Puppets, Bones, Salt

I am just not the kind of person that can pass up the opportunity to see a marionette rendition of Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Prague is famous for its opera, Mozart even chose the city to premiere Don Giovanni here in 1787. The Czech Republic is also well known for its hand crafted marionettes. It only makes sense then that Prague would be home to Unima, the Czech National Marionette Theater, and that this company would offer nightly performances of Don Giovanni. The advertisements had been tempting me since my arrival in Prague and after two days I could no longer resist the curiosity. I followed the posters and flyers and soon enough found myself at the puppet opera waiting for the tiny curtain to rise. The opera was conducted by Mozart himself (he was much shorter and more wooden-looking than you would imagine.) The performers dropped to the stage and the the opera began. The marionettes sang in the original Italian, and since I was too cheap to purchase a program (90 crowns??!) I only had a vague idea of what was going on, the puppet antics were nonetheless entertaining. The opera was abridged from the original four hours and only lasted for two which was somewhat disappointing, but I suppose when it comes to puppet opera it is quality over quantity--and quality it was! All of the puppets gave stellar performances. The ad for the opera claims "Not to see our Don Giovanni is not to see Prague!" Marionette opera: indeed a Czech national treasure.

I initially wanted to visit Prague because everyone I've ever met who has been here seems to say, "Prague is the best city in the world." It is indeed a good city, there's a lot to see, good food to eat, beautiful architecture, but the sheer volume of tourists here was really starting to wear on me after a few days. Having already seen all of the major tourist attractions in the city I began thinking that for my fourth day in Prague it might be nice to get out of the city on some kind of day trip. A series of serendipitous events led me into a bookstore yesterday where I picked up a book about the area and saw a mention of the Kostnice Ossuary. I had heard of this site on the Travel Channel a while ago but had completely forgotten about it until that moment. I immediately dropped the book and ran hastily back to my hostel to get on the internet and look up maps and train times.

But what is the Kostnice Ossuary, you ask? What could make me so desperate to go there? It is a church made of human bones. Well, it's made of regular building materials, but the inside is completely decorated with human bones. Of course it is something that I had to see. I am just not the kind of person that can pass up the opportunity to see a church filled with skeletons. This morning I rose early and headed to the train station where, after a lot of Czech-English miscommunication and confusion, I procured a ticket to the town of Kutna Hora. Kutna Hora is a dingy, dilapidated silver mining town an hour away from Prague known for two things: a huge Gothic cathedral and a bone church. I got off the train and followed my internet-acquired walking directions to the Ossuary. The site has been a church and cemetery since the 10th century, but in the 14th century when the plague hit the burial grounds became so cramped with bodies that they had to start stacking corpses in the church basement. Then in the 1800s someone decided to get creative and they used the thousands of skeletons to decorate the church with bone chandeliers, bone candelabras, bone monuments, etc. All together, the church is decorated with the remains of over 40,000 bodies. It's just simply freaky and weird and wonderful.

After filling most of my camera's memory card with skeleton pictures I decided I may as well visit the Gothic cathedral in town as well, since it was supposed to be "spectacular," according to descriptions. I made the three kilometer hike to St. Barbara's from the Ossuary. It was pretty nice I guess--it had your flying buttresses, your stained glass, your Baroque organ, your 15th century frescoes, but it was seriously lacking in the kind of macabre that I was out looking for today. No human remains at all. There were some funny gargoyles though.

Also--yesterday, because I cannot read Czech, I put salt into my tea.