Listen to GEORGE HARRISON while you browse it's more fun that way.
Right click it. It's a nice song. (If you can't play it perhaps you need REAL
PLAYER? Get it free at www.real.com.)
Prague in 1993 was about as great a place as can be. Why was it so good?
Because the Czechs were so glad to have opened up its doors to Westerners,
become its own country, and it felt like the dawn. Suddenly everyone was making
friends and the Czechs were just unbelieveable, with their music and drinking,
there was a lot of hope you could see everywhere. And everyone wanted to learn
English.
Even better than the Czechs were the foreigners around the time. The place
and time was right and so many great people went there. Where are they now?
That was a pre-email age so they're half lost to me now dammit! But you lot
are the hard core, if you're listening!
I lived everywhere this year, as usual. In the beginning Zelivskeho, with
Maria Straw & Lisa Ford, singing Bob Dylan and drinking all the time.
Then Krc, in a nice, big apartment with nice Italian bird Max, who didn't
last all that long in CZ or with me but there you are. Next Dejvice, by myself.
And then among Suzana, James & Rob in two different houses in Sidliste
Novy Barrandov, which I liked. I mean it looks like shit up there and it takes
forever to get in and out by the stupid 128 bus but whatever, I'm still sold
on it. We used to come home at five in the morning after a night drinking
and encounter all the Czechs at the bus stop going to work that early. Why
do they go to work so early? It's not like they do any work at work!
In 2001 I went back up there for the afternoon while holidaying in Prague
and I thought it was amazing. I don't know what's so good about it, it's perhaps
the rocky hills where it is located, plus the proximity to Hlubocepy, the
village which looks like 1983 and seems like it doesn't know or care whether
or not Communism has ended.
Friends...Chris Wood the first six months until he went to Korea. My we were
funny together. Crawford, ha ha ha yes. Maria Straw, who was responsible for
me going there in the first place, with the job, the flat and the everything.
And many, many more. Too many brilliant friends doing nothing else but drink,
socialise and work a little bit. I liked it and this was the Golden Age. The
perfect place to be 22 & 23. By December I was talking to Rob Faulds who
noted how many circles of friends we'd been through already there. True, and
how plentiful the good people were.
