Spretnak The Blog: And Then I End Up at the Hospital

The Kuks Hospital and religious statuary

Don't worry. The "Hospital" was a monastery, spa and convalescent home for soldiers in the Sudetenland built in the early 1700s. After climbing up and down all the stairs in Adrspach, I could have used some convalescing.

I got lunch instead.

No, it was not one of those famous "Las Vegas Hot Dogs" from the concession stand at the park. (From the Czech language signage, the best I could tell was that in Las Vegas, we love cole slaw on our hot dogs. Guilty!) No. It was a real Czech meal at a real Czech restaurant.

The Hotel Javor next to the park. I had the pork "sparrow" -- that's what the English language translation on the menu called it -- it was just pork cut into bite-sized bits, with potato dumpling (yes, it looks like sliced roasted potatoes, but those were very much dumplings) and some of the best sauerkraut I ever had. It was studded with cumin!

After a very filling meal, washed down in the traditional Czech way (a tall glass of Pilsner Urquell), we were whisked off to the Hospital.

The historic Kuks Hospital.

To get to the Hospital, you have to cross the mighty Elbe River.

The Elbe is one of the great rivers of Europe. This is it. We're close to the headwaters here, so the mighty Elbe is more of a creek. But it gets bigger. It eventually flows into the North Sea near Hamburg, Germany.

The "Hospital" was built by Count Anton von Sporck. He had made his fortune inventing the fork/spoon combination implement. I kid. I kid. He was a wealthy nobleman who became wealthy doing noble things.

Like building this Hospital, which was a combination monastery, spa, and convalescent home for soldiers recovering from war service. The Hospital and statuary are excellent examples of Baroque architecture.

The Hospital is best known for its Baroque statuary, the Virtues and Vices, sculpted by Matthias Braun. If you are looking up at the Hospital from the mighty Elbe, the Virtues are on the left, the Vices on the right. Each statue represents a different virtue or vice.

Here are the row of Virtues, such as generosity, or justice, or wisdom:

And here are the row of Vices, such as sloth, gluttony, vanity:

The dog in this statue looks angry, so maybe this is the Vice of Anger, or Wrath?

The pig in the statue has got to mean Gluttony:

After our heavy, filling lunch, our tour group stands here contemplating the Vice of Gluttony:

Behind the Hospital is its garden. This was well-known for its herb garden, which the monks used to make pharmaceuticals for the patients.

The communist plowed up the herb garden and planted potatoes.

But they have turned it back into an herb garden, the communists having been vanquished.

This is another statue from Matthias Braun. Recognize it? It's David, looking rather different from his Michelangelo version.

This is a view of the Czech countryside. The yellow is not sulfur lichens, as in Adrspach, but rapeseed, which we know in the USA as canola. Rapeseed is growing everywhere, by E.U. mandate, for biofuels. Yes, the communists ripped up all the land to plant potatoes. The E.U. bureaucrats ripped up all the land to plant rapeseed for biofuels.

After visiting the Hospital, we walked through the forest to here:

Bethlehem! Or Betlém, in Czech. This is considered to be Matthias Braun's masterpiece:

It has decayed considerably over time, due to exposure to groundwater and the atmosphere. At least the groundwater is delicious:

They keep a teacup there so you can draw a drink of the mineral water. Cool and tasty!

Near Betlém are some more sculptures. Below is a sheep:

Contemplating the meaning of it all:

This is a statue of a murderer. Again, Braun's theme of virtue and vice. Once statue of good, another of not-so-good. Below is a rendering of a man lost in the wilderness spying a human for the first time in 60 years: