Prague Blague

We just left Prague, apparently one of Europe’s largest tourist destinations.  We really only spent a day and a half there, though, which may have been giving it very short shrift.  On the other hand, it kind of seemed like there wasn’t a whole lot to do.  Prague seems to have two main attractions – 1. The beauty of the city itself, which is formidable - 

The Astrological Clock on Prague's City Hall

In Prague's main square

-        and 2. Their 2-for-1 variation of the castle on a hill/church motif, i.e. a castle on a hill *containing multiple churches.*

Inside St. George's Basilica, also in the castle

St. Vitus Cathedral inside Prague Castle

Participating in Prague's main activity

Now, most people go to Prague for a different attraction: the beer.  We participated in this to a certain extent, and definitely had some good beers.  We took some notes Tim is going to write them up for you guys soon.  Still, we didn’t feel like going on the pub crawls as we generally aren’t much for the mass-market lagers, which to be honest aren’t really for us as people who like strong, hoppy ales.

To be fair to Prague, I think our not-being-that-impressed may have been a combination of travel burnout as well as feeling a bit overwhelmed by the crowds in the city.  Still, our favorite day in the Czech Republic was not in Prague but in a small town an hour away by train called Kutna Hora.

Our travel guidebook informs us that Kutna Hora used to be a relatively wealthy, populated town, but as Tim put it, the town seems to have had a pretty sleepy past couple hundred years.  The entire town is walkable on foot and the population is similar to the small town where I grew up, but unlike Bay Village, Ohio, Kutna Hora has some pretty awesome sights laying around from its medieval past.

The coat of arms

The first sight we visited is the Kostnice Ossuary, also known as the Bone Chapel.  This chapel contains the remains of an estimated 40,000 people.  The Ossuary was built after lots of people died during the 14th century (because of the Hussite wars and the plague), making it necessary for the graveyard to be enlarged.  They decided to build a church in the middle of the cemetery with a basement containing the bones of those who had died, and those whose graves were disturbed during the construction of the church.  It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

The chandelier

The chandelier shown to the left is rumored to contain every single bone in the human body.  I didn’t see that much variety, but who knows.  Tim joked that I should take a medical school field trip here to have a scavenger hunt. 

Skulls of soldiers injured or killed in the Hussite Wars

Pretty unique, if a bit creepy.  Honestly, both of us had the sensation that the chapel was so beyond the pale that it was kind of more bizarre than creepy.  They also had a small case showing remains of soldiers who had been injured or killed in the Hussite Wars (at right).  They pointed out that the one on the right even showed some healing.  Pretty amazing.

After seeing the Bone Chapel, we moved on to the Czech Silver Museum and signed ourselves up for a tour of the silver mine.  We learned about how silver was mined, but really it was just an excuse to go down into the silver mines and wear miner jackets with hard hats. 

Tim navigates the mine

The mines were partially flooded after years of collecting water, and some passageways down were completely full of water.  Still, we got to walk through a bunch of the mine, though even the rock around us was dripping very cold water.  The mine was quite narrow and parts of it had quite low ceilings.  We even saw passageways that we would have had to crawl through, though we didn’t go into any of those.   We navigated the mine with flashlights, which at one point the guide had us turn off to see the darkness that the miners commonly had to work in.  The darkness was absolute – we couldn’t see our own hands as we waved them in front of our faces.  Even with our flashlights on, you can bet that we made good use of our hard hats, hitting our heads several times on unexpected outcroppings of rock.

After finishing our tour, we stopped for dinner at a tavern, Pivnice Dacicky, with some pretty darn good food and drink.  I had Wild Boar Goulash with Peter’s beer recommendation, Gambrinus.  Thanks for the recommendation, Peter - this was our favorite lager of the ones we got to try.

All in all, Kutna Hora was a great day trip, and quite a nice break from the Prague crowds.

Before I end: I wrote this while on the train to Berlin, and now we have been enjoying Berlin and the wonderful hospitality of Carla and Johannes, former Concord co-opers.  They are amazing hosts and all-around fun people to be with.  We are lucky to be here!