It's often said Czechs are like Brits: pragmatic and unexcitable. Since I'm neither of those things perhaps that's why I've taken a while to get to know them. Of course no generalisations about peoples are true. Dad's Army is one thing, The Good Soldier Schweik another. But the real problem for me was shaking off my anti-communist past. For a number of years suspicions that old political ways were still lurking at grassroots level bothered me and occasionally seemed justified, whatever the change in intellectual leadership. And until I got to know it a bit, Czech, another Slav tongue, always reminded me of Russian. Mea culpa. I really have moved on.

I love the new Prague, now gorgeously renovated even in the suburbs, after decades of decay. From my first visit in the political darkness of 1971, I remember the green slime on the steps up to the Castle, the dim lightbulbs and the dire food. Now, exhausted by overcrowded, under-resourced London, I'm happy to spend weeks and months in a small city where most attractions are in walking distance and I can drop in on concerts and exhibitions without hassle and vast expense. The overt concert scene has been dumbed down to make money and some of the picturesque events in churches are tourist traps. Still, the real thing, often to be found in the Lichtenstein Palace, where the Prague Conservatory students play, is the peerless rendering of the chamber music repertoire. Musically, Prague is beautiful, serious and culturally elevated. I can never get enough of it.

Meanwhile, almost anywhere is a pleasure to walk or jog, except perhaps the far too famous Charles Bridge, which is the first and last port of call for Prague's eight million annual global visitors. The guidebooks extol the view from the Castle Hill, but I prefer staring out over the Vltava and the Old Town from the Letna Park. It's only a pity that the pretty Hanak Pavilion café there seems to be controlled by the Russian mafia.