The Presidents' Nighttime Prague Pub Crawl -- Clinton, Havel Spend Evening Touring Town

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - President Clinton swept into this formerly drab communist capital last night in a flash of color and excitement.

Vaclav Havel, the playwright turned president, took Clinton on a pub crawl that started as a stroll through history but descended into media pandemonium.

Havel led Clinton on a walk across the 15th-century Charles Bridge, one of the most beautiful spans in Europe, distinguished by 30 baroque statues spaced 100 feet apart on each side.

At one end of the bridge, Clinton paused to give an interview to Tom Brokaw, the anchorman for NBC News. At the other end was Dan Rather of CBS News. Twenty yards further stood Ted Koppel of ABC News.

Feverish presidential aides scurried about shouting "Let's go - out of the shot, folks," to make sure no one blocked the TV cameras' view.

A crowd of several thousand lined the streets at the bridge's end and across into the tourist-happy Old Town where Havel and Clinton next ventured.

Next stop for the two presidents was a famous pub frequented by writers (such as Havel), bohemians and lovers of good beer. U Zlateho Tygra (At the Golden Tiger) is housed in a 13th-century building with a bas-relief tiger over the front door.

Surrounded by a frenzy of photographers, Clinton and Havel alighted from Clinton's stretch limo. Inside the pub, Havel had a surprise waiting - the Czech couple whose son was a Clinton classmate at Oxford and who showed the president-to-be around town 24 years ago this week.

"When I knew I was coming here I wanted to walk across the bridge and I wanted to see you," Clinton told Bedrich and Jirina Kopold, as he kissed the latter on both cheeks.

The president ordered dinner for his guests, and did a fair job of putting away most of a breaded veal dish and about half a pint of pilsener.

"It was like a fairy tale," said Bedrich Kopold. "At 6:30 in the evening the bell rang in my flat and a police guard said we must go with him. He said the president wanted to see me.

"In that moment, I was afraid," he said. "Then the guard explained about going to the pub."

Clinton, meanwhile, was rolling toward his last stop for the night - the Reduta Jazz Club. The manager had cleared the card for the night, opening up the program for the First Saxophonist.

Clinton obliged, after someone presented him with a saxophone (that's two on this trip, alone, if you're scoring). He played "Summertime," followed by "My Funny Valentine."

Clinton also visited Prague's historic Old Jewish Cemetery. Wearing a light gray skull cap, the president walked solemnly among the graves and placed a pebble on one, a traditional mark of remembrance.

Clinton stopped first at the Pinkas synagogue, now a Holocaust museum where the names of 77,297 Czech Jews killed by the Germans in World War II are being inscribed again on a wall. The names had been plastered over in a resurgence of anti-semitism.