A couple of the trams follow the Ringstrasse around central Vienna. I remember doing this on an early Sunday morning (whilst most good Viennese are still in bed or at early Mass). It's the best way to see the huge changes to the city made in the 19th-century, including the Opera House, the Rauthaus and other institutions built as part of Frank Josef II's reimagining of his imperial city. Also a good place to flirt and smile at the Viennese.

Any tram stop on the Ringstrasse

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Brno is the second city of the Czech Republic and the capital of Moravia. Both Janáček and Korngold were born there, and there is much to interest a tourist on a day out. The Janáček Museum (next to the organ school he founded) is a small insight into his daily life, with exhibitions organised in the other buildings of the Moravian Regional Museum regularly. There is a large opera house, with an enviable repertoire of work and a symphony orchestra. For the non-musical it is a charming city, which grew rapidly as a satellite to Vienna during industrial expansion. The Austro-Hungarians had a prison on Spilberk hill, which dominates the horizon in the city centre along with the Gothic cathedral. It's less commercialised than either Prague or Vienna. Ryanair have started flying there, so get there before it gets spoiled!

Brno is on the main line from Prague to Vienna.

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Theresienstadt, as it was known (now Terezín) was the 'model' concentration camp during the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia during the second world war. 'Model' because, as a cover for the true horror of places such as Belsen and Auschwitz, at Theresienstadt the Nazis actively encouraged a community of artists to compose, write and paint... frequently Red Cross groups were brought in and were amazed by the 'wonderful' creativity at the camp. Whilst at the camp, however, the same problems of starvation and brutality (behind closed doors) existed. Inmates included Pavel Hass (a composer pupil of Leoš Janáček) and Viktor Ullmann (another composer, whose opera THE KAISER OF ATLANTIS was a veiled criticism of the Nazi regime). Shortly after Red Cross visits many inmates were shipped off to the death camps. It's an incredible place, a sore reminder of yet another atrocity in the now Czech Republic's bleak history... but one in which the human managed to rise above the situation itself. Some of the composers' work is available on Czech CDs and the Terezín children's opera BRUNDIBAR has been heard throughout the world.

www.pamatnik-terezin.cz Principova alej 304 CZ - 411 55 Terezín Phone: +420-416782225, 416782442, 416782131 Fax: +420-416782245, 416782300 There are buses from Prague to Terezín, on the D8 road out of Prague.

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