Day 20 and 21 - All The Lovely Bones And Scott Heads Home

Note:  After looking at Day 21, I didn't think I had enough for a whole post.  So I'm going to combine them with 20.  Added stuff is at the bottom.  KH

Hey Team,

Day two in the Czech Republic and for our activities today, Scott and I are daytripping away from Prague and heading to a little town an hour away by the name of Kutna Hora, which was an important silver mining region in the Middle Ages.  This historically is the second most important city in all of Bohemia, and was a favorite residence of many of the Bohemian Kings.  There are a lot of important churches and buildings from the 14th century here, but Scott and I really came down for one thing:  The Sedlec Ossuary.

Looks like a normal little church right?  It even has a beautiful cemetery surrounding the grounds.  In 1278, an abbot from the monastery nearby brought back some dirt from Golgotha and sprinkled it on the site, and from that point anyone of prominence requested to be buried here.  After the Plague and several wars, the number of people who needed to be laid to rest increased substantially and the cemetery had to be expanded to accommodate.

The church was built around 1400 and all of the bones that had to be removed for the building where placed inside as an ossuary.  In the 19th century, someone got the idea that rather than just store all of these folks, perhaps it would be better to show them off.  So you get this:

This is the front entrance.  Some people have "Home Sweet Home", some people go this route.  Just in case there's any confusion, none of these are plastic fakes that were picked up on special in the holiday aisle at Kroger's.  You're looking at the real deal here.

This is the coat of arms for the family that ruled these lands, which goes to show you not only the importance of the chapel, but also the happy and cheery persona that these lords projected to the populace.

Here's the chandelier in the center of the chapel.  It contains at least one of every bone in the human body.

So I don't have the best idea of what things looked like before they came in and added their artistic touches, but there are 4 of these bell shaped columns in the chapel that look similar to this.  All of them taller than me and 1.5 times as wide.  Apparently 40,000 people's bones are in this church and on display.

Here's a shot of Scott and me hanging out next to all of our new friends.  As you can see we totally annihilated the surrounding competition when it came to largest skull size, once again asserting American dominance over the competition.









After we finished off at the Ossuary, we caught a couple of other churches before heading back to Prague.

This is at the Cathedral of Assumption of Our Lady and St. John the Baptist which was built beginning in the 12th century and is the oldest cathedral in the Czech Republic.

Apparently displaying decayed human remains is a reoccurring theme here because once again we get to see somebody's insides. This is actually a patron saint of the church and therefore considered a Holy Relic.  Just in case you missed this specific one, the church is offering a two for one special with another just on the other side of he altar.  See, sometimes the best things in life are free (Hi Five)!

This is from the other big dog church in the town, St. Barbara's.  I hate to say this, but I am beginning to hit cathedral fatigue.  Many people told me about this phenomena, but I didn't think it would be happen.  Most of the churches I've see have been in the Gothic style, like Notre Dame and St. Vitus and these two.  They are all beautiful beautiful places of worship, but they are starting to run together with the main distinguishing characteristic being the color of the walls and the little chapels surrounding the middle of the church.  Here is a beautiful section of this one I saw.

Here's a shot of Kutna Hora from an elevated area.  It's no Prague but pretty good nonetheless.











Our next day was our last in the Czech Republic and was Scott's last on the trip.  It's a bummer that he had to head home (we had a blast) but I think we made the most of it and had some great experiences.  For the grand finale we daytripped again from Prague and saw a castle about 30 minutes or so away from Prague called Karlstejn Castle.  Once again, King Charles IV was the one to build it.  This thing was huge by the way, but unfortunately, we couldn't take pictures inside. What else kinda stunk was that they wouldn't take us to the best rooms in the castle.  You had to pay extra and book days in advance which we didn't know about until it we got there.  However, it was a good looking place and the town surrounding it was very nice.  Here's some shots:

Here's the castle.  That big structure is the Great Tower (walls are 4-6 m thick) which used to hold the Crown Jewels and Regalia of the Holy Roman Empire.

As you can tell, this bad boy is a bit off the ground, which made for a difficult time in over running it.  So what do you do?  Well obviously you besiege the castle by camping outside the walls for months at a time and then resort to "biological warfare" by lobbing dead bodies and feces over the walls in the hopes that they will infect the populace inside.  Despite these efforts, the castle was not taken.  And it had such potential . .

No blog of our time together would be complete without showing you a shot of Scott facing away from me.  If I had one of these, I have 50 where he randomly wanders into the photo in the last second.  It got to be a running joke of the trip actually.  This one however, was on purpose because it shows what we did for about 30 minutes, which was go straight up this hill in order to get to the castle that wouldn't allow us to take pictures.  I don't know if this was Scott's idea of punishing me or what, but it seems like half of the activities we did together involved the need to have spent a considerable amount of time on a stair stepper.  I've never missed Houston so much in my life.

But it was all worth it in the end!  Behold this massive sugar wafer.  These things cost a buck and are probably not the ideal snack for me since they are basically 95% sugar.  Of course, that didn't stop me from eating 2 of them before the tour started.

And here's a pretty view of the town after the tour of the castle.  The surrounding area around Prague is very pretty, but I think we all agree that Prague was definitely the best of the lot.

And for all of you "How I Met Your Mother" Fans (That would be me by the way), I have great news.  If you ever lose your copy of the Bro Code on your next European trip, fear not. . .You can still Suit Up as Barney is never far away and translated into 46 languages.











So after we got back to Prague, I hit a night train to Krakow, Poland and Scott got to hang out all night at the airport waiting for his flight back to the States.  Everyone got to their respective destinations safely thankfully and I have to say the latest Homann Brother's Trip was an overwhelming success.  Had a blast dude and hope you did as well.  Thanks for coming.

Tomorrow I go it alone again, and I'll be reporting on the eastern most portion of the trip in Poland.  Later . . .

Day 19 - Our First Peak Behind the Iron Curtain

Howdy,

Well, we have left the "West" behind and are now moving into the portion of the trip where the countries are still working their way through all the fun they had under the former Soviet Union.  We have made our way to the Czech Republic, specifically, the capital city or Prague, or Praha as it's called here.  One of the reasons Scott came for the Germany and Czech Rep. part of the trip was not just because it looked like a good time, but also because about 75% of our family background originates in these two countries.

In fact, if you go about halfway between Houston and San Antonio on I-10 you'll find a little Czech community about 10 minutes away from Flatonia named Praha that our great, great times 3 (or something like that) Grandfather helped found and build the first Czech organized Catholic Church in Texas.  We even had the village names from where our ancestors came from over here, but unfortunately they were 4 or 5 hours away and not on the train lines, so we didn't get to go due to time restrictions.

Prague has a completely different feel to it.  English is still spoken, but not as frequently and by less people.  That combined with the fact that I know zero Czech made it a bit harder to get around.  It's a very nice and beautiful town but you can still tell the difference between places like France and here.  It's completely safe, and we had a great time, but I'm glad we did something a little more touristy for the first part of the trip.  It made it easier to navigate a slightly more difficult situation.

There are two names you need to remember when you go to the Czech Republic, St. Wenceslaus I (from the Christmas Carol.  And he wasn't a king either, by the way) and King Charles IV.    St. Wenceslaus I was a Duke of Bohemia in the 10th century and is the patron saint of the Czech Rupublic, Bohemia, and Prague.  King Charles IV was from the 14th century and was the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.  A huge portion of the famous structures in the city where authorized by this guy.  Scott and I started off our day with a tour of the city.  We had a guy who was from the Czech Republic named Radic who was really funny and knew his stuff.  We've been really lucky with our guides so far.  Here's some of the highlights.

This is Old Town Square.  On the right is the Church of Our Lady before Tyn which is from the 14th century.

On the left you can see a small statue of Jan Hus who was the inspiration for the Hussite Uprising which converted the surrounding region for a time from Catholicism to Protestantism a hundred years before Martin Luther and the Reformation .

The Catholic Church was not a big fan of Huss speaking against them.  Where would the indulgences, tithing and bingo night crowd come from?  So they decided to burn him alive.  Bad call it turns out because doing so rallied the troops and the Church was pushed out till the Hapsburg Empire took over.  And thus 10 generations never felt the joy of completing their line after hearing the oh so sweet words, "B-5. . . that's B . . 5".

This is the Astonomical Clock on the Old Town Square which I've still yet to figure out how it works.  There are about 12 hands on this thing  Every hour supposedly a little show happens with some moving pieces on the clock.  If you want to know the time, look at your wrist.  If you want to see pretty pictures and dials move in a circle, look at this clock.

This is the Town Hall and a statue of St. Wenceslaus I in Wenceslaus Square.  This is where the Velvet Revolution took place, which is where the Czech Republic (then Czechoslovakia) peacefully asserted it's independence from the USSR.

This is not just a picture of a hotel, but the picture of the building in Wenceslaus Square where the revolutionaries who lead the people out of Communism rallied the troop. The playwright Vaclav Havel, a rock star, and some other guy were the folks in charge.  Havel, who was imprisoned by the Communist regime for his complaints against the government is this country's Nelson Mandela and also the first democratically elected President.  The rock star apparently had some speakers, so they hooked them up and used them to address the 300,000 people in the square. . .no report on whether a spontaneous rendition of, "Freebird" ensued afterwards.

This is Radic, our tour guide.  By coincidence, he was on a field trip at the Square when the Revolution was going on so you are looking at someone who has had a first hand view of a historical moment you read about in school books.

The symbolic action to tell the Communists to stick it was getting out your keys and jingling them.  I found this amusing because if you go to certain sporting events, fans of the winning team will do this as well indicating it's time to "Start the Buses" for the losing side.  See, doing that at a high school football game isn't taunting, it's fulfilling your patriotic duty and demonstrating your solidarity with the democratic process..

Midway through the tour we hopped a boat and sailed down the Vltava River, which cuts right through town.  Here's a shot of Prague Castle, which is th largest one in the world.  It's not just the steeples (That's St. Vitus Church) but all the buildings surrounding it as well.

This is the shot of the famous Charles Bridge which is one of the most associated images of Prague.  It was built by Charles IV in the 14th century.  It's a cool bridge but I was a little surprised by the color.  It looks like someone put a factory underneath it for a couple hundred years.

Here's a shot of me on the Bridge overlooking the Castle.

This is a shot of the Little Quarter on the way to the Castle area.  It looks quite medieval.  This shot is very indicative of what all of inner Prague looks like.  Like a lot of other places, the buildings are old but well maintained and the streets are all cobblestone.  This is great for pictures but terrible if you're a girl who wears heels.

Here's a shot of the main entrance to the castle with St. Vitus, which I put at #2 on coolest church I've seen, towering above it.  This is where the president lives and works, so there is a heavy security force surrounding the area, including a ceremonial changing of the guard like the Brits do.  Apparently, it's not a good idea to "poke the bear" so to speak.  We didn't see it but some girl got a little too close and got a forearm to the sternum.

Here's the shot of St. Vitus.  Construction began in the 14th century but it wasn't completed until the 1920-30's.  The front half is Gothic architecture and the backside is neo-Gothic.

So you must be thinking, "Kenny, why are you wasting valuable blog space with a stained glass window?".  And the answer is simple:  This is the first billboard in the Czech Republic.  On it are Bible versus that say things like, "Who will take care of you when there is fire, flood, death, etc.?'.  On the top is the omnipresent Eye of God. And on the bottom in the red squares is the first insurance company established in Prague.  They apparently paid for this stained glass window to be put in around the time the stock market crashed in 1929.  I'm not sure if an advertisement in the most important church in the Czech Republic is hilarious or very very sad.

Here's the view of Prague from the castle. You can see the Charles Bridge in the background.

And here is the shot without us in it.  I've included this because I'm sure everyone was too distracted looking at us in the previous shot to appreciate the beauty of the city.









Tomorrow, we head on a day trip from Prague to Kutna Hora, which as you'll see, will put everyone in the Halloween mode.  Later...

Day 18 - The Bill Gates of Rothenburg

Morning Team (at least for me),

After our tour of King Leopolds' Castles, we headed north in our C-Max to a little town about half way between Munich and Frankfurt by the name of Rothenburg.  Now back in the day (Middle Ages) this place was booming.  Textiles and fertile farming land actually made this the 7th largest city in the Holy Roman Empire.  It was even bigger than London at the time.

Much like Bruges, however, it had a couple of bad breaks, some industries came and went, and it stagnated for a couple hundred years.  This blows for the people living in those times, but with the onset of the tourism business, it set up a cornucopia (advanced word of the day) of business opportunities to cash in on suckers like me who want to go see something "authentic".

Scott and I got into town in the evening because there was supposed to be this really cool tour around 8PM by a local called "The Nightwatchman's Tour".  Next time you're in Rothenburg, check it out.  It's one hour and completely worth the price of admission.

So here's a couple of shots of my new hero.    His name is Hans and he's from Rothenburg.  For the last 18 years this guy shows up in the middle of town around 8PM wearing this get up and charges somewhere between 50-100 people about 5 euro a pop to go walk around and tell you a little about the history of the town.  He's also one of the driest wits I've ever heard and  he got no less than 10 laughs from the entire crowd.  He's like a German version of Monty Python but without having to endure 20 minutes of stupidity before getting to the good stuff.

                                    

Oh yeah, so why is he my hero.  Notice there is no one else in this picture.  No staff, no waiver forms citing he's not responsible if his axe thingy there hits you in the face.  His overhead is that costume and whatever product is needed to get his hair looking like that.  He just shows up at 8, does his spiel, collects your money (not including tips) in cash, and is at the pub by 9:15.  This dude makes more money in euros for one hour's worth of work than I do in dollars putting in a full day. He's even got a DVD if your interested.    

Scott and I crashed at this cheap hotel/bed and breakfast place and then got up early the next morning and did a walk around the city wall.  You can cover the entire perimeter in about an hour and it is supposed to be one of the highlights of visiting.

Here's a shot outside the city.  The town is surrounded by a steep hill on three sides so attacking the city was very difficult.  In fact it was only taken once in 700-800 years.  During the 30 Years War a heavy rainstorm happened along and one of the enemy armies (going somewhere else) got stuck in the mud and asked to be sheltered.  Rothenburg gave them the German Finger so they besieged the town.

Well like I said, it is a very difficult place to take due to it's impressive wall and cliff like perch.  Rothenburg was doing quite well until the guy in charge of the gun powder room decided it would be a good idea to take a torch in there one night (because it was dark of course) to check things out.  Well it got really bright in a hurry and simultaneously that section of the wall disappeared.  So after that the army just waltzed in and took over, making sure they high-fived whatever remnants of the torch guy was left.


You'd think there would be some kind of entrance exam to get the gun powder room watcher job.

Question 1)  While none are a good idea, which should you never ever do in the gun powder room?
a) Use the powder kegs as you own personal toilet
b) Play your lute for long periods of time
c) Light a fire around the highly highly combustable contents that we store there
d) Wear a jester suit

I would think that really needed to be the only question but perhaps it's more complicated.

Here's a shot to show you what the town looks like.  For my money this is more medieval looking (whatever that means) than Bruges but it doesn't have the canals.

This is a shot of the wall from inside the town.  As you can see, you can actually walk on the wall.  Good story here. During WWII when the Allies where finishing off the Nazi's one of the last German Armies came to Rothenburg.  Well we found out about it and started to bomb the city, damaging a bit of the wall here.

We were about to go ahead and just wipe this place off the map when some Under Secretary of State for the US heard about the plan.  Turns out, his Mom had visited here many years before and loved it.  When he was growing up he would even eat dinner looking at a picture of Rothenburg hanging in their dining room.  Well he called the commanding general, and said that he thought Rothenburg was too important a historical city to destroy, so if the Nazi army would surrender we would spare the town.  The Germans were ordered not to surrender, but the commanding officer for them was out of town for some reason, so one of the local citizen/soldiers came out and said, "No problem, it's all yours".  And just like that,  the town was saved.

Here's another shot of some of the architecture.

This is the main square and the city hall of the town.

This is at St. Jakob's church.  This is considered one of the most remarkable wood carvings from the Middle Ages.  If you get up closer on it, the detail is amazing.  How people do this stuff is beyond me, and with wood it seems even more impressive.  You screw up, and you have to start all over.  I struggle to write my name correctly and this guy does a 10 foot wide masterpiece that's nearly flawless.




Our next stop was to the Medieval Punishment Museum where you get to see all of the "civilized" ways people used to pay for their sins.

Is this a new way to play washers?  Perhaps a really big key?  Maybe a new form of hopscotch? . . .

No silly.  Its a Double Neck Violin.  Gents, are your lady friends having a bit of a tiff and need to be put back in line?  Well pop 'em in here for a couple of hours and voila!  They're now the best of friends.

Now girls, don't shoot the messenger.  I'm just reporting the facts (see picture).  This isn't nearly as bad as the Bavarian dresses at Oktoberfest.  See, you can't even see their ankles.

Alright ladies and gentleman, step right up and pick your favorite way to leave the world.  Will it be being boiled alive?  Or maybe driving a stake through your heart.  Or even better, taking a 150 lb wagon wheel and throwing it on top of you repeatedly until you expire.  Of course, we'll follow that up by weaving your broken body between the spokes just for good measure.  You get full service here and all for free.

It's times like these that make me wish I was back in the Good 'Ol Days.



The last big thing we did was head over to see Europe's version of the North Pole.  From the outside this building looked like any other one.  But then we walked in and saw this:

And you though Macy's gets the Christmas stuff out too early.  There are 3 floors of nothing but Christmas decorations here.



Rothenburg was a quick trip, but we got a good 3/4 or a day in and I think we both agreed it was worth the effort.  After that we headed back to Munich to drop off the car and catch a train to the Czech Republic.  Prague is the next stop. . .

Day 17 - The Magic Kingdom For a Tenth of the Price

Hi Team,

The perfect follow up of our tour of an infamous WWII sight was to go to the place "Where dreams come true".  No, we aren't talking about Disneyland people.  We're talking about King Ludwig II of Bavaria's Fairy Tale Castles right outside of Fussen, Germany.  These castles, specifically the Neuschwanstein Castle that Ludwig II had built for himself in the late 1800's were the inspiration for the Magic Kindgom Castles at some of the Disneyland Theme Parks.

So back then, when you won the national horseshoeing competition, or made it to your 50th birthday or something like that, you wouldn't respond to some journalist with a "I'm going to Disney World!!".  You'd say the much more poetic, "Ich werde bis zum Schloss Neuschwanstein!!". . . and then you'd have to wait half an hour for the picture from the camera box to take.

But before we can see the castles, we had to get there first.  Scott and I had left the Eagle's Nest and headed for Innsbruck, Austria, where we crashed for the night.  Innsbruck is a beautiful mountain town (we just drove through it so no pretty pictures. . sorry) that hosted both the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics.  We got up early in the morning and headed for our two hour drive to the Castles.  Now I know I was bagging on the Austrians last go round, but one thing both the Germans and Austrians have is this little thing called the Autobahn.  Scott and I have decided we like the Autobahn a lot.

Here's a shot of our speedometer.  Our little Ford C-Max may not be able accelerate more than me when I run a 40 yard dash, but once she gets moving, she can go.  As an added bonus, at these speeds, you can't even hear the body work shimmying off the cars due to all of the rattling.

Now don't freak out, that is in in km/hr and not MPH, but that still is 100 MPH.  This was not irresponsible driving either.  We were being left behind like we weren't even moving by a lot of cars.  This was not our cruising speed (Scott and I both just got up to this to say we did) but 130-140 km/hr is more than normal.

When we started our drive we only had 100 km or so to make it to the castles, so if we were going 130 km/hr we were a bit confused as to why the nav system had us down for 2 hrs.  Then we found out.  This was our view for about 90 minutes of the drive.  We went straight up two mountains.  No more 160 for the C-Max.  More like just 60.





At long last we reached our destination in the very southern most part of German on the western side of the country.  We had excellent weather for the day and were looking forward to seeing if these castles could live up to the hype, as the have apparently assumed the mantle of the Muhammad Ali of Fairy Tale Land.

The first thing we came to was this.  This is the Alpsee Lake.  As you can see it is quite a bit different than Sam Rayburn back home with the mountains, and the reflective surface, and the lack of drunk people tearing through on a jet ski.

There are two of these castles on this site.  This is the older one and it's called Hohenschwangau Castle.  This is the ugly sister of the two and it was built by Ludwig's Pop, Maximilllian II.  I realize everyone obviously knows what this name means, but just for giggles I'll give you the translation: Castle of the High Swan County.  See, isn't German fun.  You don't even have to put spaces into full sentences.  Makes typing much faster.

This castle is a bit smaller but I think I liked it more.  It felt more homey and a lot of the bedrooms look like what you'd want to have in your kid's room when they are small.  Unfortunately, the fine people in charge of this castle felt, in their infinite wisdom, that it was better to have all of us pay to go in but not be able to take out evidence that we were there.  So no pictures.  But fear not, dear readers, for I circumvented the rules for the next one.  See what I do for you guys?

After finishing the tour of the first smaller castle, we had to get to the second one, which is a 25 minute hike up a mountain.  We saw this view a lot over the last 24 hours.  The consensus was that mountains are pretty, but only from afar.

Finally we made it to where we were going.  This is Schloss Neuschwanstein, the apple of Bavaria's proverbial eye.  Ludwig II grew up in his Dad's castle, so in order to one up him, he built his own twice as big, much higher on the mountain range, half a mile away so everyone at the old castle could see it, and not yellow.

This is an ok view but the shots coming up are from even higher up the mountain (so more climbing/yodeling for us).

Here's the shot of the first castle from our highest perch, The Mary Bridge, which as I said, was above both castles.  As you can see, it was a rough life these Bavarian Kings had.  This castle is 600-700 years old actually but during the Napoleonic Wars, the French laid waste to it.  Maximillian saw this as his own personal "Flip this House" project and came out ahead several billion dollars after an investment of less than $1500 for supplies and an antique toilet basin he picked up at a garage sale.

Here's a shot of the Mary Bridge.  The next several shots are taken from the bridge.

And here's the Neuschwanstein Castle (which means New Swan Stone Place) in all it's glory.  We've had a bit of bad luck the last week with famous landmarks.  Most of them are under some type of maintenance and this one was no different.  This is the far away shot which keeps you from seeing it too much.  I can tell you that the scaffolding on the building was the only disappointment of the entire day.  No joke, perhaps the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen in my life.  Without question, a storybook castle on a storybook day.

Here's a shot of Scott and I on the Mary Bridge.  Here we can clearly see why I should actually use the undershirt as an undershirt and not the main upper body garment.  It's either a little cold or I'm very excited to be here.

This is the front entrance to the castle.  Looks just like the lego set I had as a kid.

Now as I said, we weren't allowed to take pictures, but I thought that was simply unacceptable, so I pulled out my iPhone and took a few shots.  I had to discreetly take them from my hip to avoid the guide seeing me, so I wasn't exactly aiming but merely pushing the button hoping something stuck.

This is the Throne Room of the castle.  It is done up in Byzantine style (Eastern Europe), and that is a picture of Christ and below him six patron saints of Europe.  There never was a throne put in because Ludwig II died at 41 in the 1880's.  Only one third of the rooms in the castle are completed because construction stopped after his death.  Whereas the other castle was homey, this one was designed strictly to impress.  Everything was intended to be done on a grand scale. . .and they succeeded.

This is the reading lamp in his bedroom.  Like I always say, why stop at one candle when you can have 163?  What's sad is this guy only lived here for 6 months before kicking the bucket.

Here's a shot of a painting in the castle.  Now picture this all over the walls of your room.  And I don't mean hanging pictures.  I mean actually painted onto your wall.  Most of the paintings were inspired by the famous German composer, Richard Wagner's. operas  Both castles had this stuff covering every room.

This is such and awesome place I had to show you a picture of the castle in it's pristine state, even though it's not mine.  This looks like it was built a long time ago, but remember that it just turned 120 or so not too long ago.  This is done in the Neo-Romantic style which was brought about to recall the heroic and idyllic days of the past.  At the end of the day, Scott and I both agreed that the castles had lived up to expectations and more.  Great day all around.




Before I let you go though, you're lucky enough to be reading the post containing Classic Kenny Moment #3.  So gather around kids, it's story time:

Scott's favorite time of year is Christmas.  And I don't mean he likes to watch Frosty on TV and drink a lot of eggnog.  I mean when he was 3 he essentially Mr. Miyagi'd all of us other kids to ensure that he had the lifetime title of Santa Claus when presents were handed out  It's what he does, and it's been like that ever since.

Well, when he travels, he likes to buy Christmas ornaments for the 4 or 5 Christmas trees he puts up in his house every year, and he found a perfect little one of the castle in the souvenir shop on site.  Now we are doing a lot of traveling and as you know most ornaments are not made of cast iron, so there was a considerable amount of concern as to whether the ornament he purchased would make the entire trip in one piece.

Being the great older brother that I am, and knowing how important these things are to Scott, I decided to test the tensile strength of said ornament.  The following conversation ensued:

Scott:  Hey look at this one.
Kenny:  Cool.  What's it made of?
Scott:  Wood.
Kenny:  Is it sturdy (Kenny grasps ornament with pointer and thumb and pushes fingers in opposite directions to test it's worthiness)?

SNAP!!

German dude who runs souvenir stand:  Guttentag.  That will be 3 Euro's please.

How it is possible that after 20 some years living under the same roof that this guy and I have failed Brotherly Communication 101 is beyond me, but I've now learned the when he says the word "Wood" what he really means is "Communion Wafer".

Here's the shot of my new Christmas ornament after I completed my own artistic adjustments.  Hard to see, but this thing should be about twice as high as it is right now.