Kutna Hora

St. Barbara's

Unless there is a popular revolution and/or regime change here at the journal, this is the last post. Tomorrow is airplanes. I'll try to finish this today; that may or may not happen. [UPDATE: Finished late Saturday night, July 5].

OK, I wrote that and then changed my mind. There will be a wrap-up of sorts, but it will only be available in the online version, which should be ready in a couple weeks. [Update: just finishing this second-to-last post in the online version on October 1]

So – daybreak, down to the atrium again, lines again, breakfast again, on the bus again. The Last Day. We are going to Kutna Hora.

I think I mentioned this trip a couple of days ago. Somebody once told me that my father's family comes from Kutna Hora, Czech Republic. I knew the Czech part, of course; my dad's family were all Czech, and we had peach dumplings when we visited my grandmother. As I remember, my father's grandparents came to America from what was then Bohemia. And I remember someone telling me that their point of origin was Kutna Hora.

That remained just a name, one I made an attempt to remember, but nothing more. Then on the last night on the boat, we learned that there was an excursion to Kutna Hora during our time in Prague. And here we are, on the bus. It's a city of about 20,000, about an hour east of Prague.

There are about thirty people on the bus. Interest in Kutna Hora is not the result of the fact that my father's family is from there. It's because, apparently, Kutna Hora is an interesting place to visit.

Overall, the draw is a well-preserved old town, a long history of silver mining, and two very interesting cathedrals – that's right, two cathedrals in the same small city.

Let me say at the outset that there were no profound revelations regarding my heritage or any connection to the place in general. It was one more very interesting place we saw on the trip, and that's pretty much it. I had been excited about visiting Kutna Hora, but never got a sense that there was anything to get excited about. I'm disappointed that I did not experience a connection, but at least I was there – I went, learned a lot, and I have a few more stories to hand down to Randall, Whitsun and Gwen about where they came from. Probably.

And, of course, there was that one cool thing. Stay tuned.

Anyway – our bus took us out of Prague on the same highway we came in on two days ago, until we got off and traveled the local roads. It was beautiful – it reminded us of Otsego County, if you replace much of the corn with grains. I was thinking today (it is now Saturday July 5 as I write this) that the villages and towns looked a lot like the villages and towns we've seen all trip: streets are mazes; houses are placed on streets haphazardly, and most houses – really, almost all of them, almost everywhere – are very much alike. Red roofs; stucco siding; a pleasant palette of generally soft colors. And, as noted somewhere earlier, a simple steeple rising from the center of town.

This is what we saw, and drove through, on our way to Kutna Hora. Until we got to Kutna Hora. I've got to say, the outskirts of town are not attractive; there is apparently a lot of business and industry in Kutna Hora, which is great for the residents but do not improve the countryside. I remember very large grain silos and other huge buildings in a rambling complex; two office buildings, maybe five stories high, a hundred yards long, all of glass (one was FoxConn). Oh – and tobacco companies, one of which – Philip Morris – owns one of the cathedrals. I'm not making that up.

Anyway – we saw the town in this order: The Cathedral of Assumption of Our Lady and St. John the Baptist; the Sedlec Ossuary, and Saint Barbara's Church, sometimes referred to as the Cathedral of St Barbara; the (outside of) the former Jesuit College, and then through the old town, which is just as interesting to walk through – and very similar to – the Old Town of Prague. Things are not as big, as a rule, in Kutna Hora, as they are in Prague, but if you've been to one, you're comfortable with the other.

The history of Kutna Hora is all about silver, and just about everything that happens is connected to the sliver mines around and under the city. St. Barbara's, which Wikipedia calls one of the most famous Gothic churches in central Europe, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built by silver miners' guilds, it was begun in 1388 and completed in 1905 (sound familiar?). Construction was halted for a number of reasons, one because of the Hussite Wars (Catholic vs. Protestant Hussites; Jan Huss is interesting to read about if you have a strong stomach). And then during the next century, revenue from the mines petered out because they had dug so far down that miners couldn't get down, do a reasonable day's work, and back up again in one day. So work on the cathedral stopped, until some guy figured a way for the miners to slide down into the mines on a leather apron, and the money flowed again. I am not making this up. The guy in question got rich enough to afford a very nice house in town, which we saw, and there's a statue of a miner with his leather sliding apron on the Cathedral (right).

The Cathedral is Gothic in basic structure, but had had a lot of Baroque elements added as construction continued, but later they were mostly dismantled by people with no taste. Anyway, it's a mish-mash now; nice as far as smaller Gothic cathedrals go, but “one of the most famous in Europe?” I don't see it. And it's got a roof like three Bedouin tents, which I don't get at all.

There are some cool frescoes in the minor altars (nooks that you could buy and dedicate to a saint) around the main altar, which showed life in medieval Kutna Hora, including details about silver mining and production. They had been uncovered during the great un-Baroquing of the church.

Anyway, St. Barbara's (she's the patron saint of salt miners, no surprise) has some grotesques up toward the top (gargoyles double as rain spouts; any other interesting beasts on a Gothic cathedral are grotesques). They are human, and scholars debate heatedly whether one of them is making a rude gesture toward the other cathedral in town.

Monks showed up in the 12th century and decided, for no observable reason, to stay, and establish an abbey. They were having a hard economic time of it until the late 14th century, when they suddenly started building a very nice Gothic cathedral, which became the Cathedral of Assumption of Our Lady and St. John the Baptist. The common belief is that the monks discovered silver, which, as I think I noted, is the reason for most things in Kutna Hora. Then in the fifteenth century the cathedral was burned down by Hussites (hmmm...) and sat as a ruin for two hundred years.

Then a very interesting and pretty unique thing happened. In 1700, the Abbot hired (more silver?) an unknown architect named Jan Santini Aichel to rebuild it. This is an interesting guy and if you have any interest in architecture at all, it's worth getting to know him. He rebuilt the Abbey in the – hold your breath – Baroque Gothic style (also called Czech Baroque), a style that combines two separate styles that couldn't be more different. I couldn't wait to see it.

It's really beautiful, and worth looking up. It has the soaring Gothic interior, but the lines are softened, and I especially liked how the columns swirled around and interlaced on the ceiling. The exterior was also softer Gothic and restrained, but enthusiastic, Baroque.

Santin Aichel was paralyzed early on from the waist down, and couldn't follow his father into the stonemason trade. So he became an architect, and we're all glad he did. Most or all of the buildings he designed are now UNESCO World Heritage sites. And – I am not making this up – there is an asteroid named after him.

Oh – and there was a rivalry between the two cathedrals and their congregations; classic town vs. gown stuff. Thus the rude gesture, etc..

The Sedlec Ossuary (left) was also on our list. An Ossuary is where you keep the bones of dead people. When the cemeteries got full, they dug up the older corpses and stored the bones in an Ossuary. In this case, there are the bones of around 60,000 people. The reason this cemetery was so popular (once again, thank you Wikipedia):

In 1278, Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, was sent to the Holy Land by King Ottokar II of Bohemia. He returned with a small amount of earth he had removed from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery. The word of this pious act soon spread and the cemetery in Sedlec became a desirable burial site throughout Central Europe. People were dying to get in...

Sedlec is a neighborhood in Kutna Hora. The Ossuary (designed, with the chapel above it, by our friend Santini Aichel) is maybe a little bigger than an elementary school classroom, but there the comparison ends. In 1870, a woodcarver was hired by a prominent family to put the whole thing – the bones of 60,000 people - in some kind of order. The result remains today, and is a big tourist draw, with whole souvenir stores dedicated to bones and death. We couldn't take pictures, but there are plenty in Wikipedia. Help yourself.

We walked through the old town, which, as noted, was pretty cool. We had lunch at a restaurant there, another dark-wood, trestle table affair with an open courtyard. Abbey and I had pork with plum sauce, a local concoction, we were told, which was really good. I had some Kutna Hora beer, which was great but tasted like every other great beer. Then we had like five minutes free time, and it was back to the bus and back to Prague.

I'm glad I went. It was a really interesting town: interesting stories, interesting history, interesting architecture, and interesting, but a little off-putting, bones. And I was especially glad I went because of this:

The Ossuary was surrounded by the modern graveyard. I had a thought to look for “Koutnik” on the gravestones, but no luck. However, as we were leaving, Abbey spotted this, the one cool thing:

Rodina HLAVACOVA PECHANKOVA. “Rodina” means family, and was at the top of almost every stone. “...ova” means “family of.” My aunt Vi's maiden name was Hlavac, and she took it on again after she was divorced. My cousin Dana, youngest of Aunt Vi's three boys, took his mother's native surname after he grew up. Hlavac. Finally – a connection. Unexpected, but exciting. Here there were Hlavacs. And probably, somewhere – but we'll never know – Koutniks. Regina Koutnikova.

We returned to Prague and hung out in the room for a while; we had a great view north, from the eighth floor, a view which included both sunrise on one side and sunset on the other, which we enjoyed. It also overlooked the surfers.

If you go to 50.094599, 14.438191 on Google Maps, you'll see the surfing place (right) on the Vltava River that we can see from our Hilton hotel room. There's a lock there, so the river descends, and beside the lock is an artificial wave. Leading to the right (east) of that point is an artificial white water kayak run, something we've never seen before. Both are, according to today's guide, used for training the national teams. We watched them for quite a while.

Abbey's gone to the grocery store to get roasted paprika. She came back and encouraged me to come out with her, and we went back to The Gate, where we had eaten two nights ago. We ordered a plate of strawberry dumplings, in honor of my Czech grandmother's peach dumplings, and I just got a faint taste of those days, sixty years ago. I had a glass of red wine, Abbey had a raspberry lemonade, and we watched the world go by. Just like in Paris last year. A quiet ending to a great trip.

By the way, we were told by a number of people that “Koutnik” is a common name in the Czech Republic, and it's pronounced the way we pronounce it – Coat-nik, except the second syllable is a little more emphasized, and more “neek” and drawn out a little. That's how every Czech speaker who read the name said it. That's is quite something, to find out you've been doing something right all your life.