We're not the only ones who find Prague interesting - in 1992, the entire historical core of the city was added to the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage Register. The city is also known as one of the world's most beautiful, and its many historical buildings have lent it the nickname "city of a hundred spires." And over 1,100,000 people call it home. All of this comes in a very inexpensive package - the Czech currency, the crown, is currently at 22 crowns to 1 American dollar. That means a half liter of beer is usually 2 dollars or less, and a full-fledged meal in a restaurant is less than 10 dollars. My pictures look like a million bucks, though. Let's see!
Actually, we are going to take a quick break from Prague, because that's what we did! We, and by that I mean "I", somehow managed to ingeniously decipher the Czech train system. As a result, we were able to make it all the way out to a town called Kutná Hora. This place is about an hour outside of Prague and plays host to a VERY unique and famous landmark - the Sedlec Ossuary.
This particular ossuary (an ossuary, for the uninformed, is a site serving as the final resting place of skeletal remains) is in the basement of the Church of All Saints, which was built in the late 1300s. The church was built on the plot of a cemetery that had been active since 1142. By the end of the 1400s, there were 40,000 dead people buried in said cemetery surrounding the church! At that point, the cemetery was greatly reduced and thousands of bones were moved into the ossuary beneath the church. In the 15th century, legend has it, a blind monk arranged the countless bones and skulls into the pyramids and shapes one can see today. After he completed his work, he got his eyesight back. I'm a bit skeptical of the legend, considering how meticulously the bones are all placed. But one thing is for sure - the bones didn't arrange themselves, so someone was crazy enough to mess with 40,000 people's skeletal remains in the 1400s. The results:
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| Check out the chandelier. Too crazy to be made by a blind monk, right? Right indeed. This was actually made in 1870 |
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| The Schwarzenberg family coat of arms was also made in 1870. This is pretty famous - I remember seeing a picture of it somewhere long before I came to Europe |
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| This guy is sprouting some bone out of his head |
All crazy stuff! That's something you don't see every day.
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| This is the Church of All Saints from the outside. Yes, it really does look that tilted in real life |
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Afterwards, we were ready for a more conventional church experience. We headed over to the nearby Cathedral of Assumption of Our Lady and St. John the Baptist. Like the historical part of Prague, this cathedral is also a UNESCO-listed world heritage site. It was built from 1290 to 1320, although it was then burnt out by Hussite troops in 1421. Hundreds of years later, it was renovated in the Baroque Gothic style.
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| Sigh... so much for a conventional church experience. More bones! These skulls belong to martyred Cistercian monks, date to 1421, and were found in 2003 during restoration work |
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| The Baroque Chapel of Fourteen Holy Helpers |
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| Part of the Barque Gothic renovation, this unique spiral staircase has no center pillar |
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| This is pretty unconventional as well - we were allowed to walk through the attic! |
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| From the choir balcony |
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| What is it with this town and displaying human remains? These are relics of St. Felix, a martyr of ancient Rome |
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| This fresco depicts the Holy Trinity and was done by J.J. Stevens of Steinfels |
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| The Chapel of Our Lady |
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| The cathedral from the outside |
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| Granted, we were not in the center of town, and there are supposed to be other minor sights there... but in the part of Kutná Hora where we were, everything seemed pretty lonely, sad, and depressing. It felt as though it was still the 1970s there. We had a stopover in a different town on the way back to Prague. Out of curiosity, we briefly looked outside of the train station to take a peek at the town. It was gray, sad, and extremely foul-smelling. We like Prague better than the countryside |
After our business in the bleak Czech countryside was done, I successfully navigated us back into the city of Prague. This is no small feat - outside of Prague, many Czechs do not speak English. But we were back, and that's what mattered. Time to do some nocturnal sightseeing.
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| Back in Prague! Fancy buildings everywhere |
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| I tracked down yet another building from my favorite architect, Frank Gehry. He designed this in 1992 in cooperation with a Czech architect and opened it in 1996. It is known as the "Dancing House," as it resembles a pair of dancers. Gehry thought of the dancers as being Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers |
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| Kendra and I love architecture |
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| Prague's castle on the left |
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| A neat look at the Prague Castle (the huge hilltop campus) and the Charles Bridge |
We had dinner at a Czech brewery. I gathered that Czech food consists mostly of meat, potatoes, and mushrooms, and that Czechs love eating the strange parts of the pig, like the neck or knee.
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| Beer is still cheaper than water here in the Czech Republic. After dinner, it was off to a second brewery - U Fleků, founded 1499. They make just one beer: a super dark, chocolatey lager |
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| The brewery sports a clock that bears the place's name rather than numbers |
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| The subway is the easiest way to get around, as is the case with almost every European city |
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| Even just down our street from our cheap Air BnB apartment there was a neat-looking church |
The Czech Republic boasts the world's highest per-capita beer consumption, beating out even Germany. When in Rome, as they say: before turning in, we went to one last bar for one last beer. This bar was particularly unique and dangerous since each table had its own tap from which you could draw your own beer! They tracked your bill digitally.
While there, an American guy heard us speaking English and invited us to his table with his Czech friends. We talked with them for a while (as best as we could - the Czechs don't speak English as well as the Germans) about life in the Czech Republic. It was pretty interesting! They told us that in the Czech Republic, wages are not that great, and the currency exchange rate works against Czechs. So you don't have much spending power. But at the same time, everything is dirt cheap within the Czech Republic. As our new American friend said, "you have a little, but you only need a little." And the primary leisure activity, as you may guess, is hanging out with friends drinking beer after beer. We talked with these guys from about 1 to 2 am, but they had been in the bar since 9 pm.
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| Almost all Czechs have light brown hair and green eyes, I discovered. There is remarkably little diversity, even in Prague. So seeing Kendra was a real experience for them. The whole trip I think I saw 1 or maybe 2 black people other than our friend Kendra. The Czech guy in this picture was particularly excited to see a black person so asked us for a picture (through the American guy, as his English wasn't up to speed) |