Just "Czeching" In: February 2010

Last weekend my roommates and I went to a little town outside the city called Kutna Hora. It was about an hour train ride. It was a very cute little town but very dead when we went on Saturday. All the stores closed at 11 am. Kutna Hora used to be a booming medieval town.

The first 3 pictures are of the downtown area. As you can see there were not every many people about. The train ride was long and we were not sure where the sites we wanted to see were exactly so we decided to go to the medieval brewery.

This is the sign for the restaurant.

I love how every thing in Prague and surrounding areas seems to be supremely decorated. Everywhere I go not only do the walls have paint and some kind of detailed molding but also the ceilings of the buildings. This is the example from the restaurant.

That is my Kunta Hora brew. for .3 Liters it was a whopping 15 Krowns, translated to American dollars 80 to 90 cents. What steal! It was actually really good too.

That is my lunch of Goulash. One of the signature dishes in the Czech Republic. The bread bowl was pretty delicious with the soup. The standard bread here seems to be a mild rye bread. They have white but I have not found wheat yet.

Here I am with my Goulash ready to eat!

Saint Barbara's Church

The view of the town of Kutna Hora

Saint Barbara's close up

More stained glass!!

The main alter

The organ.

Beautiful painting

Confessional

Another alter

St. Barb's from the back

The former monastery everyone calls the "bone church"

BONES!!

more bones

bone cave

bone chandelier that uses every bone in the human body

The crest of the Schwarzenberg family that bought the monastery in 1870 and allowed an artist to use the bones to make these creations.

Front view of the church

They got cute with the snow and the theme of place and created this lovely thing

Train station at Kutna Hora that was deserted

Prague at dusk; simply the best

Prague church at dusk

Last Saturday was an eventful day. We navigated our way through a foreign airport and went outside of Prague for the first time. I enjoyed my day and we saw some really interesting things but I do not think I would recommend this journey to people visiting for a short time because there is so much to see in Prague. It was a cheap trip all total for train ticket, meal, and admission to the places I spent around 13 US dollars.

Next post will be Vienna!!!

I cannot believe how fast my time here is already going. Week two is already complete. I have really been enjoying my classes. A class is a 3 hour block here so I only have each class once a week. They are very interesting and the professors have interesting perspectives on subjects that I have learned about previously but taking notes for three hours at time is a lot of writing. It will take some getting used to. It is also somewhat sad that I have to go to class and do homework when all I want to do is explore the city.

Last week Val, Katie, and I went into the church at the Prague castle. It was one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen. The church was huge. There were like 12 to 14 enormous stained glass windows that were probably 15 feet high. The view from the castle grounds were amazing.

Last weekend we also went to the communism museum. The museum had interesting artifacts of the communist era. It also had a video detailing the fight of the Czech people to end communism. They had real footage of the demonstrators being attacked in squares all over the city in the last year of the communist era in Prague. They also had some footage of the Velvet Revolution. For those of you out there who do not know about the Velvet Revolution and wonder why this country is not called Czechoslovakia anymore let me tell you. After the wall fell in 1989 and the country once again was capitalist there was a divide between the people about how they wanted the country to be run. The people of the East and the people of the west decided to split up the country based on their differing views in a non-violent revolution. There were also ethnic reasons for the split because it the east there were more people of Slovak decent and in the west there were more of Czech decent.

We also happened to come upon a street celebration in honor of Carnivale. This almost like a week long Mardi Gras celebration in Europe. In some countries it is a bigger deal than others. At the street fair there were booths set up with all different kinds of sausages and breads. There were also booths with amazing pastries. Ground where the fair was just happened to be pure ice so everyone was slipping and falling all over the place. We also met this Czech old man who was a riot and told us we would become the ambassadors to the Czech Republic.

On Monday some of my roommates and I decided to go to get actual Czech food because we haven't really had that much. The food was not the best and very salty but the place we ate at was really neat because it was built in the 1380s.