Get yourself a three-day transport ticket from the stand in the airport – it only costs 220Kcs, and pays for the 119 bus to the metro, plus all metro and trams while you’re in town. You can’t buy a ticket on the bus and, if you are foolhardy enough to leave it, attempting to get a ticket once you reach the metro can be somewhat problematic. The ticket machines don’t take notes for the 20Kcs (single journey) ticket, and staff can be reluctant to deal with pesky tourists. Having been to Prague twice, and never been checked for a ticket once, I told my girlfriend we’d be ok to get tickets later… a decision which could have proved costly, as the trams/metros now seem extremely well populated with plain clothed, badge wielding, ticket inspectors. The only reason we escaped on the spot 500Kcs fines was that the inspectors at Muzeum Metro station were over occupied with collecting 4500Kcs from “Reservoir Stag” weekenders… nice personalised t-shirts lads although, in the circumstances, not brilliantly inconspicuous.
Tickets don’t become valid until registered (with a date and time) and the little machines at the entrance to metro stations and on trams.

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Where possible I like to partake of the local tipple on my travels but rarely, if ever, have I tasted anything like Hungary's herb based spirit, Unicum. A single measure of this concoction should be more than enough for two to three people ... the first sip tastes a little of cough mixture, and the second enough to convince you that no, apologies to the good people at Benylin, this is something far nastier.

On the plus side, it does come in great globe shaped bottles - miniatures of which make ideal presents for friends back home, particularly those you don't like much.

Just about every bar in Budapest

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Sparta Prague are the most successful, Slavia have the best kit and Viktoria Zizkov have a nice little stadium in a great part of town for drinkers. But for me, the only Prague club to follow is Bohemians.

They’re untrendy, languish in the third division, have a ramshackle ground and their badge features a kangaroo. They did a tour down under in the 1930s, were presented with a kangaroo, which promptly acclimatised to the Prague climate by dying.

Reason enough, you’d think, to enthuse my girlfriend that, yes, we did need to take a tram out into the bleak Prague suburbs so that I could buy a green and white scarf with a marsupial on it. The shop was poorly stocked, although we did get to climb onto the rickety main (only) stand and watch the groundsmen trying to clear the pitch of snow. One rarely gets the opportunity to stroll in off the street and gain such access to football grounds back home.

That was whimsical insight enough for me. Personally, I didn’t need to know that the Bohemians physio room adjoins the club shop, and has bigger windows, although these are facts which became inescapably evident on the appearance of a group of players, stark bollock naked, strolling around the treatment tables. I still haven’t managed to wipe the grin off my girlfriend’s face although she at least stopped cooing long enough to agree with me that, crap ground or not, that’s a bonus not generally afforded the casual shopper at the Man Utd Megastore.

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