Het heeft gesneeuwd!

Snow gathering on the balcony railing in the kind-of-gloominess of yesterday.

Which is Dutch for "It snowed!"

Yesterday was only the fourth time it got below freezing all year.  And it was also the first snow!  It wasn't very much snow but it was real snow.  And it stuck.  I am very, very delighted.  It is supposed to stay under freezing (around 30 degrees) all the rest of the week, too.  For what it's worth, all this week it is going to be around 20 to 25 up in Friesland, which does say good things about freezing stuff, maybe.

I went for a walk in the snow in the afternoon.  It was pleasant, a little chilly, and it finally felt like winter.

As I was walking down the street, I noticed that all of the cars had been cleaned off in a peculiar pattern.  The side windows, the hoods, and the trunks had been cleaned off.  However, for the rear windows and windshields, only the outside edges had been cleaned up.  At first I couldn't figure out why this was so.  Then I saw little kids running around and realized that the cleaned areas of snow were where they had scrapped off all the show that they could reach, so that they could have snow ball fights.  There were kids out all over the place, running around, chasing each other with handfuls of snow.  They seemed to really be enjoying themselves.  Even the adults seemed to be in a particularly festive mood.  Snow is good stuff.

This morning, with snow sparkling in the sunshine.

Jesuit College

The Jesuit College was a major political/religious institution at Kutná Hora.  It is in the massive, long, white building beside the St. Barbara's Cathedral.  It is now used as an art gallery.  It houses the Czech Museum of Fine Arts.  I was going to include a link to that but it doesn't display the nicest of paintings.  The Jesuit College is a UNESCO world heritage site.

  

Chrám Sv. Barbory

Chrám Sv. Barbory, or St. Barbara's Cathedral, is the major cathedral of Kutná Hora.  It is a fair walk up mountains (at least compared to the Netherlands) to get to it. and there is a very pretty approach.  It was a gorgeous view, even though it was gray and misty.  I can't even guess what it would be like if it was a clear sunny day out.  St. Barbara's is the spiky spire-filled building.  The white building is the old Jesuit College.

If you notice the terracing beside the cathedral (see, I told you it was on a mountain) that is all set up with grape vines and, if I understood them correctly, they make local wines here.  It makes it mighty picturesque place to walk around.

These are pictures of the vineyard and the valley from the St. Barbara Cathedral.

The walk up to the cathedral is lined with lots and lots of giant stone statutes.  It is impressive looking.

 

Some of the statues are more ghoulish than others. 

Front view of St. Barbara's Cathedral

There are some pretty impressive stained glass windows in the cathedral.  I don't know what the technique used was (and you probably can't really see it) but there is some pretty impressive shading and detail on the glass that make it look more like a painting than like a stained glass design.

The statue on the left is of a miner as the area was full of silver mines.  The backwards apron  is specifically so that the miner can use it as a sled to slide down into the mine.  Can you image what the climb out, at the end of the day must be like if the best way down in the morning is to sled down on special leather aprons?

The pulpit below is pretty elaborate.

        





I liked the Cathedral ceiling.  It looks kind of like an antique modified double wedding ring quilt with appliques.