prison visit

“This is the second time I have taken someone to a prison,” my Uber driver tells me cheerfully. On the first occasion he was taking a man to Pancrac who was about to start his sentence. Today he is taking me to Mlada Boleslav, sixty seven kilometres from Prague, a drive of about an hour through the pouring rain.

Mlada Boleslav is known chiefly for its huge Skoda factory and that is my driver’s first assumption about why I am going there; it is not an typical tourist destination. He has obviously never been asked to go to the prison before, so stops and asks various locals, who all know where it is and point us in the right direction. Mlada Boleslav is an unremarkable town, with an attractive, cobbled central square and plenty of new blocks of flats and shopping precincts. The prison is close to the centre and I spot it before my driver does. The law courts face Namesti Republiky, looking fresh and smartly painted; lurking behind them is the prison, with peeling paintwork and rusting bars at the window. It is now used exclusively as a film location and today is the one day in May when it is free from cameras, lights and action.

I have looked on YouTube at a short video of Tom Cruise filming scenes there for Mission Impossible 4. Barbed wire was looped around the perimeter fencing, Russian signs had been erected and there was scaffolding as high as the building. Everywhere there were cameras, cranes, lorries, people with walkie-talkies and, towards the end, Tom Cruise himself signing autographs. Today it is empty and still.