Like Kafka, Rilke or Einstein, you can sit down for a coffee at Café Louvre today and write down your free-flowing thoughts on the little notepads you can find on every table. Or have a Death Before Noon breakfast cocktail in Slavia café as a tribute to Hemingway’s legendary Death in the Afternoon cocktail. Or maybe not. Prague won’t let go. Not you, not me. This little mother has claws. One has to adapt to that, or -. We would have had to burn it down from two sides, at Vyšehrad and at Hradčany, and then we might have managed 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 20 December 1902. We Praguers feel the same as Kafka. We love our Prague uncritically. And it’s a lifelong love. The most famous German literary authors of all time came from Prague. Lawyer and novelist Franz Kafka is probably the most well-known, but there were others, such as the publicist, novelist, poet, and translator Max Brod and the equally versatile Franz Werfel. Brod was Kafka’s closest friend. They met at university. Brod encouraged the shy, intensely self-critical writer in his work and helped him even during his illness. It’s a little-known fact that Kafka was a healthy lifestyle enthusiast. He loved swimming and was also fond of vegetarian food. In 1924, at the age of forty, he unfortunately lost his battle with tuberculosis, and in his will, he wrote that his unpublished texts should be destroyed, with Max Brod as executor. However, Brod did not fulfil this wish, but published the work instead. To our great fortune – otherwise, the world would have lost such treasures as The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika. Czech and German authors of the “Prague Circle” met up in cafés. Café Arco is unfortunately long gone. However, you can soak up the unique historical atmosphere in the two Viennese-style cafés that still exist. Café Louvre was founded in 1902. In addition to Franz Kafka, Max Brod, and Franz Werfel, it was also frequented in 1912 by Albert Einstein, who attended the regular Tuesday salons of Berta Fanta, the German-speaking intellectual and pioneer of the women’s movement. Even today, Café Louvre is a meeting place for cultural and political figures, and you can step into the shoes of Prague’s bohemians at the traditional five o’clock tea, served every day between 4 and 6 pm. Perhaps the most famous and most popular café in Prague is Slavia. Built in 1881 in the Art Deco style, every Prague resident knows its iconic walls of marble and wood and its sturdy round tables. Slavia offers a beautiful view of Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, the Petřín Lookout Tower, and the National Theatre. It soon became a traditional meeting place for artists and intellectuals. Franz Kafka, Rainer Maria Rilke, the Nobel Prize winner for literature Jaroslav Seifert, and the world-famous composers Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák were regulars here. After the Prague Spring, the invasion of the Russian army in 1968, Czechoslovak dissidents, led by Václav Havel, met here. For the Prague bohemian, Slavia offers special breakfast drinks such as Death Before Noon, a cocktail of absinthe liqueur, prosecco, and citrus dust. It’s Prague’s answer to the Death in the Afternoon cocktail invented by Ernst Hemingway. Cheers!