Church of Bones June 11

Remember that Vincent Price quote in "Thriller," the one that goes something like "the funk of 40 thousand years..?" Well we visited a church in Kotna Hora (I think that's how to spell it) that had the funk of 40 thousand corpses. Literally this Ossuary was decorated in human bones. There were these huge pyramids of skulls and bones that were not held together with any bindings, just stacked up twelve or fifteen feet high. The smell was terrible-- and slightly terrifying. How can bones from over 500 years ago still smell so funky? Well, they are still remains and slowly decaying even under the sterilization and whitewash treatments. It smelled like old tapestries and musty, closed off rooms, laced with the smell of sweat and b.o. from everyone there-- the only way to really get there without a car is to walk about a kilometer from the train station; in the 90+ heat, it was like slowly baking in a brick oven, the heat coming off the pavement in waves. It was so freaking hot we actually broke down and bought cold drinks at the station to cool off. By the time we got to the ossuary, we were plastered with sweat, but really that isn't anything new in Prague. We showered twice a day sometimes, just to cool off and de-stinkify. We were happy to get into the shade, and knowing that usually churches and museums are cooler than the out-of-doors, hoping that there would be a breeze or something to cool us down. Well, it cooled us down, but it smelled awful, so it was up in the air as to whether or not it was "better."
As soon as you enter the place you can see the bones, and the absolute shabbiness of the place. One lady at a desk at the front taking money for the tickets and handing out a badly translated history of the chapel. Apparently some half-blind (and in our consensus totally mad) monk set out to honor God by using the bones that were heaped up and mostly forgotten to decorate. These 40,000 corpses are largely unknowns; victims of the bubonic plague and the Turkish wars. There was some famous guy who spread some famous handful of consecrated earth from the crusades over the graveyard there, so lots of people wanted to be buried there. They literally heaped them up inside and out, a pathetic sepulcher for about 200 years or so; then, after a fire destroyed part of (most of?) the chapel, the monk-guy (who apparently had nothing else to do with his time, and had no sense of smell left) took the bones, most of which were heaped up, mouldering outside the walls and started playing kinex with them. Somewhere in the 16-1700's some famous Italian architect dude came along and sterilized and whitewashed the bones before actually creating artworks with them... chandeliers, wall drapes and crucifixes, a coat of arms and heraldry, even candelabras and instruments of the churchly rites.
All in all, it was an interesting place and well worth the 50 cent entry fee, but I wouldn't recommend taking kids there.
The train to Kotna Hora took about an hour, but for the three of us to go and return was 300 crowns, which we earned by having to stand the entire way to Kolin, where we switched trains unnecessarily. Literally the train was packed too tight for us to find seats in second class, so we stuck our heads out the windows in the aisle and just tried not to die of heatstroke. It was like being in an oven-- but we were like marinated chickens: marinading in our own sweat and the stink of hundreds of unwashed bodies. It was probably better than the seats, to tell the truth, no matter how achy and sore our feet, knees, hips got from standing, sitting on the floor was a hard prospect-- not only was it filthy, but people kept coming and going past us, so every time Air would try to sit, a few minutes later she would have to stand again.
It got us out of the hostel and out into the sunshine, so it was worth it.