Another huge attraction is the architecture. Many late 19th-century blocks of flats are adorned with allegorical statuary glorifying the national idea; if you haven't seen them imagine them as frozen Smetana. Art nouveau and socialist realism continued the tradition of decorative facades. I walk about with my eyes upturned to the different ages, awfully likely to meet the fate of Diogenes.

Besides the pleasure of buying my Moravian wine on tap and coping with the crisp cold, I'm also slowly learning the language. Something very basic struck me recently about attempting to speak someone else's language. It's an anthropologically friendly gesture. As a stranger, one offers oneself absolutely disarmed and it's appreciated. Some of the funnier exchanges come with the Vietnamese grocers, who have their own peculiar pronunciation. Vietnamese grocers are, by the way, as characteristic of Prague as Pakistani newsagents are of London. These tiny shops, packed with real fruit and veg, remain commercially viable despite sometimes being two to a street. Apparently, they too are centrally-controlled by bigshots in their community.

The other day from the tram window I saw a man painting part of the side of a huge residential building. He was alone in the dark with his bucket and brush. I took a silent bet that, like me, he remembered old times, when at least graffiti wasn't a problem. There are pros and cons to the maturing of a generation that knows nothing about what a police state was like. The bright, globally oriented, multilingual young are both led and misled by older folk who have conveniently forgotten the ideology, and the consequent closed and carefully supervised society that they once supported. In Britain, the rapid passing of time equally means airport security staff have no idea how it might resonate with my once dissident husband to search his books. They say they're looking for razor blades. I've never read of an historian feeling lonely because of his knowledge. But I can imagine him or her these days, because of that now inconceivable world that actually ended only 20 years ago.