17 September 2006

Milking The Public In Prague

This morning I was giving a car tour of Prague and turned off a main square as indicated by arrows in the road. As I drove along stationary cars were parked along the road until it got narrower and next thing a police car pulled me over. My companions spoke better Czech than me so we established that I should have made a turn somewhere further back in the road. Apparently, they were very friendly and settled for a payment of 500 crowns (£12) before directing me to the main road out of the city. That was the end of the car tour. Anyway, by the evening I'd completely forgotten about the incident, but by chance was in the same area, this time on foot. I got reminded when I saw a couple more police in the same spot waving down cars as they came through. Both the drivers I saw caught were in Czech cars and they looked pretty dischuffed. Time to retrace my steps I thought. As you drive down this road and you see this sign for the first time, there is no possibility of turning. Every junction just before or after has a no entry sign. In other words, without knowing about the road ahead from experience (in my case bitter) you will always break the law and it appears the police are semi-permanently in situ collecting cash. I could see no safety implications. Apart from blogging, should I let this go?

4 comments:

PETER MARTINOVIC said...

No wonder. If you want to drive our roads, you need to know them first. It is quite common that there is an information sign of the exit from a highway 50 metres behind the exit :)

Anonymous said...

That's a cheeky one, I'm sure there are a few more roads like that in Prague.

Anonymous said...

How is The Czech Republic reporting on the sensational news from Hungary?

Praguetory said...

No different than for any other international news. First 15 minutes of the 7.30 news is national, second half is international. WW3 could break out and you wouldn't know until 7.48pm. Sorry, being facetious. Will look into it. It is actually a bit worrying given the presence of Nationalists in Slovak government, but I don't really know enough details yet to be speculating like that.