Last week I had the luxury of a three day work week which just so happened to coincide with my friend Julia's week off at Trinity College in Ireland. Visitors!
Wednesday night Julia, her friend Chris, my new friend Erin, Julie, her friends and two girls from Poland who came to hangout from couchsurfing.org went to check out this place called Hrom Do Police because it was supposed to have some rare unfiltered Polish beer. Gotta get in touch with my roots, yo. In any case, the beer or place wasn't quite as exciting as I expected (I wanted to see things floating in it! Unfiltered!), so we took off to U Sudu, the old standby, then spent some time wandering around Charles Bridge and Mala Strana at night and take in the sights.
Thursday I got out of a trip to work to drop off some graded tests and we did one of my favorite things: ride the train. Our destination was Kutna Hora, about an hour away from Prague. Once there, we caught a taxi for 50 kč ($2.50ish) to Kostnice Ossuary, which was possibly one of the weirdest things I've ever seen. In essence, decorating the walls and ceiling of this "Bone Church" are the bones of approximately 40,000 people. These "raw materials" were provided to some pretty quirky monks thanks to 14th century plagues and 15th century wars. According to my good 'ol Rick Steves guide, "Those who first placed these bones 400 years ago wanted viewers to remember that the earthly church is a community of both the living and the dead, a countless multitude that will one day stand before God." Talk about a medium.
Highlight was probably the chandelier that contained every bone in the human body:
After we left, we walked to the center of Kutna Hora, saw the cathedral (from the outside because we're incapable of getting anywhere early), ate a nice Italian dinner and found our way to the smaller Kutna Hora město train station, which at first we thought was this (and thought we were literally going to have to "hop" the train):
No matter, we made it down the road, walking in the dark on the tracks to the real Kutna Hora město station, where we took a ghost train to the bigger Kutna Hora hlavni nadrazí station. I say it was a ghost train as it was only one car, changed directions mid-way through our ride, only went one stop and had a pretty damn creepy conductor. Between trains we got stared at by some creepy guy from a porch and Julia got possessed:
Friday night was when the crunk happened. I think my final count was 1 1/2 half beers, 2 margueritas (happy hour!), 2 glasses of red wine, 2 gin & tonics and 3 or so shots of tequila. Needless to say, I was pretty happy. Not quite as happy as my comrades who decided to brave the Absinth and Becherovka, however. I'll leave that to the youngins' while I throw back my G&T's, grandpa-style. Our goal was to get goth and punked up and see a hardcore show at this club called Bunkr so we donned our best studded belts (or guyliner, in Chris' case) and headed out. We successfully got to Bunkr and did a bit of headbanging, only to realize it was the WRONG one. My bad. Who knew Bunkr was such a common club name?
Nonetheless, we finally made it to the real Bunkr--a decommissioned military bunker several floors underground (Wikipedia says a bunker is a 'hardened shelter, often buried partly or fully underground, designed to protect the inhabitants from falling bombs or other attacks'). Some dancing, lots of foosball and other such illicit activities were had before taking an epic journey home and passing the fuck out.
Saturday we recovered, ate vegan Chinese food, watched really cute dogs in the park by my house from a bench and got our culinary skillz on in the form of some pretty delicious homemade pizzas and calzones.
Unfortunately, Sunday it was back to the real world when Julia and Chris headed back to Ireland. I sort of lesson planned and caught part of a free screening of "The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover" (1989), which was possibly the worst movie I've ever seen (re: attempted to see) in my entire life.
Luckily, today is the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution--when student protests set in action a chain of events which led to the overthrow of the Communist government. No work!
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