An American in Prague: Kutna Hora & the John Lennon Wall

This past Monday we did not have class since it was Memorial Day in America and this program is run by a US school, not a Czech school. A few of us decided to take a day trip to the village of Kutna Hora by train. The train was so cool because the interior looked like the train from Harry Potter. The village is an hour outside of Prague by train. Katie Baum really wanted to go see the bone church that was there. The actual name of the church is Sedlec Ossuary. According to the legend, in 1511 a half blind monk decorated the church with the bones from the destroyed graves surrounding the church. He regained his sight afterwords. There are 3 large bone structures, a chandelier, a coat of arms and numerous wall decorations made of human bones. The chandelier is constructed with every type of human bone that can be found in the body. It was cool, but really creepy. It's also creepy that these bones were peoples' prior to 1511. I also don't understand how someone can be half blind. Is it just one eye that is blind? Or that he just had really really bad eye sight to the point he was legally blind, but not truly blind? Half blind is just fishy. He's either blind or he's not. Whatever floats Kutna Hora's boat I guess. I've been so busy that I haven't had time to update recently!!

Later that day I went on a walk around Vin Hirodui (our neighborhood in Prague). I just walked from pretty building to pretty building and found a lovely park about a mile from our hotel. I also went into this gorgeous church in Namesti Miru (the square near our hotel). However there was a service occuring so I did not take any photos because that would have been rude. And I didn't want to be noticed and get roped into an awkward situation because I don't understand Czech at all. Except for Dobredun which means good day.

That evening my roommates and I walked across the Charles Bridge to the neighborhood where the John Lennon Wall is located. This wall was painted on during the Velvet Revolution in 1989 to piss off the Communist government and was filled with quotes from John Lennon's music as well as portraits of him . It has been painted over many times since then and is the most beautiful piece of graffiti I've ever seen. I left a little something for my deephers as well :). Initially we couldn't find the wall in the neighborhood and wandered around and found a beautiful park alongside the river and a bridge with all these locks on it.