Kutna Hora 24 9 10

Last weekend I intended to travel to Vienna but due to technical issues and the difficulty of navigating Czech bus line sites we didn't have a reservation. Desperate to get out of the city my friend Mike and I took a day trip to Kutna Hora. It was only about an hour on the train from Prague, and the ride was aesthetically pleasing if not pretty.

We visited the famous Ossuary (bone church) which is a really weird place. It is a popular burial ground because a monk who had traveled to Palestine brought back with him a handful of Earth from Golgotha and sprinkled it around the abbey, thereby making it some kind of holy ground. During the plague, thousands of bodies were stacked around the church and then buried in mass graves. Years later, a half-blind Cisterian monk decided it would be a good idea to dig up all the bodies (which had long since decomposed) and to redesign the interior of the church by decorating it with the bones of the corpses. I found that a bit odd, but no further explanation was given.

He not only placed the bones in pyramid structures and stacked skulls atop one another but also crafted a chandelier which contains all the bones in the human body and a coat of arms for the Schwarzenberg family.

The bird pecking the skull in the eye is meant to represent the defeat of the Hussites in the 15th century.

I was amazed by the Ossuary but Mike was not very impressed. Truly, its small size was a bit disappointing, but its intended effect rang mostly true inside my little heart. No matter who we are, we will all end up the same way: just one of many in the multitudes that stand before whomever their god is. In the same vein, I pointed out to moje kamarad the poetic nature of a certain scene we witnessed outside of the church. There, in the cemetery amongst who knows how many thousands of graves there was a bush around which swarmed more bees than I have ever seen before. They were resting on the gravestones or humming happily as they danced with the flowers. The deceased are remembered with eternal flames or pebbles on their gravestone but the bees continue buzzing and the flowers keep growing, and that will continue forever.


After the Ossuary we went to the Cathedral of our Lady which was just around the corner. We were still in a suburb of Kutna Hora called Sedlec. It's an UNESCO site (for those who aren't familiar with that program, you can find a Wikipedia explanation here) and very beautiful.

It doesn't seem like there are services there any more and it was restored, though I'm not sure how recently. It was more like an enormous gallery, with pieces on display that had recently been restored.

 There was a seemingly secret passageway from one balcony through another that I thought was pretty cool. I made a video of it but it isn't working right now, of course.

We then hiked through the town for about a half hour to get to the next attraction: St Barabara's Cathedral.

We picked up lunch at a reasonably priced restaurant; it cost me about $7.50 for my chicken and sausage skewer, fries (hranolky), and a beer (Kozel dark, my favorite.) We checked out the silver mine but the last English tour had left an hour before, which my mother pointed out was probably for the best. Some people from my program went there on a day trip and said it was pretty awesome but we would have had to pay a good amount for the tour anyway. 

On to the Cathedral, which is built in a style similar to St Vitus Cathedral at Prague Castle. It was enormous with beautiful views of the town and neighboring countryside.

There was no flash allowed inside the Cathedral, so I had to edit my photos a bit. I apologize for the loss of quality.

After that, we caught a bus back to the nadrazi (train station), arriving minutes before our train departed for Prague.

It was a pretty nice day despite the fact that it rained for most of it. Even better, the entire trip (transport, lunch, admission) cost about $20 each. Additionally, we were happy to get out of the city for the day though it was small compensation for a missed trip to Vienna. There's always another day!