Sunday: Kazac Koruni

Today I walk around town, and take an honest, straight in the eye look at Plzen. Not the architecture, the street cafes, or the pretty park with its burbling fountain: I look through, past, and over these. A crumbling tenament, its windows missing, grey washing strung from balconies, gathering mildew and traffic fumes above the rubbish strewn yard. A baby crying and music blaring; then a small, fluffy ginger kitten perched on a dirty windowsill. Graffitti and litter fill the narrow streets behind the market. A stray dog streaks out of a side street and is sent tumbling into the gutter by a passing tram; it limps off across some wasteland for perhaps the last time. In a subway, a makeshift home: an old sofa cushion and some cardboard matting, a bundle of dirty clothes, fag packets and empty beer cans, the resident nowhere to be seen.
Enough.
What had I expected? Not a paradise, but perhaps the same rose-tinted and obviously romantic view of the city I remembered from my first visit.

I walk to the Nadrazi. I stop for a coffee at one of those street cafes I tried to ignore, and give the last of my cigarettes to an old man begging outside the station. I buy a ticket for Brno tomorrow and Nyrany today, and board the train.

I step back in time, or so it seems.

I imagine this to be how Czechoslovakia - as the countries of the Czech republic and Slovakia were known when they were one - was in the 1980s; whether through reading about the Communist era, or sheer ignorance, this is what I believe it was like. The main street is narrow and treelined, the low concrete buildings washed in browns and institutional greens. Blue bakelite letters - Elektro, Radio, Televize - above the empty showroom window of a shop that sells nothing. An old Avia truck gasps under its load of timber, a tail of Ladas, Skoda 105s, and Trabants following its exhaust fumes. The squat, ugly government building, fenced into its Fir tree shaded compound, windows barred and blinded. I order a drink at the Hotel Sokolovna. It's a busy lunchtime, and two startlingly attractive girls serve the happy, chatting locals with food and drinks; the customers don't seem to notice how attractive the waitresses are, as if here, it is commonplace. Above my table is an old, plastic, Art Deco styled clock; it is made by Kienzle, and it stopped at precisely 6.30: in which, perhaps less democratic year, is anyone's guess. It is incongruous among the farm implements and bundles of wheat decorating the walls and giving the restaurance a homely feel. Is it a reminder to all, perhaps, of less wholesome times?
I order an Esspresso, and miss my train back to Plzen. There'll be another train, but there may not be another moment like this.

Back in Plzen, I join the jostling queue at one of the booths between Nastupiste 2 and 3. I pay 16kc for a beer and another 2kc for the plastic cup it is served in. Behind me, on the wide platform is a bungalow that would look at home on a 1960s English housing estate: offices for the station manager. Above the booth rise the upper stories of the station buildings, their faces pocked and faded by time and weather, huge swathes of plaster crumbled away to reveal the brick skeleton beneath. There is a huge variety and quantity of booze behind the booths counter, and there's food too: a partially dismembered cooked chicken buzzes on a platter of flies; shoddily made salami rolls sweat in their clingfilm shrouds; a plate of Brambrot decays in a shaft of sunlight. The Parek V Rohliku - hotdog - looks particularly unappetising, like a penis wrapped in dough, only the glans protruding.
I stand at one of the nearby tables and light a cigarette, flicking my ash into the Grand Extra dog food tin that is the ahtray, three Labrador puppies fading like a memory from the once red label. I note the dog food contains more protein and less fat than the Spam that is the ashtray on the table near Nastupiste 2; lower too in salt than the sardines at Trafika, a less popular booth on platform 4, possibly because of the nest of high-tension cables that threaten to slide from their resting place on the roof, or the array of obscene magazines that leer and thrust from the yellowing windows.
A young man in a chenile jumper and huge plaid shorts sidles up and asks for a light. The timeless introduction for hookers, hustlers, and hangers-on the world over.
"Where are you from?". Fairly good English. I tell him, and he gushes like hes stumbled across a fellow countryman in an impossibly distant country.
"I go before to England! Kentmargate!"
"Margate? Kent?"
"Yes, yes, yes!" Highly unlikely. I ask if he had visited the coal mining museum, or had taken the long trip to the seaside. "Yes, yes, all the time!"
After a few minutes of my pointed silence, he asks: "You sleep with girls at hotel?"
"Where? In Kent Margate?"
"No, no, no!" he forces some hysterical laughter. "Here, Plzen. I know. I show you. They fuck all the time, non-stop."
"They must be very tired. Thanks, anyway". But he won't be deterred.
"You smoke? Hashish? Everyone smoke it in England: I know, I go there. Kentmargate, everyone smoke hashish"
"I don't think thats entirely true", I venture, then stop. Behind him, two policemen have appeared. They are sinister in their tucked-in-boots black combats, baseball caps and bulging tee-shirts. They frisk him, question him, and throw him off the station. Then they come back for me.
They demand something in Czech, and I pathetically try to explain I don't understand. Memories of the ill-fated trip to Bratislava: one day, two countries, no passport, and being thrown out of Slovakia, and almost Hungary, too - as a disaster, personal best.
"Your passport please". Its in the hotel safe. I try to explain, and desperately search my bag for some form of identification: I hand them my Yorkshire Bank cash card. They pass it between them, turning it over to inspect the signature strip. "You are American?" one of them asks. I feel like telling him to take some geography lessons: how long has Yorkshire been an American state? Instead I give him a worthless tear-off strip from an old doctor's prescription. They are perplexed, but eventually nod to each other. As they turn to go, the younger of the two points at my cigarette.
"Kazac Korouni", he instructs. "It is not possible to smoke on the platform" he says in all seriousness. I hastily stub it out in the overflowing dog food tin, and leave in a hurry.

I walk back to the hotel and pack my bag for Brno. I go out into a light evening rain and eat at a Vietnamese bistro, ordering my food by pointing at the out-of-focus, over-exposed photographs on the menu. It is almost inedible, and looks nothing like the pictures. The crab salad is mechanically retrieved fish protein in a Thousand Island dressing customised with bitter spices. A searing dish of stringy chicken in a thick, gelatinous sauce is shoved in front of me before I can even try to finish the starter. I throw 100kc on the table and leave, trying not to think of the thin, grey, abrasive toilet paper that may be the final cost of my meal.

To Brno, then, and hopefully not via the restrooms of Central Europe.......