Kutna Hora

A two hour train ride east of Prague leads to a medieval city dating back to 1142, Kutna Hora the location for the Sedlec Ossuary or the Bone Church.  We arrived at the central train station in Prague, dropped off backpacks at the luggage storage and bought the train tickets for the same day (trains leave every hour with an option for a direct route or one with a transfer).

The day trip wouldn't be complete without visiting both Kutna Hora & the suburb Sedlec, which has the Bone Chapel & Saint James Cathedral.  The buses that service Kutna Hora, Sedlec and the train station are infrequent.  To maximize a day trip, in my opinion it is best to take the regional train after arriving at the Kutna Hora station.  The regional train stops at the town center, from there we walked around the whole town visiting  the main square, the black plague column, stone fountain, the Jesuit College, the silver museum and tiny streets that wind through the little town.  We made our way from Kutna Hora center and walked all the way back to the Sedlec ossuary, it's a nice, long walk and maps are available at the tourist booth in the train station.

Sedlec Ossuary or Bone Church started some time in the 1200 when the King of Bohemia sent some religious person to Jerusalem and brought back with him some soil from Golgotha. Because of this said holy soil, lots of medieval people wanted to be buried at the cemetery in Sedlec.  A church was built on the cemetery which naturally became famous for being super holy not just in Bohemia but also throughout Central Europe,  the ossuary was built for all the bones that were from abolished graves. About 40,000 to 70,000 human bones later, and the handiwork of a woodcarver completely renovated the basement of bones into something artistically eerie.  Piles and piles of bones in every corner, skulls and femurs create a coat of arms and chandelier with angels sitting atop.  Displaying the human bones in this way supposedly suggests that in the end, when we are all the same.

All in all it was creepy and cold in that basement with ex-humans.

Prague

After a terribly boring 2014 (zero trips taken except for an impromptu visit to Puerto Nuevo), Prague didn't seem real.  The picturesque capital of the Czech Republic and the once historical capital of Bohemia looks like it should be a part of Disneyland, it would be named Medieval Land, located between Frontier Land and Fantasy Land, the section where they would sell pork knuckle instead of giant turkey legs. The Kingdom of Bohemia consisted of two thirds of what is currently the Czech Republic, was part of the Holy Roman Empire, then became a province of the Habsburg Dynasty, making Prague the second capital of the Austro- Hungarian empire.


The fall of the empire at the end of World War I created Czechoslovakia. After a whole bunch of battles, wars, Nazi occupation, Iron Curtain and the Velvet Revolution,  it was peacefully separated as Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.  The pastel buildings, fairy tale-like architecture, Gothic churches,  and bridges each with their own distinct characteristics connecting the Hradcany and Mala Strana (Prague Castle & Lesser Town) to the Stare Mesto (Old Town) over the Vltava River, yields a city with beauty truly unrivaled and inspired the setting for the works of Kafka.

Getting to Prague was simple enough; seven hour overnight bus from Budapest to Prague with a stop and a bus switch in Bratislava at three am in zero degree Celsius. (Orangeways... although cheap would not recommend, it is either late or a no show).  Czech Koruna is the currency. Finding an ATM outside of the airport that dispenses euros was really difficult; but unless your next destination has economic sanctions in place and you know for a fact that you cannot get cash from an ATM then it's good to know that the airport ATMs dispense euros.   As far as language is concerned we are both sorry and embarrassed to say that we did not learn any key phrases (salutations, please, thanks you). English was widely used, so much so that I don't remember once being greeted in Czech (in our defense we were laser focused on learning Farsi... not a good excuse but legitimate none-the-less).


Most of our days were spent walking around the city.  Literally a museum in every corner ranging from the sex machine museum, wax museum, medieval torture museum to name a few. We aren't fans of visiting museums but rather, we like to spend our days cafe hopping around the city.  We used the metro to get to the Mustek stop and walked everywhere from there. 

As far as food is concerned there are plenty of restaurants and cafes throughout the old city center and the lesser town just below Prague Castle.  We ate lunch at a few different restaurants around the Jewish Quarter and dinners in the Krizikova neighborhood. Recommendation from a friend was the Pivovarsky Klub - beers on tap and the best pork knuckle reasonably priced.  Other traditional Czech fare are sweet dumplings, goulash soup in a bread bowl, spicy beef stew, roast pork with huge dumplings, potatoes and deliciously dense breads. There are plenty of store fronts that serve hot chocolate, literally melted chocolate, delicious but almost sickeningly thick and rich.  Also, plenty of stands that sell hollowed out, slow grilled desert bread named Trdelnik...sooo delicious.