Kutna Hora: Sunday, September 13

Dear Friends and Family,

For our last day in the Czech Republic, we decided to venture outside the city of Prague. We chose Kutna Hora for its bone church. Having not much more information than that we ventured into a Tourist Information center where are very nice man told us how to get there (he even printed out the train/bus options that we needed), but that we had to leave right then. So we rushed to the train station (a theme of our time in Prague) and sent someone to buy tickets and someone to buy lunch. And then we were off. While Prague is incredibly urban, the towns we passed by were not. When we got of the train, we knew that this was much different than Prague—way less crowded and less touristy. We walked to the Ossuary, which was an interesting church, but I ended up not liking at all, so my description of it ends here (you can look it up online or ask Lee or Kathy about it – they liked it). We then found some soft serve ice cream and then walked further into town. We noticed how some of the apartment buildings away from the main center of town, resembled the communist era, with its uniformed, colorless, and block-like buildings. Walking into the main part of the town, we realized we had past by at least 4 churches, and we mistook 2 of them for the big cathedral we were looking for. It turns out that Kutna Hora used to be the Czech Republic’s second largest city (second to Prague), due to silver mines. Since the silver mines have run out, the city has become more of a town. However, remnants of its former power remain in forms such as St. Catherine’s Cathedral and its many other churches. While this cathedral cannot compare to St. Vitus’s in scale, size, or grandeur, the cathedral was still amazing and I liked it just as much. There were less people as well as no lines. As a result, the cathedral was more peaceful than St. Vitus’s. While the stained glass windows at St. Vitus’s were more stunning, these were still amazing stained glass windows. Also, being the geek that I am, there was a statics diagram of some of the flying buttresses of the cathedral that showed the pressures at various points of the area highlighted, which I found really interesting.

Before we had arrived at the Cathedral, we had ambled through the town, taking pictures of the churches and the area. We stopped by a bunch of shops and ended up getting some souvenirs from a shop that sold art and jewelry made by Czech artists. I got this really pretty barrette. We had also noticed some restaurants on the way up and decided to check them out (or Czech them out as Lee would say) for dinner on the way back. After wandering around for quite a while in search of some authentic Czech food like schnitzel and goulash, we finally ended up at a hotel restaurant. The food was pretty decent. And although we had both schnitzel and goulash, it was our most expensive meal in the Czech Republic and probably wasn’t as authentic. However, the company, the atmosphere, and the beer were awesome. We sat outside on a deserted deck underneath an apple tree. Kathy even ate an apple. The food took a long time, so we got to talk and drink beer. For beer, we shared a light beer a dark beer and a master. All of which were pretty good (I don’t remember my favorite of the three).

After paying we decided to walk back to the train station. However, we were a bit farther than anticipated, and we ended up having to run to catch our train. Luckily it was late and were able to make it. The train was incredibly crowded and there wasn’t even standing room in some of the cars. We eventually made it back to Prague and our hostel. We were pretty tired, but we decided that it was our last night in Prague so we went on a stroll and spent all 400 Kc (23 dollars) of our remaining money on a midnight snack. We ended walking though the Old Town Square again and its surrounding area while having both serious and not serious discussions. We went to bed relatively early since we had to be up at four for our 5:06 train the next morning.

Summary of our Czech words learned:
Dobry Den = Hello
Dequi = Thank you (Not certain on spelling)
Pivo = beer
Vychod = exit

Love,
Rosalie.