Hello, I'm Simon Calder, welcoming you to my independent travel podcast, bringing you the latest news on travelling, whether you're just dreaming of a great escape or actively making plans for one.

And you might be doing that because I've been looking at some of the absurdly cheap flights that are going out for the

rest of January and into early February. And it's frankly mad. I mean, when you're paying less than

£10 return, which is, for example, open from Stansted to Bordeaux or from Edinburgh to

Copenhagen this weekend.

And that, yes, is including taxes.

It is absolutely ridiculous.

And it shows you what a tough, tough time it is for the travel companies.

However, I don't think that you should be entirely guided by price.

And so, in the spirit of finding how people are thinking just on this

cold January day, I put out a one-hour Twitter poll and nearly 2,000 people very kindly responded.

And the question was, which is the most rewarding central European capital to visit in terms of visual appeal, culture, hospitality and value.

Now, I put four cities down because those I think are the key central European capital cities.

Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia,

Budapest capital of Hungary, Prague, the Czech capital,

and Vienna, of course, capital of Austria.

And unbelievably, the public got it wrong.

Now, that's completely unfair.

What I mean is that my view is that

actually Prague shouldn't have won. Bratislava got a 6%, Vienna 24%, Budapest 33%, but Prague was clear winner with

37%.

So what's gone wrong here?

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