From your own correspondent

I have spent the last five days in Prague. It's been a mixed experience, but overall a positive one and the first time I've been travelling solo in seven years. The last time was a week in India during my gap year, when I backpacked it on my own up to a mountain resort and teamed up with a German girl, also called Hanna (I seem to recall) and two English lads who were scouse or geordie (I forget). We went all day hiking in the mountains with an Israeli lad called Adam and some French dude, among other things. The only slightly weird experience was when a lone Indian man started staring at me and then, a few minutes later, started walking around me in a circle with a radius of about three metres as I was sitting in a park. He went away when I asked him to, thankfully. My Rough Guide to India had advised this tactic, if anything like this happened, but I was amazed when it actually worked.

The most disturbing aspect of this episode was that I became aware of his stare when he was behind me, such was its intensity. A week later, I met up with my Danish travelling companion and all as well and we continued together for another two weeks until we got to Chennai and flew our separate ways. We exchanged e-mail addresses, but despite the odd attempt at contact, I've never heard from her since. Ah well.

But anyway, to this excursion. Before I left, I was bricking it somewhat, having been too busy at work to really organise anything with regard to my stay, and that included accommodation. My initial plan of crashing on a friend's couch fell through after his girlfriend said no. He was able to book me into a hostel near him, but they only had a bed available from Tuesday - I was arriving on Sunday. On Saturday night, I googled "Prague hostel" and rang pretty much the first one on the list. They had space for two nights so I booked, and ended up spending the whole time there as they were slightly cheaper and could fit me in, so it saved having to move.

I didn't really know what was going to happen on this trip as it had been initially booked with the thought of doing some freelance work based on article I wrote when I was here a couple of years ago, but due to aforesaid busy-ness at work (working nights, covering a murder trial), no planning was done. So I decided to come along and do what felt good at the time.

To that end, I went to a classical concert in a church, visited an exhibition of Mucha and Dali, met a Czech journalist, met a campaigner against the American Missile Defence Shield, got given two condoms by a woman I know who runs an NGO which helps sex workers, watched a play she had written performed by former prostitutes and drug addicts in a theatre that used to be factory, was intimidated by giant statues of Lenin at the Museum of Communism, went to a black light theatre show, wandered, due to my professional status as a journalist, around Prague Castle and its environs for the princely sum of 10 Czech crowns, which is about 33p (ridiculous, but great) and drank about five cups of hot chocolate, returning twice to a particularly wonderful restaurant which served it in a metal jug with a little cup like you would have for an espresso.

I'm very much a creature of stomach and it's amazing how much the right, or wrong, meal can colour how I'm feeling and my perception of what's been going on. On Tuesday, for example, my dining experience at lunch time was a complete disaster. I was bang in the centre of town and knew it was highly likely I'd get ripped off wherever I ate, so gave in and wandered into the first, vaguely decent-looking, restaurant I could find. This was my first mistake. My second was ordering. When my food arrived, (it was spaghetti) it looked like a pile of soon-to-be-deceased worms gently expiring in a pool of their own blood. The cheese that accompanied it not only smelled of rotten sweaty feet, it tasted of them too. I ate it because I was starving and there was nothing else except the additional bread which they automatically provided you with and charged you for (which I only saw mentioned on the front page of the menu after it was too late) and that tasted like foam rubber. Fortunately, I remembered halfway through that the reason the pasta was red was because it had been cooked in red wine. But you know how chefs sometimes out wine that's a couple of days old in cooking to use it up? I reckon this wine was a couple of weeks old at least...

But later that same day, after an entire afternoon spent dodging in and out of touristic sites trying to avoid the bitter wind and driving rain, I found Cafe Savoy. This had been recommended in the guidebook as a source of free WiFi and good hot chocolate, but it was far more than that. I had chicken schnitzel with potato salad and cranberry sauce and it was, quite simply exquisite. So exquisite I went back the next day and had their chicken noodle soup with a side of order of French fries cooked in peanut oil which were some of the best chips I have ever eaten. The first meal I had there was a revelation, the chicken was hot, the potato salad was cold with sour cream and the cranberry sauce was slightly bitter but quite like jam. The three things together shouldn't have worked, but they did, beautifully. The whole meal really lifted the day and put me in a fantastic mood for going to the theatre that evening. And their hot chocolate was essentially melted chocolate diluted with a splash of milk. It was rich, but not sweet and just like drinking liquid velvet. Gorgeous. Both that meal and the earlier disappointment cost about £16. The second one was worth a lot more. I would have been surprised if the first had cost £1.60.

Prague is a great city, full of character and ridiculously easy to navigate. The public transport system is efficient, well-integrated and regular. Bendy buses, the bane of everyone's life in London, are the norm here and the streets are big enough to accommodate them. They also have a handy digital display that tells you what stop you're at, what's next and what the final destination is, so even if you're a foreigner as long as you can read you're fine. They also announce it as well. And it doesn't take a genius to work out that "Pristi Zastavka" means next stop after you've heard it a couple of times... There are only three metro lines and they are similarly idiot proof while covering the city centre pretty comprehensively. And then there are the trams that, as far as I can make out, do a pretty good job of making up the shortfall elsewhere. I maybe biased from having mainly travelled in the centre, but even getting here from the airport, which is out to the north west, was really easy and much quicker than getting from Heathrow to central London.

The hostel I've been staying in is comfortable, if dark with some rather strange decor, but they have free WiFi which is reliable and fairly speedy. I've only been limited by the need to charge my laptop every so often.

The one thing about dorm rooms in hostels is the smell. It either contains rather too much unwashed armpit and foot in the mix... or there's so much deodorant you can't breathe. But overall, I've had a great time. Work next week will be a jolting return to my usual existence.

Onion unwanted

Second only to soft drink half measures in my rage-inducing food-and-drink-related issues is when a meal I ordered turns out to have unexpected additions.

Case in point, if I order a "hand-made beef burger with cheese and bacon", I don't expect the otherwise delicious burger to be packed full of little pieces of onion. Perhaps the chef decided that it tastes better that way, and perhaps many people would appreciate the addition, but it violates the simplest of rules: if it's not on the menu, don't put it in the fucking meal.

If I decide that a salad I'm making would be improved with a few shavings of bacon in it, but fail to advertise this on the menu, I'm lining myself up to be faced with some very angry vegetarians, not to mention all the other groups for whom pork is objectionable.

The anti-onion lobby is admittedly smaller, but it is nevertheless extant. Some people just don't like bits of onion in their food, and if you put them in without announcing it, all you're going to do is piss off a portion of your clientèle.

So thanks unnamed pub in which I had lunch, for letting me buy something I didn't actually want to eat.

On Lunch

I forgot my lunch today. I think it was probably the fault of the olympics. Waking up to live sport on BBC1 instead of the news apparently messes with my internal compass to the extent that I forget I need sandwiches. In any case, once I realise that I have nothing to eat, I have to decide whether to go out and buy something, or settle for produce from the "sandwich man". Not a bread-based superhero, as you perhaps might suspect, but a gentleman who brings sandwiches around the office on a trolley, somewhat disconcertingly announcing himself by shouting "sandwich man" at the top of his lungs. I've never investigated, but I like to think that he refers to himself using that moniker (and in the third person) in all his conversations.

In any case, his sandwichwes, while relatively cheap, and a convenient 4 second walk from my desk, are not the most impressive creations, being somewhat high in stodge and low in delicious. So I made the 60 second trek outside to the local Subway, where my order got the usual reaction:

"What salad would you like?"

"None, thanks"

"None at all?"

"Nope"

"Sauces?"

"No thanks, nothing".

"Salt and pepper?"

"No, nothing at all"

"You sure. Nothing?"

"Yes, I'm sure"

" ...ok..."

I know that people generally find it strange that I don't like salad, and that I would rather not put a load of stuff I don't like in a sandwich, but this is the reaction I get every time I go to subway, from the staff, and from anyone I'm with. Is it really that unusual to just want a sandwich? With meat and cheese? Why is it so strange to not want to garnish it with a hundred million other flavours? I like the taste of meat and cheese and that's what I've asked for in my sandwich.

It's like on a menu, where "fish and chips" means "fish, chips, and half a plate of salad". Please food-providers of the world, give me a choice. And don't act like I'm some sort of lunatic if I choose not to fill my meal with vegetation. I don't like my lunch to be served with a side of judgementalism.

Glass half full...

One of the continuous things that niggles me about modern life is the approach to soft drinks in pubs and bars. As both a non-drinker and a diet coke addict, the provision of non-alcoholic drinks in social establishments is something I encounter pretty much constantly, and my complaint usually boils down to the size of the drink served.

Usually nowadays you can get a pint of diet coke in a pub, thankfully, as I have been told in the past that the pub in question "doesn't serve" or "isn't allowed" to serve soft drinks in pints. In bars and clubs it's a different story, though, usually it'll be a half pint, but sometimes it's just a plastic cup, or cocktail-sized glass, and often for the same price of (or even more than) a pint in a pub. Clearly it's up to the particular establishment to determine how it wants to sell its drinks, but to have such limited options on size seems to be deliberately obtuse. I'll sometimes resort to drinking water in places like that, if it becomes too expensive and fiddly to keep getting tiny one-gulp glasses of coke.

The second way that the size of the drink can be restricted is with the level of ice included. I'm not totally anti-ice, by any means. In the summer, a few blocks of ice in a drink can be very nice (though no substitute for the drink itself being cold), but the way that ice is used in drinking establishments at the moment, all year round, seems to be as a deliberate method of restricting the amount of liquid served.

It's rare that you'll be asked whether you want ice or not, and you usually have to be pretty quick, clear and forceful about making your preference clear if you don't want any. Usually, if you don't state a preference, you'll get the glass filled to the top with ice, and then the gaps filled in with coke. Is there anyone, anywhere in the history of drinking who considers this a satisfactory way to serve a drink? At the very most, a glass should be filled 1/3 full of ice, and even then only in the summer. Filling the whole thing and then adding the drink cuts the amount of liquid served down to between 3/4 and 1/4 of the available glass-space. In any other situation the drink would be replaced (imagine being served a beer that was 1/2 head), but in this case, you actively have to insist to get the drink you order.

In some places, they will serve without ice if asked, but will leave a gap at the top of the glass to ensure that you're not getting any extra by doing this. The gap left varies, but can be up to an inch. I rarely argue about it, but it does seem ludicrously tight of a pub to deliberately withhold from topping up a drink that's being served just to save the tiny amount of money that it might cost (and at the risk of future sales too).

My main problem with these situations is that there seems to be very little thought from the bar staff. When I order a pint of diet coke, it's because I like the taste. If I wanted to quench my thirst, I'd get a glass of water. There's really no logical reason for filling the glass up with ice first without asking, but they do it anyway, without really thinking about the customer experience they're providing. I'd be interested to hear from anyone who's worked behind a bar (*ahem* Bambi), but it really does seem negligent for people to deliberately give you as little as possible of the drink you want.

And there is a special circle of hell reserved for bartenders who serve regular coke when diet coke was ordered...