New Year's in Prague

It is a vision of the Charles Bridge, still and silent in the snow, that haunts my memory – a sepia-tinted view from an old postcard that I have carried for a long time.

Perhaps it is for this reason that I have come to Prague this winter.  To see the old baroque bridge slumber beneath a blanket of freshly-fallen snow, beshadowed by its anguished saints. And maybe, just maybe if you listen hard enough, to catch the slow, sad sigh of centuries seep from its stone...

But, of course, there is no snow, and the bridge is besieged with tourists.

So off I head to the old ossuary in Sedlec instead, with its slightly unsettling vault of bones – a slightly macabre way to start the new year...!