Day 43 - Kutna Hora

I have mercifully little to say today, as I had a late start to my day, visited a small city, and even found time to watch a movie before writing this email. I was awoken shortly before 6:00 AM today when some of my roommates, drunk, returned from a night out, and, since I had slept for most of the night already, I had a hard time getting back to sleep and was sluggish all morning. I started my day by looking for a decent bookshop, as I am quickly running out of reading material. Alas, Prague is not the right city in which to be to find cheap books: none of the bookstores that I visited offered books in English for less than five dollars, and all of the books that were cheaper than about twelve dollars were terrible. I searched three bookstores before giving up and going to Kutna Hora without having made any purchases. If I were in Berlin, I would almost surely be able to find a cheap bookstore with a good English-language selection, but alas, it will almost be too late to matter by the time at which I visit Berlin. Such are the breaks, as they say.

I left for Kutna Hora at lunchtime today on a stuffy, overheated train with no display for upcoming stops and breaks that screeched intolerably every time the train stopped. I got off of the train in Kutna Hora flanked by tourists, all of us looking for the historic city center. Momentarily united, like a slime mold, we oozed along the pavement in search of cathedrals. I branched off from the main group with a couple of other individuals when I saw a nearby church, then I visited a second church and the city's famous ossuary. I bought a city map for one crown (roughly five cents; it looked better than the free map) from someone who was convinced that I could not possibly make it to the city center by foot (despite my having just come from that direction), whereafter I saw the old town's main sights, hopped on the train back to Prague, and fell asleep.

 

I walked through Prague's city center on the way from the train station to a nearby restaurant and discovered that it is incredibly alive in the evenings. Vendors fry traditional Czech snack food in little stalls, the smells of their different dishes intermixing in the air; street artists of every sort draw crowds of tourists; people everywhere play music; the odious, nameless odors of Prague's streets flood one's nostrils; hobos rummage in garbage cans; tourists take photos and bump into one another; and the energy of a thousand different activities pervades the central square. Some British tourists who, seeing that I had a map, asked me for directions agreed with me that it was a pity to see such cultural riches juxtaposed with evident poverty. They commented that the country's having been ravaged by Communist Russia for years must have left it indigent; it is possible that, given thirty or forty years, it will start catching up to its neighbors to the west, as life in the Czech Republic appears to be gradually improving. While people here are not outwardly unhappy, there is a huge amount of homelessness, the streets are filthy, and at least half of the city's buildings appear to be, if not on the verge of collapse, at least more decrepit than would be allowable in Western Europe. People here probably were outwardly unhappy thirty years ago; it seems likely that some progress, at least, has been made.

I do not have too many cultural notes today, though I have noted people's liking my efforts to use Czech. While people here do not like being spoken to in Russian (on which I have given up with young people, as they usually speak English), they lighten up considerably when I say things like "please," "thank you," and "goodbye" in their native language; a little effort can go a long way here. My main interest in the ossuary at Kutna Hora was that, unlike the ossuary at Brno, which appeared to have been made through strictly practical considerations, that at Kutna Hora appeared to have been made to mock death. Words written in human bones stuck to the walls; mountains of bones topped by skulls sat in recesses in the wall (alcoves?); a chandelier made of bones had human skulls as candleholders; and people's bones were often arranged as though to make them look, in some contradictory way, as though they were still living. The purpose of this type of display, as far as I can tell, was to make light of death and show that it cannot defeat us, which is a much different attitude than that adopted in the West. It is interesting that Western cultures are the only ones around that treat death with utter horror; as far as I know, other cultures accept death as a part of life.

 

My final point of the day is that I have probably been overly-critical of Czech Republic; in short, by reviling the Czech Republic for its lack of infrastructure and its cultural insignificance, I have, in a sense, been complaining that my lemon meringue pie tastes like lemon. I cannot view this part of my trip as a total waste of time, as it has taught me not to root for cultural treasures in areas in which no one else in the world has found them - if they are out there, they are likely to be found - and not to visit small towns, Eastern Europe, or out-of-the-way places in general. The bike trip, in turn, taught me never to bike while on vacation, and especially not to do so as a means of long-distance transport. Perhaps the only way to learn about other places is to make mistakes along the way; perhaps travelling itself is an art at which one can grow more adept. I hope that my lessons from this trip carry over to future trips and, as such, save me future grief by forewarning me against future missteps. I need only to trust that the nothing will change in the world over the next few years that would prevent my continuing to take these trips.

I have, at this point, run out of things to say. I am going to visit Pilzen tomorrow, go to my favorite restaurant one more time, and, if time permits, watch another movie. Watching movies is one of my favorite leisure activities and brings me some of the same enjoyment as reading books; having not yet discussed movies at all in this blog, however, I do not want to jump into a discussion of them now. Based on the past few days, the fact that so much of my trip is already behind me, and my aversion to changing hostel bookings at the last minute, I expect that I may have to wait until I reach Leiden to catch up on sleep. I am looking forward to reentering Germany and hope that my travels through Eastern Europe have brought me some sort of latent new knowledge that a superior trip through Western Europe could not have brought me. My advice to all of you is to avoid Eastern Europe like the plague until you have seen more interesting parts of the world and are dying to see something new, as you will otherwise smolder with regret over having passed over gems in favor of dross. (Again, I am sure that I am judging the Czech Republic too harshly, and I should not be so quick to talk given that I enjoyed Slovakia and Prague. One disadvantage to my writing these emails without forethought is that you get to see my rawest, most biased, and most emotionally-tainted ideas. Hopefully, I will see things more objectively with time, as my ideas will mature. Goodbye!)

 

This is the approach to Kutna Hora's famous cathedral.