Edit: I spend like 45 minutes editing this damn blog so the pictures would look nice and they look terrible. I'll better next time but this one is a wash. Sorry about the formatting and I hope it's not too awful to read.
Saturday the whole of CIEE had to wake up and get to a bus across town for a day trip to Kutna Hora. Kutna Hora is a fairly large city about 40km outside of Prague. I figured the trip would just be a brief look at a cathedral, some lunch, a bone church and a trip home. It was that, but much more boring. We learned about the city itself for the better portion of the day. The history is this: The town came to prominence in the 1300s when silver was discovered. It was the second richest town in Bohemia (Czech lands) next to Prague. Its silver helped build major cathedral in Kutna Hora itself and Prague. Then, when the Hapsburgs took over the continued to mine silver but also began minting their own coins from the silver until the 1700s when the silver dried up and no one cared anymore. Now, it survives as a tourist destination.
St. Barbara Cathedral
The first stop was the cathedral of St. Barbara, patron saint of miners (go figure). The cathedral had an interesting roof and some nice gothic architecture. The inside was nice but I have to say St. Vitus at Prague Castle is better.
Jesuit Seminary?
Adjacent to the cathedral is either a Jesuit seminary or monastery, I can't remember which. The Jesuit building was built in the Baroque style and if I can figure out how I'll put up some pictures of it. After a tour of the Church we walked to the smaller church in the town, the cathedral of St. James (also a patron saint of miners).
The Italian Court
The next stop was the so called "Italian Court" where the mintmasters and craftsmen took the silver and minted it. We watched some mintmaster make some coins and then walked through a pretty famous meeting room. Next was lunch.
St. James Cathedral
Lunch was was very tasty and I wanted to get some grog but apparently the restaurant didn't have it. Grog, according to my Czech teacher, is rum, tea sugar and lemon served hot. It's quite the drink especially when its cold or when you want to get drunk. The food was good but lunch was long.
A short bus ride brought us to the Bone Church. Now, my perception of the bone church, like any logical person, was a church literally made of bones. Wrong. The Bone Church is this tiny, unassuming chapel that had bones decorating the basement. In the 1870s a mass grave of plague victims was found in the area and it was decided that the bones should be used to decorate a church basement instead of being burned. Ergo, Bone Church. The whole thing was pretty ridiculous, but at the same time it was still cool. I can't say that I've ever seen one real human skeleton let alone over40,000. The Bone Church was supposed to be the crowning point of the day but we sort of milled around for 20 minutes, had no guide and then left for Prague.
Bad to the Bone Church
That evening consisted of going to a club, refusing to pay the 200K cover and then heading to another bar. The high point of the night was the snow. It started falling that afternoon and by night there was maybe a half inch of ground cover all over the city. It was very picturesque. Sunday consisted of watching Liverpool beat Chelsea at an American sports bar. The sports bar is in Wenceslas Square amidst lots of strip clubs. The people outside of these clubs are hilarious. They see a group of guys and start to harass you about their cheap prices and beautiful women. If you decline they get more aggressive and start to question your manhood. It's funny at first but just gets annoying. The same goes for the Arab and African drug dealers on the square who offer their "skunk weed" and coke to you even inside bars. In other news, I'm missing the first opera night this week because I'm going to Bratislava. Should be fun and there will pictures and tales when I get back. It's supposed to be better than how it looked in Eurotrip.
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