The last time I was in Prague, a random guy slipped a pill of ecstasy into my mouth at a club. I didn't want to be rude, so I swallowed it. After I got royally fucked, he proceeded to tell me in a weird accent, "You are my American teddy bear," all the while trying to cuddle with me. That didn't disturb me as much as the fact that I was interacting with an actual gay guy. Because, believe it or not, Eastern Europe wasn't exactly the most gay-friendly region in the world. But that was ten years ago, and things are different in Prague, which is a little more cosmopolitan, and therefore more gay-friendly.

Landlocked Prague -- unlike, say, Venice -- has never experienced an influx of Far East cultural influence. So that the world's first Buddha-Bar Hotel is debuting in this most medieval of cities seems a curious incongruity (a second will open soon in Dubai, a more obvious marriage of flash and cash). But the Buddha Bar aesthetic has always been nothing if not shamelessly baroque, so perhaps it will actually fit quite comfortably within the Czech capital’s ornate cityscape.

Following a recent onslaught of trendy everythings in the once scruffy Czech capital, comes now a pair of gleaming 21st Century hotels. The sleek new 305-room Hilton Prague Old Town flaunts David Collins interiors inspired by Czech Modernism and Cubism, as well as an outpost of London’s Maze eatery, Gordon Ramsay’s first foray into the East. And the new Imperial Hotel, an Art Deco masterpiece that had faded into a grubby but weirdly opulent student flop, has just been glamorously gussied up.