Kutna Hora

Kutna Hora

Recently we visited Kutna Hora which is famous for the silver mines that powered the worldwide currencies in the 13^th century and whose boom in the 18^th century made it a rival of Prague. The other attraction is a nearby Ossuary in Sedlec which contains the bones of 40,000 to 70,000 people. Basically besides the walls, every decoration, every sign, every lamp is made up of bones.

Part of the problem came up when King Otakar II returned from the Holy Lands he brought back some earth from Golgotha (place where Jesus was crucified) and sprinkled the dirt on the cemetery grounds. I’m certain Otakar’s trip didn’t have a tour guide with an umbrella, rather one with a sword. Suddenly, everyone wanted to be buried at that site. Then the black plague hit and worst of all a monk in a “Donald Trump” fashion decided to expand the church, higher and deeper. What to do with all the bones?

Enough is enough; in 1870 Franktisek Rint a wood carver was hired to take care of the bone problem. He created the 4 bell shaped stacks of bones, bone chandeliers, bones stacked like vases, and even his name drawn in bones. This is a very creepy place!

Kutna Hora was the perfect example of a traditional Czech small town. For the mole in us all, they even have a silver mine tour, down into the old shafts. Gayle decided to head underground while Linda and I wandered the city taking pictures of the grand buildings and surrounding views. The only tour available was with a group of Czech teenage school kids, there on a field trip (it looked as though every school in the area was on a field trip that day to Kutna Hora!) Gayle decided to go anyway and to read her way through the tour with the english text they offered. She donned a white miners coat and funky looking leather helmet and set out for the mine shaft with the group of teens and four other non-Czech speaking adults. Fortunately, when they were about to descend into the earth one of the tour guides a tall, slender retired miner named Mr. Matuska, said “English people, kome unto me.” He let the energetic hoard of teens move ahead into the mine with the other guide and gave them the rest of the tour in English and Polish. They followed him through ever narrower and lower ceilinged passages and told them about the lives of 14^th century miners. At one spot a cross had been roughly carved into the wall where a miner had died. There were also small concave hollows where the miners placed their oil lamps as they hammered out the precious silver ore. The mine has been unused for hundreds of years, and the walls have become covered with what look like slimy excretions of limestone. However, they are smooth to the touch and eerily beautiful. He told them that on a previous tour, as the group squeezed through a particularly narrow shaft, he heard a young woman call to him: “Guide, Guide, I’ve lost my breast!” They all laughed, but no one asked about the “rest of the story”! The group ascended from the mine after nearly 90 minutes of twisting and turning just around the corner from where they had started. As they trudged toward the Silver Museum in their coats and helmets carrying their flashlights, they looked as though they had worked a 10 hour shift!

As we were leaving via the train there was a bit of confusion regarding which train tracks. I heard some English speaking and was drawn to a group of two men and two women. Everyone was dressed in black: leather shorts and either vests, or leather jackets, legs multicolor with tattoos, everyone wearing dangling earrings and mascara. “Do you know which track the Prague Train leaves from”? They graciously gave us their advice and in conversation mentioned they were from Vancouver, B.C. They were there to see the bone church. Humm…

On the bus ride to Kutna Hora we met a doctor from the states who left this country just before the Velvet Revolution. The communists allowed her to take only her clothes and her 8 year old daughter. They fled to Austria, saved their money and finally immigrated to America. She said if you really want to see what living under the communists was like watch the 2007 movie, “4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days”. The movie is about a Romanian woman who seeks to get an illegal abortion. It is subtitled in english.

Linda asked her how they survived under such a repressive regime. “Oh we concentrated on the freedoms we did have. We chose our friends, our furniture, our plants, and were able to buy our own cars”. Since you could not own a home, the people then bought better and better cars, to show status. This apparently is why we see so many big cars here compared with France.

Today Linda returns home to her “Toohy” (Dave) and Gayle and I take the train to Nuremberg to the welcoming home of Werner and Sieglinde. We all agree that Prague is a city that shines in the day and sparkles at night. As Mr. Matuska would say: “Kome unto me, all you tourists!” As the Czech say: “Nashledanou” (goodbye)