds of tango dancers in the studio next door. Then, as midnight approaches, she eagerly prepares to dance the night away again. While I’ve never come close to actually “dancing a night away,” listening to Lída preach the magic of tango makes me want to try.

What’s amazing about this is for an American to walk through the late-night streets of Prague with a Czech person raving about Argentinian culture. The world is a beautiful place, and I’m inspired by how this working-class Czech reaches out to embrace it. In fact, the word tango means “embrace.”

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

Prague is a beautiful, historic, and delightful-to-visit city. And if you, like me, are forever fascinated by slice-of-life stories from people who had to live through the Cold War in the Warsaw Pact, it’s even more engaging. Throughout Eastern Europe, guides like my friends who lead me around Prague know how to weave their personal memories of communism into their time with you.

One of my guides talked of the generation gap in the Czech Republic. When she traveled recently to the Grand Canyon National Park in the USA, her older friends asked her excitedly, “What did you bring home?” In the old days, people just fantasized about being able to leave the country to bring home a boom box or a Western camera. To travel just for the experience didn’t make any sense to them…and, in some cases, still doesn’t.

Another guide reminisced about 1989 and how, with the arrival of freedom and the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russian language teachers suddenly had to teach English. There were no textbooks, and Russian teachers took cram courses in English so they could teach their students sentences like “Deez eez my bruder” (“This is my brother”). The fun thing for schoolkids those first few years was that they knew more English from watching Rambo movies than their teachers did from taking the cram courses.

Another guide talked of how, in her youth, she could only dream of drinking a nice cold Coca-Cola. She said, “We couldn’t drink Coke, but we could collect the cans tourists threw away. I had five cans. My friend had ten.”

Any time I visit Prague, a highlight for me is to drop by the castle’s front door and see Josef and his Prague Castle Orchestra playing — and, hopefully, hear Smetana’s Die Moldau (as we have in this clip). If I were the mayor of Prague, I’d book them for the rest of their musical days to bring joy to city’s many visitors, as they do here, at the gateway to its most visited sight. Josef is one of those creative people who has clearly found his niche.

If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.

Prague is a traveler’s dream city: exotic but easy, affordable, boasting arguably Europe’s best beer, and an architectural time warp with plenty of great sightseeing. It’s crowded and touristy — precisely because it’s so much fun. Here are a few of my favorite memories from my latest trip.