PRAGUE (AFP) -- "This is paradise," exclaimed 22-year-old David Stojka, one of the first guests at Prague's floating shelter for the homeless where he looked forward to a bed after two months on the streets.

"Hermes," a 250-bed converted barge anchored at a secluded section of the Vltava river embankment, is the Czech capital's novel response to the increasing numbers left behind in the country's post-communist economic success story.

"We believe this is the first homeless boat hostel of its kind in Europe," boasted Jiri Janecek, the city's rightwing lawmaker responsible for social services, at a lavish spread featuring a small chamber orchestra put on for the shelter's official launch last week.

The next evening, Stojka and around 40 of the estimated 5,000-6,000 homeless in central Europe's richest city were greeted with a cup of tea, showers, health checks and a canteen area to bring in food after paying 20 koruna (0.70 euros/0.90 dollars) at the door.

"I will try to stay here a few nights. I hope to try and get a permanent job, for example, in a supermarket or something," the fresh-faced and hopeful Stojka said.

He said he was thrown onto the streets when his Ukrainian employer disappeared owing him eight weeks wages.

The part-time jobs he finds do not give him enough to afford permanent accommodation and a return to his hometown, which he left "for family reasons," is out of the question.

Jozef Kanotz, 27, who quit unemployment-blighted eastern Slovakia more than a year ago and has been homeless for seven months, praised the shelter's open-door policy.

"The main advantage of this place is that it does not ask for documents," he said.

His lack of official papers means he is barred from other shelters and forced to work illegally when he has the chance of earning some money.

But he has few regrets about leaving Slovakia. "There is no work where I came from and what there was paid 5,000 koruna (144 euros, 187 dollars) a month. You could not get by on that."

For Jan Danovksy, a 70-year-old who supplements his pension by playing the accordion twice a week at a Prague restaurant, the converted barge is a "provisional" mooring until he gets a flat he has been promised by a local council.

After a few hours sleep, the trio were woken at 5:30 am (0430 GMT) and back on the street within an hour. The two-floored floating shelter, which offers bunk beds in 28 berths with a separate section for women, reopens its doors at 7:30 pm (1830 GMT).

The homeless can stay a week in the barge, which used to travel between the landlocked Czech Republic and the German port of Hamburg, before asking for an extension. Priority is given to those willing to rebuild their lives.

"These are far from the most desperate cases," commented Petra Lakatosova, the Prague director of the homeless charity Nadeje (Hope) which runs the shelter.

"There are also the long-term excluded who do not look for help from charities or institutions," she said.

"It gets these people off the streets, into somewhere warm where they can start to lead a decent life again. It means they do not risk frostbite and perhaps amputation in the winter because of the cold," she added.

Last winter, the city council erected army tents as temperatures lunged to minus 20 C (minus 4 F). The move highlighted its own shortcomings, as well as a fight by local councils unwilling to host shelters on their territory in a city that has become one of Europe's most popular tourist destinations with its stunning spires and impressive mediaeval quarter.

The off-shore solution steered round some of those objections.

The number of homeless in Prague has climbed in recent years as more families fracture in the face of increasing economic pressures and less social support, Paval Ondrak, the head a 153-bed Salvation Army hostel in Prague said.

Jakub Chudomel, a board member of Novy Prostor (New Opportunity), a newspaper sold by the homeless, who puts the number of permanently or temporary homeless in the city as high as 9,000-10,000, blames the city's inadequate social and housing policies.

"Prague built four social housing units in the last 10 years," he lamented.

Martin Hadascok, who runs a Novy Prostor day center in the city center, is also critical. "The basic problem is that Prague council has no social policy regarding housing for low earners," he said. "How can you afford anything when you have a low wage, like a store assistant, but are paying rents that are just as high as in Berlin or Dresden."

Traditionally low, regulated rents in Prague are also soaring as the government moves to reduce the massive gap between these and open market rents.

Flat purchases meanwhile are only possible with massive mortgages for even those earning above the average monthly wage of around 20,000 koruna (711 euros, 927 dollars).