Up Close & Personal With 40,000 Human Bones in Kutna Hora (Prague Day 5)

On Thursday morning, day 13 of traveling, Dad waived the white flag. He'd had enough of walking tours that seemed to go uphill both ways over cobblestones. So, we left him to have a relaxing day in the apartment while we explored further afield. Our destination: Kutna Hora. Why? To see the bones.

How to Get to Kutna Hora from Prague

For us, it was a short walk to the metro station where we took a train to the main train station (hlavni nadrazi). Here, on the main level, you can buy a ticket up until just a few minutes before the train departs. One passenger is $7.50. Once in Kutna Hora, you can take a local train downtown, a bus or cap to the bone church (ossuary), or—as we did—you can stop in the tourist office at the train station where a very nice staff member will give you a map and directions, and you can find your way on foot.

Our Travel Experience

The main train station in Prague has a variety of places to buy grab and go breakfast. I got a pastry and yogurt, Aaron got a baguette with ham and cheese, and Mom got a yogurt parfait. With our hands full of goodies, we went downstairs to purchase our tickets, then back upstairs to get on the train. There did not appear to be any reserved seating, and you could choose from an open-air car a car composed of semi-private 6-person cabins. We shared a cabin with a couple from Brooklyn that was into food and craft beer, which made for a fun, engaging conversation all the way to Kutna Hora.

Once arriving in Kutna Hora, I stepped into the tiny tourist information office and grabbed an informative map and got walking directions from the attendant. It was only a twelve-minute walk to the bone church (proper tourists would call it the Ossuary). It's not a scenic walk, but it does take you by a Phillip Morris tobacco plant—which emitted had a pleasant, sweet smell.

The Ossuary was amazing ... and creepy. It was decorated with the bones of over 40,000 people, many of them plague victims. Even after reading the literature provided, it's still a bit unclear to me why someone would think this was a good idea. But, these towers were built by monks.

This chandelier contains every single bone in the human body. 

These skulls were in a separate display case that explained that they died from blunt-force trauma. Obviously.

After the breath-taking, bone-chilling Ossuary, we walked the the city center. There is a bus that runs every 30 minutes, but it was only a 20-25 minutes walk and the weather was beautiful. Upon reaching the center, we were quite hungry. We were ready for a break from Czech food at this point, so we stopped at Fresh Burger. I ordered a burger with goat cheese that sounded quite delicious. When it was delivered to the table, I learned that it was also quite enormous.

Even after cutting it in half, I couldn't eat this burger without most of the insides ending up on my lap, and that took about five seconds to happen. 

Next on our list was the silver museum, but we learned that hard way that you have to purchase a ticket in advance to go in, and there were hundreds of kids on some sort of field trip waiting to enter. So, if you plan to visit Kutna Hora and want to tour the old silver mine and see the exhibits, buy your ticket in advance!

With a few minutes left to explore, we went to the Cathedral of St. Barbara. I really wasn't anxious to see another cathedral at this point, but this one was absolutely beautiful. To reach the cathedral you first walk down a beautiful cobblestone street flanked by statues (although the image of the Dr. Who weeping angels was hard to get out of my head). Inside, there was gorgeous architecture and stained glass.

The view from the cathedral.

After the cathedral, we had to catch the bus back to the train station. I'm very grateful for the help of a local, who let us know where the bus stop was (it wasn't particularly marked), how much it cost (it wasn't listed), and when the bus actually showed up (it was a van that looked nothing like the bus). It was less than 50 cents to ride the bus, and it took about 20 minutes for us to get to the train station. Then, back on a train, back on the metro, and back to the apartment, all by 5:00 p.m.

We really could have used a quiet night at home, but the Tottenham Hotspurs were playing, and we'd made plans to watch the game with Jimmy and Kate. We went back to Old Town and settled in at an over-priced Irish Pub because they had the game on. But first, we caught the chiming of the astronomical clock and took pictures of everyone else taking pictures.

Back to the bar! There was another Tottenham supporter in the bar—a young Englishman—and he joined our table. He was young and alone in Prague, waiting for his friends to arrive the next day. He was staying in the hostel and tried to negotiate better beer prices from the bartender, so we all took pride in our older, wiser position and bought the kid some beers. Tottenham managed to play for 90 minutes without scoring a goal, but neither did the other guys, so ... yah? Unfortunately, he then got quite drunk and started asking about our plans for the rest of the weekend. We took our cue to leave.

We found a little sausage kitchen and beer hall that was the epitome of Czech beer halls: bad service, loud, cheap sausages, lots of smoke. It was the only place we visited in Prague that kept track of our order like this:

The sausage kind of looks like one of those prehistoric dinosaur sausages.

While staff was ignoring us because their national team had a soccer match, we saw an amazingly odd tour taking place outside. A short man wearing a wizard costume and carrying a magic wand was giving some sort of "Prague at Night" tour. I'm so sad we missed it. Next time.

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