Prague 2011

This is strange, the spell check is in Czech. Of course. I'm in the Czech Republic, Prague in fact, at the European Renal Association meeting. The conference itself is so focused on end stage renal disease that I'm wondering why I've come. There is nothing for Primary Care here. Still, Prague in the summer, fabulous.
We have been given a travel pass and so off I went yesterday to explore the city and find Wenceslas square.
Last time I was here I enjoyed just lazing about in the bars around what I then thought, was Wenceslas square. So imagine my surprise and amazement to find no mention of the square on the city map. So confused was I that I thought I must have mis-remembered my last stay and actually wondered if Wenceslas square was in a different city altogether. It was not until the evening when I presented my problem to the accompanied crowd, and to some merriment from them, that I discovered that Wenceslas Square is not a square at all, and definitely not the place I thought it was. It is in fact a long and wide street, somewhere else in the town. The place I thought was Wenceslas square is actually the Old Town centre.
The Old Town centre is the gathering place for tourists, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets the name wrong. There is the famous Tyn cathedral and the Town Hall clock, whose figures chime every hour. Yesterday, though the weather was bright, there was a sudden downpour just as the clock struck three.
Prague is a city with many memories of the communist era, reflected not least is some of the architecture on the way from the airport to the city centre. The austere tower blocks have done their best to modernise, but there's no mistaking their origins. The taxi radio, stuck in the past too, was playing White Snake, Judas Priest and other heavy metal. They may be proud of their velvet revolution, but please time to move on in musical taste too. It was during the velvet revolution that a Russian tank, standing in Wensceslas square one night was painted pink, much to the annoyance of the would-be occupiers. It was later floated on a pontoon in the river.
The underground in Prague is easy to use, and the people, like many users the world over, look grim and in a hurry. One scene, though, that cheered me up. It was in another carriage and so witnessed as silent. Two girls were having a right old giggle, about what I have no idea, but they were laughing uncontrollably at something. It made me smile. May be they are more relaxed with themselves than I thought.
After my initial attempts to find the tourist places I went back to the hotel for a nap. It had been an early start to get to the airport for an early flight. I hadn't bargained on being stuck in the middle of a 'stag do', dressed in shell suits, some a worrying pink, and already pissed. They carried on drinking all flight, and became noisier and noisier. Fortunately they didn't engage me in conversation, but some poor American girl did. Their 'conversation' went pretty close to the mark, but luckily I didn't have to stand up for her honour.
I half expected to see them all in the square that isn't Wenceslas square. I think they were probably sleeping it off, and will miss Prague altogether in a drunken haze.
In the evening we had dinner at the Lion restaurant, near Prague castle, and took in the view of Prague from the citadel. Prague Castle isn't a castle, like Wenceslas squaree isn't a square, but it is next to a fabulous cathedral. The history of Prague is the history of Europe in microcosm, OK that might be over stating it, but it seems to have been at the centre of much of the great struggles of the last four centuries. Our tour guide talked us through the Hapsburg reign, the Protestant uprising and later 'defenestration', and the martyrdom of Jan Hus, burnt at the stake as a heretic.
I offered my own heresy at the dinner table of kidney specialists. That the modern staging of kidney disease has entirely distracted attention from identifying rapidly declining renal disease (now stage 1&2) and those leaking protein. Instead we are mis-staging and over treating little old ladies, who would be better left alone. I'm not sure how well that went done. Slightly better than telling a room full of cardiologists that there are too many of them, I guess.