Sedlec Ossuary and many more

My friends and I traveled to Sedlec and Kutna Hora last Sunday to see the infamous "bone church." What a better second impression to have of the Czech Republic than a church decorated with human bones? (That was obviously our train of thought for Caroline..) But moving past the fact that it was a tad creepy at times, the church was actually really cool!

For those that don't know the story behind the church, I've attached a brief synopsis:

In 1278 the Cistercian abbot of Sedlec, Henry, traveled to Palestine and the ‘Holy Land’, bringing home a sample of earth from Golgotha which was later, upon his return, sprinkled over the grounds of his local cemetery. The grounds were immediately considered scared, and hence became a much sought after location for relatives to bury their dead. In the 14th century, the Black Death spread the bubonic plague across Europe and now 30,000 bodies all wanted a resting place within the sacred grounds. Such vast numbers of dead led to the creation of the ossuary in 1511 by a half-blind monk who gathered up the bones to be stacked up within the ossuary, making space for new corpses, which were soon taken up by more victims from 15th century Hussite Wars. The ossuary itself is situated in the basement of the All Saint’s Chapel

Express your emotions of where we are::

But all joking aside, we had an amazing day and greatly enjoyed this popular scene. And while, yes, very eerie, it was also extraordinarily interesting.

Prior to setting out on this journey, I decided to venture by myself to find a church service Sunday morning. I had found a Czech Unitarian Church online and so I figured I would explore the scene a little bit. Service was to be fully in czech and at 10 am, but when I arrived at 9:50 am, there was not a soul in sight. I figured I had just misread the information online, so I ducked into the nearby cathedral and enjoyed an up-down Czech Catholic Mass. The cathedral was absolutely stunning, and since Catholic Mass has been burned into my brain, hearing the czech version actually helped in my goal to learn the language. The church is also conveniently located across from Charles Bridge. Hopefully, I'll make it to Unitaria next week. Turns out I didn't read the information on the website wrong..I just forgot about Daylight Savings..

Additionally, on my adventures to church, I happened across a small marionette theater. Thinking it was the same one that was recommended to me by a CSA member (thanks Janet!), I mentioned it to Caroline. We decided to do some research ahead of time, mostly due to prices, and boy were we glad we did! Apparently, it is NOT the same one that Janet recommended. Instead, we ran across this review:

We just got back from Prague and had purchased tickets to a show of "Don Giovanni", but when we arrived at the National Marionette Theatre (Zatecka Street 1) they explained to us that the tickets that were sold to us were from a fraudulent Yugoslavian company (called the "Prague National Company") basically doing a very low quality version of the same show at a different location (on Karlova Street 12, the former location of the Marionette Museum). We returned to the ticket sellers and tried to get our money back and were physically threatened by the employees, with the owner going as far as telling us that they "kill people" where he is from.

I cannot tell you how glad we were we didn't just show up..Hopefully we'll make it to the real place soon though!!

And on a really really happy note: My friend's boyfriend was visiting this past weekend. He made the 4000 some mile hike here for a 3 day weekend. He seems to have enjoyed his time in Prague and the weekend went out on a bang when he proposed to Kari!!! According to Kari, our first AIFS reunion will be their wedding. :) Congrats guys!

Look! They even dress alike!