Il Messaggiere - Sex, drugs and gritty reality on Prague's underworld tours

"I pass on my cautionary tale," said the 54-year-old sex worker as she chain-smoked her way up the central Wenceslas Square.

"At least my ruined life can be useful. I can make a clean breast of it. It's a relief."

Lada, who was homeless for years, is one of six tour guides who work for a social enterprise called Pragulic tackling "myth and prejudice" around people who live on the streets of the Czech capital.

Prague was infamous for its criminal underworld and drug problem in the 1990s. It still has a substantial homeless population of around 4,000, according to its social services.

"We are trying to open people's eyes," Pragulic's Petra Jackova told AFP, "and teach them how someone may end up on the street. The dividing line is sometimes very thin."

For 12 years Pragulic's tours have been giving homeless people a voice and a chance to get a foothold back in society.

"It's a therapy of sorts for them -- some have forgotten fragments of their lives and here they can put their memories together," Jackova said.

- 'I wanted to live' -

Some guides have quit after paying off their debts and settling down elsewhere, while others are close to doing so.

Lada, who once lost everything to drugs and slot machines, does one tour a week to earn 400 CZK (16 euros, $17) plus tips.

She still works as a sex worker to make extra money. But now that she's clean of drugs for four years, the avid reader would like to quit.

"I only go when I need to buy something. Washing powder, cat food," said Lada, who is lesbian.

"I work technically," she chuckled. "I can't manage more than 20 minutes mentally."

Lada became a sex worker at 19. Two years before she had given birth to a son but soon left him in her mother's care and quit her small hometown for Prague.

"I was young and stupid. But I wanted to live," she said.

She spent 30 years on drugs, working in the sex trade in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland.

She ended up on the street, living at Prague's main train station and in an old car. Her drug-induced bipolar disorder put her in a psychiatric hospital 15 times.

Two dozen mostly young tourists listen as Lada recounts how a client nearly strangled her to death and how another kicked her out of a car naked.

Petra Weidenhofferova, a store manager who took the tour, said she was surprised by Lada's openness.

"You could say she may be ashamed or hide something, but this sounded really natural and interesting," added Weidenhofferova, who paid some $15 for the ticket.

- On a 'mission' -

Outside the main train station on another night, 56-year-old Roman Balaz jovially greeted a group of students.

"I am your ticket to the underworld," the pony-tailed guide told them.

Having grown up in an orphanage, the former baker first tried drugs at 32 after splitting with his boyfriend.

He became a sex worker before ending up on the street for nine years.

Balaz gradually quit drugs, taking 10 months to recover.

He took the students to a homeless shelter and then to a couple staying under a railway bridge where he once used to live.

Surrounded by garbage, clothing, prams and the scuttle of rats on the gravel, the students hesitated before showering the couple with questions.

Encouraged by Balaz, they then tipped them -- "food money", as the guide said.

Balaz, who once trained as a fashion designer and dreams of his own collection one day, said he sees being a guide as "a mission".

He insisted that he has no regrets about his past.

"I'm happy. Maybe I'm crazy, but I take my life as it is. And this all is a part of it," he said.

L.Bernardi--IM