"Cave Rave"

June 27th

Today, our history class took a trip to Kutná Hora. On the way there, we stopped at the Sedlec Ossuary, which is a church decorated inside with human skeleton remains. Starting in the 14th Century, there was an ongoing competition to attract Jesus to one's cemetery, since people believed that he would come and resurrect people, and everyone wanted to be resurrected first (maybe this is just me, but I think that one life is more than plenty of living time). Due to the combination of "Jesus appeal", being a highly populated town, and a number of epidemics, the cemetery in Sedlec became highly "populated". However, the church later needed to sell land to earn money, so they decided to sell the land of the cemetery. They dug up all the bones, dumped them in the church basement, and went on with their days. Later, the church became a private chapel, and the family hired an architect/designer/woodcarver/macabre enthusiast to redecorate the chapel, and thus the present day "masterpiece of a twisted church" was created.

Throughout listening to the spiel about all this dense and deathly, my face proceeded to get more and more convoluted, which CHPetr picked up on multiple times. And then it was time to enter the church. And to my surprise, it was not as horrifying as I expected. Was it disturbing? Yes. Was it unnerving? Yes. Did I have a nervous breakdown and run out of there screaming? Possibly. Did I hold my composure long enough to take some photos? As shown by the photos below, yes.

Who wouldn't want a skull chandelier in the middle of their room?  Obviously sane people!

I don't have a family crest, but if I did, it wouldn't be made of human bones

Moving on to the lovely town of Kutná Hora. First, we went to a museum of coin-making and learned how silver coins were made. Not going to lie, interesting process but nothing life changing. Still, the tour was nice and if I ever land myself on Jeopardy and need to know ancient coin making ways, I will be prepared. Afterwards we ate lunch at a quaint little Tex-Mex place. Perhaps a Tex-Mex restaurant an ocean across from both Mexico and Texas should have been our first warning sign. However, all but one of our syndicate made it through our lunch alive. A few days later, hapless Caroline had the following words of advice based on her Tex-Mex experiences: " No one get any Mexican cheese. I had some in Kutná Hora and that was a Kutná Horror story". Once again, we should have payed attention to the warning signs for Caroline's stomach's sake.

And then came the exciting part...going down into the silver mines!!! Yes kiddos, yours truly went underground into complete pitch darkness (those with knowledge of my irrational fears of darkness should be proud) and managed to come out of the experience with only positive memories. And once again, words of wisdom from the hapless nugget of a person, Caroline: "I'd rather be a prostitute than a miner". So there we have it: obviously Caroline would have been just fine in the Czech Republic during 15th-18th Centuries.

(Quote of the Day author- Ajay)