bone church

It’s been a while since my last post… the internet has been iffy at best and there has been a lot going on around here to keep me away from my computer. Nonetheless, I’m going to try now to get everyone up to speed on everything here in Prague.

Two Fridays ago, my program had an excursion to a small town about an hour outside of Prague called Kutna Hora. Our professors went with us in order to make the trip as educational as possible. On the way we stopped at an open air museum of vernacular architecture from central Bohemia, a region in the Czech Republic. The museum was pretty similar to every other outdoor museum I’ve been to so it wasn’t too exciting for me, or for the rest of my class mates, for that matter (we ended up playing hackey sack with some apples from an apple tree towards the end of the visit).

From the vernacular museum we headed into Kutna Hora and stopped at the world famous ossuary they have there. It’s a chapel that has been ornamented by thousands of bones from victims of a plague that came through southern Bohemia centuries ago. It’s pretty impressive, yet quite unsettling, to see so many human bones decorating the interior of a chapel. Also quite impressive was the fact that the entire collection was started by a blind monk in the early 1300s. (I might have that date wrong, but go with it for now…)

Anyway, after the “bone church” we went into the center of the town of Kutna Hora, stopped for a quick lunch and went down into a silver mine. The mine had been in use for centuries but now it’s only for tourist visits. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures inside the mine -- it was really tight and wet… not a good environment for my camera! We went about 4,000 meters underground through very narrow passageways wearing white cloaks and hard hats and carrying flashlights to find our way. Definitely don’t do this if you’re claustrophobic!

After the mine tour we got back on our bus and headed back to Prague for a fun evening at the local billiards hall.

More stories to come about my fall break trip to Vienna this past weekend…

oh and more pictures to come as soon as i get better internet :)