Czech This Out

Staring down the barrel of another Monday/Tuesday weekend and realizing I’d already seen most of the sights in Praha proper, I strapped on my kicks, picked a distant spot on the map and hit the road in search of must-see’s a little further afield.

Within about six blocks of my apartment, I learned three very valuable lessons:

1. “Further afield” is a relative term,
2. Prague is an incredibly small city and, perhaps most important of all,
3. The tiny little pocket-sized map that came in my welcome packet is drawn, like, nowhere near scale.

Finding myself with a far shorter trip than I’d expected, I meandered. Because really, what else is Europe for when it comes to people in the mid-twenties? Okay, mid-to-lateish twenties. Pushing thirty. Climbing a small hill that had more switchbacks than the Grand Canyon, I scaled the city’s mini Eiffel Tower and ventured into the mirror maze that’s the pic of the day.

I know that a mirror maze sounds really cool but it was only 150 feet, leaving me feeling very cheated by every SCOOBY DOO “abandoned amusement park” episode I’d ever seen. Which is, I realize, all of them. Facing this tragic loss of innocence, I did a little retail therapy at Shadow Cafe – home of the “Golem of Prague” logo you see at right – and ended up with a t-shirt with arms designed for sufferers of gigantism.

Luckily, I fared a little better the following day. Teaming up with special guest travel buddy Bill Stevens, fellow Canadian Brittany Nance and Jo and Shannon – a counterpart crew member/roommate team – we headed an hour outside of town to Kutna Hora, a.k.a. Bone Church. I heard about it when the VAN HELSING crew was here back in ’03, and it was one of my must-see’s.

Decorated with sculptures crafted from the bones of an estimated 40-70,000 plague victims, the place comes across as some goth interior decorator’s lifetime (deathtime?) achievement. Although I was a little disappointed that the entire church wasn’t constructed out of bones – like it was in my imagination – I have to admit that the chandelier of spines and skulls exceeded my expectations.

Now that my bone lust has been satiated (sounds wrong but I’ll let it slide), I think it might be time to take the sightseeing to a whole new level. We’re lining up tickets to Berlin, which should make for a fiercely efficient vacation if there ever was one. Although my pocket map indicates that the distance there is roughly 40 light years, fingers crossed it’s only a few hours.

Auf Wiedersehen until then…