Day 31: Adios, Europe!

Technically, it's 11:45pm of Day 30, but I bet the clock'll tick over before I hit "Publish Post."

There's not much left to my big Europe trip left now. Other than spending several hours in the Frankfurt airport, I'm not going to experience much of anything else. My bag's packed, I've kissed my grandmother goodbye, and in less than four hours I've got to be up and ready to head out to the airport for my flight home. Right now, all I'm hoping for is that Lufthansa serves decent food on my transatlantic leg (on the flight over I had some surprisingly good Chinese style chicken) and that my flight doesn't get delayed, at least not too much. See y'all in the New World!

Day 28: McMadrid

Yesterday I committed the cardinal sin of the European traveller: I had dinner at McDonald's. In my defense, I was hungry, it was late, and it was cheap. And most importantly, I've found out that Spanish McDonald's seem to have the McRib as a permanent menu item. As far as I know, McDonald's in Canada haven't had the McRib in several years (I seem to remember a tie-in with the last Flintstones movie), and I don't think I've had one since I was in Spain five years or so ago. So what's the verdict? Is the McRib worthy of all the hype? Not really, it's actually kind of not good. It is a pork patty mechanically shaped to look like a slab of ribs, after all. But still, I can sort of see why it has the cult following, and I bet if it ever came back to American I'd have another one.

Day 26: Soaking in Spanish-ness

Yes, the Spain-France result last night was terribly disappointing. Even with my pessimistic "out in the quarters" hopes, I still got let down. I'd make excuses about bad referees and cheating, diving French players, but as Hanson astutely points out, the Spanish will never, ever win a major soccer championship. We'll just have to content ourself with stuff like the Under-21 championships, and, for me, the occasional Champions' League title for Real Madrid.

Today, after I did some gift and souvenir shopping in Madrid, I caught the new Almodovar movie, Volver. It was really good, for the longest time seeming like a weird mix of supernatural thriller and noir thriller, before tying everything together nicely at the end, but it does raise the interesting question of why Penelope Cruz is only a good actress in Spanish. I've seen several of her Spanish films, and several of her English-language films, and she's invariably good to great in the former, and average to bad in the latter.

It's tempting to say that it's because she's worked with better directors in Spain (notably Almodovar), but she's worked with some pretty big names in America, too (Cameron Crowe, John Madden, Billy Bob Thornton). It's not a case of her just getting worse with age, either, since she was good in Sin Noticias de Dios, which was made after she started making bad movies in English. She was even bad in Vanilla Sky, a remake of Abre los Ojos, a Spanish film she was pretty good in. Do I have a point to all this? Not really, other than that Volver is pretty good, as are a lot of other Penelope Cruz movies in Spanish. And Blow, which I think is the exception that proves the rule.

Day 25: Majadahonda

So I'm back in the Madrid region after travelling from Granada to Malaga yesterday. We'd intended to get up early(ish) and get to the bus station by about 9:15am to get tickets for the 10am bus and have some breakfast. Instead, we made it there at 8:55 and got tickets for the 9am bus but had to skip breakfast. Once in Malaga, we started the search for a cheap place to stay. It came down to a sort of nice cheap hotel for 52 euros or a pension for 30 euros. The big differences were lack of TV and lack of air conditioning, and we decided that such luxuries weren't worth more than 20 euros. Big mistake. By the middle of the night we were ruing the lack of AC and the fact that it meant we had to sleep with the windows, which led to mosquitoes in the room and bites all over both of us. The budget hostel also featured shoeprints on the wall, a lack of towels in our rooms, and a bathroom with no light. Damn my cheapery!

Today we headed off to the airport, Zafeer for his flight to London, me to get back to Madrid. My flight left promptly on time, but Zafeer got delayed an hour or two. Better than the Easyjet flight that was on the board that was delayed over eight hours, I guess. When I landed in Madrid, I was the first person to make it to luggage carousel 18, where my bag was supposed to come out, but wound up waiting over an hour as only a handful of bags came down the chute. Finally, they took my flight off the screen and I went to find out where my bag was. I was asked to fill out a claim form and told that my bags would be delivered to Majadahonda for me. I did this, then went to use the washroom before embarking on the hour-long metro ride. On my way out of the WC, I saw something familiar going around carousel 19. So, I claimed my bag off the wrong carousel, cancelled my claim form, and headed for the subway.

Now, I'm back at my aunt and uncle's place in Majadahonda, and my parents and I are going out in a bit to see Spain-France. The big travel portion of my trip's over, and for the next few days I'll just be hanging out here, doing some shopping in Madrid, and just generally chilling. We'll see whether I keep blogging, but I'd say the odds are better than for Spain winning the World Cup.

Day 23: Granada

As soon as we left the Internet café in Cordoba on Friday we found out that the Mezquita would only be open from 8:30 to 10:30 on Saturday morning, so we set our alarm clocks and got ready for an early start. We actually managed to get up on time and see the mosque/cathedral, and we had the added benefit that it was cooler and less crowded than during the daytime. However, that left us with the whole afternoon free before we could catch our bus to Granada. We didn´t do much, just visited (quickly) the bullfighting museum and shopped for souvenirs. By the time we reached Granada, it was late enough that we only had time to walk around a little and have a nice dinner while we watched the first hour of the Argentina-Mexico match. We´d have watched it all, but we wanted to get to bed early in anticipation of Sunday.

Because on Sunday, we had to get up at 6am because everyone from the hostel keeper to Lonely Planet claimed we had to get to the Alhambra before 8am to be sure of getting tickets. It turns out it wasn´t necessary, as we were something like 15th in line and they give out thousands of tickets a day. Still, it was nice because we avoided the midday heat (actually Zafeer complained about the cold until 9am) and were able to get ahead of all the tour groups and actually get some good photos. After the Alhambra we grabbed an overpriced lunch, and climbed the hills of the Albaicin to get some good photos of the city and the Alhambra. Now, it´s 5pm and we´re going to head out soon to see the cathedral and the royal chapel.

Tomorrow, we try to get an early bus to Malaga and find somewhere not overpriced to stay in a resort town. Wish us luck!

But first, photos!

First, some bones from the creepy Kutna Hora ossuary...



And now, some photos of me and some friends...

Day 21: Cordoba

Been travelling around the last few days without access to a computer for long enough to blog, so this entry´s going to be jampacked, but also quick since the ´net place I´m at closes in 20 minutes.

So, our plan to sleep on it and decide our plans for Sevilla and Andalucia in the morning backfired, since all the hotels and hostels that were showing availability on Tuesday night had closed their reservations by Wednesday morning. We did wind up booking a place, but probably paid 20 euros more than we needed. We also slept in late and wound up spending longer waiting to buy train tickets, but we were still able to squeeze in the Reina Sofia museum before the train left. We got to Sevilla about 8pm, giving us just long enough to walk around a bit and have a cheap dinner before turning in early(ish).

Yesterday, Thursday, was packed. We got up early(ish) hoping to get on the free Internet at the hostal during breakfast, but were denied. We headed out and saw the Torre de Oro, saw the Alcazar palace and gardens, saw the Cathedral and climbed up the Giralda, and saw the Archivos de India and its Columbus exhibit. We found another cheap place for lunch, and went back to the hostel for a siesta, and also to finally get on the Internet and book a place for Granada on Saturday, but decided to chance it on Alhambra tickets and accomodation for Cordoba. After siesta, we headed back out and saw the Plaza de España and walked along the river for a while before turning in.

(Aside: Remember when I was moaning about how hot it was in Prague? I was being a baby, southern Spain is hot. The low in Sevilla yesterday was 23 Celsius at dawn, and it hit 43 Celsius by late afternoon. That is f&!king hot!)

Today we were up early and had a leisurely breakfast before heading out to the train station early for our afternoon train to Cordoba. Once in Cordoba we walked in the heat a bit with our packs trying to find a cheaper hotel and found one, then went out to eat and watch the Spain-Saudi Arabia match (1-0? Not good, when the papers here were talking about total blow-outs. My quarter-finals bouncing prediction still stands.) For the rest of the evening we´ve been walking around trying to find museums that are open and Zafeer bought a shirt. Now, it´s 9:30 and we´re off to do a night visit of the Alcazar gardens.

Tomorrow, we´re seeing the Mezquita during the morning, and off to Granada in the afternoon. We´d hoped to get tickets for the Alhambra for Sunday but they´re out, so we´re going to get up early and try to get lucky. Hope our procrastination doesn´t backfire and burn us too badly.

Day 18: Madrid

Well, not Madrid itself, but Majadahonda. As close to a home town in Europe as I´ve got.

Anyhow, Monday. It was mostly a write-off, tourism-wise. Got up early to return our rental car and get to the airport, then got stuck waiting while my flight got delayed nearly three hours. As a result, we didn´t get to Majadahonda until after 6pm, just long enough to visit with my family, then go out and find a bar to watch the Spain-Tunisia match. Like Ho said, a close shave, and further fuel for my "out in the quarters" theory.

Today, we wanted to see the Royal Palace, but it was closed for some official function. We also wanted to see the Reina Sofia museum, but it was closed because it´s Tuesday. We did get to see the Prado museum, which was as great as I remember, and more so because of its special Picasso exhibit now. After the museums and some travel research at the train station, we looked into some shops along the Gran Via, then had some tapas around the Plaza Mayor. By the time we took the metro and bus back to Majadahonda, it was practically midnight.

We´d planned to spend tomorrow in Madrid, too, but since we can´t get into the palace we´re now thinking we may see the Reina Sofia in the morning and then catch a late train to Sevilla in the evening. We´re too tired to decide for sure tonight, so we´ll revisit it whenever we get up in the morning.

Day 16: Prague (again)

I'm writing in a Net Cafe with Zafeer waiting to go do one last tour around the Stare Mesto, so some quick quick blogging of the last few days.

• Thursday (night) Nothing more of note after the last post, except that on the way back to the hotel I decided I wanted one last beer before bed, and popped into a grocery store for one. I grabbed a can of the cheapest stuff they had, paid my 15Kc ($0.75) and was off. Unfortunately, the beer was horrible. Which is fine, I can drink horrible beer, but it was also warm, which was just too much. So, once back in my room, I had to commit a cardinal sin and pour the last two thirds down the drain.
• Friday Went down for a day trip to Plzen, taking a plush bus for only 80Kc ($4) each way. In Plzen there wasn't a lot to see, but I checked out the cathedral, toured the Beer Museum, and poked my head into the Pilsner Urquell brewery, though I was too late to take the tour. I did grab a pint on the brewery patio, then headed back into Prague and wandered around the old town a bit before heading in for an early night, since on...
• Saturday ...we had an early morning in order to get on the road south in our fancy rented Skoda. On the way down we stopped at Karlstejn and Hlutova nad Vltavskou castles (I'm guessing at those spellings since I don't want to look it up). We got to Cesky Krumlov about 6pm, found out every hotel, pension, and hostel in town was fully booked, and took off back up the road to try and find something nearby. We found a guesthouse (sort of half camping, half hostel, half pension) a few clicks up and also found out we'd gotten into town in the middle of the Festival of the Roses, hence the lack of hotels. We drove back to Krumlov (lovely) walked around the festival a while (festive), had dinner (all right), then walked around a bit more and heard a South Bohemian rock band doing "Like a Rolling Stone" (unique!). Then, back to the hotel, unfortunately too early to catch the festival's fireworks.
• Sunday Got up early to see Krumlov castle, then hit the road to make it to Konopice before its castle closed. All these castles were nice, by the way, but after the third one they start blurring together. After that last castle, we had some Italian for dinner, hit the highway and were back in Prague by seven (after having to drive on the sidewalk to get around a fender-bender between a Fiat and a cement truck). Now, it's almost nine, and we've got to be up by 6:30 tomorrow to return the rental car and catch our flight. So, like I said, it's one last tour of the Stare Mesto, one last crossing of the Charles Bridge, then it's bye-bye Prague.

Tomorrow, the early morning I just described, then it's Spain by the afternoon, my family by evening, and at night the Spain-Tunisia match.

Oh, yeah...

Nearly forgot. Woooh! Go, Spain! Espana! Espana!

Though officially I'm sticking by my pessimism and fully expect them to crash and burn and go out in the quarter-finals.

Day 13: Kutna Hora

This morning I hopped a train to visit Kutna Hora for the day. The highlight clearly is the ossuary or bone church. It's an old chapel that's been decorated with the bones from 40,000 skeletons that were unearthed when a nearby cemetary was dug up. It's supremely creepy but at the same time kind of cool looking. Like a real-life Haunted mansion, almost. Other than that, I walked around Kutna Hora for a bit and checked out the cathedral, and then relaxed with a nice, cold Budweiser. The real Budweiser from Budvar, not that crap from St. Louis.

On the way back my train was delayed by 15 minutes, which meant that we missed the connecting train in Kolin. That spiralled into a whole thing where a small group of us where trying to figure out which train we could catch back to Prague and how long it would take. Could we take the 18:04 Eurocity, or did our cheap tickets not let us on that? Was the slower train leaving at 18:01 going to be quicker than the fast train leaving at 18:04, seeing as it's now 18:05 and the slow train's here but the fast one's not?

Incidentally, on the train I wound up sharing a compartment with a motley crew of Aussies, Americans and Canadians, and it turns out the Canadians were from North Van. In fact, one of them lives just across the highway from me. Small world.

Tomorrow, probably another day trip out to Plzen, and then on Saturday Zafeer, Dorian, and I pick up our rental car and drive down to Cesky Krumlov.

Day 12: Prague

It is very hot in Prague. So very very hot. But I get ahead of myself...

So Monday night I did manage to get a standing room ticket for the opera. Up in the balcony it was really hot and stuffy, and one girl near me actually passed out, and I could only see about a third of the stage at the best of times, and couldn't see any of the screens with an English translation on them at all, but it was the f&!cking Vienna Philharmonic and the Stadtopera and Mozart and it only cost me 2 Euros! After the opera I went to the Sachercafe for a melange and a sachertorte and felt so twee and cliched it hurt, but it was still lovely.

Tuesday morning I managed to get myself to the train station early enough to catch the 9am train to Prague, and after some dicey moments trying to confirm with someone that the train that said Warsaw and Krakow really was the one I wanted (it was, I was changing in Breclav for the Prague train) I was off. For the last stretch of the trip I was in a second class car with no air conditioning and no open windows, and stuck right next to the smoking section, so that was no fun, but still, it got me to Prague in one piece.

Once in Prague, the first order of business was finding my hotel and finding somewhere to do laundry. I managed both, and then coming back from the laundromat chanced into running into Zafeer in the lobby of the hotel where he, too, was checking in. It's a good thing we ran into each other, because the hotel seemed pretty intent on giving us two separate rooms, even though we only had the one reservation and only wanted to pay for one room.

That night, Zafeer, his colleague Dorian and I walked around Prague Castle and over the Charles Bridge before meeting up with Bill, Zafeer's supervisor for dinner. The restaurant we wound up at was a little more swanky (and consequently a little pricier) than I've been eating at so far this trip, but the amazing roast duck we had was worth it. And the famed Czech beer didn't disappoint, either, although the 50 Koruny (about $2.50) it cost wasn't quite the famed 50 cent pints that people have told me stories about.

Today, Zafeer's off seeing a lab with his colleagues, so I've been touristing on my own. I checked out the castle some more and visited the Museum of Communism (nestled on Prague's main shopping street, just between a casino, a McDonald's and another casino). Now, I've got to find somewhere to watch the Spain-Ukraine match that I believe has already started. Preferably somewhere with air conditioning and cold beer. Especially the air conditioning. But especially especially the beer.

Even more photos

From Budapest...

More photos

From Poland...

Photos

I'm at an Internet place that provides free media card readers, so I figure I'll take advantage and post the first few photos from my trips. Just a few from each place, and don't expect much in the way of verbiage about them.

First, a few from Amsterdam...

Day 10: Vienna

(Still on a German keyboard, still getting Blogger in German, so apologies for any weirdness.)

I've been in Vienna two days and a bit now, and I've been to seven museums. I already mentioned the surrealist exhibit I saw the first day, but here's a quick something about the rest.

• The Kunsthistorisches Museum A pretty typical big European classical art gallery, with exhibits ranging from ancient Egypt to the late Renaissance. Since I always enjoy those type of museums, I had a great time with this one. And since I got a free audio-guide I wound up spending over four hours wandering around and learning about paintings.
  


• Museum Moderner Kunst (MUMOK) The modern art museum, though I'm not sure if they have any permanent exhibitions or just special events. Regardless, they had a photo exhibit that I thought was all right, and some stuff on Viennese Actionism and Nouveau Realisme that weren't really my thing.


• Kunsthalle Wien The Summer of Love exhibit caught my eye, and since they closed later than the rest of the museums I impulsively decided to check it out. An exhibit about psychedelic art from the 1960s, I had a really good time with this one.
  


• The Leopold Collection More what I expected from the MUMOK, a good collection of Austrian art from the early 20th century, including several pieces from Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. There was also a special exhibit called Body, Face & Soul devoted to the female image from the 16th to the 20th centuries that was especially interesting.
  


• The Haus der Musik Both the museum for the Vienna Philharmonic and a Science World-y journey into the world of sound, it was interesting if a little gimmicky. At least I was able to catch a nap during the video of the Philharmonic's New Year's Concert.
  


• The Mozarthaus One of the apartments in Vienna where Mozart lived, and where he composed the Marriage of Figaro. The displays were a little sparse, but the very thorough (free) audio guide made up for it.
  

Other than the museums, I've eaten Wiener Schnitzel, eaten Bratwurst from a street-vendor, and watched United 93 at an English-language theatre. I stopped by the Opera yesterday to inquire about tickets, and the only cheap ones they had left only had a 20% view of the stage. They had standing-room still, but I passed it up since it was for a fairly edgy-looking (albeit interesting) version of Moses und Aron. Tonight they're doing The Magic Flute, and while I've been told tickets are completely sold out, I may still try for standing room.

Tonight's my last night in Vienna, and tomorrow morning I catch the train for Prague, where hopefully I'll be able to find my hotel and meet up with Zafeer.

Tidbits

A few things I wanted to mention that didn't make it into my regular posts over the last week and change.

• In Amsterdam, I saw a guy sitting on a street corner wearing two cowboy hats -- one of which was foam, neon-green, and comically oversized -- playing the didgeridoo. If it wasn't Amsterdam, it would have been the craziest f&!king thing I saw all week.



• In Budapest there seems to be a real business in what Cory Doctorow calls craphounding. All over town (or at least the neighbourhood around my hostel) there's these big piles of junk that people have thrown out, and I'd always be seeing people scavenging in them for useful stuff, like copper wire or repairable furniture. It was interesting until this morning when the pile outside the hostel's front entrance had grown to such an extent that it had taken over the entire sidewalk and I basically had to walk through it to get out.



• I've been really charmed weather-wise this trip. On several occasions -- the bus ride into Krakow from the airport and the ride out to Auschwitz come to mind -- I've observed really heavy rain from a safe dry place. The same thing happened this morning in Budapest; when I left the hostel it was grey and drizzly, and by the time I got on the train it was raining pretty hard, but somewhere on the train ride it cleared up and all day today in Vienna it's been beautiful.



• Twice now I've bought what I thought would be delicious grape Fanta and got some decidedly less delicious. First, in Amsterdam, I was eating at a pizza place and fointed at the purple Fanta sign on the fountain, assuming "purple = grape". It tasted kind of weird and not really grape-y, and later I figured out it was probably cassis. Today at the Budapest train station I grabbed some drinks to get rid of my last Hungarian coins, and one of them was a green Fanta, with a clear picture of grapes on the label. When I tried it, though, it was pretty disgusting and, again, not very grape-y. But, yet, it had grapes on the label. I figure it must have been some sort of weird sour grape or champagne flavoured Fanta, but I couldn't manage more than a handful of sips to figure it out.



• The Viennese computer I'm at is giving me Blogger in German, so I'm having to guess at all the commands. On top of that, it's a german keyboard, which thankfully Windows has let me remap to USEnglish, but still when I look at the keys there's umlauts and an "Einfg" key. Here's hoping that when I click "Post veroffentlichen" this will actually post...
  

Day 8: Vienna

Again I'm paying for Internet access, but I know better to promise to keep it short this time. So, last we left off I was deciding between the park and the football. I opted to visit the park, but found they were showing the game on a big screen, so two birds with one stone. There was also some sort of wine festival going on, so I was able to get a tasty dinner al fresco and write a postcard sitting by the edge of a pond.

Today I got up early, hoping to catch a 9:20 train to Vienna that wasn't on the schedule but that the tourist info office assured me existed. It turns out it does exist, but was some sort of intercity express that cost twice what the afternoon trains cost. Despite that, and because it was starting to rain in Budapest, I coughed up the extra 3,000 Forints for the early train.

By not much after noon I was in Vienna, and since I'd booked ahead in case there wasn't an early train, I was able to head directly to my hostel and had most of the afternoon free. I grabbed a cheap lunch by buying some ham and cheese from the supermarket and eating it with some bread that I'd swiped from the hostel breakfast, then took the U-Bahn (subway) into town. I found a gallery that was showing a very nice exhibition of surrealist art, including pieces by Dali, Miro, Picasso, and Pollock, then just spent some time wandering around in downtown and around the Hofburg. I grabbed some pho for dinner, and now I'm at an Internet place blogging before heading back to the hostel. Or maybe to a pub for the football game.

My first impressions of Vienna are that it's very nice and very clean. It's old-fashioned Europe, but in a different way than the sort of medieval charm of Krakow; it's more that 17th century ostentatiousness, all wedding-cake buildings and wide avenues and strictly manicured, obsessively designed gardens. There also seems to be more museums per capita than anywhere else, which is good since I'll likely be here through Monday and need somewhere to visit. For now, my list includes the Mozarthaus, the Kunsthistorisches Museum (classical art), and the Museum Moderner Kunst (modern art). If I get really ambitious there's all the museums in the Hofburg Palace, and I may even try to go to the opera!

Day 7: Budapest

Despite what some people may think, I'm not dead; just in Budapest at a hostel that promised free Internet but provided only a broken computer. Since I'm actually having to pay for this Internet time, I'll try to keep this short.

Wednesday was my last day in Poland, and it started with a mad scramble to find a way to get to Hungary that night. I was hoping for the cheaper bus, but it only left at inconvenient times or days, so the train it was. For the rest of the day, I visited Wieliczka and its salt mine (awe-inspiring, and words don't do it justice so I'll wait until I have photos), then went back to Krakow and wandered around until my train at 10:30.

On the overnight train I shared a sleeper car with some friendly Swedes, but wound up sleeping through most of the 12 hour train ride, with the exception of the three times I was woken for passport control (by Polish, Slovak, and Hungarian authorities).

In the morning, I followed a tout to a cheap hostel, but opted out and found an even cheaper one on my own (that would be the one with the broken computer). I spent the rest of the afternoon getting my bearings in the city and trying to make head or tail of Hungarian, a language so far from anything I know it's not even distantly related. In the evening, I visited the Terror House (where they've converted the old Nazi and Communist detention and torture building into a really stunning if overly artsy museum) and the national fine arts gallery (some nice exhibits confusingly laid-out, and disappointingly the Greco/Goya/Velazquez was under renovation).

Today, I took a tour out to Statue Park, where they've turned all the old communist statues and propaganda into an open-air museum. It's really stunning to see it all at once, and we had a great tour guide who'd grown up under the Communist regime and provided an interesting perspective (and she gave us a free shot of apricot brandy back at the tour office). For the rest of the day, I walked around on the Buda side of the river and across a couple of the bridges over the Danube. Now, I'm pondering whether to ride the metro up to City Park and wander around until dark, or try to find somewhere to watch the first game of the World Cup.

Tomorrow, I'm off to Vienna! And maybe spend some more time in Budapest depending on how the trains to Vienna shake out!

More travel blogging

One of the fellow travellers I was playing Trivial Pursuit with last night is keeping his own travel blog while in Europe. He's been on the road since May but looks to be going in the opposite direction as me, so has already hit up places like Budapest, Vienna, and Prague that I'll be getting to in the next few weeks.

Day 4: Auschwitz-Birkenau

Got up early today even without setting my alarm clock and enjoyed a nice grilled cheese breakfast before setting out to try to get to Auschwitz-Birkenau. After spending a while trying to navigate the train station with no English signage I finally found a tourist info booth and got directions to the train station and instructions how to get to Oswiecem. After a quick sprint to make it to a bus due to leave in 15 minutes, I was on my way to one of history's infamous locations.

So what to make of Auschwitz? It's not a fun place to visit, obviously, but I'm definitely glad I went. While I wasn't overcome by emotion as much as I thought I might, there were still some moments that just hit you in the gut. In particular, a whole room piled high with the hair cut off the victims of the gas chamber was a chilling sight, as were the rooms filled with mundane items like shoes, glasses, and cookware taken from the arriving prisoners. One of the weirdest things that struck me is how pretty a lot of the grounds of the camp are. When the sun breaks through and the birds are singing, the tree-lined roads between the bunkers are almost peaceful, though once you remember where you are it's disconcerting.

More striking for me was visiting Birkenau, the nearby camp where most of the exterminations actually took place. What got me most was the sheer scale of the site; bunkers the size of barns stretch out by the dozens in rows upon rows, for hundreds of metres. Most of the bunkers were burned down by the Nazis as they tried to destroy any evidence of the camp before the arrival of the Red Army, so all that's left of the wooden buildings are their brick chimneys. Dozens of them stand in eerie silence like some strange ancient ruin.

By the time I got back to Krakow it was after 7, so there wasn't much to see or do, so I just walked around in the streets around the Rynek Glowny for a while and grabbed dinner at a Georgian restaurant. (For those keeping score, I did manage to catch what's becoming my traditional afternoon nap when I slept through most of the bus ride back from Oswiecem.) After dark, I was able to get some really nice photos of the buildings in the square and some of the monuments nearby.

Once again I was planning on heading to bed early tonight, but there's a party going on in the hostel common room and people are enticing me to go. Hopefully I won't stay up too late, since I'll be trying to get up early tomorrow to go out to the salt mines at Wieliczka in the morning and still get back in time to catch a night-bus to Budapest.

A funny thing happened at the Krakow airport...

After deplaning from my flight into Krakow this morning I made friends with this really happy dog named Oskar at the airport baggage carousel. Unfortunately, his human buddy Yuri (I didn't actually get his name, but he seems like a Yuri) wasn't quite so friendly. Next thing I know I'm in a little room off the customs desk, all my luggage is open and Yuri is carefully inspecting everything I'd meticulously packed that morning. Luckily, that's as far as it went and I'm not enough of an idiot to do something that could actually get me in trouble, but when you're in a room with a security officer, and he's putting on rubber gloves and telling you he has to inspect "your luggage and your pants," let me tell you, it's a tense moment.

Further Krakow

Having now had a chance to walk around in Krakow, I must say I'm duly impressed. Walking between the Rynek Glowny and the Wawel Castle was beautiful, even though by the time I got up to Wawel all the buildings were closed. If I have time I'll try to get back up there to have a proper look around, but the truth is I'm more interested in going out to see Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Wieliczka Salt Mines, so it may have to fall by the wayside unless I want to cut short my time in Budapest or Vienna.

After walking around for a while, I was dead tired and retreated back to the hostel for what's becoming my usual evening nap. Around 8 I roused myself and forced myself to head back outside for dinner, and found a nice, simple restaurant a few blocks away. I headed back early fully intending to catch an early sleep, but instead got sucked into a game of Trivial Pursuit with a group of Canadians, Aussies, and Americans. Unfortunately, it was a British edition of TP, so we were at somewhat of a disadvantage on all the rugby, BBC, and prime minister questions. After jumping in mid-game to help my fellow Canucks who were down 4 pipieces to 1, I managed to rally us to a 5-5 tie that stalemated for a long time while we couldn't answer history questions and they couldn't answer sports questions. Finally, we gave up the pretense of rolling the dice and moving the token and went to sudden-death, then it sort of fell apart as we started digging for funny or weird questions rather than actually playing the game. (Real Question: What is the price of a traditional monkey? Answer: 500 pounds. I don't get it either.)

Now, off to bed, a couple of hours later than I'd anticipated, but hopefully I'll still be able to get it together to visit Auschwitz tomorrow morning.

Day 3: Krakow

Wonder of wonders, I was actually able to get up early today and make all my connections to get to Schipol on time for my flight to Poland. Of course, that meant that my flight got delayed. On the bright side, it did give me time to check out the Rijksmuseum exhibit at the airport, and pick up a few chocolates from Neuhaus. They're obscenely expensive, but obscenely good.

I haven't formed much of an impression of Poland or Krakow, yet. So far, it's just been a bus ride in from the airport and intermittent stormy rain that has me reluctant to go outside, because the hostel is nice and warm and has free Internet access. What I did see of the town walking to my hostel (and I saw a good bit of it, since I missed my bus stop and had to trek in 20 minutes) seems really lovely, and the Rynek Glowny especially is quite impressive.

Day 2: Amsterdam

Somehow, this trip continues to be more about sleep than about actually seeing stuff. This morning, I slept in more than I'd anticipated, causing me to miss the free breakfast at the hostel. Then when I got back to the hostel in the afternoon I lay down for a minute to rest, and woke up an hour and a half later. Thankfully, in between I managed to actually go places and see stuff, so I don't feel like a complete failure of a traveller, yet.

First stop was the Rijksmuseum, or the wing of it that's still open during their renovations. It was over an hour's wait for a not-very-large collection (at least compared to the likes of the Uffizi or the Prado), but it was worth it to see Rembrandt's Night Watch. It's made especially impressive by the addition of Peter Greenaway's video installation Nightwatching, which at once reveals a lot of the backstory behind the painting and turns it into something of a Laser Rembrandt show.

After the Rijks, it was the Van Gogh museum for the Rembrandt-Caravaggio exhibit. This time, I was smart enough to pre-buy my tickets and was able to jump the line. I quite enjoyed the exhibit itself, especially since the complimentary audio guides provided some nice background and analysis. I also took a quick run through the main Van Gogh gallery, but I didn't linger since I've seen it a couple times before.

I've got an early flight to Krakow in the morning, so I'll probably spend a little time wandering around the neighbourhoods near my hostel before heading to bed early. That's if I know what's good for me, which I probably don't.