Prague sadly becoming "Amsterdam of the East"

Recently a Prague court convicted but did not sentence four players from the Northern Ireland international football team who two years ago were involved in a fight with staff in a "strip club" off Wencelsas Square. Now what's interesting to me about this case is that the establishment in question, named Atlas, is not just a strip club but is also a brothel. How ironic is that? The members of the Northern Ireland football team, who famously can't score, getting arrested in a brothel.

Prague sadly becoming "Amsterdam of the East"

Photo: CTK

When you think about it, though, in today's Prague a brothel is perhaps the one place where you would expect a group of lads from their part of the world to end up, because once synonymous with cheap booze, this city has in recent years become synonymous with cheap whores. If you don't believe me check out the website praguepissup.com, which calls Prague the "Amsterdam of the East". Organising as they do holiday weekends for British and Irish stag groups, praguepissup are certainly doing their bit to help Prague turn into an even lower-class Amsterdam.

A few weeks back I went to a sports bar just up the street from the above-mentioned Atlas. It was about one in the afternoon and there was nobody in the front room there but me and a stag group from the English city of Milton Keynes. Around 12 or 15 in number, they seemed like average guys, not too rowdy or aggressive, but obviously out to make the most of their weekend. Given the time of day, though, I was somewhat taken aback when one of them said "what time are the whores getting here?" Whores? I thought, it's just after lunchtime and you're surely here to watch the football. But, lo and behold, arrive three whores did. What surprised me was their age; three very normal looking girls, the oldest was 20 and the youngest 18, I overheard. The 20-year-old, a law student she said, was "taken" by the guy who was getting married. When she heard the stag lads had been to a brothel the night before and were going to another that evening, she recommended that they try such and such a place. They said they'd check it out. Hearing all that, along with a brief but to the point lesson in anatomy in Czech, it was hard to concentrate on the game, I can tell you.

A couple of years ago when I was home in Ireland on holiday, a friend of my brother-in-law's told me he was going to Prague soon for a romantic weekend with his girlfriend. Indeed, he was planning to propose to the girl. Tell me, Ian, he said, what it's like for brothels there, how much do they cost, that kind of thing. What a concept! Here's a guy about to propose to the woman he loves and at the same time sneak off and hire a whore. Call me old fashioned, etc. The fact that this city has become synonymous with cheap prostitutes strikes me as very sad indeed.