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Published: July 29th 2013
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Road Trip!
This morning I met Jon and Lori Anderson at their hotel. We rented a car and ventured out into the wilds of the Czech Republic. The day was not without mishaps, but we had a fine time. Beautiful country, interesting sites and great company.
As I mentioned, Lori is in Prague at the invitation of an International Nurses Association, making a presentation on topics I could never hope to understand. The Nurses put the Anderson's up at the Prague Hilton. Can I just say, that like international airports, every convention hotel in the world looks exactly the same. Big, clean, efficient and dare I say a bit "sterile." Give me a small European hotel on a back alley anytime (as long as it serves a proper English Breakfast).
The day began with a discussion of service standards.
In Europe tipping is much more limited than it is in the United States. As a result, Americans often find the quality of service is not what we are used to. American waiters, bartenders and service people understand that a significant chunk of their wages comes for tips, so, for the most part, they try to take care
of you.
In Europe this is not always true.
Our rent-a-car experience provides a wonderful illustration.
When Jon completed the paperwork, the rent-a-car guy, Jan, walked us out to the car. First, our car was "parked in," and there was no way to move it. Second, once we sorted the "parked in" situation, we discovered the car did not have a full gas tank. At this point Jan sent someone to fill the car up, and promised we would have the car in 10-15 minutes.
Now ... most of you readers are Yanks, so you know where this story is going ... THERE WAS A PARKING LOT FULL OF RENTAL CARS. When the car was parked in why were we simply not handed the keys to some other car? And even if we had waited to sort the "parked in" situation, can you imagine an American rent-a-car company making you wait for the "fill-up?"
And honestly people, the thought of giving us a different car DID NOT OCCUR to Jan.
We Americans can be impatient, jingoistic and not terribly tolerant of cultural differences (all of which are unattractive qualities) but we do, as a
rule, have better customer service than anywhere else in the world.
So anyway ... once we had a full tank we hit the highway.
I was on the Ghost Tour last night, and my journey into the macabre continued today (for the record, I could not figure out how to spell "macabre" so I went to the Wikipedia page for Edgar Allen Poe to get the spelling ... pretty smart right?)
Our first stop was the Bone Church in the Czech town of Kutna Hora. The Bone Church is a Catholic Abbey. In 1278 a monk from the Abbey traveled to the holy land and brought back a small amount of earth. He sprinkled the earth in the Abbey cemetery, consecrating it. From that time forward, the Abbey cemetery and the Abbey itself became a very desirable place to be buried.
In the 14th century, the Black Death moved across Europe killing up to 200 million people over the course of 3 years. Many communities, including Kutna Hora, resorted to mass graves, but in this case, the mass grave was inside the Abbey.
The bones of from 40,000 to 70,000 people have been collected in
the chapel of this church.
Most of the bones are contained in four huge piles, in each of the four corners of the building.
Other bones, however, have been used by artists to make "art objects." There is a bone chandelier made using every bone in the human body, and other creepy objects.
I kept thinking if Allie Stone could see this, she would never go into a dark basement again.
After a ghoulish time at the Bone Church, we visited a much more beautiful church, the Cathedral of St. Barbara, one of the finest examples of gothic architecture in Europe.
After the Cathedral, we grabbed a great lunch and then set the GPS for Lidice, a memorial to what had been a small town about 30 km north of Prague.
In 1942, Lidice was a ghetto to contain large parts of the Jewish population of Czechoslovakia . In June 1942, Czech freedom fighters killed Reinhard Heydrich (the head of the SS, author of the Final Solution, and possible successor to Hitler). In retribution, the SS went to Lidice, killed all of the men over the age of 16, transferred all others to extermination
camps and then destroyed the town.
Needless to say there is a memorial.
After diligently following the GPS directions for about 90 minutes, Jon began to wonder if we were headed in the right direction. It turns out we were not. We were supposed to be 30 km north of Prague and we were 100 km south of Prague.
Ok, so much for Lidice.
But not to be undone, we pulled out our maps and guidebooks to see what there was to see south of Prague.
It turns out there was quite a lot to see, including Castle Konopiste, the ancestral home of the Hapsburgs, the family that ruled the Austo-Hungarian Empire for 500 years. This was also the last home of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose murder started World War I.
The Castle is situated high on a hill, so when you arrive, you are taken up to the Castle on a tram being pulled by a tractor designed to look like a little train engine. Once the tram got underway, we did several "loop-dee doos" in the parking lot before we climbed the hill in a very serpentine motion, back and forth, back
and forth. At one point Jon accurately pointed out that the driver clearly thought this was some kind of "ride."
Upon our arrival we had a very interesting tour of the estate and spent quite a lot of time enjoying the rose garden.
We finally made our way back to Prague. A great day with great friends.
Next time ... on to Budapest.
JJF
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Matt
non-member comment
Czech that off your list.
Keep them coming, Jeff. We are reading. You are reminding me of my 1991 post-law school trip to Europe. The only differences are I did not spend any time in clubs, there were no realistic cell phones, no blogs, and I was young and poor. Other than that, pretty much the same.