So, here is an advantage of contributing stories to Bootsnall, and getting them viewed. A girl I knew very well in Prague when I was teaching there wrote to me recently, saying that she had read my stories for BNA. She had first read the Prague/Liberec story, aspects of which she remembered and enjoyed, then she read the other ones. I had been out of touch with J. for years, and she didn't have my e mail, so she presumably got it through our helpful friends at BNA. Thus our friendship was re-opened.Thanks, BNA, for that.

So what about J.? What is she doing now? She's settled down in Prague and is married to a Czech and has at least one child.
J., like all the best travellers, had an adventurous spirit, and was willing to explore and try new places, by which I mean not just towns and cities, but very local restaurants/bars/monuments. I remember one occasion, just after Katcha and I had separated, when J, Ales, a Czech friend, and I went together to see Locket castle. Later, we ended up in Cheb, in the North West of the Czech Rep, in a very seedy local restaurant where Vietnamese gambled away their savings on a kind of Vietnamese poker with shouts of delight and despair. The food was robust Czech, and the waitress was one of those buxom types that you don't fool around with even on Easter Monday, or perhaps, especially on Easter Monday. We were in the grimy end of Cheb, and my memory of that town is grime and more grime, though I am sure this is unfair, as rumour has it that the centre is quite pretty. It was hard to tell in the ill-lit streets. Maybe we never got to the centre, being distracted by the Vietnamese, the hard waitress and copious quantities of beer; I don't remember.
J and I and various others often visited places before Katcha took over as general fellow-explorer. Like Katcha, she was not afraid of visiting black spots (as long as there was a pretty place on the way there or on the way back).
Our more unlikely finds were:
The Hotel Kacerov in Prague 4, a modern dull slab of concrete that nevertheless upstairs housed a billiards/pool bar which doubled as a restaurant, and downstairs housed the greatest find - a so-called 'Snack Bar' which didn't serve any snacks, in fact it served no food at all. It was just a bar which had the supreme advantage of being open until 2 or 3 in the morning . This had a lot of charm in an understated low-lit way, and was very friendly in contrast to its brutal exterior. On more than one evening we played pool against some locals. J. was so good at pool that some of my Czech friends referred to her as 'the pool shark'. Her boyfriend at the time was also very good at pool, and so they both became known as 'the pool sharks'.
The seedy bar with Vietnamese, mentioned above.
The best place in Prague for Beer Cheese on toast (yum, yum, yum), again in Prague 4, I think it was called Na Michelska, on the road which bears that name, a very ordinary street, and there was little to indicate that this was a really good place.
When we first went there, people weren't very friendly, but this did not deter us, the best Beer Cheese in Prague was to be relished; we went there a few more times and before long we were accepted. I remember an extraordinary evening there with our German and Czech friends, sitting outside. We were discussing where we had had the most awful puking experience, or the worst runs. We spoke of horror-inspiring WC's the world over. If these weren't such staple Traveller's tales, I would be tempted to reproduce some of them here. The best, and most original one, about certain loos in Moscow, was told to us by a Czech who had been to that mighty capital. Maybe I will reproduce that one some time, but only if requested.
The Dukla. This admittedly was very near the school and therefore not exactly a discovery, but it had real character. There was a mad professor who was into English word games with puzzles, and used to ask us cryptic questions in broken English, for example.
A brilliant Hospoda in Tabor, slightly marred by a Czech equivelant of a Joul coming in and giving us a hard time.
A bar near the train station in Tabor where we were regaled by a fool.
There is so much I could say about Prague, and other places in the Czech Rep. but this blog is not officially a Czech one. A lot of the best stories (like the ones in Greece) I have squirrelled away for use in the future.