Week 3: 1st Clinic Visit and a trip to Kutná Hora

Ahoj!

Before I get into my adventures this week, I just want to say thanks. You know, for actually taking the time to read this blog (or look at the pictures ;). I've received so many positive messages about how enjoyable this blog is to read, how this is their new favorite blog, or how they just can't wait for the next update. Seriously, thank you so much. As long as people are interested in what's been going on with me, I'm totally willing to continue updating this blog. In fact, your words of encouragement motivate me to leave my sketchy apartment building and just explore this place, even if it's just for me to add more stories to my repertoire. 

That being said, I want to start with Friday. Last week, I teased about our first visit to a psychiatric clinic here in Prague. We went to see Doctor Krch, who gave a lecture on eating disorders before bringing in one of his patients to talk to us. This visit was so uncomfortable. Dr. Krch created this massive amount of tension in the room when he awkwardly asked if any of us suffered from eating disorders. He waited patiently while we sat in silence, struggling to digest his persistence in the matter.

"There are 19 of you. One of you is bound to have an eating disorder, or know someone who has one."

A few heads nodded slowly, followed by an uncomfortable giggle made by someone on the other side of the room, probably hoping that he was just being humorous. Everything was pretty cut and dry with him though. It was interesting to see the dynamic between him and his patient, the only one who could speak English and/or was interested in talking to a group of college students. He would often probe her for more information while she was giving her story, most likely because he wanted her to open up more for us. I don't think it was beneficial though. I don't recall any of us being comfortable with asking her questions. At least, I know I wasn't because she had only been there for a week and she was acting as a representative for the patients of the clinic.

Saturday, we traveled to Kutná Hora for the day. Kutná Hora is like the first runner up for the capital of the Czech Republic (behind Prague, of course) and is known for it's silver mines. It's frequently visited by tourists from all over because it has many interesting sites, most, if not all of which we were able to see while we were there.

The first is the Kutná Hora Ossuary, or the Bone Church.

 The outside wasn't so bad...

Inside, however, it was a little too creepy for me. This place contained the skeletons of over 40,000 people who died from the plague. They were originally buried, but were unearthed and used to furnish the chapel. 

They even had "do not touch" signs, which I don't know why anyone in their right state of mind would touch these diseased bones. Also, it doesn't quite sit right with me knowing that all these people were dug up and disturbed from their original resting places.

They put bones everywhere.

Even a chandelier made of bones.

Creepy decoration.

Schwarzenberg coat of arms made of bones.

Next, we stopped at the Cathedral of Assumption of Our Lady. This was a beautiful cathedral with a simple design.

Painted on the ceiling

View from the balcony outside of the attic

Then, we had a tour of the silver mining museum. They took us into the silver mines, which if I'm being honest, weren't as bad as they made them out to be. It was being hyped up as something we had to "prepare for" if we were claustrophobic or disliked narrow, small, and dark rooms. I'll admit, I had no idea what to expect since I wasn't sure if I was claustrophobic or not (I have never put myself in a situation to test it), but I was fine. The rooms weren't small enough that I had to crawl and they weren't too narrow for me to navigate. I didn't take any pictures from inside the mines, but here I am all geared up as we walked to the mines from the museum.

People were snapping pictures of us as we walked past. After the mines, we went to take a look at the Church of St. Barbara and the Jesuit College, which had very interesting art galleries inside.

Church of St. Barbara

Jesuit College

We made it back to Prague later that evening and the rest of my weekend was fairly uneventful. Apparently it was St. Wenceslas Day on Sunday and I saw a little bit of a sword fight happening on the street as I was coming home from the grocery store.

Speaking of grocery shopping, I've gotten so much better at it. Most of it is just a result of practice, but the Czech language class is proving to be useful as well. Czech is a difficult language to learn. As a synthetic language, it takes longer words or phrases and condenses them, changing their endings as it's called for. I think my favorite word so far is the czech word for ice cream, zmrzlina (yea, the Czechs are kind of stingy with their vowels). I think its fun to pronounce, but you also receive some satisfaction in ordering food correctly at food establishments ("Dám si vanilkovou zmrzlinu") instead of just pointing and grunting.

I went to my first hockey game today, and it was a lot of fun. Rooting for Slavia Praha to win and cheering every time they scored was exciting.

GÓÓÓL!

The best part was observing the fan club at work. Ice hockey is the second most popular sport here (behind soccer or "fotbal") and the home team had a lot of support compared to the guests. And we won!

Well, that's all for now. Next week, I'll talk about our upcoming trip to Český Krumlov. Thanks for reading!

Čau!

-Brandon