Zličín

I feel I've been here before but I don't remember why. It couldn't be the shopping centre. I wouldn't come all this way, not when the identical stores are more conveniently located. It couldn't have been for the atmosphere. It's not even charmingly decrepit. People stand stiffly while trying to smoke casually. Everyone's reading everyone else. Then there's a sudden burst of moment. This time two guys hurry to the train platform. And it's back to the awkward stares.

Maybe, G. and I went on a trip somewhere. There is a bus station here. But I honestly can't recall where. I have this impression I've been here but no firm memory. It's not that it seems familiar. Quite the opposite. It seems mostly strange with a nagging sense that I've been here though until I arrived I thought I never had. Is this what they call presque vu?

This nagging feeling is irritating me the more I stand here, so I walk around the block. The first path leads to a traffic jam and the outskirts of a city ossified under billboards and consumerism. I double back and take a path heading through the long grass.

It is the type of grass we were warned away from as kids. "Dugites might be there." Any snake was a dugite. No snakes today. Only snails. Huge snails lugging their limestone like homes across the rain moistened path. Some smaller ones are dining on the unfortunate victim of a careless foot. All around is the pervading smell of an unwashed crisper.

We warned about other dangers in the grass and be so suddenly isolated, I can't help but given into those fears. "It would be my luck," I think but I reach a gate without incident and turn back.

While I approach the station I hear the distinctive rattle of a spray can. As a child I wanted my father to open up a can to show me the ball bearing inside. I asked no matter how many times he explained that the can would explode if he tried. Years later, I found an opened can in the bush. The ball bearing was still there just as I imagined. What else could it be? It was one of those distinctly disappointing moments.

The juvenile graffiti artists lower their voices and crouch behind the railing. Do they really think I care? Then I remember a game we played as kids. We would stand at the end of the drive way and wait for cars. At the last moment, we would duck for cover. The cars went on oblivious and our hearts pounded and our bodies wriggled with pleasure. Subterfuge of any kind is tantalising.

I head back to the platform disappointed I can't get more from this place. Partly, I feel ashamed, as though I'm letting the station down by not finding something more. Of course, this is a home to someone. Someone else had their first smoke or drink or god knows what here. The graffiti artists will perhaps think back to this place as one of their first hits. To me though, it's just a suburb that smells like day old salad.

And I still don't know why I came here the first time.

Smíchovské nádraží

It starts to rain as soon as I get to the station - a light spring rain. This feeling is emphasized by the unseasonal warmth and the urban humidity. I don't have as much time today because I'm going to the cinema. It's a pity because Smíchovské nádraží proves to have a lot more to explore than I first thought.

My first mission is to find an ATM. I figure that way I won't have to leave so early. Though the concourse is filled with shops, there isn't a dispenser, so I give up and decide to follow the sign to the second hand bookstore. I can't say that my Czech is so good that I can freely browse, but I might find something to add to the 'I will read this when my Czech is better pile'. It's already getting a little large.

The store is crammed into a space usually reserved for občerstvenís. It's not so much a shop as a great disorderly stack of books, which the shop owner has borrowed into, making just enough space for his desk and one customer at a time. There is a copy of de Sade in Czech and just above it a Rod Stewart album. The rest are unfamiliar English authors in translation and some textbooks. I continue around the building. I consider taking the bridge but decide to go to the park.

This area is probably what some people think of when they want the 'authentic' experience of Prague, dilapidated turn-of-the-century blocks, lines of pubs, few tourists. Only one building has been renovated and it is literally tarted up with hot pink window frames and a blushing rouge paint job. A man passes me speaking into his mobile phone. He gesticulates as though his interlocutor were there in front of him. If I continue down this foot path I will get to Anděl and I would like to see more of the station.

As I pass again through the park, I notice some people speaking behind me. It's a group of four guys in hip-hop gear. I quicken my pace a bit. I'm not proud of this, nor am I proud to admit it. I don't want to give further credence to the already pervasive mistrust out there. But it is how I react, and this reaction leads me away from the bridge I wanted to cross and back to the station. I had a knife pulled on me on a bridge in East Perth. That memory is all that's going through my mind. My steps flash underneath me. I don't slow down until I'm back at the station and I see that the guys had stopped long ago to chat.

From this side I can go down to the metro platform. Around the corner, I find an ATM hidden behind a station controller's office. At least now I can see more of the station. I even have time to go and check out the platforms - but first I'm going to head back to the bridge. I can't exactly admit to the guys that I thought they were going to rob me, but at least I don't have to behave like a total fool.

The bridge leads to a sparsely developed part of Prague. There are blocks and flats, but behind them the land is bunched up into smooth hills. On top of one is a house a friend once pointed out when we were on the other side of the river, looking down from Vyšehrad. He said that no one knows what the house is for, but when a student of his tried to walk up the hill he was turned away. It is possible to make out radar dishes at the front - though that could just mean the occupants have good TV reception and don't welcome trespassers. I could walk to Anděl from here too, but there's something I want to see.

I've taken trains from here a few times. Almost as soon as you leave the station you see two sculptures of cars, which look as though they have been molded from resin and then pinned with giant stakes to the factory wall and left to dry, so that their bodies are now stretched. Unfortunately, through all the overhead wires the two forms only resemble red blobs among the grey brown walls. And I've got to go if I'm going to make my movie.