Just like Kafka, Rilke or Einstein, you can sit down for a coffee at Café Louvre today and write down your free-flowing thoughts on sticky notes that you can find with a simple pencil on every table. Or have a Death Before Noon breakfast cocktail at Café Slavia as a tribute to Hemigway’s legendary Death in the Afternoon cocktail. Or better yet, don’t. Prague won’t let go. Neither you nor me. This mama’s got claws. You have to adapt, or, – you better… We’d have to burn it down from two sides, at Vyšehrad and Hradčany, and then we might be able to escape. This is how Franz Kafka, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, describes his uncritical love for Prague and his inability to leave it in a letter to Oskar Pollak dated 20th December 1902. We Praguers are in the same position as Kafka. We love our Prague uncritically. And it’s a lifelong love. Prague has produced some of the most famous German writers of all time. Not only the lawyer and novelist Franz Kafka, but also the publicist, novelist, poet and translator Max Brod and the equally versatile Franz Werfel. For Franz Kafka, Brod was his closest friend. They met at the university. Brod encouraged the shy, strongly self-critical writer in his work and helped him even when he was ill. It is little known that Kafka was a healthy lifestyle enthusiast. He loved swimming and was also fond of vegetarian food. Unfortunately, he lost his battle with tuberculosis in 1924 at the age of forty, and in his will he wrote that his unpublished texts should be destroyed, with Max Brod serving as the person to take care of this as executor. However, he did not carry out this wish, and instead published the work. Fortunately – otherwise the world would have lost such treasures as The Trial, The Castle and America. The Czech and German authors of the so-called Prague Circle used to meet together in cafés. The Arco café has unfortunately ceased to exist. However, you can soak up the unique historical atmosphere in the two Viennese-style cafés that still exist. Cafe Louvre was founded in 1902. In addition to Franz Kafka, Max Brod and Franz Werfel, it was frequented in 1912 by Albert Einstein, who attended the regular Tuesday salons of the German-speaking intellectual and pioneer of the women’s movement Bertha Fant. Even today, Café Louvre is a meeting place for cultural and political figures, and you can put yourself in the shoes of Prague’s bohemians, for example at the traditional afternoon tea, served between 4 and 6 pm every day. Perhaps Prague’s most famous and popular café is Slavia. It was built in 1881 in the Art Deco style and every Prague resident knows its iconic marble and wood walls and chunky round tables. It offers a beautiful view of Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, the Petřín Tower and the National Theatre. It soon became a traditional meeting place for artists and intellectuals. Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, Nobel Prize winner for literature Jaroslav Seifert and world-famous composers Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák came here. After the Prague Spring, the invasion of the Russian army in 1968, Czechoslovak dissidents led by Václav Havel met here. For the Prague bohemians, there are special breakfast drinks like Death Before Noon, a cocktail of absinthe liqueur, prosecco and citrus dust. It is Prague’s answer to the Death in the afternoon cocktail, which was invented by Ernst Hemingway. Cheers!