I'm Going Deeper Underground

It's interesting to see how many cities we've been to that have an underground tour. Prague is a city that used to be much lower and it turns out all the old buildings we've been wandering past on the street used to be the first or second floor.
In the old town square, and more specifically the old town hall, there's a room with large tiled mosaics on both walls. Mostly it's used for weddings nowadays but the door pictured leads down to some of the preserved buildings underneath the (current) street level.
Getting down there was much less involved than in Berlin as most of the rooms were used up until quite recently. That and they were never meant to be shelters of any kind, several rooms being used as store rooms or in some cases prisons.
The first room contained a giant burnt cross, one of the many religious symbols that had suffered at the hands of the many religious purges in Prague's history. When the citizens aren't busy throwing town councils out of windows that is. Also along the wall are statues of many of Prague's more famous and influential people including King Wenceslas, a great favourite among the Czech people.

As we continued down we passed through what was once the ground floor of the tower, and then through several old houses which had each been built with a common wall to save on building materials. This was not terribly successful when people had, as we saw in one room, large ovens in their houses and fires quite often broke out. The oven we did see was constructed by Italian immigrants and had several small bones peppered through the stonework. They had taken all the household animals that had died and incorporated them into the oven to keep the good luck in the house.
As we passed over a bridge between houses we saw what was once the original street level a few metres below us and discovered why this had all been buried. During Prague's expansion into a town from a little village on the river no town fortifications had yet been built. Add to this the problem of the river rising and flooding the town and both problems were solved in one go. When building a fortified wall around the town a moat was also dug outside. This earth was used to raise the level of the streets, essentially burying the first level of each house underneath the new streets.
We also saw an example of Prague's old heraldic emblem. The version we saw shows the gate of the Charles Bridge and this was later modified to include a sword in front of the entrance after the residents successfully defended themselves from an angry invading Danish army.
We also saw several replicas of various pikes and weapons used at the time and a measuring device which included scales and the standard unit of measurement in Prague.
All in all another fascinating tour with a lot of the history of Prague revealed and sights we wouldn't normally see just wandering the streets on our own.

Kutna Hora

Kutna Hora is a wacky place, it is located about 69km east from Prague and has had UNESCO World Heritage Site since the mid 90's.

Historically the once substantial wealth and politico-military power of the town(s), especially between the 13th to 15th centuries, was founded on the copious deposits of silver and the attendant boom in silver mining that occurred in the region. However, this has not been the case for nearly half a Millennia now as the towns principle silver mine was irretrievably flooded in the mid 16th century.  The towns’ prestige also eroded drastically over the centuries through the deleterious effects of various wars, the Austro-Hungarian occupation and numerous devastating plagues.

Our first stop was the eerie Sedlec Ossuary. I can’t deny that principally it’s my morbid curiosity with regards to the ossuary, one of the town’s main tourist draws I think, that has drawn me here today.

The Ossuary houses four enormous bell-shaped mounds of bones and occupy the corners of the chapel. An enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the centre of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vaults.  One other prominent “artpiece” is the large Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms.  Of the large amounts of bodies bequeathed to the earth as a result of recurrent, severe plagues; 30,000 bodies are estimated to be buried here from a Great Plague in 1318 alone!  This is possibly not a spot for the easily spooked or squeamish but I think this is a really great, not run-of-the-mill sight to see if you’re up for the trip out to it.

Our second stop was St Barbara's Church which was an amazingly beautiful 3 spires Gothic Church. It houses a lot of renaissance and baroque artwork.  The church is visible all over Kutna Hora. Amazingly, construction of this church began is 1388, but was not finished until 1905.

Onwards to the Kutna Hora town centre and a very becalming and pretty one it is too.  The beauty of Prague, but a much quieter and smaller one.
There are many more churches and a museum of the old royal mint.  This involves a local guide which shows you some of the old coins under each King.

This was quite an interesting tour, although again our tour group kept to themselves a lot and weren't interested in chatting to us, we're beginning to think we're frightening :(

After this 6 hour journey, we again went and had a hearty meal and dessert at Cafe Slavia and then a walk along the river before we headed home to rest our tired eyes.

Tomorrow, we do an Underground Tour of Prague's Old Town and a Dinner Cruise along the river.

We Can Be Happy Underground

One of the more interesting tours that we went on in Berlin was the Berlin Underworlds, a fantastic expedition into all the interesting remains of the various caverns, tunnels, tracks and shelters that lie underneath the city. Berlin, being built on a swamp, isn't anything like many other cities. For example, Rome is mostly built on top of Rome, whereas Berlin has one of the highest water tables in Europe which means you can only dig so deep. This also means that Berlin has very few tall buildings as the foundations can't go very deep and the few things that are underground are not very far down. Nevertheless there's still lots to see down there and our tour covered some 150 years of Berlin's underground history.
We began by taking a brisk walk from Gesundburnnen Station, down a large flight of stairs, across the platform, then up again into the daylight and across the road to an innocuous looking door on the side of the road. We descended down some much narrower stairs into a room with several benches and our guide gave us an overview of the whole tunnels and bunker systems telling us how they came to be built, their use in WWII as air raid shelters, and to their refitting for use as fallout shelters during the Cold War.
Our first stop was the past several radiation suits and through some more narrow twisting passages to see a part of the re-activated bunker from the Cold War period. Originally underneath the French quarter of Berlin after WWII this was turned into a fallout shelter after Stalin threatened to detonate a nuclear warhead over Berlin if the Allies didn't leave West Berlin. It turns out that this was somewhat of a crappy fallout shelter as the projected explosion of a 100 Kiloton nuclear device would have killed everyone in this particular shelter anyway.
Continuing on we saw more of the original tunnel system that was sued by the railways. This is what most of the bunkers and shelters in this location were before being used as air raid and fallout shelters. A decent amount of historic train memorabilia has preserved with the old station sign for Gesundbrunnen being donated by a household of students who were using it as a table.
The last part of the tour focused of the use of the tunnel systems as an air raid shelter during WWII. Again, it turns out to be security theatre as a direct hit on this shelter would have resulted in the top level or two of occupants being killed or badly injured.
A highly recommended tour, but unfortunately one in which photographs are not allowed.

Buddhist Temples and a River Cruise

Another early start on our last day in Thailand, up at 6am so we can get picked up by 7am to go on a tour of several temples close to the capital.

After a long drive (and a quick catch-up nap) our first stop was in Ayutthaya and the ruins of the old capital which contains an old Royal Palace and Wat Pra Si Sanphet. This city was destroyed by a Burmese invasion and the site was never used again because so many women and children died there. When the Burmese were attacking the city they had defeated the Thai army defending the city and many of the women and children fled to the Royal Palace to take shelter in the confirmation hall, and other large buildings. When the Burmese king came to capture the women and children to take them back as servants they refused to open the doors and the Burmese army burnt down the buildings.

A few of the larger buildings were rebuilt, or had extra mortar added over the years to keep them standing, and now the ruins of the palace is the only building left from the original capital.

We also saw a temple at the same site with an enormous golden Buddha, which was much larger than the one we saw in Bangkok.

We had about 20min to walk around the grounds before we had to meet our tour bus and depart, so we walked back to the front of the park to look at the elephants. As we got there we saw about 5 or so elephants, and one baby elephant being unloaded from a truck which was quite a sight. These elephants were also unfortunately chained up much the same as the previous ones we had seen. You could also have an elephant ride, buy a small basket of corn to feed the elephants or pay 40 Baht to get a picture with the baby elephant.

We then piled into the bus again to visit the Wat Yai Chaya Mongkol temple (The Great Temple of Auspicious Victory) which was built to celebrate a victory over a massive Burmese invasion in 1593. Many of the sites we visited seemed to be either destroyed by, or built to celebrate a victory over, the Burmese.

At this temple we walked the grounds and saw a reclining Buddha statue and a courtyard lined with many other smaller Buddha statues, some of which had been offered a small glass of water so they wouldn't get thirsty. You could also buy offerings of a flower, a candle, and an incense stick to make a wish at one of the halls.

Back into the bus once more we proceeded to the Bang Pa-In Royal Palace where it started to rain. Heavily. Lounging around in the front building we sampled some Mangosteen which is a delicious local fruit. It took some prodding but I finally convinced Sancha to try some, which she enjoyed as well. The fruit, not the prodding, that is.

Once the rain eased up we eventually got to wander the grounds and see a pavilion in the middle of the pond, the awesome hedge sculptures, the Chinese style royal palace, a lookout tower, and another royal palace which we weren't allowed to enter. Sancha passed on the lookout tower since she was royally over stairs by this point.

Onwards, and our last trip in the bus involved travelling back to a dock and our lunch cruise down the Chao Phraya River. This was probably the nicest part of our day, as we relaxed in the boat, had a nice buffet lunch, and saw all the various riverside buildings. These buildings ranged from giant new condominiums to some barely upright shanties that looked like they could collapse any second.

We were quite exhausted from the day once we were dropped back at our hotel, but we did end up having the nicest (and cheapest!) Thai meal we had during our stay at a restaurant down the road. This time it was a much more relaxed walk down the road as much of the military presence had eased up.