Kutna Hora-Sedlec Ossuary

The small town of Kutna Hora, outside of Prague, is famously known for the Sedlec Ossuary or, the Church of Bones.

What makes this place so cool and creepy is all of the ossuary's bones are on display in a decorative fashion. Tens of thousands of people's bones piled into pyramids, arranged into a shield, and then the famous chandelier which has at least one of every single bone in your body.

There's an interesting history to it, and you can read more here:

http://www.sedlecossuary.com/

We took the night tour which is only narrated in Czech, and is naturally creepier after dark. Even though we didn't understand a single word of what the guide said, mostly we wandered around inside and took creepy pictures for the hour. Lighting was really difficult because the whole place was only lit by candlelight, but with some camera adjustments, we were able to get some pretty good shots. And a couple on our phones, which I can share with you here.

After the main tour, the monk guy took us outside (through the graveyard for a minute) and upstairs, where we got a special performance of one monk singing, another one playing the organ, and the original guide controlling the airflow of the organ, I think. This took up almost another hour, and it was super cool because one of the monks looked like a knight from Lord of the Rings , and he sang really loudly, I actually jumped.

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This is us before, getting excited for our "night out." Forget the pub crawls and partying, we're going to a Czech Ossuary, dude!

(Since we each hate ourselves in the opposite picture, the compromise is to post both.)

Prague Pt. 2

We joined a free walking tour that started at 11am, which is way too late by the way. And I did get a fair amount of sun. But we learned a whole lot of history, and I can't wait to look up more about Prague when I get back. And since I don't have any particular stories to relate at the moment, here are some pictures.

(After the pictures there may be a story.)

First, this is one of the statues on Charles Bridge. I think the pinwheel hats are a little avant-garde but--wait, they're halos? Never mind.

The astronomical tower! Extremely pretty and so incredibly detailed, I loved just staring at it. But the on-the-hour "show" that's so famous? One of the most overrated touristy things ever. I did get video that I might share later.

View from the side of the square, to the left where you see the church, is where the main area opens up. But this corner looks huge with the panorama.

In the Jewish Ghetto. This clock runs backwards, as expected.

A statue of....anyone? Anyone? No not anyone. Specifically Franz Kafka. Author of The Metamorphosis and other stories. He's from here. Born lived and died here, actually.

A bad combination of a black building, and sunlight in the back. But it is really this dark in real life. Used to store gun powder for the city.

This artist (of a random door at a garbage facility) is actually the architect for some famous things, including something or other from the London Olympics last year. The heat was getting to me, I'll admit my mind wandered.

Tessa being a bad vegetarian.

This guy was one of our roomies (we had to switch rooms for the second night.) but I never saw him awake. When we got there he was asleep, and he slept all day, and then later when we came back to go to sleep, he was out with the other three dudes in the dorm, until 3 or 4am, when they all came back and fell asleep. And he was still asleep when we packed up and left in the morning. He had a sombrero. 

These random-words Coke bottles are everywhere in Europe, and we can't figure out why. For fun I guess. Tessa sure got excited upon spotting this one.

This is my horrible attempt at a Star Wars impression thing. What it turned out as: a too-skinny backpacker trying to swat a fly with a cape on.

Tessa's worked out better. She had been wearing the shirt all day anyway like that, to avoid sunburn. And in case you're wondering, this building behind is a very famous concert hall where Mozart conducted at, and parts of the movie Amadeus were shot. And the statue is in honor of the opera Don Giovanni.

And for all those Lemony Snicket fans (this includes me and Tessa) well take a look, they're everywhere....and this weather did take a very frightening direction from the norm, a few minutes after this was taken.

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And you thought the post was over, no? No. See, as we did our last outing and looking around for postcards...well we had another close call with the apocalypse.

I almost bought a water color from an artist on the Charles Bridge, but I wasn't sure how I'd bring it back. But as we explored the old town that afternoon I thought and thought about it and decided I really wanted it, and would find a way to get home. 

So we're walking back, about a 20 minute walk to the bridge, and it starts to rain a little. This was in the forecast, so we expected it. But I had stupidly worn my sandals anyway, and of course a tank, because it was still insanely hot out. But within 10 minutes, gusts of wind were shooting through the small streets and into the shops, and the sky got dark, and rain started coming down sideways. I was reminded of the movie, The Day After Tomorrow. Since the shop windows and doors were open to all the tourists, things were flying around, and breaking, and we still slowly made progress, ducking in the eves, toward the Charles Bridge. People were rather freaking out, and we found ourselves against what seemed like every tourist in the city. Why was everyone going this way? It's hard to walk against a frightened crowd.

Tessa managed to get some video clips before it got too bad. 

We finally get to the bridge, and realize we can't see it at all, which is not a good sign, and so we hide with a bunch of other people in a tunnel nearby for about 15 minutes, waiting to see if it will let up. 

Well it didn't.

Since our hostel was about 100 meters after the bridge, once we crossed it, we would be good. So we take a deep breath and start sprinting in bursts again. We meet a lady on the edge of the bridge, in a covered area, and she says, "I got halfway across before I had to turn back!" Cue our horrified faces.

Apparently some sand is mixed up in the tornado-like weather, so as we finally brave our way across for the next 20 minutes, sand is stinging every part of our exposed skin, and we are soaked to the bone, and Tessa is trying not to have an asthma attack.

By the time we make it to the other side, the weather is okay enough to take out the camera, and look at the famous bridge...with no tourists on it! 

Happy ending.

And I'll leave you with a very nice view of our dorm window. The calm after the storm. 

Budapest exploring pics

The walking tour was good, but so hot because it starts at 10:30, and is about 3 hours long. I vote midnight tour for the next one. If only.

One of the coolest things I learned this time was Hungarians are technically from Asia before mixing with other cultures (after wars had to bring in new population) so that's one of the reasons their language is so different than the areas around it. George Lucas actually used Yoda's lines in Hungarian. He wrote them in English, translated them to Hungarian, and then back to English. That is why it sounds so weird. :) so Hungarian is the Jedi language.

Anyway here are some sightings from our explorations. We did look around after the tour as well.

Chain bridge from a hill on the Buda side.

Last time I was in Budapest this was our ride, Viking River Cruises...so not thinking about how awesome it was...and with no heavy backpack...during the cool Christmastime.....

As weird as this is to say...I'm pretty sure I've seen this before.

A far-away view of one of my favorite buildings I've ever seen. It's the third largest Parliament building in the world. I think it's London, Brazil, and then this one.

Tessa tends to find cool graffiti.

:)

Yellow watermelon. What.

This is possibly the best and cheapest ice cream I've ever had. Tessa got: dark chocolate, hazelnut and vanilla and I got: peach, pear, and hazelnut. We went twice within the day and a half we were there.

The view from my bed, looking up.

Famous hourglass that's turned around every new year.

Mushroom ceiling on the Metro.

Also. I tried to discreetly get pictures of this awesome phenomenon. This is the first city we've seen so far, that the advertisements are placed diagonal like the Metro escalators...you see where I'm going with this. Once you tip your head and look at it one way, you can't un-see it. We love this.

Prague Pt. 1

We made it to Prague, Czech Republic! Again without any mishaps! Wow I don't want to jinx anything here, but if this could continue for the rest of the trip? That'd be great. Of course, that means fewer crazy stories for you guys, but less freaking out on our part.

Our hostel is right next to Charles Bridge, so we can pretty much walk anywhere and there is no need for Metro navigating. (Though the Metro has A/C and the hostel doesn't, which is rather irritating.)

It's super super hot outside, so we will try to get a semi-early start in the morning. Old Town Square is only a 15 minute walk anyway. Free walking tours are in abundance here!

It's hard to see, but these funky looking leaves caught my eye.

Our hostel is in the building right in front here, with the red/brown roof. This is coming back from the supermarket at about 8pm.

Tessa has this thing for her spices. To the extent of hiding the rest of our precious basil, in plastic wrap, in the curry powder container, in order to keep it from getting lost in the food bag. Which of course is not what it looks like.

Budapest

Is it really arrogant to say I've been here before? Well I have. And it's a beautiful city so I'm glad to be back. In our original plans, (wow "original plans" we had no idea what we were getting into....) Budapest, Hungary was not on our list. But since it's halfway between where we were in Romania, and Prague, we figured it wouldn't hurt to look around for a day.

For the first time in weeks, we did not get lost at all on our way from the airport to the hostel. We even made a run, backpacks and all, to our favorite grocery store, Tesco. We missed you Tesco, and your Wally-World-type qualities. Mostly Tesco stores are in Western Europe, because we certainly didn't spot any in Romania.

The hostel we are staying at is called the Black Apple. There are stencils of black apples painted on the walls, but they really look like funky shaped cherries. It's a nice place, but the kitchen is smaller than one in a New York apartment; we're just glad it has one. Even if the stove is built into the top of the toaster oven.

We booked a dorm with five beds, since it was cheapest. And we had some nice roomies, a French girl who was going out for her birthday, and the Aussie dude. 

We talked a lot to Aussie dude when we arrived (but never got his name) since it was way too hot to actually leave the place. Oh, and this hostel doesn't have A/C. This hasn't really been a problem in the trip until now, but you just need more than a standing fan for 93 degree weather in a city. Also these ceilings are 14 feet high. Which is sort of eerie.

I got off topic. Aussie dude has a guitar with him, which gets him points on the backpacker scale of coolness, along with his green roll of duct tape, another point. But he also put on deodorant half a dozen times during our conversations that evening, so that may lose him points. (Note to self: I will write a post soon with our Backpacking Scale: Rules and Regulations. You guys will like it.) 

Despite the cool room and people...we changed rooms. The whole place had lots of windows, but it also faced the main street. And with ambulances screaming by every ten minutes sounding like an alien space ship, (I really worry for the health of this city's people) we knew there would be no sleeping that night. Our new room faces a slightly less busy street.

Well, we are off to take advantage of the free city walking tour like we did in Bucharest. We have our bottles of mineral water to fend off the heat, no worries.

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I forgot, a few pics from our last day in Targu Mures, Romania:

We got pizza!!!!! It helped with the homesick a little. But it also had corn on it, which was new.

Tessa broke the room.

One of the foods we will both miss are "cocoa shells" which are about ten times more awesome than cocoa puffs. And on this particular bag had the ingredients listed in no fewer than 20 languages. That is a record for this trip.

Yeah we're still here.

A few more activities happening in the last few days....

One of Krishan's friends has a bee keeping hobby, and she offered to show us the hives in the food forest because she happened to have some extra gear on hand. I knew I wasn't allergic, so I took just the netting hat and put on my jacket, and Tessa put on the spiffy full body suit just to be safe, because she is allergic to about half the world.

There are three hives, one recently swarmed. That means when a hive gets too big for the space, and there are too many bees, they start to make another queen, and the new group needs a new place to go. The two hives are now three.

Neither of us are afraid of bees, so it wasn't super terrifying. Certain bees have different jobs, and I think it's the drone ones, they kind of perpetually dive bomb you. But bees are good. And if you talk quietly and stay calm, they stay calm too. Relatively.

The lady (I can't say we ever learned her name, but she was Dutch) smoked the hives and took some slats out to show us the inner workings, and to check the hives were healthy. Healthy hives have a queen (which is hard to spot sometimes) and sections with honey, and different compartments with the larvae. All of the hives he has are doing quite well. And also, before I thought the smoke made them sleepy, but Dutch Lady said they don't like it, and it makes them stay inside the hive because they think something is wrong.

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A baby buffalo was born last night! We were all hanging out near the fire and they brought it down from somewhere, I'm not exactly sure where, but the carrier van came from the hill slash forest.

We didn't see it being born, but I did get some video of it wobbling around. The baby buffalo was still slick and had its umbilical chord. They let it wobble into the pen with others, and its mama. At least I'm pretty sure that's what happened. There were five workers involved and a lot of Romanian back and forth.

Well it doesn't look adorable from this picture today, but that's the best picture we could get, and it's mama was giving us LOOKS. That's her ear to the right.

Sorry for the Tessa's-arm close up. But I wanted you to see the LOOKS we received from the mama.

~~~~~

After learning Philippe is an artist, we both really wanted him to draw something for us. And he is leaving in two days, so we spent half an hour yesterday interrupting his yoga-ing in the back garden, trying to figure out which medium he prefers and what he needed. Considering we couldn't get much, Krishan found some water colors and we both managed to scrounge up some small pieces of paper. Something simple, that is all we ask for....

We concluded bribery would be our best hope, and so came up with some ideas. I gave him a small earbud rubber thingy, since he had lost one of his, and I brought two pairs of earbuds. And Tessa fixed his murse (man-purse) by sewing a new zipper for him. This was a pretty fair trade, for backpackers on a farm.

Philippe's murse below. He wouldn't let me take a pic with him wearing it, and it took some convincing to even get it alone. "Why? Why would you want to take a picture of that? Well if you must."

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Our zucchini is still...growing. Way too much. But, Krishan is leaving tomorrow for Bucharest again, and will bring a bunch of them to his restaurant.

Ah. His restaurant! I haven't mentioned it yet, have I? Well. You'll have to wait till the next post.

The Spoon Man

I promise I didn't forget about blogging. (Or globbing as Tessa calls it.)

Workawayers usually get a day a week off, so we took our first free day to go touring around the area. Cathryn has her car that she shipped overseas (after literally filling it all the way up with Trader Joe's groceries) so she took us to a few villages nearby.

Viscri

The name may sound familiar. There's one UNESCO site, an old church. It was one of the coolest churches I've ever been to. There's a tower in the middle and then a wall full of rooms surrounding the area, with a courtyard too. It's all very quiet and accessible. 

(I forgot to take a picture on my phone.)

Prince Charles owns a few houses in Viscri but apparently his wife doesn't let him stay there because it's not super fancy and she's kinda spoiled like that. At least that's my interpretation. 

We bought some local honey:

Sighisoara 

The Spoon Man.

At the top of a hill where a famous church stands, we hung around for a little while to take pictures. Soon we spotted a crafter's booth with a bunch of spoons on display. They were very beautifully crafted and the guy sitting there started telling us about these spoons. Only two countries are known for their spoons, Romania and Wales. And this is when I notice he is actually carving one at the moment. His explaining wasn't at all trying to sell to us, spoon wittling is just a family tradition of his. His whole air was just so genuine and he got really enthusiastic in telling us what all the designs mean...

I couldn't help but buy one. It's about 10inches long.

Let us hope it makes it home all right...!

(Made of linden wood and glazed in beeswax.)

His website is thespoonman.ro and it's all in Romanian. So if you want to learn about any of the stories or meaning behind his spoon designs you can just use google translate or something, maybe recall your Latin studies.

We got ice cream at the bottom of the hill. All natural yummy. Tessa got black vanilla (we still aren't sure exactly how/what that is) and coconut. I got strawberry and kiwi. The day was a hot one, so this refreshed us!

Back at the farm, look at this awkward adorableness! (Baby buffalo: "what the hell are you doing at my fence?")

And this evening a new volunteer is coming to the farm, a guy from Puerto Rico who is cycling around Europe. Yeah. On a bicycle. 

Now there will be five of us! Cathryn, Philippe, me and Tessa, and soon Puerto Rico.

Krishan's still in Bucharest, we aren't sure if he is coming back today.