Barb and I decided that Friday, October 21 would be our day to venture away from Prague.

   At first, we had thought we might take two day trips -- one to Plzen, and one to Kutna Hora. We were interested in Plzen because some of Barb's ancestors lived there, and we wanted to visit Kutna Hora both because of its important role in Czech history and because of the "Bone Church" nearby in Sedlec. After some investigation and discussion, though, we decided to skip Plzen because it would be a longer trip than we had realized at first -- and because we couldn't really figure out what we would do there beyond visiting the Pilsner Urquell brewery. And while the brewery would have been fun, it wouldn't have been significantly more fun than spending a few hours in any of the pubs within five minutes of our Nerudova apartment.

   So our Friday trip to Kutna Hora, about sixty kilometers east of Prague, would be our sole excursion away from the Czech capital. We planned the day carefully . . . and at first, our plan unfolded perfectly. Toward the end of the day, though, we would find ourselves "off script" and a bit lost. But that would turn out to be one of the best moments of our entire Czech vacation.

   At least, that was what I would decide once we finally made it back to the apartment.

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   That Friday morning dawned overcast and gray, as most of our mornings in Prague did. But it wasn't cold, so we eschewed the Metro and walked to the main train station, passing through Wenceslas Square on the way. Having visited the train station the day before, we more or less knew what we were doing and managed to buy our tickets (only 62Kc each, about $2.50, one way) and find the correct platform without any trouble. When we boarded our train, we found ourselves sharing a compartment with four quiet fellow travelers who didn't seem to mind that we couldn't refrain from taking pictures out the window for most of the trip.

   I was struck by the diversity of the Bohemian landscape. In just the sixty kilometers between Prague and Kutna Hora, we passed through forest (or what looked like forest to me, anyway), rolling hills, verdant valleys, and flat farmland -- as well as a number of small towns. The farm fields, in particular, seemed more than familiar to me . . . and a few times, if I hadn't known where I was, I could have believed that I was looking at fields being worked by farmers in northeastern Kansas. No wonder my Koci ancestors eventually settled near Topeka: Back then, Shawnee County must have looked a lot like the old country, only without the Hapsburgs.

   Kutna Hora's main train station is a few miles from the town center, and when we arrived, a number of our fellow passengers boarded a bus that would take them the rest of the way. But Barb and I decided to hoof it. Or, to be more honest, we dithered about whether to get on the bus because we weren't entirely sure where it was going . . . and it left before we made up our minds.

   But we wound up being glad that we chose (by default) to walk, because we saw a lot more of everyday Czech life than we would have seen from the bus. And the "Bone Church" in Sedlec was on the way, so we were able to stop there first rather than having to backtrack.

   The Sedlec ossuary is a small church surrounded by a graveyard. The story is that, centuries ago, a globetrotting priest brought back some soil from Golgotha and scattered it in the cemetery, which made it a popular place for people to be planted. (Say that five times fast.) And about four hundred years ago, as the graveyard ran out of room due to decades of wars and plagues, the priests who ran the joint began disinterring old bones to accommodate new arrivals -- and then began stacking the disinterred bones inside the church to remind the locals of their mortality. (As if anyone in Bohemia needed to be reminded of that.) Some of the priests -- an uncharitable commentator might say "some of the more morbid or bughouse crazy priests" -- got really creative, making a bony chandelier, a huge skeletal coat-of-arms, and other spiffy decorative displays out of their neighbors' mortal remains. It's estimated that the church is now decorated with the bones of 40,000 people . . . some of whom no doubt thought they'd be resting in peace for all eternity under blessed soil from the Holy Land. But instead, they're fodder for our digital cameras. (Surprise!)

   The ossuary is both fascinating and creepy as hell. Also, I can testify to the fact that, even after several centuries, the bones of 40,000 people have a distinctive odor. They don't smell "dead," of course; their flesh has been dust far too long for that. But there's a musty, heavy, organic smell in that church that I've never encountered anywhere else.

   In other words: Even though all those dead folks don't smell "dead," exactly, they sure don't smell good, either.

   After visiting the Bone Church and having a snack on a bench in the cemetery, Barb and I continued walking into Kutna Hora. We passed supermarkets, homes, machine shops, schools (with laughing children running around outside), and a huge Philip Morris plant (which didn't smell too good itself). We also passed by a Communist-era apartment complex that looked like humongous cinder blocks that had been dropped from the sky. And we stopped to take a photo of a now-neglected monument to (we think) the Soviet "liberation" of Czechoslovakia in 1945.

   Kutna Hora initially earned its place in Czech history as a source of royal (and Church) wealth in the medieval era. The town sat atop a silver mine -- and although the silver is long gone, its influence remains. The shafts and tunnels are still there for the non-claustrophobic to tour (Barb and I stayed above ground), and the one-of-a-kind Stone Fountain still stands as evidence of 15th-century prosperity. Most prominent is the amazing Cathedral of St. Barbara, named after the patron saint of miners. While this Gothic cathedral isn't as large and grand as St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague, its architecture is just as impressive.

   Except for the Bone Church and St. Barbara's, we didn't have any must-see stops on our Kutna Hora itinerary. So after touring the Cathedral, we just spent a pleasant afternoon wandering around town. We had lunch at a cigarette-smoky diner where our waitress didn't know more than three or four words of English . . . but when we added those words to our three or four words of Czech (plus a lot of pointing at the menu), it turned out to be plenty.

   And, naturally, the food was great.

                  #

   After a bit more exploration, we walked back to the train station. We had purchased one-way tickets in Prague, so we had to buy return tickets at the Kutna Hora station -- which turned out to be a bit of a challenge. The lady at the ticket window didn't seem to understand us when we said "Praha," and we didn't understand her when she responded with what sounded like "Eeckih?" So we went back and forth with that for a little while. ("Praha." "Eeckih?" "Uh, Praha?" "Eeckih!" "No, Praha!" "Eeeckihh?!") Finally, I realized that she was asking, in English, if we needed TICKETS, so I handed over the same amount of money that we'd paid in Prague, and she gladly took it and gave us our tickets. She also may have rolled her eyes.

   This is when the real fun started. Barb and I had scoped out the train schedules the day before, and we had carefully chosen which train to take back to Prague. But now, plopped on a bench inside the station with forty-five minutes to kill, pooped from a long day of hiking around Kutna Hora, and newly unsure of ourselves because of our communication difficulty with the lady at the ticket window, we began to second-guess our choice. The train schedule was there on the wall, and the train we had decided to take was listed . . . but why was it listed in a different color than the others? We knew that some trains ran only on certain days, so did this color mean that our chosen train was one of them? Did it run on Fridays? Or did the different color mean that it came through Kutna Hora, but didn't stop? Or did it mean that it was a local that stopped everywhere? Had we screwed up? Should we choose another train? And if so, which one? Which of those trains went to Prague?

   If we had shown up five minutes before our departure time instead of forty-five minutes, we wouldn't have had time to doubt ourselves, and our train probably would have shown up as expected. But as it was, with time on our hands, we managed to convince ourselves that we had no idea what we were doing.

   It was then that the door leading out to the platform burst open and a young, scruffy man with a backpack bounded up to the ticket window and asked, in an unmistakable antipodean accent, "Oy, 'scuse me, mam? This train about to leave is the one we want for Prague, right?"

   Behind the glass, the lady gave him a puzzled smile.

   The young man grinned and nodded. "Thank you very much!" he said, walking backwards toward the door.

   To my horror, Barb stood and spoke to him. "Excuse me," she said. "We're a bit lost, and you seem to know what you're doing. We're going to Prague, too, so could we tag along with you?"

   "Oh, yeah, yeah, come along!"

   Barb started after him, so of course I stood and went along too. But inside my skull, I was yelling: Noooooo! The eeckih lady didn't tell him anything! He doesn't know what he's doing either! Let's wait for the train we already planned on! I don't want to follow a crazy twenty-year-old Australian! Nooooooooooo!

   But it was too late. We were following the crazy twenty-year-old Australian.

   Outside, we quickly introduced ourselves to him and his traveling companion -- a young Aussie lady -- and then ran for the train that was, indeed, just about to leave. As we passed another Czech railroad employee, our new tour guide pointed at the train and asked, "Prague, right?" The railroad employee smiled and nodded, but I thought I saw a mischievous twinkle in his eye. (Honest, I did.)

   We all four hopped onto the train with about twenty seconds to spare before it pulled out. I was still pretty sure it was the wrong train, because there had been no train from Kutna Hora to Prague listed for this time . . . but the Aussie bloke explained that we would hop off this train in Kolin, then switch to a different train to get to Prague.

   That sounded right. When Barb and I had made our plans, we had tried to avoid confusion by ignoring options that required switching trains. But the Aussies didn't seem confused at all, so I relaxed and enjoyed the fact that a different route away from Kutna Hora provided different views out the window.

   Then we reached Kolin, hopped off the train, and went through a pedestrian tunnel into the station. Kolin was a much bigger stop than Kutna Hora, and there were multiple tracks and platforms, so I assumed our Aussie friend merely wanted to check to see which track our Prague train would use. But once we got to the waiting room with its big schedule boards, I realized that he was looking for more than that.

   "There!" he said cheerfully, pointing up at the board. "That train comin' in twenty minutes is goin' to someplace with 'hl. n.' after it. That's Prague, right?"

   Suddenly, I didn't feel so great. "Hl. n." is an abbreviation for "hlavni nadrazi," which means "main train station." Yes, Prague had an "hl. n.," but so did Kutna Hora, Kolin, and the completely different city (Bratislava?) up there on the board. Our young Aussie friend, skin-of-the-teeth adventurer that he was, had simply heard from someone that it was possible to change to a Prague train in Kolin. He didn't have any idea which train to take, or whether such a train was even coming tonight.

   So I began to scan the board myself, and I found that there would indeed be a train to Prague's main station . . . in three hours. I pointed this out to Barb and the Aussies, and we began to contemplate the prospect of hanging around the gray Kolin station until late that evening.

   Then a sixtyish gentleman standing behind us cleared his throat. "These schedules can be quite tricky to read," he said in a mild British accent. "You're right that the train to Prague's main station doesn't leave for three hours -- but look, there's one leaving for Masaryk Station in ten minutes."

   I remembered from my studies of Prague maps that Masaryk Station wasn't all that far from the main (Woodrow Wilson) station. (As a matter of fact, nothing in central Prague is all that far from anything else.) A train to Masaryk Station would do just fine, especially since it would mean we wouldn't have to languish in the Kolin station for three hours.

   So we thanked the British gentleman profusely (I thanked him extra profusely), and the four of us scampered back down the tunnel to the correct track. Well, the twenty-year-old Aussies scampered. Barb and I did whatever middle-aged Yanks do. In any case, we found the correct track and train with no difficulty, boarded, and then sort of half-crumpled into our seats.

   And this is the part of the journey where I became glad that Barb and I had followed the crazy young Aussie whose good-natured confidence had disguised the fact that he had no idea what he was doing. Because if we hadn't followed him, we wouldn't have wound up on a commuter train with dozens of Czechs returning home at the end of their workdays, and we wouldn't have stopped at every small-town station between Kolin and Prague.

   For some travelers, this may not sound too desirable. But it was my favorite part of our day trip.

   The sun set soon after we left Kolin, and our world shrank to the size of our train car.

   Our train from Prague to Kutna Hora had been equipped with sliding-door compartments that separated its passengers into neat little cubicles, and it had been clear that many of those passengers, like us, had been non-Czech tourists. In contrast, the commuter train to Masaryk Station was set up almost like a city bus, with two long rows of alternate-facing vinyl-covered bench seats on either side of a center aisle -- and the majority of the passengers were locals. We sat among working men and women having long discussions in Czech, and each of the many stops along the route changed the population of our car a little. Some of our fellow passengers carried shopping bags or briefcases and wore business suits, while others carried lunch pails and wore scuffed coveralls. And when a uniformed lady came through the car to check our tickets, she told us all "Dobry den!" ("Good day!") and meant it.

   I had been a little worried that my and Barb's tickets, which stated that they were good for travel from Kutna Hora to Prague's main station, might cause us a bit of a problem on a train from Kolin to Masaryk Station. But the uniformed lady just glanced at them and then punched them along with everyone else's. I realized then that our tickets were valid on any route from Kutna Hora to Prague; the details didn't matter. Or, perhaps, the nice lady had decided to let the details slide. Either way, I thought it was an exceptionally good system.

   Our Aussie friends didn't know where Masaryk Station was located, so I told them it was close to Republic Square . . . then showed them one of our maps when I realized that they'd never heard of Republic Square. (Four days earlier, neither had I.) They were happy to see that Masaryk Station and Republic Square were within easy walking distance of their hostel in Old Town, and I was happy to be able to repay a little of their kindness. (After all, the fact that they didn't really know what they were doing any better than we did doesn't alter the fact that they were more than willing to help out absolute strangers when asked. On any continent, that's good people.)

   Soon after our map examination, the Aussie bloke told us that he and his companion would have to move to different seats because the flickering of the fluorescent light just over our heads was giving him a terrible headache. I could tell from his tone that Barb and I were welcome to move with them, if we chose . . . but I decided that it was probably time for us to part company. I had the sense that these two young people might be at the raw beginning of what we in the States call a "relationship," and I also had the sense that the presence of a couple of long-married Yanks might be cramping their style. So I thanked them for their help and companionship and wished them good fortune on the rest of their travels. Barb thanked them too, and they expressed their good wishes for us as well. And then they disappeared up the aisle behind us.

   Barb and I spent the rest of the ride looking at the lights of small towns, watching folks get on and off the train, and listening to the murmur of conversations that sounded familiar even though we couldn't understand a word.

                  #

   Masaryk Station was crowded, noisy, and fragrant with a few thousand people in the last stages of their Friday evening commute. I caught one last glimpse of our Aussie friends on the other side of the throng, and I would have waved if they'd been looking in our direction. But they weren't. They vanished a few seconds later, and I'm sure we'll never see them again. So thanks and g'day, kids, wherever you are.

   Barb and I headed for Wenceslas Square, and before we got there we were approached by a gaunt young woman begging for change. It was unusual and startling. We'd seen a number of beggars on the Charles Bridge and on the castle steps (and I'd given money to a few of them) -- but they had all been men, and none had actively solicited any passersby. Instead, they had knelt, eyes downcast, with a hat or a cup placed on the pavement before them. All had remained as still as statues -- so much so that I actually thought one of them was a statue until I was within a few feet of him.

   But the woman we encountered between Masaryk Station and Wenceslas Square was different. She practically ran at us, speaking rapidly in German . . . and when I gave her what must have been a perplexed look, she switched to broken but still-rapid English.

   "Please, Mister, Lady," she said. "I need hundred fifty crowns for phone call!"

   Barb pointed out that a hundred and fifty crowns sounded like a lot for a phone call. (It's a little over six bucks.) But the woman was persistent, switching back and forth between German and English, literally begging for the money. So I gave her all the change I had in my pocket, which was about 120 Kc. That seemed to satisfy her. And as Barb and I continued on our way, I tried to tell myself that maybe the gaunt young woman would use the (roughly) five dollars I had given her to buy some decent food. You can get a really good meal in Prague for 120 Kc.

   But I didn't believe that scenario any more than I believed the phone-call story. I had seen the need in that young woman's hollow eyes: She was a junkie.

   I'm sure we'll never see her again, either. But wherever she is, I hope she's still alive.

                   #

   The encounter with the gaunt young woman was depressing, but we couldn't help perking up a bit when we reached Wenceslas Square. This was the first time we had seen Vaclavske Namesti at night, and it was stunning. The whole boulevard was lit up in shades of red, purple, and gold, and the National Museum was glowing. That's Prague for you -- tragedy and beauty, cheek to jowl. You don't get one without the other.

   Barb and I took the Metro from Wenceslas Square to the Hradcany station. Then, after getting our bearings, we walked by the Royal Gardens and headed down the castle steps to Mala Strana . . . and home.

   It was a lovely night.

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   Some of the things I learned on October 21: Farm fields in Bohemia look much like farm fields in Kansas. But unlike in Kansas, the fields in Bohemia aren't studded with farmhouses -- and there aren't many outbuildings, either. Instead, whole compact villages are surrounded by almost building-free fields.//After six hundred years, dead people no longer reek. But they don't smell like roses, either.//Propagandistic monuments from the Soviet era still exist here and there in the Czech Republic. But they're pretty much ignored.//Youthful exuberance, a sense of adventure, and a willingness to take a chance can often make up for a lack of actual knowledge.//Czechs are somehow able to simultaneously mind their own business and make strangers feel welcome.//And the Prague Metro's escalators are steep enough to induce vertigo. If you're a newbie, hang on tight and look at your feet, stealing only occasional glances upward or downward until you're used to it. The Metro tunnels are way, way down deep below the cobblestones.