"So listen, I can tell you where to get some really good cocaine - and at a good price too."

"How," I asked myself, "do these people always find me?"

Debra had immersed herself in garnet shop #24,982, this one just off Staromětské Náměstí, the Old Town Square. In a moment of pique I decided that I couldn’t handle yet another garnet browsing experience and excused myself to the square to take some pictures of the astronomical clock and the clock tower. We actually had good weather, the only day of the trip with blue skies. As I set up the camera and tripod and blazed away at the clock tower and street life in the square, up came a Norwegian junky inquiring about my tripod and telling me where Prague’s best narcotics could be found.

Junkies notwithstanding, Staromětské Náměstí is one of my favorite places in Prague. Always has been. The square itself, which dates back to the 1330s, is paved with cobblestone and framed by homes, churches and buildings in Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles – all jammed up against one another in an architectural mishmash. In the midst of it all sits the Jan Hus memorial, a massive weathered sculpture and pigeon-perch dedicated to the church reformer who was burned at the stake in 1415. The streets leading into Staromětské Náměstí tend to be narrow winding affairs, which simply adds to the impact of the square when suddenly you round a corner and POW! it opens up in front of you. Its not a cramped little square, either. It’s a wide-open place edged with building façades that rush toward the sky, each capped with high-powered lamps that shine down into the square at night, casting the surroundings in a diffuse glow as the evening fog rolls in. In the summer the place is a mob scene – jam-packed with tables and umbrellas and tourists and suffie vendors, pickpockets and street musicians. In the winter, though ... in the winter the place is utter magic:

"Ahead the great old square lay open before us, a light blanket of glistening snow stretched thin over cobblestones finally free from summer crowds. Bright lamps shone from the high rooftops surrounding the square, their light filtering hazily through falling flakes, casting an effulgent glow that hung above the square like a canopy. Delicate traces of snow dusted the fans and swirls of the masonry and cornices, clothing the buildings in silken lacework, softening the hard stone. Our breath rose silently, tiny twin columns in the luminous night. All around us was the silence of a city at peace settling in for the night.

'It’s beautiful here at night, in the winter'’ I said. Peter nodded. We forgot our hunger and our fruitless search for food. We forgot time and the cold and simply soaked in the beauty of the snow-filled night." (Read the whole story here.)

After burning a roll of film I saw Debra as she emerged from the garnet shop. I waved her over. "I think I got some good shots," I told her. "By the way, when we get home remind me to go to www.manaproductions.com."

"Why? What website is that?"

"It's the website of a Norwegian drug addict I met here a little while ago. I told him I'd check it out."

Debra buried her face in her hands. "You meet the strangest people, Michael."

By the way, only one of the pictures from that roll turned out. When I got home and loaded up the slide projector I found out exactly what had happened to a roll of film that had mysteriously disappeared from our 2005 Morocco trip. Turns out I shot most of the roll in Morocco, in the Koutoubia Gardens surrounding the minaret in Marrakesh, then took the film out of the camera before it was finished. Then, like an idiot, I reloaded the same film in Prague – on the ONE GORGEOUS day we had - and shot a whole mess of Old Town Square photos right over the Marrakesh shots. The effect? An entire roll of double-exposed images of leafy trees (Marrakesh) and stone buildings (Prague). I did say, though, that one came out. Here it is: