1999 Biking East Europe

Sunday, September 19 – Prague, Czech Rep, Sport Camp, 400Kc

This morning we took tram 10 all the way from the bottom of our road to Zelivskeho in search of a bus to Kutna Hora 66kms east of Prague. There were several buses moving out when we reached the bus station and, much to his dismay/disbelief/bemusement, I yelled at Charl to “run” to all the leaving buses and see if one of them was ours! We subsequently found that bus three to Kutna Hora was only due at 12h45 so took instead an already-waiting bus to Kostelec, halfway to our destination. Then hitched two rides to Kutna Hora. The first in a red Mercedes with a father and son basically just out of Kostelec to a perfect hitching spot on the main road, Route 2. Then with a young couple en route to their holiday home 6kms west of Kutna Hora. They were the ultimate yuppies in their brand new aubergine Skoda – which does not look like a Skoda i.e. which could be a posh car anywhere. The young woman spoke careful limited English. She asked where we were from and was delighted when we answered South Africa as she had been to Sun City once in the late-80s and they had both been there again in 1996 – on both occasions to participate in martial arts’ competitions. She specialises in Kata; he in Kumite. She laughingly showed us her English exercise book and they were delighted when Charl, paging through it, found a sentence which he read in Czech: This is a most expensive car. They were both flattered and amused. We were amused and a little taken-aback by the back page of her book which depicted a lecherous old man saying to a young woman: You are beautiful and your body is supple! They were kind enough to drive us into Kutna Hora beyond their home and to drop us at the St Barbara cathedral – which particularly pleased us as hitching had proved much slower than elsewhere to date.

Kutna Hora, thanks to the discovery of silver, was for 250 years one of the most important towns in Bohemia. Today it is a sleepy town of 20 000 inhabitants; at the end of the 14th century its population equalled that of London’s.

The Gothic cathedral, financed by miners and dedicated to Saint Barbara the patron saint of miners and gunners, was relatively empty (unlike crowded St Vitus) and lovely to behold. (As we arrived a tour-bus group was leaving; one woman wanted to go inside but I heard the guide say it would take too long and watched him draw her away! – and was pleased as ever to be an independent traveller despite the attendant hassles.) The cathedral’s foundations were laid in 1380; but parts of the church are still incomplete – building being interrupted by the Hussite wars etc. A parade of Baroque saints and cherubs line the approach road, and the unusual roof is divine, but it was the hushed inside of church we loved most.

On entering we were most sensibly handed a returnable English self-guide sheet and so got more out of this visit than out of most (I don’t know why more tourist attractions don’t take this simple step to ensure a more fruitful visit). We learned that the bulk of the church was constructed between 1388 and 1558. That major changes and restorations were made in the 17th and 18th centuries. We loved the plain glass windows as well as the simple stained-glass windows; the frescoes depicting the miners’ lives (they worked 6 days a week, 10-14 hours per day; their 16th century silver mines were, at 500m, the deepest in the world at that time); the statue of the miner with his lamp, tools and leather apron (used for sliding down the mine). The Gothic ceiling as usual was intensely pleasing. In the “fields” of the ceiling were painted coats of arms of guilds and burghers. There was a wooden carving 3.5m high depicting the 17th century virtues: Justice, Bravery, Caution, and Temperance. The wooden choir stalls (each unique) dating from 1490 mimicked the stone decorations on the ceiling. All unified by plain stone pillars and floor. The cathedral is 30m high and measures 70m x 40m. Great stuff.

Later we wandered through a well-signposted attractive little town to lunch on soup and ham omelettes at a busy little pub. Thence to the helpful tourist information centre to find out about transport back to Prague and the route to the ossuary at Sedlec – the primary if macabre reason for our visit. Our assistant  actually looked up timetables on a computer and gave us a laser printout! We were amused to find on the train timetable a list of carriages attached to the train – in our chosen case including a baggage car (for bicycles?), and a dining car. Very first-world and quite different from the other countries on out trip. Then walked long and hot to the ossuary.

A Cisterian monastery was founded at this site in 1142. In 1278 the King of Bohemia sent Henry, Abbot of Sedlec, on a diplomatic mission to the Holy Land. Henry returned with earth from Golgotha which he scattered in the monastery’s graveyard. The cemetery thus gained considerably in fame and popularity throughout central Europe – especially after the 1318 plague (which alone added 30 000 graves) and the 15th century Hussite wars. In 1400 an All Saints church was erected in the grounds with a chapel built beneath it which, from 1511, was used to store the bones from abolished graves in the overfull graveyard. In 1870 the local authorities commissioned Frantisek Rint to do something creative with the piles of bones. He moulded four gigantic bells, one in each corner of the crypt, designed-wall-to-ceiling decorations – skulls and cross-bones hung like Xmas decorations, hip-bone haloes around dead heads (gives dead-heading a whole new meaning), chalices etc – recreated the Schwarzenburg coat of arms and, for his centrepiece, erected an enormous chandelier made out of every bone in the body. He even signed his name in bones. Although the place is decidedly odd it does not give one the creeps nor was it intended to trivialise the dead. The 30Kc ticket states: You are entering a pious space. Conserve, please, respekt to the dead.

We then bought 2nd class tickets at 50Kc each to Prague. The train was chokablok with people standing in the aisles etc. I managed to find a compartment in which three women were seated on one side and one man was fast asleep across the remaining three seats. I tapped him on the leg to rouse him – too tired to stand for the 50-minute ride – and Charl and I sat happily for our 2nd trip to Prague’s main station. The young man (and his sleeping girlfriend) was German, clearly backpacking around. He did not smell pleasant, was very thin and his arms and hands were covered in sores at which he had been picking. The girlfriend looked much healthier. From the station by Metro to the Charles bridge to buy Martin a T-shirt, to walk across the bridge in daylight for the first time (we were practically the only people not being kissed on the bridge!), to take photos, to cash money, to shop for dinner at an overhot supermarket, and to decide against buying any Bohemian glass items. We missed the first No.9 tram so had coke and beer at Bohemian Bagel instead – where they made a spicy Melba toast out of stale bagels sliced thin and served them with the beer, as well as allowing one to top up one’s coke. Lekker. Then home to assemble our bikes in preparation for tomorrow and to pack and sleep.