Dem Bones

A gothic church.  A pitch black trip through a tunnel.  A room full of 40,000 human skeletons. 

A horror movie?  A gothic novel?  Nope, just a day in Kutna Hora. 

This Saturday my program bused us all to the Czech town of Kutna Hora to see St. Barbara’s church, the silver mines, and the Ossuary, popularly called the “Bone Church.”  Here is a little breakdown of the day:

St. Barbara’s

I don’t think I will ever be able to get enough of gothic cathedrals.  This one was filled with little altars around the sides with frescos painted up to the ceilings and painted windows—a combination of religious scenes and stories of the town and the country.  The best part was the balcony.  The balcony was not part of our official tour, but my friend Andy figured out a way to get up there—for a small price.  Our broke, college student selves paused for a second at that.  But then the thought hit us that we were in Europe, in the second biggest gothic cathedral in the Czech Republic, getting to go on a balcony overlooking the organ while a little organ concert was going on—of course we were going to do it.  And it was only 10 crowns (about 50 cents). 

So we headed up and just stared down at the church, the windows, the organ.  I stopped taking pictures after a while because I wanted to just be there all day, or every day if I could.  It would be nice to know what it would feel like to not be a tourist in a church like that, to be able to just go there and not feel like you have to take a picture of every square inch of the place before your tour is over.  Maybe I’ll be back here someday and do that.

 

 

The Silver Mines

I think we should have caught on that this was going to be terrifying when they asked us repeatedly who wanted to stay above ground and seemed shocked when everyone wanted to go into the mines.  They kept saying, “Are you sure?  Not good for claustrophobia, very dark.”  But of course we just skipped right down under tons and tons of rock and didn’t realize what real mine darkness was like until we were in it.  We had flashlights and walked single file through wet, drippy, narrow passages.  We had learned a lot about the history of this town, which had been a major silver mining town, and the tough labor of the miners and their families.  When we got to a relatively big part of the passage in the mine, we stood around talking about how the wooden posts scattered throughout the little cavern were used by the miners to keep the rock from collapsing (um, what?  Please tell me those aren’t the originals).  Then our guide instructed us to turn off all of our flashlights to experience what the miners would have dealt with if their lanterns went off.  Absolute, unnerving darkness.  I think that cured us of any romantic, nostalgic ideas we had about Medieval European villages. 

 

 

The Ossuary

Shockingly, this was less scary than the mines—probably because none of us could seem to process the fact that we were in a room full of human skeletons.  And they were so beautiful.  This wasn’t just some creep cobbling together household items out of human bones, this was an artist.  The chandelier was probably one of the most impressive chandeliers I have ever seen—bones or no bones.  The walls were decorated, the ceiling was decorated, and behind wire fences stood pyramids of bones.  People wanted to be buried there so badly that they ran out of room in the graveyard, so the monks began digging up bodies and using old bones as to decorate the small church (there are a few different stories on the exact origins of this practice, ranging from insane monks to blind monks).  A lot of these people were victims of war, and a special case held the fragmented skulls of some of the people who had been killed by war wounds.  The feeling of the Ossuary is a strange mixture of a war memorial, a Body Worlds exhibit, and a Halloween store.  But overall, probably everyone’s favorite part of the trip. 

 

Headed to Budapest this weekend after the opera on Friday!  More posts to follow soon!