I'm sitting in the "Bohemian Bagel" in Prague tapping away, after a day visiting the house Kafka was born in, the Jewish quarter of Prague, the Polish consulate and getting a free haircut in the most prestigious salon in Prague. I'm not sure what it is about my hair that attracts the free cuts I've been getting the last few years, but I'm not going to complain.

I'm in love with Prague - have been spending days wandering around the streets, and I've got another three days of wandering to do before I head on to Poland, and Krakow. Have been hopping on and off trams around the city, which assuages my occasional homesickness. The girl who cut my hair today started to teach me some Czech phrases (only the very simple ones... and I've forgotten some of them already, because they're so foreign to me, I haven't quite grasped them yet) and she'll probably teach me some more tonight, because I'm meeting her for coffee too. Oh, and she cuts hair really well.

Oh, and I found my bottle of absinthe yesterday.

I got in on Saturday night, and had only been in a few minutes when the girls in my room suggested we all go out somewhere for dinner. Found a Czech restaurant near the centre, and got to drink some of the Czech beer-that-is-cheaper than Coke. Great beer, but the downside of all the British boys coming over for their weekend long stag parties. Lots of interesting contrasts. The Communist Museum next to the Casino is the one that springs to mind immediately. Very beautiful, old Eastern buildings, but also a Parisian feel to parts of the city (says she who hasn't been to Paris) because the star of art-nouveau design, Mucha, who designed all the famous theatre posters for Sarah Bernhart in Paris, is from the Czech Republic, and there are buildings in Prague that have very much embraced the art nouveau style. I went to the Mucha Gallery here, which was gorgeous. Though of course it led to yet another thing to be fascinated by. The list of things I need to read more about when I get home grows ever longer.

Am still going with Vasari's lives of the artists, and stuffing myself with a bagel and bottomless cup of coffee at the Bohemian Bagel each day. Oh, and their chocolate cake is also very good. That is, have been reading Vasari over bagels morning and evening, as the Bagelry has become my office for the week so to speak!

Went out to dinner last night with Charlotte, a girl staying in my room at the hostel who is from England (the Lakes district) and studying in Belfast, and who may or may not be offended by the fact that I told her she reminds me of the Cookie Monster. I have since explained further that this is a good thing. She made what might be considered by most the grave error of drinking two absinthes, straight, the night I first arrived! I haven't actually tried the stuff, and am not at all convinced that I will, but have been enjoying the sight of all those bottles of stuff that looks like Listerine in shop windows.

After Krakow I've decided I'm going to try to get to Denmark to see the Tolland man in Aarhus, track down a copy of Seamus Heaney's Tollund Man poem and stand in front of him and read the words "Someday I will go to Jutland / to see him peat brown head..."

Praha.