Karlovy Vary

Tuesday June 9 we had an excursion to Karlovy Vary. This is a very well known Spa Town here in the Czech Republic. There are 12 natural springs that people travel from all over just to drink the water. The story behind these natural springs is if you drink the water, then your body will be healed and you will have great health from then on.

Karlovy Vary also offers the Becherovka liqueur and Moser Crystal. Becherovka is one of the most famous Czech liqueurs and it is said to be the 13th spring you are supposed to drink from. Many people who believe in this have 40 milliliters of Becherovka a day. They usually have 20 ml in the morning and then 20 ml accompanying their dinner.

Moser Crystal is very famous for its crystal creations. You can find Moser Crystal all over the Czech Republic and the products they provide are wide ranges of hand-made glass.

From its beginnings, Moser Glass have developed a formula for manufacturing glass as hard as rock and as brilliant as lead crystal, without using lead.

The composition is highly suited to engravings and much more ecological than lead crystal.

Moser glass is potash-lime glass. The raw materials used for making it are silica, potash, other chemical substances and recycled glass. The manufacturing process then determines its hardness, brilliance, and colour.

In making Moser crystal, the glass is heated in the furnace to a temperature up to 1470°C. The melting lasts about 15 hours. The molten mixture becomes an incandescent substance, which it "cools" to around 1280°C, the glassmakers are able to start to use it to form objects.

Moser uses pot furnaces. Each furnace has six to eight pots (glory holes) from which the glassblower, using a long iron blow-pipe, lifts out the required quantity.(http://www.pragueexperience.com/places.asp?PlaceID=667)

On the way home we stopped at Lidice, Czech Republic. This town is very historic and its most famous event happened on June 10, 1942 in World War II. http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/lidice_1942.htm