Interior Decorating the Czech Way

Europe » Czech Republic » Central Bohemian Region » Kutná Hora
July 21st 2006

Published: December 17th 2006

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She Rambo

Schwarzenberg Crest

Impressive but prehaps too big for the mantle piece. Not that it was for sale.

Caroline and Margo were chatting in the room next door early in the morning. That was a bit strange to me (for reasons that I can’t fathom) and I woke up with a sneaking suspicion that we were supposed to be somewhere. I had a moment of selflessness the night before and buried my watch underneath some clothes. Along with that moment, I had a lapse in judgement by letting Lisa set her alarm to wake us up half an hour before meeting with Dan at 7:15am. It was seven. I leaned over between the beds and tapped madly on Lisa’s arm. When her eyes eventually opened I pointed to the clock and jump out of bed. Clothes on, out of the room to the wash sink (passed a very bewildered Margo), brushed my teeth, went to the toilet, back to the wash sink as Daniel went into the toilet and back to the room as Lisa went to brush her teeth. It was a precision effort as we all filed out of the apartment to meet Dan and the Jobs at the corner of our street. Margo was suitably impressed.
“I thought I was going to be going to Kutna

Sedlec Ossuary

Never judge a book by its cover, the Bone Church is far from ordinary.

Hora by myself,” Dan commented as we filed into the Metro.
“You should have seen them, it was like clockwork,” Margo mused. “I was asking Caroline if I should knock on the door to wake them up and all of a sudden they were all whoosh, whoosh, in and out and done.”
“I heard you talking to Caroline, that’s what woke me up,” I replied with eyebrows arched at Lisa.
“Uh, yeah. I sort of forgot to kinda turn on the alarm. I set it though!”
“My fault,” I said to questioning looks.
“Absolutely, you should know better than to let me be responsible!” Lisa said triumphantly. After fourteen years of friendship, I should know better than to trust Lisa with simple tasks, only the difficult ones.

Kutna Hora is the day trip from Prague; for foreigners that is, the locals go to Chesky Krumlov as we discovered earlier. There are two things to see in Kutna Hora, the Sedlec Ossuary (commonly known as The Bone Church) and St Barbara’s Cathedral. Despite our best efforts to get up in time, we didn’t quite beat the tourist coach to the Sedlec Ossuary. Europe has a problem with bones in general.

Giant Bells

The giant bells consist of the most number of bones in its construct. Times that by four.

Too many wars and plagues have strained the continent’s grave yard limits. There is only so many times you can bury a body on top of another before you jump the line of decency. The French has solved their spatial issues by stacking the bones in an orderly fashion in their abandoned sewers. The Czechs opted for the creative approach of stringing the bleached femurs and skulls in a crisscrossing design across the ceiling in the way someone would decorate their house for a child’s birthday party. Granted that it would be a very macabre celebration but I personally can’t think of anything better to do with 40, 000 bones. I must say that Mr Frantisek Rint did a fantastic job of replicating the Schwarzenberg coat of arms complete with crow pecking out the eyes of a severed Turkish head. The centrepiece of the bone collection is the massive chandelier which contains every single bone in the body and I attempted to name every one of them (novelty wore off at phalange number four). Mr Rint would have an impressive resume; wood carver, holy church interior decorator and sculptor in the medium of bones. In keeping with the theme he

Chandelier

'Femur 1, Femur 2, intercostal, middle phalange... oh forget it'

even signed his name in human bones. Still, I think cremation is a lot more space friendly and my preferred method of body disposal.

The group dutifully followed Dan along the grey building lined roads towards the heart of Kutna Hora. Communism may have officially left but no one seemed to have told the people of Kutna Hora and the statues stood untouched while the cement block housing remained unloved behind their rusted cyclone fences. If I was walking down a street of this calibre in Australia or my temporary home of the UK, I would be picking up the pace and avoiding eye contact with anyone between the ages of five and sixty. Here, it is entirely normal and the locals could not care less about a bunch of foreigners trailing like sheep behind an abnormally perky pseudo-British leader. Stranger things have probably passed through Kutna Hora and its not likely that someone will give their homes a lick of paint any time soon.

Something which is getting a face lift is St Barbara’s Cathedral. Kutna Hora is built around mining - much like our very own Newcastle in Australia so it is rather apt that St

Strung Up

The criss cross design from all four corners reminds me of the birthday decorations my mother used to hang up for me. ALthough she used crepe.

Barbara is the patron saint of deadly professions. Well, dangerous professions (electricians, explosive technicians and I like to include any profession that involved the care of children), I doubt that she was highly approving of assassins. A condensed version of the story is that a beautiful (everyone roll their eyes) daughter of an evil (lets assume podgy and ugly) wealthy man, was locked in a tower out of pure possessiveness and jealousy. Before making a pilgrimage to some unknown location he commissions a bathhouse to be made for his daughter. I know, nothing says I love you than a bath house. In any case, she converts to Christianity while staring out the window at all the beautiful forests and deer cantering around joyfully in the green pastures. She orders the builders to add a third window to represent the Holy Trinity. If ruining his bath house design didn’t enrage the old heathen on his return, finding out that she had become a born again Christian sure did. Dragging her to a town hearing which he chaired; he sentenced her to death by be-heading. As he walked back from his dastardedly deed, he is struck by lightning and his body obliterated.

Chandelier from Below

From this legend of the lovely daughter’s persecutor’s untimely death by lightning she is regarded as the patron saint in times of eminent danger and sudden death. An electrician would be protected from electrocution, an explosive technician may escape the wayward firecracker and a paediatric physiotherapist may just not get crushed by an eighty kilo autistic teenager running across a muddy field. Hypothetically.

The Cathedrals are blending in together as one. There are pews, stained glass windows depicting people kneeling at the feet of other people with little plump cherubs gracing the skies and a collection box. There was a part of me that felt mighty guilty that I wasn’t over-awed by St Barbara’s Cathedral. Walking along the cobblestone path leading to the cathedral in collective indifference some of us stopped to watch some locals restore an old statue. We laughed and soaked in the surrounds, the Cathedral a mere building of no particular interest. It could have been the effort of our no nonsense wake up earlier this morning but our eagerness to absorb every ounce of culture had waned. The destination and the sites where no longer drawing our passion but the actual journey with our

Signature Mr Rint

An impressive signature to match.

new found friends for two weeks.
“Five dollars,” Mark demanded while standing smack bang in front of my shot of the Cathedral.
“Eh, not that interested in the Cathedral,” I replied and turned to take a picture of the landscape.
“Five dollars,” he persisted leaning over the wall into my shot.
“You own all of the Czech Republic?”
“Yes. Five dollars,” he replied. Good to see he had absorbed the Czech mentality. Also good to see that the Imodium had kicked in and he wasn’t constantly on the reconnaissance for the nearest toilet.

“Five dollars,” Mark demanded again at the bus stop.
“What? For sitting on the dirty pavement?”
“Yes. Five dollars.”
“Corporate Americans.”
“Damn straight.” He was feeling better.

Margo, Caroline, Lisa and I caught the tram up to Prague Castle to bathe in the glory of Bohemia’s majesty. What a load of tripe, we were trailing along with thousands of other tourists and it was just another castle surrounded by tourist cafes, shops and it reminded me a lot of The Vatican. Perhaps it should have reminded me of Buckingham Palace with their motionless guards at the entrance but something that once had meaning is now

Heaven Over Hell

Upstairs a simple pious symbol of heaven looking down at skeletal designs of hell.

lost under the waves of tourists and profit. The sky looked unforgiving as we stood there wondering how much of our attention we should impart on the medieval castle.
“So Lisa, tell us all about Prague Castle!” I said in hope to generate some enthusiasm.
“Well, a beautiful….” and all of a sudden the four of us were in stitches at Lisa’s convoluted stories of broken down carts and stranded wood cutters bartering gold for stale bread with the people of Prague. The first fat droplet of water smacked us on the forehead and it became a dash for the apartment. Dressed for the steamy weather of late, we loped down the wide steps past hawkers closing up shop prematurely only to be pleasantly surprised as to how close we were to our Ikea apartment. Our peak saturation time was when we turned and turned the key in the lock under the eave less door to our building.

Typically the storm blew over a few minutes later after we had arrived into the apartment. With a surprising burst of energy I walked the streets nearby for ingredients for tomorrows planned barbeque in Teplice. A side step into an express

Irony or Efficiency?

The tobacco museum neatly attached to the local church... at least you don't have to go far to confess your sins.

mart was rewarded with half melted Milka chocolate. The rain had did nothing to cool down the heat weighing down all of Prague and the air-condition-less express mart confectionary section suffered the effects. Away from the square, I walked past a busy bakery filled with bread in all shapes but in the one size of gigantic till I caught the eye of a bunch of rowdy British men sitting outside a bar. They motioned for me to come over with their mugs of foamy beer and I crossed the road towards them. Their triumphant grin faded as I walked straight passed them and into the small independent grocery store nearby. A crate of bright red capsicums had caught my attention and not the beer swilling men who were calling out to many girls in the their Jordy accent. Predictably they were getting shunned by local and foreign females alike.
The owner, presuming the clean shaven neat looking man behind the boxy counter was the owner, smiled warmly at me and waited. He wasn’t gregarious, aloof or too helpful. He was just pleasant and polite. Small crates had a limited amount of mushrooms, bananas, red, yellow and green capsicums, a few

Commumist Statues

Enroute to the heart of Kutna Hora, remnants of a failed political system.

carrots and some potatoes. Leafy green produce poked over a shelf next to a little bucket of lemons. A modest spice rack held its pungent contents in little blue sachets and half were paprika. He waited patiently as I decided how many red capsicums I wanted and saw that I was tempted by the mushrooms. Turning around he put a hand of bananas into a blue plastic bag with the mushrooms and capsicums, he rung up the total and gave me my change. Before handing the bag he smiled in the fatherly way some men do and added a few more capsicums to my bag and patted me on the arm. This is why I love food, it connects us all in a common language.

Our last dinner in Prague was at the foot of the castle with an uninterrupted view of the twinkling lights of the city surrounded by parklands. Our stuttering tram took us halfway to the top and we used our able legs to traverse the rest of the hill. At the corner of a winding street an unshaven smelling as foul as your average drifter, tried to grab my attention. A double amputee in a

Towards St Barbra's Cathedral

Renovating the pride of Kutna Hora.

battered unloved wheelchair, he put his dirty fingerless gloved hands together and looked pleadingly with bloodshot eyes at me. He continued to natter at me in Czech and turned his wheelchair around as I passed him by with the others. Then I stopped as I looked ahead at everyone else powering up the hill.
“I think he is asking us to help push him up the hill,” I said more to myself than to the rest. Dan and the others stopped and looked at me and then to our man in the wheelchair. He continued to put his hands together and we pointed up to the top of the hill. He nodded enthusiastically and looked ready to cry as Dan strained and heaved him up the hill. Till we hit the curb that is. He tried indicated a whirling motion with his hands and repeated frantically in Czech on how to get him down the curb.
“Turn him around and bump him down,” I explained. Everyone looked at me blankly momentarily till I took the wheelchair and pulled him backwards off the curb. There are some benefits to working with a lot of wheel bound children. He continued to thank

Mark?!!!

What happens when you mess with corporate America.

us profusely as we left him at the top of the hill.
“Jeez, I hope he wanted to go up the hill!” I said as an afterthought. He was still where we left him chattering away praising us or the heavens and waving his unbathed arms around.
“He’s probably saying ‘you foreign bastards!! I didn’t want to go up!’” Mark commented.
“Whoops. He’s probably really swearing at us!” Dan added.
“Ah, well, he’ll have fun going down. That’s gotta hurt the hands,” I said, feeling a little doubtful. “Maybe he’ll just stop some other foreigner and make them take him down.”
“Or he could still be there when we get back, cursing us.” Lisa theorised. We turned around for one last time and our gentleman was no longer there.
“Or it could be some elaborate sociological project where he is looking at how many people will push a dirty double amputee beggar in a wheelchair up a hill and is already down there waiting for his next subject,” I continued, “which means we passed as the good citizens of society.”
“Yay for us!” Always look on the positive side of life or at least self-enhance your image when ever possible.

Cathedral's Front Door

Taken rapidly when Mark's back was turned hence the slight tilt.

The city of Prague fell under the shadows of twilight as we drank our drinks of choice. A lot of people have told me that Prague is over-rated as a city with its influx of tourists and the hike in prices to match. Maybe it is the company you are with that makes it special. If I was wandering these streets alone, would I soak it up the same way? Certainly I wouldn’t be laughing over roasted rabbit (which I have had better) or being supportive of Caroline’s decision to consume a cheesecake that was more cheese than cake. A band struck up to merriment somewhere in the basement and in the confusion Dan convinced us all to try a Bercherkova. Not so enamoured with the shot that went down as well was water used to wash bowling shoes, Keith bought the rather shot glass instead.
“How much?” he asked our rather surprised waitress holding the empty shot glass.
“It’s expensive,” she replied.
“How much?” he asked again.
“ One hundred Czech crowns,” she replied slowly as she plucked a random figure from her head.
“Done!” he pronounced and pulled a hundred Czech crown bill from his wallet and

Prague Castle

put on the table and picked up the glass with other hand.
“No! No!” she exclaimed, “I will get you a new one!” and raced off to get it. Twenty minutes later as we called her for the bill we reminded her of the purchased shot glass. She looked sheepish as she returned with a clean one for the General.

Apart from the boys the rest of us accepted Dan’s offer for a walk through the park at night. The cheesecake started to backfire on Caroline as she groaned her way up the winding path and looked all too grateful when we reached the top to look at the mini Eiffel tower lit up in a radioactive yellow. In the distance I heard a car drive up behind us and I pulled Lisa off the path.
“Thanks Bek.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Jeff will be pleased that you saved my life.”
“Again,” I added.
“Yes, again,” she conceded.

Our plans were interrupted in the form of park renovations and our options were to climb over the pile dirt, scramble down the funicular tracks or back track. We backtracked till we diverted down the unmarked path through the trees. It was

Prague Castle

The looming towers of the Castle Cathedral

probably the bercherkova but I skipped my way down occasionally hoping I wouldn’t land flat on my behind. The cheesecake was certainly not agreeing with Caroline as she death gripped Dan all the way to the bottom.
“This is going onto my feedback isn’t it?” Dan said ruefully as one by one the others gingerly made their way down.
“Sure, because we’re not adults and can’t decide whether or not to walk down a semi-treacherous hill and it is all your fault,” I replied.
“Yes, there was certainly not enough cheesecake related information on this trip,” Lisa added.
“Never again. Why did you let me eat the cheesecake? Mind you it agreed less with me up hill than down hill… I think,” Caroline pondered. Together we laughed and Irish danced all the way through the streets of Prague. Okay, so I Irish danced and the others walked sensibly. There is a lot more to Prague and who knows, when I come back I may discover them. At the moment as I reflect, it is a sparkling city under the watchful glow of a majestic castle and somewhere a man in a wheelchair is sitting at home telling someone how a