Your Guide to Czechoslovakia [antikvár]

YOUR GUIDE TO CZECHOSLOVAKIA Czechoslovakia is a delight-ful country of forests, lakes, spas and lovely old towns. Its capital, Prague, known as the 'Golden City' at the tura of the century, still retains a medieval air. Incredibly it escaped dam-age in the last war. With its hundred spires and spectacular Gothic and Baroque architec-ture it has always drawn visi-tors. There are somé 473 towers and spires in the city andover three thousand streets, many of them old and twisting and often leading to gardens and parks. Prague's green areas are said to average 26 square metres for each of its more than one millión inhabit-ants. To add more statistics the capital has 20 theatres (in-cluding the famous Black The-atre) 12 museums and 80 cin-emas—one being a circular panoramic one. Gothic architecture through-out the country is second to none. There are somé 2,400 castles. Small stone village bridges are festooned with sculp-tured fígures and in thecountry-side, with no houses in sight, you can round a corner in your car and come upon a statue of a saint or a cardinal—or even a stone figure of King Charles IV. Lakes are edged with pine-woods and there are magnifi-cent caves. For the sportsman there is superb hunting and fishing. There is skiing in the spectacular Tatra and Giant Mountains, sailing and swim-ming in innumerable lakes, walking and hiking in nature reserves, forests and mountains. Country roads are amazing-ly free of traffic but signposts are plentiful. Colourful nation-al costumes are still worn on festive occasions. The Author Nina Nelson was born in Newfoundland and educated there and in England. She stud-ied singing and piano at the Royal Academy of Music but as travel has always been the thing she enjoys most, instead of music she turnéd to writing as a career. She has travelled extensively in the Middle East and has writ-ten guides in thisseriestoEgypt, Lebanon, Jordán and Syria. She knows Europe well and lived in Czechoslovakia for two years when her husband was at the British Embassy. Her main interests are photo-graphy, theatre, music and reading.