Kutna Hora.

Hmm...did you know, that the only bombing that Prague sustained (and the reason Prague has such a well preserved center is precisely because it was one of the few cities that sustained almost no damage during WWII) was one American bombing mistake, where they were meant to head over to Dresden but, goes the story, the skies were cloudy, they got confused, and ended up bombing Prague instead? Funny, ha ha.

Do you hear me laughing, though? :|

Anyway, headed over today to Kutna Hora (UNESCO World Heritage Site!) on a nice tour guided by a very handsome gentleman in his early thirties (dark hair, hazel eyes, carmine lips and pale ivory skin...oooh!), and while we were driving on the bus we passed by an old Cistercian Monastery, which was turned into a tobacco manufacture by Josephus II, and which is now owned by Philip Morris, who now uses it to build Marlboros in what used to be a beautiful, peaceful old building designed for meditation, work and study. Funny, ha ha?

I'm not laughing yet, either. :|

Anyway, one of the interesting things about Kutna Hora is its ossuary, which is unique from all the others I've shown you is that here the pretty bone patterns are more elaborate. Now, in that shield in the picture, do not miss the little "joke": the bird skeleton pecking at the skull's empty socket where the eye used to be.

Anyway, Kutna Hora is a sleepy little town, though its cathedral of Santa Barbara is way cool, with its art nouveau stained-glass widnows which I cannot show you, since pictures are not allowed. Though we did get a complimentary picture CD with the tour package so I may try to link to that when I get to a better equipped and more relaxed computer facility. :)

Our handsome guide then took us to a nice restaurant where we had some delicious Czech food, I had a nice steak with cream and berry sauce. It was sweet and therefore a bit unusual, but it came with those delicious bread dumplings so typical of this country and which I have been gladly eating for the past two or three days. Besides, David the guide was sitting across the table from me so the views were pretty nice also. :D

In the evening back in Prague, I catched a show of the very strange, absurdist Black Theatre, which is rather cool: you go in and it is pitch black onstage, and then you see all these fluorescent-painted figures (i.e. fish, flowers, actor's faces) floating by on the black background and doing flips since the stage is actually lighted by UV lights ("black" lights, as you know) which makes white things brighter and this kind of paint glow, and it doesn't matter that you don't speak Czech because the actors speak little and the little they do is made purposely to be gibberish so even a child can "understand".

And I put "understand" in quotes because with fish flying and flowers doing backflips in response to an actor's funny face expression, the plot doesn't typically make much sense anyway.

But it is a bit like walking into someone else's dream, and that's kinda cool. ;)