I was in Prague in August, 1968, 35 years ago this week, just a day or two before tanks from the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries rolled into the city, crushing the so-called "Prague Spring" of liberalisation swiftly and brutally. It was my first foreign assignment and I was working on a business story there, nothing whatever to do with the great political events of that summer, writes Hugh Oram.
During the week I spent in Prague, the atmosphere was electrifying. Everyone was on a high over the liberating reforms of the Czech premier Alexander Dubcek, but people knew that invasion was imminent and that the relative freedoms introduced over the previous six months would soon be swept away. One day, I went into a jazz club just off Václavské námesti (Wenceslas Square) and joined the throngs of people listening to a radio, tuned to a French long-wave station, full of crackling from interference, which could just be heard reporting the rumours of tanks being massed close to the Czechoslovak borders.
Despite the situation, I met everyone I needed to meet in Prague and, amazingly, everything I needed to get organised was dealt with efficiently by various government departments.
At the offices of Hospodarske Noviny, still going today as the Czech Republic's daily business newspaper. I got into conversation with a middle-aged journalist there, who told me that he and some of his colleagues had done time in the coal mines during the early 1950s because they had fallen foul of the regime over some minor criticism. One taxi driver told me that in a previous existence he had been a university professor.
Yet in many ways, Prague that August was remarkably normal. I stayed in a bed and breakfast place on Národni, a main street in the city centre leading up to Wenceslas Square. My room was vast, big enough for a family of a dozen, and the landlady was very friendly, even though we only had one or two words in common.
In between all my work, I went around like an ordinary tourist, seeing all the great sights of Prague. Nowhere in Europe had more architectural splendours, including St Vitus's cathedral, the castle, the Charles Bridge, the Tyn
church, the Betramka villa where Mozart stayed when he was in Prague, and the Child of Prague. I explored Mala Straná, an old quarter near the cathedral and Staré Mesto, the old town. All the sights of Prague, then hardly known in Western Europe, were wonderful. I took in at some exceptionally colourful and melodic folk dance performances, which were truly intoxicating.
But in restaurants and banks, you could wait hours for service. The busiest people in Prague were the illegal moneylenders, who seemed to be at every street corner. One I spotted must have been a juggler in his previous occupation: he was busy changing money and at the same time, keeping a procession of black balls in the air - quite a dramatic performance! For anyone who was willing to take the risk, a fistful of US dollars meant a very cheap holiday.
On the last night I spent in Prague, I went to see a performance of Jánacek's opera Jenufa in the late 19th-century National Theatre, just across the street from where I was staying. The sheer emotional charge among cast and audience flooded out like the last outpouring of hope before the curtain came down on the brief period of reforms.
The next morning, I took the plane from Ruzyne airport; the weather was grey and rainy and the flight to Brussels was extremely turbulent and unsettling. I had no sooner got home to Dublin than the TV and newspaper images of the invasion started coming through.
A protest meeting was held in the old Jurys hotel in Dame Street. Hundreds of people attended, but what could we do except pass totally ineffectual resolutions? I had been quite friendly with Miroslav Hudec, who had been the Czechoslovak representative here, and I had often enjoyed great hospitality with him and his family at their home in Raheny. I told him I was very sorry for what had just happened to his country, but in best diplomatic style, he just shrugged his shoulders and said nothing. Soon afterwards, he was recalled to Prague and I never heard what happened to him.
The following year, 1969, I managed to get a visa to return, this time on holiday with a friend. The Czech hospitality was still evident; I remember vividly the stuffed goose, a typically Czech dish, that the family we stayed with served up for Sunday lunch.
But Prague itself was sullen and quiet, with soldiers plentiful on the streets. All the life had been drained out of the place and the country had to wait another 20 years before freedom returned.
These days, Prague is a totally different city, due to become an EU capital next year. Czech people themselves tend not to remember too much about August, 1968, but for one journalist at least, young at the time, it was an assignment I've never been able to get out of my head.