More my next story, I’ll tell the somewhat less adventurous tale of a day trip I took from Prague to the small city of Kutna Hora just about 70km away. I’ve chosen this one because it’s a fairly representative story on how my trip went. I met someone, got lost, found where I wanted to be, struggled with the train system, made it, walked a bit, saw a cathedral, walked a bit, saw a church, got lost, found where I wanted to be, saw a cathedral, got lost, found a train home, got home, had good beer. Basically everyone of my days travelling can be summed up using those things in some order.

So let’s start the day out. I was staying in a hostel fairly near the centre of Prague and I woke up fairly early to try and get an early start to the day. My friend, a middle-aged Australian man, asked if I minded if he tagged along. Always happy to have company, I told him of course not. We set out for the train station on foot – I prefer walking if I can. The only problem is that apparently the train station in Prague is fairly removed from city centre – a solid half hour walk if you know the directions and we definitely did not. We had maps that gave us approximate directions but nothing fancy so that half hour walk? It took us a solid hour.

All this time I was getting to know this guy (who I later learned was named Joel – I’d forgotten it the moment he introduced himself). He was an interesting fellow – a sometimes actor, sometimes construction worker, he had packed up and gone backpacking when he realized he needed a change in his life. We found the train station and bought tickets to Kutna Hora – a fairly popular tourist destination. The tickets were, for all intents and purposes, gibberish to us. We had between us absolutely no knowledge of Czech and so only managed to find the correct train thanks to the generous help of at least three strangers. But we found it, and that’s what counts.

So we get to Kutna Hora and the train station is a half-hour walk out of town. No big deal, it’s an easy walk down a straight road that takes you right to the first of three major tourist attractions in the city – a Cathedral. It was a modest cathedral, as pictured below. Austere even, but none the less gorgeous. There was a pathway under the roof of the cathedral in basically the attic that gave visitors a unique look at how these buildings were, well, built.

Humble but beautiful.

Stop number two was nearby and the main attraction of the town. Known as the ‘Bone Church’, Kutna Hora’s ossuary is world renown for decorated with thousands of human bones. Former coats of arms, chandeliers, and large piles with no apparent purpose, these bones had belonged to tens of thousands of residents of nearby villages who wished to be buried in the graveyard that used to surround the church that was said to have dirt from Jerusalem in it. I’ve put a picture in for good measure.

Coat of Arm Bones? Morbid.

Joel and I headed to our next and final stop in the city next. We decided to take a path off the beaten track, for some reason thinking that was a good idea. Naturally you can guess what happened next – we got lost. Very lost. Luckily for us, I had vaguely learned to use the sun to find cardinal directions and I knew which our goal was so we eventually found the cathedral we were searching for. It didn’t hurt that cathedrals form fairly obvious landmarks either!

This cathedral was a proper cathedral. Ornate as it was huge it was built on a hill overlooking the rest of the city. The view of Czech countryside was gorgeous, the cathedral was monumental, and the weather was gorgeous. I had an amazing time soaking it all in while Joel photographed all the artwork inside the cathedral (a hobby of his). I was, if anything, more interested in the countryside that surrounded the cathedral than the building itself. This was my first time in the countryside in a long time – my trip had only just started and I was ready to be out of the city.

A proper cathedral.

So it was time to get lost again and we managed to do so quite efficiently. Trying to find the train station we ended up on the outskirts of town quite lost with only a vague sense of direction. We tried asking an elderly farming couple but they only spoke Czech and German and my German skills just weren’t up to it. Eventually we found our way back to the main road and the train station but again it was a pretty long search! Still, I don’t regret a single one of the times we got lost.

Luckily the ride home was easy enough, despite the fact that we almost got on a train headed in the opposite direction (and did accidentally send another tourist in that direction, despite our best efforts not to). When we got back to Prague we did the only responsible thing and tried ‘Tank beer’, a form of preservative free beer that’s dispensed from tanks and not kegs. With no reservations I can say it was the best beer I have ever had. Absolutely delicious, smooth, and refreshing after a long day on my feet.

Kutna Hora wasn’t as exciting as my train to Nowhere but it shows the other side of travel, where things are slow moving and fun. I had a great time with Joel and saw countless amazing things. I wouldn’t change a single minute of that day! I think if there’s any moral I’d learn from Kutna Hora, it’s that I get lost a lot. Like daily. And that’s okay with me.