Here, you will find beggars, junkies, prostitutes and homeless people — but no Robin Hoods. Here, everybody steals off everybody. So begins one of Europe's less family-friendly walking tours. Provided by homeless organisation Pragulic, these tours aren't your typical jaunts around Charles Bridge and the castle. They're an altogether darker affair, shepherding tourists around seedier, lesser-known crevices of the Czech capital.
Each of the nine employed guides is either homeless or has spent a large proportion of their lives on the streets, and their tours explore the triumvirate of homelessness, drugs and prostitution — with a bit of police corruption and the occasional Mafia killing thrown in along the way.
Our guide — the most popular of the lot, according to Pragulic — is Karim. A former male prostitute and heroin addict, he has spent 25 of his 40 years living — and working — on Prague's streets. Dressed in a leather duster that sweeps theatrically around every corner, his eyes are caked in thick eyeliner and he wears a jumble of pendants and trinkets around his neck.
His hands — an inky mess of tattoos and elaborate gothic rings — don't stop moving throughout the tour, drawing attention to every crack den, brothel or homeless hotspot he refers to.
There was a balcony in the station where people used to have sex, and others just used the park. Nowadays, the park is more of a living room for homeless people. A quick glance around confirms this; an assortment of beggars, vagrants and drug-users are territorially occupying the benches, or passed out on the grass around them.
