Now I dropped eastern Slovakia from the itinerary too, contenting myself with a brief look at Poprad and a little extra time in the capital. By month's end I was ready to hit the road again, taking the direct bus to Bratislava.
DAY 580 (2 FEBRUARY): BRATISLAVA
Unlike the Moldovan capital, Chisinau, this is not some provincial backwater thrust into the limelight but a long-civilised place with its own genuine charm. Overshadowed for 70 years by Prague, it is free to stand tall at last.
As a city that radiates Central European elegance and precision, it would be hard to beat 1100-year-old Bratislava. The Old Town is a photographer's delight, and even an amateur such as I can hardly stow his camera away without having to reach for it a minute later to snap another âmust-see' sight.
All the preceding centuries cannot keep the present one at bay for long, even in an historic quarter. Flanking the street just off the town square, the US Embassy is flying its flag at half mast, in honour of the Columbia space-shuttle crew who perished on re-entry yesterday.
CZECH REPUBLIC: 4â17 FEBRUARY
Just as President Bush's campaign to oust Saddam Hussein shifts up a gear, I find a phenomenon rolling across Europe: public opposition to invading Iraq is clashing head on with strong support among governments for doing so.
It is a wonder of the age how democratic governments can take such a grave decision in defiance of such widespread public sentiment. (Polls at this point show more than 80 per cent of Europeans against the use of force.)
Like their northern neighbours, the Czechs of Moravia and Bohemia adopted Christianity a thousand years ago, yet today the Czechs have a noticeably more flexible attitude to faith than the Poles. For a nation of just 10 million, they have excelled in the creative arts, revealing a genius for writing, and a sense of the dramatic, that have inspired the rest of the world. The names of Kafka, Havel, Hacek (The
Good Soldier Svejk
) and Kundera attest to this.
DAY 583 (5 FEBRUARY): BRNO
The medieval state of Moravia is history, but then it is the reminders of history that make its capital so proud and leave visitors to it so awestruck.
The site of the city's original castle is now occupied by the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul. The delightful story is told that in 1645, when a Swedish general was besieging the town and its citizens were defending it tooth and nail, the general declared that he would abandon the assault if his troops hadn't captured Brno by 11 am next day. Came the hour, came the ingenious bell-ringer who sounded the tocsin twelve times. Ever since, so we are told, the cathedral bells have rung noon at 11 am.
I puff my way to the cathedral up forbiddingly steep Petrov Way. Arriving at 10.50, I take a few minutes to catch my breath and hear this extraordinary piece of value-added timekeeping with my own ears. Gong-like, the pealing begins. I count. One, two, three, four faint peals are followed by eleven more, distinct and strong. I scratch my head: it's either 15 o'clock or somebody's just made a clangour. Off down the hill I go, sorely disappointed. These days you can't even depend on things to go wrong right.
DAY 584 (6 FEBRUARY): BRNO
I have Mrs Stumbris, our Form 2 (Year 8) science teacher, to thank for everything I knew before today about Johann Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics. I'm sure Mrs S. wouldn't mind my having gone to the source to build on that foundation laid all those years ago: she was forever instilling into us the importance of empirical checking.
Empiricism was the very basis of Mendel's work. A friar at the Augustinian Abbey of St Thomas, Mendel spent several decades, from the 1840s onwards, carrying out thousands of experiments on peas in the monastery grounds.
Methodically, scientifically, cautiously and cumulatively, he discovered how we humans inherit our looks and other characteristics from generation to generation, all but naming the agents (genes) through which the mechanism works.
His is a poignant story of credit denied until it is of no use to the creditworthy. Mendel presented his findings to the Natural History Society of Brno in 1865, and published them in a scientific paper the following year, but their significance went unrecognised till after his death. Today, in the abbey grounds, an up-to-the-moment museum christened the Mendelianum acquaints visitors with his pioneering work.
DAY 589 (11 FEBRUARY): PRAGUE
A week after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in November 1989, hundreds of thousands of Czechs packed Wenceslas Square to insist on the exit of the communists who had ruled their land for 40 years. They were ordinary everyday people doing an extraordinary every-century thing. Led by the jailed playwright Vaclav Havel, they kicked out their âmasters' in an act of firm and peaceful resolve that could have descended into mass slaughter at any moment if armed men had been issued an order one word long.
Until today I had a seriously wrong idea of what it meant for hundreds of thousands of people to cram into Wenceslas Square, having always visualised it as a space something like Sydney's Martin Place or Melbourne's City Square. Named after the good Bohemian king of Christmas-carol fame, Wenceslas Square (Vaclavske nam) is a boulevard that rolls down a gentle slope for 700 metres and is probably ten times as long as it is wide. The tide of humanity gathered there night after night would have been awesome and, in the end, irresistible.
The âsquare' today looks stately yet exuberant. Grand hotels, bustling shops and finance houses are among the edifices eight storeys high that flank its broad central concourse. The traffic streaming between its median strip and the crowded pavements moves with a relentless purpose more familiar in London or Paris than the capital of a Slavic land.
My first settled day here is spent familiarising myself with the inner-city districts of Stare Mesto and Nove Mesto, the hub of Prague's artistic life. There is great contentment to be found in just wandering around a town that has been inhabited for a thousand years. This is the real-life Bohemian rhapsody, and its harmony lulls the senses in a way that needs no explaining to those Australians who have been to Europe. It goes without saying that those who stay at home don't know what they are missing.
At a helpful Internet café, today brings a heart-lightening email that contains a welcome surprise. It's from Stephanie, the friend and journalist whose hospitality I rather abused by dropping from that fourth-floor window a lifetime ago. She wonders how I would feel if she and a close friend of hers, Stephen, hooked up to my European caravan for a few days in Estonia this April. After this long on the road, there is not a world of difference between a lone traveller and a lonely traveller, so I don't have to waste a moment's thought before replying, âYou bet.'
DAY 590 (12 FEBRUARY): PRAGUE
Prague is one of the rare cities where I can use the underground railway. Two stops south of Metro central, I alight at Vysehrad station and take the lift up to a terrace from which there is a superb view to be had, looking back at the city.
Slavin Cemetery is literally in the shade of Vysehrad's twin-towered neo-Gothic church. What I've come to see is AntonÃn Dvorák's tomb. Just as I expected, he's surrounded by angels.
DAY 592 (14 FEBRUARY): MARIANSKE LAZNE
This is as far west as I go. The Germans knew it as Marienbad (and for some of those who come here today I suspect it always will be), this resort that was once the most famous spa in the world.
Across the countryside the snow lies metres thick, but that has not weakened the determination of the sick and infirm to âtake the cure'. Cup in hand, they lean against the façade of the Holy Cross Spring, absorbing the warmth of the winter sun, what there is of it. Inside the building these cups are filled from any of several taps, each connected to a subterranean mineral spring with specific medicinal properties advertised on printed sheets. These sheets are perused with the grave attentiveness reserved elsewhere for racing form guides. So sedate and, well, 19th-century, is the pace of life here that even bicycles are banned: top speed is achieved by a pair of noble chestnuts drawing a trap.
âGood health' is the conventional toast, and here they really mean it. With the Carolina Spring coming highly recommended for those at above-average risk of bladder infection (which spinal patients always are), I drink litres of the pure fluid until a sense of bloatedness puts an end to my sampling. It takes a decent draught of Czech beer at sundown to restore my fluid balance to normal.
Victoriana still reigns here, with the hotels Empire, Excelsior and their ilk still in business, even if nowadays they fail to attract quite the class of guest that frequented the spa a century or two back. Those whose need for peace of mind was greatest found it idyllic. King Edward VII, when he was only the Prince of Wales; the younger Johann Strauss; Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, J.W. van Goethe, Russian writers and German composers: all summered here in their time.
DAY 594 (16 FEBRUARY): PRAGUE
Late on Sunday morning I'm parked under the huge round dial of the 15th-century astronomical âclock' that is one of Prague's best-known landmarks. A jazz band is bringing New Orleans to Staremestske nam, the Old Town Square.
At noon I cross the square to the pick-up point for a city tour, of the âpackaged' variety I normally shun. But Prague has so many magical sights that the prospect of missing too many of them, in the limited time I have left here, has forced me to relent. Waiting for the tour to begin, I get talking to a jaunty couple from the English Midlands, and the wife tells me the first joke I've heard for ages. âWhat's the difference between God and Tony Blair?'
I don't know.
âGod doesn't think he's Tony Blair.'
After an hour we cross the Vltava and head up to Prague Castle, in hilltop Hradcany district, where the householder was none other than Vaclav Havel himself until he stepped down just two weeks ago. So absorbing are the sights here that I leave the tour at this point and find my own way back to town, at a more leisurely pace.
Eventually I reach the much-loved Charles IV Bridge (Karluv Most). No other I've ever been on is quite like it. A stone road over the water, it has spanned the Vltava for 650 years, a crossing enlivened by eighteen statues of figures from Czech history.
Tired at the close of a full day's urban exploration, I let Prague's music flow all over me, like a warm bath on this wintry night. A female soprano, accompanied by viola, fills the St Martin-in-the-Wall Church with the sublimity of Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Verdi and (how could it be otherwise in the Czech heartland?) Dvorák.
POLAND REVISITED: 17 FEBRUARYâ1 MARCH
DAY 596 (18 FEBRUARY): WROCLAW
The morning bus from Prague has returned me to Polandâthe west of the country this time. The city once known as Breslau is a grim, dark and sooty place, where the liveliest sight is a paddling of ducks.
Tonight in the warm haven of the Bar Smak (where on earth do they come up with these names?) the beer is flowing nicely but, up there on the screen, what's the evening entertainment? Tank formations are on the move, the Luftwaffe flies again. It's
Blitzkrieg
on the Discovery channel. Hey, I feel like shouting, this is Poland, guys. They don't need reminding!
DAY 598 (20 FEBRUARY): POZNAN
Too much seriousness can be bad for you. Luckily, Poznan has the perfect antidote, and it is administered daily in the Old Town Square. Crane your neck and you can just make out two mechanical goats above the clock on the Renaissance town hall (built 1555, restored 1999). As the clock strikes noon, the goats butt their heads together twelve times (yes, everyone counts).
So entranced are the 200 schoolchildren gawping at the sight that, when the goats retreat into their loft for 24 hours' well-earned hibernation, they wave wildly and shout a gleeful farewell.
DAY 600 (22 FEBRUARY): TORUN
âTERRAE MOTOR SOLIS CAELIQUE STATOR.' âThe Earth moves, the Sun stands still.'
With these words, Nicolaus Copernicus turned the universe of astronomy upside down and gave it a thorough shake. The words are inscribed on a plinth beneath a statue of the young Copernicus who holds a framework globe with astrological symbols girdling the Equator.
This is the astronomer's hometown, and children have laid fresh bouquets wrapped in the Polish flag at his feet. It was Nick's birthday three days ago. He was 530, but the statue makes him look 500 years younger.
DAY 602 (24 FEBRUARY): GDANSK AND WESTERPLATTE
Crossing overland from the Black Sea to the Baltic has taken me just under two months. This is where the last leg begins and the first signs emerge that winter's grimness lies behind. It will be just as cold ahead, but sunny. Today in Gdansk it is a brilliantly warm 5°C, but since this is the birthplace of Daniel Fahrenheit, a great man by any measure, I should perhaps amend that to 41°F.
Seven kilometres by taxi out of town, and of course the same back by bus, my first sighting of the Baltic is at Westerplatte. In Hong Kong I once met Clare Hollingworth, the
Daily Telegraph
correspondent whose most famous scoop was Kim Philby's defection to Moscow. By rights, though, it should have been âbreaking' the onset of World War IIâa fairly big story by anyone's standards.
Hollingworth was here on 1 September 1939, when a German battleship shelled the Polish defensive positionsâthe charred pillboxes you still see here today. Simultaneously, Panzer tank divisions rolled across the frontier, striking at Gdansk and other Polish cities. Back in London, Hollingworth's sceptical editors refused to print the story without corroboration, which Neville Chamberlain duly provided later.
Today a single Panzer tank rests on a slight incline within earshot of the Baltic surf. The scene is rightly windswept and blasted. The official memorial is beyond my reach, but I think the sign beneath it says everything satisfactorily enough: NIGOY WIECEJ WOJNY (NEVER MORE TO WAR).