Prague

How to get thereThe lowest round-trip air fare between Boston and Warsaw at press time was $1,001 on Northwest Airlines . Between Boston and Prague, it was $935 on American Airlines. We took a 14-day Tauck Tour beginning in Poland and continuing to Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic. The $3,870 per person, double occupancy, covered hotels, ground transportation, most meals, and some incidentals. Tauck World Discovery, 800-788-7885 or www.tauck.com.What to doThis is the world of Chopin, Mozart, Strauss, and Beethoven, where opera, ballet, and concerts abound.

HANDEL: "Water Music" Suite (arr. Harty) MOZART: Symphonies Nos. 36 ("Linz") and 38 ("Prague") Boston Symphony Orchestra Charles Munch, conductor (ICA Classics DVD) BEETHOVEN: "Egmont" Overture TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 5 Boston Symphony Orchestra Erich Leinsdorf, conductor (ICA Classics DVD) ICA Classics continues its welcome series of video recordings that the Boston Symphony Orchestra made back in the 1950s and 1960s, in conjunction with WGBH-TV, under music directors Charles Munch and Erich Leinsdorf, often in repertoire with...

PRAGUE - Life here can sometimes feel a bit like stunted adolescence. Remember freshman year of college, when you realized you could have Lucky Charms for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and no one would lecture you? Same concept here - minus the Lucky Charms. Its architecture and history may be hundreds of years old, but Prague itself is a "young," transient city. Most who land here are just one or two years out of college. They come with their oversized backpacks to teach English, drink cheap beer, and escape the responsibilities waiting for them on the other side of the world.

Little Madlenka, age 6, wanted to be a priest when she grew up — which "for a young Catholic girl was certainly a sign of ambition," notes Madeleine Albright wrily in her engaging new book. Albright, the nation's first woman secretary of state, published a bestselling autobiography, "Madam Secretary," soon after her term ended, and three more books since then. Now comes "Prague Winter," focusing on the years during and after World War II. Madlenka (her official name was Marie Jana)

A street in the Czech capital has been named after former U.S. President Ronald Reagan to honor his contribution to the fall of communism. The street is located in front of the U.S. ambassador’s residence in the Prague 6 district. Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice helped unveil the new name of the street Friday. U.S. Ambassador Norman Eisen thanked Prague authorities and called the move a “truly fitting commemoration to the man who in so many ways lay the groundwork for our strong partnership today.’’ Three other streets in Prague had been previously named after...

Four wooden figures on the Czech capital's famous medieval astronomical clock have been removed for repairs. Clock keeper Petr Skala said Friday that the figures need a regular fix of paint to prevent humidity damage. Skala said the clock — installed on Prague's old-town hall in 1410 — won't be shut down during the restoration. Legend has it that when the clock stops the capital faces catastrophe. The figures being repaired include the clock tower's famous figure of Death — represented by a skeleton.

The urn carrying Vaclav Havel's ashes has been buried at his family plot at a cemetery in the Czech capital of Prague. Havel was the dissident playwright who led the 1989 revolution that toppled four decades of communist rule before becoming the country's president. He died Dec 18 at age 75. Havel's widow Dagmar, his brother Ivan and other family members and friends attended a private ceremony at Prague's Vinohrady cemetery on Wednesday — exactly 15 years after Havel married Dagmar.

PRAGUE - Holocaust survivors, Jewish groups, and experts gathered in Prague yesterday to assess efforts to return property and possessions stolen by the Nazis to their rightful owners or heirs. The five-day conference, which brings together delegates from 49 countries, is a follow-up to a 1998 meeting in Washington that led to agreements on recovering art looted by the Nazis. Stuart Eizenstat, head of the US delegation, called it the most ambitious international meeting ever on the recovery of such stolen possessions or compensation for their loss.

PRAGUE - In the 1950s, Zdenek Miler stumbled over a molehill in woods west of Prague, giving him the idea for an animated cartoon character that has enchanted millions of children. Mr. Miler, creator of the Little Mole character, died yesterday. He was 90 and spent the last months of his life at a nursing home southwest of Prague. He created the character, always cheerful and ready to help, in 1956. The first episode, "How the Mole got his Trousers," was an immediate hit. Since then, 50 episodes have been made.

HANDEL: "Water Music" Suite (arr. Harty) MOZART: Symphonies Nos. 36 ("Linz") and 38 ("Prague") Boston Symphony Orchestra Charles Munch, conductor (ICA Classics DVD) BEETHOVEN: "Egmont" Overture TCHAIKOVSKY: Symphony No. 5 Boston Symphony Orchestra Erich Leinsdorf, conductor (ICA Classics DVD) ICA Classics continues its welcome series of video recordings that the Boston Symphony Orchestra made back in the 1950s and 1960s, in conjunction with WGBH-TV, under music directors Charles Munch and Erich...

Philip Kerr excels at navigating the dark corners of crime thrillers without providing much guiding light to his hero, Berlin detective Bernie Gunther. The challenge for Gunther couldn't be more extreme: Nazi Germany, where he tries to dispense a rough justice amid so much officially sanctioned crime. Gunther has no illusions about trying to save the world from Nazism; he's too busy trying to save himself, since so many of the party elite admire his skills as a sleuth — an old-fashioned street bull with a thug's touch and closer's instinct — that they often summon him to their viper's nest for...

LOS ANGELES - Doug Houda, these days a Bruins assistant coach, was there from the start. It was a long time ago, early in the 1997-98 NHL season, but Houda remembers those early days on Long Island with that humongous, gangly kid from Slovakia trying to find his place in the game. But it wasn't so much Zdeno Chara's 6-foot-9-inch frame that everyone was talking about in those days with the Islanders. It was how the unknown kid from Trencin with the perpetual smile went about his work.

LOS ANGELES - Doug Houda, these days a Bruins assistant coach, was there from the start. It was a long time ago, early in the 1997-98 NHL season, but Houda remembers those early days on Long Island with that humongous, gangly kid from Slovakia trying to find his place in the game. But it wasn't so much Zdeno Chara's 6-foot-9-inch frame that everyone was talking about in those days with the Islanders. It was how the unknown kid from Trencin with the perpetual smile went about his work.

Two artists have used wax from the thousands of candles that Czechs lit to mourn the death of President Vaclav Havel to create a large heart honoring him. Lukas Gavlovsky — whose 7-foot-tall (2 meter), multicolored art work went on display in Prague on Friday, says it is meant "to celebrate (Havel's) ideas, his greatness. " Gavlovsky created the heart with his colleague, Roman Svejda, and dozens of volunteers. Havel, a dissident who helped his nation shed Communism, was long associated with hearts.

The Czech government has signed a deal for Prague to host the headquarters of an ambitious satellite navigation system that is expected to rival the U.S. Global Positioning System. The deal was signed Friday in Prague by Czech Transport Minister Pavel Dobes and Carlo des Dorides, executive director of the European GNSS Agency. The European Union wants to achieve independence in satellite navigation with a system known as Galileo that it says is more precise and more reliable than the current GPS, while fully controlled by civil authorities.

PRAGUE - Czech diplomat Milos Pojar, who helped reestablish ties with Israel after they had been severed by Czechoslovakia's Communist rulers, has died. He was 71. The Foreign Ministry announced his death Tuesday, but gave no further details. Czech television said Mr. Pojar died Monday in a Prague hospital. Mr. Pojar was born in 1940 in the capital, Prague, and became his country's first ambassador to Tel Aviv in 1990. Communist Czechoslovakia had severed diplomatic ties with Israel in line with Soviet-bloc policies in 1967.

PRAGUE — Jan Wiener, a Czech Jew who fought in the British Air Force during World War II after fleeing Nazis in Germany and Czechoslovakia, has died. He was 90 years old. Jiri Pehe, director at Prague’s branch of New York University, said Mr. Wiener died Wednesday at Prague’s military hospital. The cause of death was not given. Born in Hamburg to a Czech-German Jewish family, Mr. Wiener and his life reflected the turbulence of the 20th century. His family fled Hitler’s Germany for Prague, but Mr. Wiener found himself on the run again after...

Four wooden figures on the Czech capital's famous medieval astronomical clock have been removed for repairs. Clock keeper Petr Skala said Friday that the figures need a regular fix of paint to prevent humidity damage. Skala said the clock — installed on Prague's old-town hall in 1410 — won't be shut down during the restoration. Legend has it that when the clock stops the capital faces catastrophe. The figures being repaired include the clock tower's famous figure of Death — represented by a skeleton.

The urn carrying Vaclav Havel's ashes has been buried at his family plot at a cemetery in the Czech capital of Prague. Havel was the dissident playwright who led the 1989 revolution that toppled four decades of communist rule before becoming the country's president. He died Dec 18 at age 75. Havel's widow Dagmar, his brother Ivan and other family members and friends attended a private ceremony at Prague's Vinohrady cemetery on Wednesday — exactly 15 years after Havel married Dagmar.