So at the drop of a hat, I decided to whisk myself off to another place before I went home. This time it was to the east of Germany in the Czech Republic. I decided to go to Prague for a few days. There are advertisements around Tubingen to visit Prague during the holidays, so I thought, well why not.Prague is a beautiful city with many really interesting buildings. Some of them are very old and have a very unique style to them. This building to the right is part of an astronomical clock. The man that designed it was blinded by the king so that no one else could ever have one. I have a video of the clock if you check out my videos on You Tube.
Each corner of Prague had something interesting to see and I think I explored nearly every corner of the city to say the least. At night it was fun walking around because of all the incredible Christmas lights. In each of the major squares there was a Christmas tree and a lot of lights. Something that I also discovered is that the food in these squares was really really cheap. So I tried some of the local food. Chicken Kababs, Belgian Waffels with caramel between them, Polish Sausage, Fried dough with a sauce on it, all good stuff.
The best thing that I had was this cooked dessert that was basically dough that was cooked over coals. Here is a picture of it to the left, good luck pronouncing the name. It doesn't sound like it looks.
Anyway....the dough is wrapped around what looks like a rolling pin and then it is placed over hot coals on a rotisary machine so that it spins slowly. After it is cooked it is buttered and then placed in cinnamon and sugar. YUM!!!
Prague is a nice town to visit because of all of the neat buildings, but after you have seen them, there wasn't much more to do there. I don't think it would be as neat any other time but Christmas. In the main square there was a stage that had live music on it every night. That only happens at Christmas.
So after being there a day or so I decided to venture out of Prague by train (which was an adventure finding the right one to get on). I heard about this church that was decorated with bones about 2 hours outside of Prague. So I headed for the town of Kutna Hora.
The bones were moved inside the church during the early 1800s to make room for more graves outside. No one knew what to do with the bones that were left over so they began to come up with ways to decorate with them. This picture is a chandallier that is made of pelvic, skull, jaw, radius, ulna, and femur bones. You can see many more in the background. The church wasn't very big but had a lot of stuff to look at on the inside. I accidently touched a wire fense on the inside of the church that was labeled DO NOT TOUCH. A bunch of sirens and lights went off. :-/
Outside the church were lots of graves that mostly dated back to WWII oddly enough.
After seeing the church I wondered around the town a bit more trying to find something to do because I rode on a train for 2 hours to spend about 30 mins in this church. There had to be more in the town to see than just the church. Not really....
But I did find one more thing that was interesting.
There was a place called the Italian Court that the king built in the 1200s to start minting silver coins. He brought Italians there to mint these coins because they were very good at it apparently. The musuem of the place had some interesting items. The tour guide was very knowlegible though and knew all the history of the area. One of the coins that the Italians minted for the Czech king was called a Tolar. This monetary ammount was traded with the Germans and eventually was called the "Dollar". See where I am going with this??This is what it looks like to the left.
So after touring around the mint a bit, I headed back to the train station and later that night stuffed my face with all kinds of treats from the Christmas square. Those Belgian Waffles with the caramel were sooooo good. I ate about 3 of them and got a little sick feeling but it was totally worth it.
