Kutna Hora

[May 13]

We finally got away from the internet cafes to actually see some sites! Katie suggested that we take a day trip to Kutna Hora, so we took her advice. She promised such highlights as the largest Philip Morris factory in Europe, a church with bizarre human bone sculptures, and a quaint village setting.



We got up early and went to the train station with Danny "Schmoopie" Quarrell. (You can really learn a lot about someone by doing a Google search! ha ha!) Danny is an ultimate frisbee player who knows Bryn (Katie's boyfriend) from the Portland ultimate frisbee scene. He was making the most of his Alaska Airlines job and visiting Europe. We were all making use of the "let's stay with Katie-Bryn in Prague" room system. What a small world.

First we walked to the ossuary, a.k.a. the Bone Church. It had a small skull and crossbones on the outside spires, but was otherwise quite inconspicuous. Inside, we were handed an English language guide sheet to explain everything. (For fun, I also picked up the Latvian guide sheet and found that it differed very greatly. I suppose that the translators chose different aspects to discuss.)



Basically, the church became famous when an abbot brought back some holy land to the church. Many people wanted to bury their loved ones there and the small church was inundated with bodies, over 30,000 once the plague hit. Somehow, it was considered a good idea to do something with all these human remains, so a few creative monks got started bleaching the bones and making wacky sculptures to make room for more bodies. Basically, the whole interior is decorated with bone, all creatively laid out into formations, like a bone chandelier, bone pyramids, and a bone signature of the artists. It did have some meaning though, as the Latvian translation pointed out: "What you are, we once were. What we are, you will be." But it sounded nicer in Latvian.



We walked another 15 minutes into town, smelling the tobacco factory scents in the air. It was a cross between sweet and gross. At this point, we were really hungry and found a place for a strong Czech beer and a nice meal. An orange cat joined us too and sat close when the food arrived. Naturally, I obliged. From lunch, we strolled around to another cathedral with a nice gothic style.



We passed on the other sightseeing then threw the frisbee in the park. I hadn't thrown in a while and it was a perfect day for it.



We strolled back into town and towards the train station until Dean stopped suddenly and did one of those funny looks that let us know that something was wrong. He had told us the wrong time of the train and we had already missed it, plus we were going to miss our "Plan B" train unless we took a taxi.

So we ran back to a taxi and asked the driver for a price. I automatically countered with a lower price and got glares from Dean and Danny. I guess my India bargaining techniques came back to haunt me. But we made it to the station (for the fair, quoted price) with a minute to spare and a mad dash to the seats. Once we arrived back in Prague we were off to play disc golf, to be discussed in the next post.

I will finish this post with a picture of a sleeping cat that we saw in town. It had a little cat ladder to get to this spot from a 2nd-story window.