If you must do Prague in chilly October, do try to squeeze in a State dinner or two. It is the only way to see Prague Castle in all its gilded, chandeliered splendour, my dear, and if fish terrine and yet another variation on pork are not to your liking, well, there are compensations enough.
On one side is a charming Czech diplomat who abruptly changes the subject when the absent first lady, Mrs Havel, comes up for mention.
On the other is a genial Czech politician from the senior opposition party, a straight-from-the-hip kinda guy. Far from ducking a current hot potato - the wall going up at Usti nad Labem to separate gypsy-occupied apartment blocks from private homes - he greets it with wide-eyed innocence: "But it's a beautiful wall. I'd like to have one around my own house, if I had a house. But I live in an apartment," he ends mournfully. The diplomat shifts uncomfortably. Heck, they've already taken flak from the likes of Nelson Mandela, and their EU entry may be jeopardised by this issue.
The opinion polls also get a mention.
Ten years after being ousted, the unreformed Communist Party has just galloped into second place with more than 20 per cent support, only half a point behind our genial politican's party and five and a half ahead of the governing Social Democrats. "Ach, their supporters are the old and the uneducated. Maybe soon they will die," he says with a nervous giggle. At which the diplomat seems about ready to expire himself. Fortunately for both, State dinners last a flat 90 minutes - and that includes drinks, speeches and five courses. Thirty seconds into the post-prandial brandies, the politician is insisting that of course he was joking as we are ushered down red-carpeted steps into a moonlit Prague night.
Behind the "joke", however, lurks more than a germ of truth. Fear, bravado, a taste for power and a shaky grasp of the democratic spirit are dangerous drivers while democracy is still in its infancy.
Back among the proletariat, despite the Disneyesque sheen off the Old Town Square, the hordes of exuberant schoolchildren on tour, the battalions of Germans, Japanese and Americans thronging the Charles Bridge, disillusionment hangs heavy in the Central European air. The euphoria of 10 years ago when Prague was suddenly swamped with abandoned Trabants while their East German occupants jumped to asylum into the garden of the West German embassy, seems aeons away.
There is nothing you cannot have in Prague. Fendi and Dior are among the scores of prestigious names above the doors, but the shop assistants can be incredibly surly. Two-tier pricing - one for locals, one for foreigners - is common. The taxi rip-off is considered a Prague rite of passage. The body shapes of women in the Old Town Square are distorted by the handbags worn beneath coats for security. Like democracy, the mechanics of customer service may be in place but the spirit lags behind. After all, if you don't like it, there will be another 70 million customers behind you.
Prague is very beautiful but its soul may be sick. Ten years on, Vaclav Havel, the iconic president, prisoner of conscience and guardian of the ideological State, is perceived to be merely human. They say he has grown aloof and arrogant. As for the second Mrs Havel, the actress he married within 11 months of his first wife's death from cancer, few can speak of her without a curl of the lip. The dissidents he led to victory in glorious '89 entered the wilderness soon after.
All across the states of the former Communist bloc, tales of corruption, cronyism and naked criminality inside and outside politics, are rife. The newly-appointed Hungarian cabinet minister who elevated his daughter-in-law from travel agency employee to the board of the national airline - with equally plum posts for his brother and mother-in-law - gets regular mention merely for its amusement value.
Jiri Pehe, a former dissident and Havel adviser, muses half-jokingly about setting up a new political party: "I'm not sure there is an ideological niche. It would have to be something like a Party for Decent People - which wouldn't get you too far," he says wryly.
In beautiful, blessedly uncrowded Budapest, an English couple is reeling out of an "antiques" shop on the fashionable Vaci Utca after being quoted £24 for a small, particularly undistinguished garden gnome. Greed gone mad in a city where a packet of Marlboros still costs £1. The assistant deals with the politely incredulous "I'm sorry?" by ignoring them.
His days are numbered anyway. Communist-era shopkeepers famously never grasped the concept of browsing. We revive ourselves in a smart pavement cafe with a cocktail called "The Russians are Coming" and vow to sell out by visiting one manifestation of the explosion of Western-style malls around the city.
Mammut (as in mammoth, complete with vast elephant at the entrance) is one of them. Four vast, energy-sapping, ear-splitting floors of Morgan, Mango, Kookai, Tommy and their ilk are topped with a food court offering Thai, American, Greek, Austrian and Chinese cuisine as well as a cafe with Miro-inspired decor for a stylish coffee break. Customer service is almost overwhelming. Not one, but several assistants spring to attention. Despite a mountain of Western research showing the collateral damage inflicted by huge shopping complexes, the trend is tidal.
And Mammut is by no means Budapest's top of the range. Across town, there's one offering mini-golf and a 2,000-square-foot indoor garden. Another is planning a 30-metre high replica of Niagara Falls, while the latest of the crop will feature a tropicarium and aquariums complete with sharks, alligators and snakes.