It was just a few days ago that I was talking about
Prague and the Velvet Revolution and how I regret, just a wee bit, the fact that I didn’t make the move there in the
early 90s (it sounds like it was so much fun). I was thinking when I wrote that that the whole Prague as tourist
destination thing was more or less holding steady, that with other places in Slovenia and Bulgaria and Romania opening
up, that Prague was seeing a decline in its visitation. Wrong.
According to this piece in the International
Herald Tribune (IHT), the numbers for Prague
tourism are skyrocketing. Yup, the annual number of tourists in the Czech Republic (7.4 million last year) is expected
to almost double within the next five years, according to the business research organization Eurobarometer. If
that pace continues, tourists will soon outnumber the Czech population of 10 million. And if it continues (that is, if
it doubles) every five years for the next 100 years, then (let’s see…where’s my calculator) the number of tourists
visiting Prague in 2105 will be 242 billion! Holy Kafka, Batman. That is going to make for some very crowded
bars.