On the road again

Prague was great, but we've got miles to go before we sleep. So we are now in the middle of Switzerland, after having toured most of the south half of Germany in a marathon day of admiring the European rail system.
On Sunday, our final day in the Czech Republic, we trained to Kutna Hora, a now smallish town that used to be the second most powerful city in central Europe when its silver mines were still producing. So it had no fewer than three giant cathedrals, and a few palaces despite the fact that it only takes 5 minutes to walk from the town center to the communist era apartment buildings on the outskirts of town. The two main attraction in Kutna Hora are a behemoth of flying buttresses to rival Notre Dame and a church basement filled with sculptures made out of human bones. The huge cathedral was pretty wonderful, particularly because it was relatively deserted compared to such attractions in the rest of Europe. The basement of bones was...impressive. Apparently, in the Czech Republic (well, some empire or another at the time) when you've got too many people to bury in a postage stamp graveyard, you sell the place to minor nobility and have them build sculptures out of the piles of bones that you don't have room in the ground for. Bones from about 40,000 people now form four 7 foot tall pyramids, candelabras, chalices, a chandeleer, and a man sized coat of arms in the basement of a small church, and hundreds of tourists come by to look at them every day. Oh, and the artist who built everything signed his name in human bones when he was done. Creepy? Maybe a little.
But the best thing about Kutna Hora was being out in the Czech countryside. From the mideival streets, you could look out and see hillsides of trees that were just beginning to turn colors.

Monday morning, we beat a hasty retreat from Prague before anyone could notice we were leaving (the streets are pretty dead at 4:30 a.m.) and tested out the efficiency of the German train system. You'll be chagrinned that it's not all it's cracked up to be. One of our trains was ten minutes late. Not that it mattered to us, because we didn't have any tight connections, but you could here the tinkling of shattered preconceptions and see the Swiss people shaking their heads. I forgive the Germans, though, partly because of my fine German heritage, partly because they have wonderful bread, and partly because they have great beer. And i didn't have to dwell on it too long because by Monday night we were already in Switzerland.

Today, we journeyed deep into the heart of the Swiss alps, to find our hostel in a tiny town of 500 that sits on top of a 1000 foot cliff and can only be reached by a gondola or a half day hike. Even as a Colorado person and proud mountain snob, I am impressed by these mountains. The views are really indescribable (and I'm tired and want to go to bed), so I'll post some pictures as soon as I download them from my camera. Until then, just imagine your most idyllic scene of green hills graced with a spattering of swiss cottages and surrounded by mountains. Then make the mountains taller, and you've got where we are.