The streets are wide but there is no traffic. The shop shelves are poorly stocked but there are no customers. The people go about their daily lives and they wear no smiles.
This is Pyongyang, capital of one of the most politically isolated countries. It is a surprisingly impressive city, spotlessly clean, with grandiose buildings and modern roads. However, look under the surface and you find Pyongyang and North Korea are trapped in the Cold War past.
From the moment you leave the grey, grim, deserted Pyongyang airport, you are reminded that you have entered one of the strictest dictatorships in the world.
Pictures of North Korea's founder dictator, Kim Il Sung, and his son, Kim Jung Il, radiate everywhere. A huge portrait of the elder Kim, dead six years but still feted by the masses, is the first thing I saw when I landed yesterday morning.
His image also jumped out from a 60-foot bronze statue from a hillside as we travelled into the city. Unlike other cities, you don't see advertisements here for McDonalds, Coca-Cola or Western consumer goods. The only advertisements on the billboards are for this reclusive regime and the elder Kim, known as "the great leader" and his successor, known as "the dear leader".
Almost every adult in Pyongyang wears a badge adorned with a picture of the country's founding dictator.
While the roads in the city compare with any capital in the West, the first thing that strikes you is the lack of traffic. During the 30-minute drive from the airport into the centre, people could be seen walking in droves. There were some bikes, which North Korea has begun importing from China. In the fields men and women toiled by hand. I saw only one tractor. A mule and cart was the most popular form of farm transport.
Little touches North Korea from the outside, and there was huge nervousness that 75 European journalists were accompanying the Swedish Prime Minister, Mr Goran Persson, and a senior EU delegation, on their historic visit to the hermitlike country. The group will today hold a formal meeting with Mr Kim Jung Il to discuss reunification of the two Koreas, food aid, human rights and missile defence.
One "minder" was assigned to every three journalists. We were firmly advised, after checking into the Kyro Hotel, to "have a rest" and not to leave. We were given special arm-bands marking us out as members of the "foreign" press. We were warned to keep it on. I managed to give my minder, a decent but extremely nervous 25-year-old, the slip. Walking out the main hotel door I turned right down Changwang Street, sticking out like a sore thumb amongst the dribble of North Koreans visible in this ghost town. Many fixed me with a hard stare. Some managed a smile. Most got upset when I produced a camera.
It felt eerie strolling down this big boulevard with hardly any people and no cars or buses. In the huge five-storey Yokjon department store, the shelves were stocked with hundreds of the same pairs of shoes, old-fashioned televisions, and dated clothing items. But only a handful of customers.