Prague Adventures Continue

As I said before, Prague is not full of things to do for a week, so the last 2 days have been pretty laid back. Two days ago we were planning to go to Kutna Hora to see the bone church (Kostnice), but it was pouring and cold. And we all got a little freaked when a lightning bolt came down right next to our hostel. There was a blinding flash of light and then the quickest and loudest thunder clap I've ever heard. I'm pretty sure that is the closest I've ever been to lightning. There was a weird smell afterwards too. Anyways, that day pretty much got chalked up to napping and reading. We met a nice guy in our hostel who we're sharing a room with named Brenton who is from Australia. We spent the evening with him; we went out to dinner (the same place I had gotten beef goulash the night before) and then had a rousing evening of playing the game of Life and Scrabble. We are quite the partiers.

Today we really did go to Kutna Hora and Brenton joined along, it's nice to have new people in our small group. It took us a while to get to Kutna Hora since the walk to the train station was about 40 minutes (including Steve's hot dog break), then we had to wait an hour for the bus, and then the busride was about an hour. Once at the towns bus station we luckily met some tourists who had just been to Kostnice and gave us walking directions to it. Only about a 20 minute walk away was a normal looking church surrounded by a cemetary. Nothing would make you think it was out of the ordinary...except the second you step inside. Pretty much every decoration in this place was made out of human bones. Over 40,000 humans total dating back to the Black Plague. Pretty crazy stuff. There was a chandelier made of bones and it had every bone found in the human body included. There was a shield on the wall made of bones and had a bird made of bones appearing to peck into a human skull. Like I said...crazy stuff. Even though the church was small (basically one big room) it was entirely worth the effort getting there. We also bought a combined ticket so we could go into the cathedral in town too, but unfortunately it was under construction so most things were either not on display or just strewn about. A statue of Jesus (positoned as he would be on a cross) was lying on the floor in plastic wrap looking like something out of CSI. The coolest things to me they had were relics of saints (I'm a sucker for relics). They had the skeletons of St. Felix and St. Vincent, some parts covered in wax (like the face) and some bones exposed (like the ribs).

After a brief stop at the grocery store there (while waiting for the bus) and finding Bueno Bars (a chocolate candy made by Kinder that Angela and I are obsessed with) we got the bus back to Prague. It dropped us off at a different place in Prague so we had to take the metro back near our hostel. Brenton, Steve and I went out for pizza while Angela and Adam went back to the hostel to eat their leftovers from the night before. Now I'm going to go downstairs to the common room where I think there is more Scrabble going on. ;-)