Just like back at High School... and other Prague, Czech Republic Nightlife Tips

Nightlife Spot: Lucerna

There are many places in Prague to go clubbing, but Lucerna is probably the most fun.

It's not an obvious recipe for success - take a bunch of laidback and unhip Czechs, chuck them into a large hall, and play 80's and 90's music to them all night.

The atmosphere is fun and friendly, and as the Czechs are such a nostalgic bunch, virtually every tune is greeted by an enthusiastic roar.

There is also a large screen above the stage, playing the videos for all the old songs. This can be particularly mesmerising when a song comes on that you haven't heard since it was big!

Make sure you're on the stage, preferably front centre, when 'The Final Countdown' comes on. Because when it does, the whole place goes ape!

Not cool, but so much fun that it's better than cool...if you know what I mean??

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Theme: Nightclub
Dress Code: Whatever you like. Nobody really cares what you wear, least of all the bouncers.
Address: Lucerna Passage
Directions: Off Wenceslas Square, make a left onto Stepanska. Look out for the entrance to the Lucerna passage on the right. Keep going through the arcade, under the upside-down horse (Trust me...!) and keep a look out for the non-descript door on the left. Enjoy!

Nightlife Spot: Karlovy Lazne

Karlovy Lazne, just off Charles Bridge, is not the experience it once was. Situated in an old bathhouse, it used to be a wonderfully shabby experience - all the peeling paint and smashed tiles made it feel like going to a party in a squat.

Alas, Western standards (and health & safety) has caught up with Karlovy Lazne, and the refurb has diminished it's cheap and cheerful atmosphere of old. It's still possible to dance in a drained swimming pool, except if you didn't know what it was, you'd just think it was a lowered dance floor.

There are still five floors of music, ranging from cheese to chill out, there's an internet cafe and foosball room in the basement. It's still pretty cheap and still draws a surprisingly mixed crowd, giving it's Tourist Central location.

Still a good time to be had - just go before they laminate it any further.

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Theme: Nightclub
Dress Code: Bouncers don't really care what you wear. As with most places in Prague, the dress code is pleasingly relaxed after the petty, over-regulated clubs in England. Once you're through the metal detector, Karlovy Lazne is your playground. Just don't mess with people too much when you're bladdered - they'll tolerate drunken lariness, so long as it's not directed at other clubbers.
Address: Smetanovo nabrezi 198, Praha 1
Directions: About 200m from Old Town end of Charles bridge.
Website: http://www.karlovylazne.cz/

Nightlife Spot: Trosca

'Trosca' is perhaps the most unlikely pub to be found wandering around Old Town, and a perfect antidote for those weary with Stare Mesto's relentless beauty and/or crass tourism.

Sharing square space on Uhelny Trh with the cute St Martin's in The Wall Church, at first glance Trosca looks like a fancy Italian restaurant - big arched windows, deep red walls, soft lighting.

Only approaching the door do you realise something is wrong - perhaps it's the welcoming scent of weed wafting from the doors? Inside it's a hellish mish-mash of smashed up furniture and thrash metal on the stereo, surrounded by people looking in serious need of a bath.

Downstairs it gets grungier, but what this place has going for it is it's complete disregard for the tourist trade...in fact, the happy drop-outs of Trosca couldn't care less if they EVER got a tourist through their doors. And that, dear traveller, is the thing that makes ramshackle Trosca a thing of beauty...that and the 18kc Starobrno beer.

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Theme: People Watching
Dress Code: No dress code, but the shabbier you dress the more likely you are to blend in...
Address: Uhelny Trh, Praha 1
Directions: Stand with your back to Tescos on Narodni. Opposite is Na Perstyne. Go down there and make a first right. Follow onto Uhelny Trh.

Nightlife Spot: U Zlateho Tygra

Prague´s beloved author Bohumil Hrabal has been dead seven years now, but his surly spirit lives on in ´U Zlateho Tygra´, his favourite pub.

It´s not cheap (Pilsner Urquell, draught, 30Kc) but it´s worth it for the rowdy, belligerent Czech atmosphere in such a central location. By the time you´ve sat down, one of the rough shod waiters will have slammed a beer down in front of you with out asking what you wanted - this may be to do with the fact they only serve one type of drink, Pilsner - which the burly barman continually pumps out and bowls out across the counter to the waiters.

The place is packed a couple of minutes after opening time, so you´re likely to be sitting with one of Hrabal´s old mates at one of the long wooden tables. There´s some tacky Hrabal paraphrenalia on the walls, including a photo of the author shaking hands with Bill Clinton, but ´At the Golden Tiger´ remains a tantalizing glimpse of what Prague might have been like before all the McDonalds, Titty Bars and Stag Parties.

Like I said, it´s quite expensive, but the Pilsner is one of the best I´ve encountered in Prague.

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Theme: People Watching
Dress Code: Socks, sandals and bad shirts seem to be the requisite dress sense to fit in among the regulars.
Address: Husova, Praha 1
Directions: From Charles Bridge, follow the Hellish tourist trail of Karlova, then make a right onto Husova.

Nightlife Spot: The Blind Eye

The districts of Zizkov and Vinohrady sit side by side, but as soon as you cross that border, something changes...the streets grow steeper and narrower, and the pubs become cheaper and grungier.

´The Blind Eye´ is no exception, apart from the beer ain´t that cheap (25Kc for a beer??? What´s happening here?) With typical Zizkov vandalised-chic interior, it also happens to be a very chilled out, extremely dark little bar, where you can lounge in the grubby booths and listen to a diverse range of tunes (Rocky Horror Picture Show to Country n Western to Industrial in three easy steps)

The clientele are as shabby as the furniture, there´s a football table and a pinball machine out back, and they also do video rental. However, if you´re a bloke and suffer from the squits, bring your own toilet seat!

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Theme: People Watching
Dress Code: Dark and shabby. Pop a couple of piercings into your face. Tattoos are always good around here.
Address: Vlkova, Zizkov
Directions: Jump off the 9 tram outside FK Viktoria Zizkov stadium, and walk up the hill until you come upon Vlkova.

Nightlife Spot: Guru Club

Not easy to find, this one, and although I wouldn't recommend smoking weed abroad to anybody, this is probably as good a place as any to chill out with a joint or two. Guru Club is way off the tourist map in the seedier side of working class Zizkov, down the hill from the increasingly cool Zizkov most visitors make the effort to tram out to.

A cosy, warm lounge filled with old, slump-able sofas, plenty of decent alternative tunes on the juke box, during the day it makes a safe haven to hang out, have a few beers, write in your journal, and maybe roll yourself a nice fat joint. The other patrons tend to be young, scruffy, unwashed student types, a world away from the fashion-conscious clothes horses of the Centre's trendy cocktail bars and beer monsters on tour.

Should you feel like dragging yourself out of your tarnished gold sofa (dirtied to the colour of dragon scales), there's a couple of football tables and pinball machines. The drinks are no bargain for Zizkov - 27kc for a Pilsner, take it or leave it - but the chilled atmosphere more than makes up for it. There is also a fridge full of Crocodile baguettes should the munchies kick in.

Downstairs is a dance club, which plays a wide variety of music on any given night, but regretably I couldn't rouse myself from my sofa to tell you what that's like.

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Theme: Nightclub
Dress Code: The denizens of Guru Club tend to regard newcomers with mild suspicion, possibly because most of them have a bagload of green in their jacket pocket and have an eye out for undercover drug busts. Therefore, the more downbeat you dress the more likely you will get accepted and get involved in many interesting, if rather meandering conversations.

Also, bear in mind that Guru is the local kid's refuge from the horrors of Prague city centre, so it probably wouldn't do to lead a group of twelve blokes on a stag-do in there. Apart from that, pretty much anything goes.
Address: Rokycanova 29, Zizkov, Praha 3
Directions: Not an easy one to find, this one, but if you make it to Konevova and walk with the hill to the left, you'll find it.
Website: www.guruclub.cz

Nightlife Spot: M1 Cocktail Lounge

M1 typifies everything I hate about the new wave of Prague nitespots - trading in the boisterous, convivial atmosphere of the traditional beerhalls for achingly trendy and po-faced people-watching, cocktail-sipping, see-and-be-seen aloofness. With the standard issue non-descript Dance music playing in the background, the mood of this shrine to posing is outlined by the seating arrangements - rather than bellowing at your fellow drinkers across a rough-hewn wooden table, you're all lined up along the wall on comfy benchlike sofas, perching your ludicrously priced cocktail on the little table between you. That way you're all peering out into the barroom, checking out the posers and model wannabes instead of having a good old chat.

Having said that, it is stylishly designed, and decorated to provide exactly the atmosphere the owners presumably want - with the minimalist decoration and lighting, it's the icy side of cool and painstakingly fashionable. So if that's your bag, or you just crave an escape from smokey beerhalls, it might just be the thing for you.

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Theme: Other
Dress Code: You can usually blag your way in wearing anything, but to blend in, sleek and trendy seems to be the M1 code of dress.
Address: Masna 1, Stare Mesto, Praha 1
Directions: Just off the bottom right hand corner of Old Town Square (facing the Jan Hus memorial), Masna is on the right hand side.

Nightlife Spot: Batalion

Batalion seems to have been around longer than Prague Castle, and given it's central location and it's twenty-four-hour drinking times, it quite often figures in people's plans as the first few drinks of the evening or somewhere to go when everywhere else is shut. The latter option is usually the more fun, with an alcoholic haze to shield you against the disparate characters that tend to congregate in Batalion in the early hours of the morning - the losers, the pimps, the flyer-distributers, the homeless, the grungers, metalheads, stoners and lost members of stag parties.

Civilized it's not. The bar upstairs is semi-respectable, opening up straight onto rijna during the daytime, welcoming tourists and locals alike. Downstairs in the cramped, murky, smoke-filled cellar is where the nightowls congregate after the witching hour, and it's not uncommon to see whole groups of dreadlocked friends asleep with their heads on the table. Live music is often available earlier in the evening, usually of the terrible cover version variety.

However, despite some of the alarming and just plain scary looking people lurking in Batalion's nooks and crannies, it does maintain an Old School Prague tradition - of getting mashed out of your face and getting involved in a deep conversation at five in the morning with someone who knows about three words of English, and making a friend for life!

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Theme: Nightclub
Dress Code: This isn't a place to parade about in your new Le Wanker shirt - dark colours and holes in the knees seems to be the general dress code among those waiting for the trams to start running again.
Address: Rijna 3, Praha 1
Directions: Facing up Wenceslas Square, turn ninety degrees right and walk along. You'll soon see Batalion on your right.

Nightlife Spot: Jo's bar

Once a comforting place to tuck away in when the quirks of Prague were getting too much, Jo's Bar now seems content in it's old age to have a snooze in front of the TV then get to bed early. It's still a cosy wooden bar area with some more discreet tables out back, but the place has lost it's edge since the 'Garaz' downstairs has closed. Without that crumbling cellar place, always a great little room to dance to Chilli Peppers in a smokey, rough-edged, fire-exit-free place until the early hours, now the only thing to do is stack up on comfort food and discuss where you're going to head next.

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Theme: Eating and Drinking
Dress Code: There is no dress code here.
Phone: +420- 2 9001 1612
Address: Malostranske Namesti 7, Praha 1 CZ, 110 00
Directions: Lesser Town, near tram #12 stop
Website: http://www.josbarprague.com/

Nightlife Spot: Blue Light Jazz Club

A cosy and laid back little two roomed joint a few metres from the main tourist drag of Charles Bridge, the 'Blue Light' is a mellow hang out populated by mainly Bohemian and arty types, dotted with the occasional barfly. The blackened walls and ceilings are completely covered with graffiti scratched into the plaster, and black-and-white photos of jazz greats doing their thing.

It's proximity to Charles Bridge and the mainly local and in-the-know crowd testifies to the majority of tourist's unwillingness to step even a few feet off the tourist trail, and it's a great place to hang out with a cocktail and try to look cool in a 'I'm Looking Cool Without Even Trying And Everyone Knows It Because That's What They're Trying to Do Aswell.' kind of way. The drinks are no bargain, it's crowded but never unpleasantly so, the music compliments the conversation rather than overpowers it. In short, a gem. Take the plunge and find it - then pat yourself on the back for making the discovery afterwards!

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Theme: Live Music
Dress Code: If you dress like you've just come from an audition for an off-Broadway play, or just dress like you don't care what people think of you (but presentably so), then you should fit in just fine.
Address: Josefska 1, Mala Strana
Directions: If you're coming off Charles Bridge towards the castle, keep your eyes peeled for Josefska on the right.