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On my last day in Prague, I went to Kutna Hora, a city an hour outside of Prague. Originally, Kutna Hora and Prague were keeping pace with each other in size, because Kutna Hora had a large silver ore running under the city. Therefore Kutna Hora was where the money was minted. However, in the mines ran dry, there was a fire in 1770, and Kutna Hora fell behind. So now Prague is the capital with 1.5 million people, and Kutna Hora has about 23,000. It does, however, have a lovely Cathedral and the reason I came to Prague in the first place – The Ossuary of Sedlec.

Before I show you the pictures, let me tell you the backstory: There was monestary. The monestary has a little graveyard. In the 13th century, a monk went to the holy land and when he came back, he sprinkled holy land dirt in the graveyard. Suddenly, EVERYBODY wanted to be buried there. During the Black Death, thousands of people were buried there. A chapel was built in the center of the graveyard, many graves were exhumed and bones put in the ossuary/basement. In 1870, the Schwartzenburg family, who owned the property, asked Frantisek Rint, a woodcarver, to put the large piles of bones in some kind of order. And hoo boy, did he ever.

It’s a small building. You walk in, and there are stairs right in front of you.

The temperature drops dramatically as you go down the fifteen or so steps, so much that you can see your breath. As soon as that happened, I couldn’t not quote Sixth Sense. I said, “I see dead people”, and it was true. Approximately 40,000 dead people, to be exact.

Is this not the greatest thing EVER? The chandelier is rumored to have at least one of every bone in the body. And that’s the Schwartzenburg family crest. I know this doesn’t look like that many deceased people, and that’s because there are four ginormous piles of bones in each corner of the room. Note my mother laughing at me because I was so ecstatic about being there.

I was in heaven. I wanted to stay there forever. Check it out: Rint even signed his name in bones.

I held up the whole bus because I didn’t want to leave. But there were other things to see in the town. And a lovely town it was.

There was their cathedral that was built during the Great Competition with Prague. This one is called St. Barbara.

St. Barbara wasn’t as high or as breathtaking inside as St. Vitus, but it did have a few beautiful and unique qualities. One was the paintings on the vaulted ceiling.

The other thing I loved about this cathedral was the turn of the century windows. I took pictures of all of them. Here’s a sample.

That pretty much covers my nine-day trip to Prague and Budapest. It was great, really really great.

Okay, now I’m going to cover a few basics about Prague. Apparently in the Communist countries, they were really keen on having insanely long and sharp-angled escalators into the subway. They’re so long that halfway through you get disoriented and start tipping backwards because your internal gyroscope is confused. I have a picture I took, but it’s difficult to really capture the length and steepness of these things. Take my word for it.

I learned a few days into my trip that “y” at the end of a word makes it plural (sort of like our “s”). I walked past a store that had a big sign outside that said DARKY and inside was a plethora of things from Africa, and I was all, “THAT IS SO NOT OKAY,” and then I learned that “darky” meant “gifts” and I felt stupid for gettin’ my racism hackles up. But it still threw me for the rest of the trip.

This was amusing: I walked past a building and it was gorgeous like every other building and – is that a sculpture of Darth Vader at the bottom?!

Alas, it was not. But I had to cross the street to check for myself.

One of my favorite architectural details was on an Art Nouveau building. Tell me if I’m wrong: It is a chicken on a woman’s head, yes? I’m not misinterpreting this, right?

This is an important window. I will summarize why. In 1617, there was drama between the monarchy, the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestants involving land and whatnot. On May 23, 1618, a bunch of riled-up Protestants stormed the castle and threw two aristocrats and a secretary out this window. They fell thirty meters, but luckily a moat filled with dung broke their fall, and they lived. In fact, the secretary was later made a noble by the emperor and given the name “von Hohenfall” (Highfall). The turfing of these people out this window started the Thirty Years War. My favorite quote from the Wikipedia page on the Defenestration of Prague, as it is called:

Roman Catholic Imperial officials claimed that the three men survived due to the mercy of angels assisting the righteousness of the Catholic cause. Protestant pamphleteers asserted that their survival had more to do with the horse excrement in which they landed than the benevolent acts of the angels.

I will now delve into one two major high points on my trip: St. Vitus’ Cathedral. I love me some good old French Gothic buildings. Notre Dame is a big favorite of mine. So I was delighted when I learned that the Frenchies has built one in Prague. The Cathedral was started in 1344 and because of wars, funds running out and a fire, it was not completed until the 1890s. Given that it took forever and a day to build this thing, I was really impressed by the cohesiveness of the design. It’s quite the example of Gothic architecture.

The building itself is very lovely, but the clincher for me was the Mucha window. Since the Cathedral wasn’t finished until the turn of the century, there is a wide variety of styles to the windows. The Mucha window is definitely the best. Alphonse Mucha is a famous graphic artist who is often credited with starting the Art Nouveau movement, so for me to see one of his works like this was a big, big deal.

See how it’s dark blues and purples around the edge, and then it’s golden yellow towards the center, with that woman and the young boy (St. Ludmilla and St. Wencenclas)? The man was a genius.

There are other beautiful windows in there as well, don’t get me wrong. I liked this one with the rainbow ribbons as well.

And this one was also very beautiful.

But you see how the Mucha one is like, really breathtaking and super-special, right? It’s more than just color placement and design, it’s also really evocative.

It’s not all airy lightness and delicate stone tracery, oh no. On one side of the cathedral is the most overdone, garish tomb/casket thing I have ever seen aside from Versailles. This thing was… eye-catching.

Not subtle. You can’t even really see the giant silver angels holding up the red velvet curtains. It be TACKAY. You know my “If it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it” quote from Beauty and the Beast? Yeah, this is broke. They should fix it.

One of the coolest things in both Budapest and Prague was the signs that stick out from the buildings. Each one was unique and special and I took a gazillion pictures of all of them.

The last one is, yes, a giant bullet. Huntin’ and fishin’ is a big thing in the Czech Republic. The best one I saw was this one:

Because it moved. I will put up an animated gif of that later today.

To finish up, I want to show one of the coolest houses I have ever seen in my life. Ever. You know those people who fall in love with inanimate objects, like bridges or the Eiffel Tower? I might have that going on with this building.

Tomorrow, Kutna Hora and the place I dreamt of going to for thirteen years.

Addendum: Animated Gif!

Continuing with Budapest. It is located in Hungary, which is unique because the Hungarian language is unrelated to any other language on Earth. You know how French and Spanish and Italian all grew out of Latin, and all the Norse languages and English all grew out of a Germanic tongue? Hungarian is aaaaaall alone. This drove my mom crazy. She speaks four languages fluently and five not fluently, and she couldn’t pull from any of them to figure out what anyone was saying. Here’s an example. Except for the bottom word, which is clearly a modification of the word “sandwiches”, all the other words are totally indecipherable.

This building is kind of special because apparently Hungary has a ceramics factory that was very big during the turn of the century. Szolnay made the ceramic tiles for the roofs mentioned previously. They were also known for having a particular iridescent glaze they called Eosin. And this building is the only example I saw with Eosin on it.

It also had completely deranged-looking fish holding up the balconies.

Two totally unrelated-to-anything-else things I saw in or near the Danube River: One, a bus that also goes in the water, which was just disconcerting-looking. I kept wanting to call for help, “There’s a bus in the river! Save the women and children!”  Two, a cute bit of graffiti on a pylon near the water.

We saw one of the finest sights Budapest has to offer, and it was Jewish, which is unusual. Judaism is not known for having rockin’ awesome art or architecture. But the Budapest Synagogue is pretty terrific. It’s an excellent example of Moorish architecture.

One of the three days I was in Budapest, we went off on a little jaunt to the neighboring villages. One of the villages we visited was a castle on a hill. It was charming and there was a beautiful view and all that, but the two things that really caught my fancy were the collection of medieval weapons:

And the delightful taxidermy collection of local fauna. As a child, I read a lot of Asterix and Obelix, which is a French comic series taking place in Roman-era Gaul, and the characters eat a great deal of wild boar. So I felt obligated to take this picture.

And because I love owls so very much, I took a picture of these little fellas.

There were people in there dusting up. I assumed it must be the Annual Clean the Dead Things Day at the castle.

After the castle, we toddled off to an adorable picturesque village. It was seriously photogenic.

The village housed several marzipan stores, and my mother and I stopped at one for cake and Viennese coffee. I wanted to buy some marzipan creatures for my friends back home, and they had charming bunnies and kitties and hippos, but if you bought the white elephant, you could sign the giant white fiberglass elephant near the door. That sealed the deal for me. I bought several little white elephants and they handed me a Sharpie. So if you go to some cute little village outside of Budapest and they have a marzipan store with a large fiberglass elephant near the door, look for my signature on the rump.

On our last day in Budapest, my mother and I decided to try the spa. Budapest is known for having thermal springs, so there are several spas in the city. I went to the one near the zoo. The Budapest Zoo is a marvelous semi-Art Nouveau zoo inside a park that totally reminded me of the Central Park Zoo. This is the entrance.

And this is one of the panels of the fence. I think that’s supposed to be a stag.

Across the street is the spa. It is Baroque and yellow and ornate and I just loved it.

There is a enormous central court with three large pools filled with warm chlorinated water, like a public pool, but so much more cool. There were fountains and jets that shot up from underneath and from the side – it was swell, I tell you.

But clearly these were regular chlorinated pools. I walked into one of the giant yellow buildings and caught a whiff of egg and burnt ash and I knew I was in the presence of the healing waters I sought out. Here is a list of the healthful mineral properties, in case you are interested.

And the thermal baths were positively Roman-looking. People were soaking, people were doing Sudoku puzzles, people were holding business meetings in the pools. It was amazing. I had never experienced a culture like this before. I have been meaning to go to the Russian baths in Brighton Beach, and I imagine they must be something like this.

Okay, I think that covers all of Budapest. Tomorrow we delve into Prague.

I went to Budapest for three days and Prague for six days, and it was the one of the best vacations ever. I’m going to cover a great deal of what I saw there, and I want to warn you ahead of time, it’s going to be very architecture-heavy, so if you’re not a huge architecture fan, perhaps this would be an excellent week to go do something else, you know, take care of some last minute taxes, or refinish your boat, something like that. With that said, on with the recap!

Budapest, the capital of Hungary, is actually two cities, Buda and Pest, that are separated by the Danube River. It is a very photogenic city and wasn’t really messed up by copious amounts of crappity Communist apartment complexes and the like. Here’s a nice shot from the top of a hill. See that building on the left? We’re going to get more into detail of that one later.

This is a picture from a similar spot. What’s cool about this shot is that in the foreground, you can see the unique ceramic tile roofs one finds in Budapest. In the background you can see the Parliament building, which was built in the high-gothic style exactly like the Parliament building in London. Although Gothic was from the 12th century to the 16th century, both Parliaments were built in the 1800s. The way you can tell the difference is London has Big Ben, and the Budapest Parliament has a large central dome. You can see a bit of it there.

I loved the look of Budapest. There were a lot of Baroque* houses that were slightly worse-for-wear, it made it look like a fairy book to me, or maybe something out of Harry Potter.

Here’s a combination of baroque and tile roof. The thing in the foreground is a pillar in the center of a small square done in classic baroque style. I can always tell baroque because there’s a whole lotta clouds and cherubs and more clouds and then some gold and silver if possible and maybe an church organ stuffed in there. “Restraint” is not really a baroque thing. Also, you can clearly see the neato tile roof on the church in the background.

After WWII, Budapest went into a flurry of repairs to get the buildings back into some kind of shape. They did leave one building in terrible condition as a reminder of the way the city looked after being bombed and shot at. You can really appreciate how mangled it looks. Also take into consideration there was another floor above the ones you see that was completely demolished in an air attack.

One of the things I love about Europe is that it’s like perpetual RenFaire there, all the time. It was more obvious in Prague, but Budapest had it going on as well. One of my favorite moments of the trip was seeing:
- a man with male patterned baldness and dreadlocks simultaneously
- in medieval garb
- reading the paper
- with a hawk and an eagle sitting next to him.
It was such a weird grouping of things, I had to take a picture. One cannot make these things up.

So, the building I mentioned earlier. My favorite period of design has to be Art Nouveau (also known as Jugendstil, Secession or Liberty), which was a very short international style from 1890 to 1905. The reason I like it so much is because it incorporated a great deal of the patterns and formations one finds in nature and, if done well, has a tension to it like a rubber band or a whip. It is often done in a way I am not terribly fond of, with lots of morose-looking women in togas draped over things like ragdoll cats. But when it’s done in a simple, clean non-excessive manner, it can’t be beat. And the exterior of this building in Budapest, the Four Seasons hotel, is one of the finest examples of this I’ve ever seen. The combination of the matte stone and the occasional touches of gold is perfect.

One of the nice things that Budapest is doing to make themselves more cosmopolitan is to light up their city á la Paris from dusk until midnight. I took this picture right next to a large monument called Liberty.

This is the Liberty monument. I can’t tell you much about it because the entire time the guide was talking, I was freaking out with delight because BATS! There were bats all around! Eating moths! Wheee! So I’m sure this is a very important site with a great deal of significance, but I can’t tell you anything about it. Bats!

I took a night boat ride down the Danube and saw some lovely lit-up sites. I took a sweet picture of the famous Chain Bridge from the shore – look at the cute couple on the park bench.

There’s my Four Seasons hotel at night. Sigh.

And here’s the Parliament. You can truly appreciate the dome the way it has been illuminated.

This is a Greek Orthodox church. You see how it only has one tower? The other one was destroyed by a bombing in the war. The church didn’t have money to repair it, and by the time the money had been raised, everyone was used to only having one tower. So that’s how the church remains.

This is the Freedom Bridge. It’s a nice contrast to the equally lovely Chain Bridge.

Lest you think that Budapest is only old buildings, there is quite a bit of good modern architecture. Here’s an example.

Tomorrow, more of Budapest and maybe we get started on Prague.

*”And if it’s not Baroque, don’t fix it! A ha ha, ha ha!” I quoted this, oh, about a million times on this trip.