So way back when Katie and I confirmed that we would be meeting up in Prague, Katie did some research on the different attractions in the area. On Friday, we did a lot of what was available in the city. So on Saturday, we thought that we would do a field trip into the Czech countryside, to Kutna Hora.
Kutna Hora is a small-ish city that’s about an hour by train outside of Prague. We had seen the guided version of our proposed excursion, but that was going for around $70 (and we wouldn’t get to ride the train) so we decided to have an adventure and figure it out for ourselves. In retrospect, I’m not sure how it could have worked out better – at least in terms of logistics.
We got up around 8:15, got ready, and had breakfast in the hotel, which was very nice. Then, we walked to the main train station (I clarify that it was the main train station because the first train station that we stopped at was not the correct train station), got our tickets ($10 each, round trip) and found our train. There weren’t very many seats left in the cabins, so we took two of the sideways-facing seats in the corridor. Really, a very comfortable ride.
I now feel obliged to tell you all about the attraction that we were off in search of. It was a bone church. And not a bone church with one or two skeletons or anything. Official estimates put the number of skeletons contained in this church between 30,000 and 50,000. Most were likely killed by the plague. So apparently, there was some kind of excess supply of bones, and a shortage of normal church-decorating materials. The church is entirely ornamented with these many, many skeletons.
When we got off the train, there was a bus waiting to take us into the center of town. We hadn’t really looked at a map or anything, so we jumped on board, figuring that first we would show up, and then we would see what happened. We made it to the center of this decent sized city, only to find that it was completely deserted. We have a few theories as to why we would have been able to walk around for a few hours and never see more than five or six people in a given spot, but nothing confirmed.
So from the center of town, we first went to look at a few of the normal churches. I took a fair amount of pictures, which I’ll post after I post this. We got pizza for lunch, and that was very good and quite possibly fully home-made. We found a few locals, who were able to tell us about the bus schedule to the bone church (busses came every two hours), but then we really looked at the map and decided that it was a gorgeous day, and we would just walk the two and a half miles.
The bone church was pretty intense. It really was the remains of 40,000 people. I don’t know whether I doubted that, but it was definitely a lot easier to comprehend once we were actually looking at the coat of arms that included every bone in the human body and the house-looking-structures made out of skulls and femurs. Everything, from the window hangings to the chandelier to the wall decorations was completely constructed of bone – and long enough ago so that it’s not like they had glue or anything. I took pictures of all the information, so if you’re interested, you can read all about it.
After the bone church, we walked back to the train station, and headed to Prague. We made it back to the hotel around 4:30, and took epic naps (there was a lot of walking – we were tired). When we woke up, we hit the city to finish looking for souvenirs and to get a “traditional” Czech dinner. I had the goulash (with an unidentified “meat”) in a bread bowl. It was very tasty, but I think that Katie’s pasta may have taken the dinner cake. It was fabulous.
After dinner and shopping, we walked back to the Charles Bridge to see the view of the city and the castle at night. It was very picturesque (and I didn’t have my camera). We really got lucky with the weather this weekend.
Tomorrow it’s home! I leave Prague around 2:00, get in to Frankfurt around 3:00, leave for Dulles at 5:00, arrive at Dulles nine hours later at 8:00 (I heart time zones), leave for Charlotte at 10:00, and get to Charlotte at 11:15. When I get to see Troy! Yay!
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