Okay, so I know I am horribly behind so far, but the trip has been very quick paced and it has been difficult to extricate myself from the present to thoroughly reflect and explain what I have been experiencing. We are all on overload. I am determined to finish the blog, but it will probably be officially finished once I am in the states again.
To update you on where I am... :)
We flew to Israel on Monday (the 14th) and had a really nice flight (that was guarded by Israeli military armed with automatic weapons). We drove from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and spent our evening crashing in the hotel. We did a city tour of the classic stuff, I put a prayer in at the Western Wall!!!, and we spent the afternoon touring Yad Vashem and our evening viewing the Dead Sea Scrolls. A very busy, but really amazing day.
Since then we have spent two full days taking classes at the International Education Center at Yad Vashem and spent this morning driving North to Nahariya via Haifa (where we stopped for pictures). We spent the afternoon at the Ghetto Fighters House - which is officially the first Holocaust Museum in the world back in 1949. Very cool stuff - this is the more reflective and laid back part of our trip - we are ten minutes walking from the Mediterranean and just a few miles from the Lebanon border.
All is well! This has been an amazing journey and I have learned a tremendous amount - I can't wait to share it with all of you back home!
I promise more blogs are coming...I'm working on it :)
Friday, July 18, 2008
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Updates from Poland in progress...
I am nearly finished with my next few reflections - it's funny how I do them in spurts, but sometimes you feel more reflective than others. I am working on getting my Majdanek pictures uploaded and will try to upload as many pictures as I can before we fly to Israel in the morning! The picture below is a picture from an exhibit in Majdanek that shows the concentration and death camps in Poland. In the past week we have visited Majdanek, Auschwitz I and Auschwitz-Birkenau (II), Plaszow, and Treblinka. So far I am having a truly powerful experience and learning so very much. Hope you are all doing well!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Tuesday – 08 July 2008 Lublin, Poland – Majdanek
*Part One* I am trying to give each reflection justice - which means that I need enough time to record my thoughts, not just laundry list what I've done -- so, with that in mind, here is part one of my trip to Majdanek, part two is coming and will perhaps be polished off on the bus to Auschwitz tomorrow morning...
Today we rose early (5:45), showered, ate a fantastic breakfast, and hit the road just after 7. I experienced our thirty-six teacher count off for the first time as we all got comfortable on our coach bus, gearing up for our three hour drive. We drove to Lublin, Poland which is southeast of Warsaw to visit the Majdanek concentration camp. (pronounced "mah-don-neck")
Click below to see pictures of Majdanek - explanation of many of the pictures may be found within my blog as well:
Majdanek was initially a camp designed to hold Soviet POW's, as the road through Lublin that runs directly beside the camp was the main supply line to the Nazi's Eastern Front. The camp ended up housing a combination of Soviet prisoners, Poles, and Jews from Poland and other countries occupied by the Nazis. After the “Aktion Reinhard” - which was essentially the official decree for the Final Solution, late 1941/early 1942, the camp began receiving Jews and was converted to a killing center for not only Jews, but also prisoners who were too weak to work. By September 1942, the gas chambers were operating. One distinctive day in the camp occurred in November of 1943. After a group of Jews led an uprising in Soibibor – another death camp in Poland, Himmler became very nervous and initiated “Operation Harvest Festival.” In one day 18,000 Jews were forced to lay in ditches and were all shot to death – this occurred across several of the camps – and the SS kills 42,000 Jews in one day (November 3rd).
Our trip to Majdanek was fairly pleasant, Stephen Feinberg discussed some pertinant details about our visit – as did our other guide, whose name escapes me at the moment – but he is a very nice man who led our tour through the camp and is fluent in both Polish and English. He lost quite a few family members during the Holocaust. Both spent a large part of our three hours telling different stories and prepping us with various information.
The Majdanek camp is just on the other side of Lublin – it's actually eery how close the camp and the city are to each other. So we were looking at the urban environment, Lublin castle, trees, and this large, ominous, concentration camp suddenly emerges – as far as you can see. The suddenness with which we were looking at urban environment to suddenly staring at a death camp that killed over 300,000 people took our breaths away. The watchtowers, the barbed wire, the open fields, the rows of barracks – it was haunting.
We visited the reception area and watched a brief video that included pictures background information about the camp...and then we set out. Our guide led us through the first building as we entered the camp, saw the field where they tore children from their mothers and wives from their husbands, and entered the building labeled “Disinfection.” The first room was where they cut off everyone's hair so they could sell it – the German's made money by the kilogram of hair – which was then used to create other military supplies. The second room was used to cleanse the victims. The third was a disinfectant room so that clothing could be disinfected and shipped bac into the Reich...and then there were two doors. You either exited to become one of their slave laborers or you proceeded further back into the building to be exterminated. The gas chambers had pipes to pump in carbon monoxide, and also had the ability to drop Zyklon B pellets in... I am not really sure what else to say about looking at a thick, dark, heavy, ominous door that was used to enclose the victims in a room...or what to say about looking into a room that essentially is a concrete box, a trap, and how it felt to know that thousands of people were shoved into the dark box, naked and shivering...terrified, only to see the dark ominous door close....
We were given a while to walk through the camp and all did so at our own leisure, transitioning from historian who clicked away at the camera, to emotional human being who could imagine what individual the artifact may have belonged to... Several of the barracks contained museum like information. Maps, photographs, basic explanations, samples of prisoners uniforms, etc. We walked through the first two barracks processing the information. The third barrack hit hard. As your eyes adjusted to the light, you realized that the barrack was full of bins of shoes. The shoes were brownish/black b/c when the Soviet government turned the camp into a state museum in 1947, they sprayed all the shoes with a oil based preservative to make them last...so there was a distinct smell in the room that we later learned was the preservative mixed with shoe leather.
The room of shoes was most difficult for me. I saw small ones that belonged to little kids... A few shoes had maintained their color and in a pile of brown/black lay one distinctive red one – it was probably the young woman's favorite. I imagined how big a pile it would make if all the kids in one of my classes took off their shoes and piled them...and then multiplied and multiplied...I couldn't begin to figure out how many schools worth of people were within the room. I was choked up. And then I stumbled upon two shoes on top of a pile that were side by side – a small one that looked like it belonged to a young boy, alongside the shoe of a woman – a mother....the shoes to me represented a mother and young son side by side. On my way out of the barrack I saw a mother with her arm around her elementary age son, talking him through each aspect of the camp… that was it for me – I was off to the field to walk it off.
We also were able to walk in a few barracks that still contained all the bunks with straw beds and coarse cloth.. Between 500 and 800 people slept in each barrack, which was difficult to fathom as claustrophobia abounded.
To be continued…
Today we rose early (5:45), showered, ate a fantastic breakfast, and hit the road just after 7. I experienced our thirty-six teacher count off for the first time as we all got comfortable on our coach bus, gearing up for our three hour drive. We drove to Lublin, Poland which is southeast of Warsaw to visit the Majdanek concentration camp. (pronounced "mah-don-neck")
Click below to see pictures of Majdanek - explanation of many of the pictures may be found within my blog as well:
 |
| Lublin, Poland - Majdanek Concentrat |
Majdanek was initially a camp designed to hold Soviet POW's, as the road through Lublin that runs directly beside the camp was the main supply line to the Nazi's Eastern Front. The camp ended up housing a combination of Soviet prisoners, Poles, and Jews from Poland and other countries occupied by the Nazis. After the “Aktion Reinhard” - which was essentially the official decree for the Final Solution, late 1941/early 1942, the camp began receiving Jews and was converted to a killing center for not only Jews, but also prisoners who were too weak to work. By September 1942, the gas chambers were operating. One distinctive day in the camp occurred in November of 1943. After a group of Jews led an uprising in Soibibor – another death camp in Poland, Himmler became very nervous and initiated “Operation Harvest Festival.” In one day 18,000 Jews were forced to lay in ditches and were all shot to death – this occurred across several of the camps – and the SS kills 42,000 Jews in one day (November 3rd).
Our trip to Majdanek was fairly pleasant, Stephen Feinberg discussed some pertinant details about our visit – as did our other guide, whose name escapes me at the moment – but he is a very nice man who led our tour through the camp and is fluent in both Polish and English. He lost quite a few family members during the Holocaust. Both spent a large part of our three hours telling different stories and prepping us with various information.
The Majdanek camp is just on the other side of Lublin – it's actually eery how close the camp and the city are to each other. So we were looking at the urban environment, Lublin castle, trees, and this large, ominous, concentration camp suddenly emerges – as far as you can see. The suddenness with which we were looking at urban environment to suddenly staring at a death camp that killed over 300,000 people took our breaths away. The watchtowers, the barbed wire, the open fields, the rows of barracks – it was haunting.
We visited the reception area and watched a brief video that included pictures background information about the camp...and then we set out. Our guide led us through the first building as we entered the camp, saw the field where they tore children from their mothers and wives from their husbands, and entered the building labeled “Disinfection.” The first room was where they cut off everyone's hair so they could sell it – the German's made money by the kilogram of hair – which was then used to create other military supplies. The second room was used to cleanse the victims. The third was a disinfectant room so that clothing could be disinfected and shipped bac into the Reich...and then there were two doors. You either exited to become one of their slave laborers or you proceeded further back into the building to be exterminated. The gas chambers had pipes to pump in carbon monoxide, and also had the ability to drop Zyklon B pellets in... I am not really sure what else to say about looking at a thick, dark, heavy, ominous door that was used to enclose the victims in a room...or what to say about looking into a room that essentially is a concrete box, a trap, and how it felt to know that thousands of people were shoved into the dark box, naked and shivering...terrified, only to see the dark ominous door close....
We were given a while to walk through the camp and all did so at our own leisure, transitioning from historian who clicked away at the camera, to emotional human being who could imagine what individual the artifact may have belonged to... Several of the barracks contained museum like information. Maps, photographs, basic explanations, samples of prisoners uniforms, etc. We walked through the first two barracks processing the information. The third barrack hit hard. As your eyes adjusted to the light, you realized that the barrack was full of bins of shoes. The shoes were brownish/black b/c when the Soviet government turned the camp into a state museum in 1947, they sprayed all the shoes with a oil based preservative to make them last...so there was a distinct smell in the room that we later learned was the preservative mixed with shoe leather.
The room of shoes was most difficult for me. I saw small ones that belonged to little kids... A few shoes had maintained their color and in a pile of brown/black lay one distinctive red one – it was probably the young woman's favorite. I imagined how big a pile it would make if all the kids in one of my classes took off their shoes and piled them...and then multiplied and multiplied...I couldn't begin to figure out how many schools worth of people were within the room. I was choked up. And then I stumbled upon two shoes on top of a pile that were side by side – a small one that looked like it belonged to a young boy, alongside the shoe of a woman – a mother....the shoes to me represented a mother and young son side by side. On my way out of the barrack I saw a mother with her arm around her elementary age son, talking him through each aspect of the camp… that was it for me – I was off to the field to walk it off.
We also were able to walk in a few barracks that still contained all the bunks with straw beds and coarse cloth.. Between 500 and 800 people slept in each barrack, which was difficult to fathom as claustrophobia abounded.
To be continued…
Monday – 07 July 2008 They're Here!
Well, in a whirlwind, the people who would become my colleagues and friends in a matter of seconds, came rushing in the door – chattering away in English. When I heard one of them say to the bell hop, well there are a lot of us, I knew it was them. As over thirty people crowded into the lobby I stood to the side, grinning like a cheshire cat, and approached a group of friendly looking women to make sure it was them and to introduce myself. They all said “Oh!! You must be number 16!!” I looked puzzled, but they said that they had been taught to do roll call by number and that when they got to 16, one of the leaders had said – she's the one who isn't here yet. Regardless, the women were very welcoming and interested in knowing why I was already here and was in the midst of conversation when I heard my name called – with a quick “oh, she's getting here later” and a chime in from me “no, I'm here!!”
My roommate is a sweet girl named Wendy from Massachusetts who is exactly my age – graduated from college the same year and has been the perfect roommate so far. We headed off to our room as I filled her in and she filled me in on the plane ride and the orientation meeting in New York. Once I figured the chaos in the lobby had died down I ran back downstairs to get my packet and was set. We had a meeting at five. I was in!
Wendy and I set off to explore Old Town and to grab a quick bite to eat, squeezed in a twenty minute crash break, and headed off to our five o'clock meeting. The meeting was a great deal longer than any of us had anticipated. I was fine – no jet lag for me!, but my colleagues were struggling. Stephen Feinberg – a historian for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC is our main guide for the trip – and is truly a fount of knowledge with a wonderful sense of humor and a fabulous sense of the power of words and their definitions. He spoke for about forty-five minutes about the beginnings of Judaism and discussed/skimmed over several thousand years of history focusing on major shifts of the Jewish people. He is very good at including a basic level of information along with a far more complex level – to key you in, jog your memory (or teach you something you really didn't know), and then delve into more complexities. After he spoke we met with a man named Stephen Stoltenberg from the US Embassy in Poland. He is actually an analyst for Poland and Baltic state accounts and works in what is essentially a state department think tank. He is here on a one month assignment while the embassy has summer breaks and transitions. He discussed US-Poland relations and how there has been a history of very positive pro-US relations in Poland, but that there may be a major change in the tide occurring at this moment. The United States has been trying to negotiate an agreement that would allow the US to install a missile defense system (like the one in Alaska) in Poland so that there would be one on the European continent. Poland has been very assertive in its negotiations and is not inclined to accept – in fact so far, it hasn't. This is a marked change in US-Poland relations, as Poland has always been very pro US and is one of the only countries to supply us with troops in Iraq. And, in fact, under new governmental leadership, Polish troops will now be pulling out of Iraq by October of 2008. I found all of this very interesting and a distinctive change from the pro-US things I heard when I was studying in Poland in 2005. Very interesting.
The next speaker was Dr. Michael Steinlauf who wrote a book called “Bondage to the Dead” which addresses how Poles after the second world war reacted and dealt with the Holocaust, what they witnessed, and what happened in Poland. He began with a general history about the Jewish population in Poland through the centuries prior to the second world war. His points were poignant and interesting – definitely something that deepened my understanding and things to mull over. After that Vladka Meed, our wonderful founder, spoke to us briefly and we headed in for a delicious dinner. Vladka Meed is the founder of the teacher's program and was a Jew in Warsaw during the war. Because of her Aryan looks, she was able to escape from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Aryan side and help the Jewish underground resistance. She helped people escape from the ghetto and find hiding places, proper paperwork, etc. She also helped smuggle goods into the ghetto – including things that would be instrumental in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. She wrote a wonderful book “On the Other Side of the Wall” that we all read prior to the trip. It was very exciting to see her and hear from her. Her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson are all here with her and it is the first time her grandson (a future high school senior) is here in Poland – so it is a very special trip for the family.
After dinner I was wired and had the advantage of not being jet lagged – so I worked out, spoke to Daniel on email, etc. I stayed up and read the two articles they had given us to prepare for our visit to Majdanek, and I went to sleep, much more at peace, no longer lonely, and excited to begin my new journey!
My roommate is a sweet girl named Wendy from Massachusetts who is exactly my age – graduated from college the same year and has been the perfect roommate so far. We headed off to our room as I filled her in and she filled me in on the plane ride and the orientation meeting in New York. Once I figured the chaos in the lobby had died down I ran back downstairs to get my packet and was set. We had a meeting at five. I was in!
Wendy and I set off to explore Old Town and to grab a quick bite to eat, squeezed in a twenty minute crash break, and headed off to our five o'clock meeting. The meeting was a great deal longer than any of us had anticipated. I was fine – no jet lag for me!, but my colleagues were struggling. Stephen Feinberg – a historian for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC is our main guide for the trip – and is truly a fount of knowledge with a wonderful sense of humor and a fabulous sense of the power of words and their definitions. He spoke for about forty-five minutes about the beginnings of Judaism and discussed/skimmed over several thousand years of history focusing on major shifts of the Jewish people. He is very good at including a basic level of information along with a far more complex level – to key you in, jog your memory (or teach you something you really didn't know), and then delve into more complexities. After he spoke we met with a man named Stephen Stoltenberg from the US Embassy in Poland. He is actually an analyst for Poland and Baltic state accounts and works in what is essentially a state department think tank. He is here on a one month assignment while the embassy has summer breaks and transitions. He discussed US-Poland relations and how there has been a history of very positive pro-US relations in Poland, but that there may be a major change in the tide occurring at this moment. The United States has been trying to negotiate an agreement that would allow the US to install a missile defense system (like the one in Alaska) in Poland so that there would be one on the European continent. Poland has been very assertive in its negotiations and is not inclined to accept – in fact so far, it hasn't. This is a marked change in US-Poland relations, as Poland has always been very pro US and is one of the only countries to supply us with troops in Iraq. And, in fact, under new governmental leadership, Polish troops will now be pulling out of Iraq by October of 2008. I found all of this very interesting and a distinctive change from the pro-US things I heard when I was studying in Poland in 2005. Very interesting.
The next speaker was Dr. Michael Steinlauf who wrote a book called “Bondage to the Dead” which addresses how Poles after the second world war reacted and dealt with the Holocaust, what they witnessed, and what happened in Poland. He began with a general history about the Jewish population in Poland through the centuries prior to the second world war. His points were poignant and interesting – definitely something that deepened my understanding and things to mull over. After that Vladka Meed, our wonderful founder, spoke to us briefly and we headed in for a delicious dinner. Vladka Meed is the founder of the teacher's program and was a Jew in Warsaw during the war. Because of her Aryan looks, she was able to escape from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Aryan side and help the Jewish underground resistance. She helped people escape from the ghetto and find hiding places, proper paperwork, etc. She also helped smuggle goods into the ghetto – including things that would be instrumental in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. She wrote a wonderful book “On the Other Side of the Wall” that we all read prior to the trip. It was very exciting to see her and hear from her. Her son, daughter-in-law, and grandson are all here with her and it is the first time her grandson (a future high school senior) is here in Poland – so it is a very special trip for the family.
After dinner I was wired and had the advantage of not being jet lagged – so I worked out, spoke to Daniel on email, etc. I stayed up and read the two articles they had given us to prepare for our visit to Majdanek, and I went to sleep, much more at peace, no longer lonely, and excited to begin my new journey!
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Warsaw, Poland - July 3, 4, and 5, 2008
Click on the adorable picture below to see our Warsaw album!
Ah, well we made it to Warsaw and had a wonderful last two days of our trip. We took a nice, easy, pleasantly breezy morning train to Warsaw, spent an hour wracking our brains to figure out where on earth the 175 bus line was and where we could catch it...and then, once we reached Foksal street and found 12 Foksal, I ended up asking a travel agency on the block to help us - and the woman graciously used her cell phone to call our contact. We waited ten minutes and a cute blond showed up to show us our apartment. Whew. But seriously, actually getting the kilometer or two from the train station up to our apartment took over an hour and a half.
After all that was over, we ate a lunch at a Mexican restaurant - which are actually very difficult to find around here, and then set out to explore. We headed towards Old Town Square, figuring it was a great place to start. It's a moderate walk and we enjoy the scenary along the way, stopping for pictures when we want, peeking into churches, etc. We reach old town and enjoy checking out some of the shops and meandering down the alleys. The exhibit I really wanted to check out was closed indefinitely so that made things a little challenging. We decided to go ahead and get all our stuff sorted out so that we could have a full last day of touring and spent a few hours getting everything sorted out and organized for Daniel's flight on Saturday. After that we set out to explore some more and find a good restaurant for dinner - we found a neat place that had delicious food and really enjoyed ourselves. We wandered around more after that and decided to call it a night. We had gotten up fairly early to catch the train and had not slept well on the night train the evening before - and besides, we wanted to go full throttle on Daniel's last day.
We woke up and Daniel went down and got yummy things from the shop that was on our block. We got ready and set out for a moderate walk to Lazienki Park. We walked through a pretty garden and then reached the park and the Chopin monument. I had visited the palace and the park in January of 2005 while I was on foreign study and had always thought it would be pretty, but wow. The park was absolutely beautiful! A vast variety of wildlife and luscious plants, flowers, and trees abounded. While heading towards the palace (which is in the heart of the park) I was on the lookout for the special squirrels I had seen while on foreign study. They are red, extremely friendly and cute, and have very hairy ears - they just look different than any squirrel you would ever see in the US, and I remembered being floored by how unique and cute they were. We had been walking for a while and no squirrels were to be found anywhere. I was getting worried. But! Just as I said to Daniel "Sigh, I really wonder where the squirrels are!" one popped up!
We had gone to the grocery store prior to heading to the park, and I had happened to buy sunflower seeds as a snack for myself, but ended up pulling them out to try to attract the squirrels. I had remembered that Andy Pendley had crumbs in his pocket and had nearly gotten the squirrel to eat out of his hands. The squirrel was interested, but timid -- but the birds were not! After recovering from the shock of being dive bombed by the birds, I had a truly "Snow White" moment. I scattered a bunch of seeds on the ground for the squirrel adn then refilled my palm with more seeds and stood, palm up. All these really pretty little birds - with blue, grey, and green colors came flying into the palm of my hand! Up to three at a time were flying up, taking a seed and flying back away.
How fun! Daniel took advantage of the situation and snapped away while I delighted in the sensation of the little birds firmly grabbing your finger and taking a seed. They came from all over - there must have been nearly twenty of them swooping in for a snack. We fed them for a while and then headed deeper into the park along the wooded paths, heading for the palace.
When we reached the palace - which basically is sitting on top of a river, so there is water on both sides, we saw peacocks roaming the grounds! They were a brilliant shade of blue and were just milling about all around the palace. It was mating season - as the brown females were taunting the males and the males kept opening up their feathers and pomping just a few feet away from us! It was really neat! We saw field mice, swans, turtles, large fish in the ponds, peacocks, pidgeons, ravens, finches, red furry squirrels - all very fun! We strolled around for a while and managed to take lots of pretty pictures and really soak up the beautiful, peaceful park.
As we were heading out (which was going to take a while, b/c we actually got lost a few times), we were approached by a very friendly, ambitious squirrel! I actually got her to eat out of the palm of my hand! A little while later one approached Daniel and he got to do the same thing as well - a very fun little suprise in our afternoon.
After that we ventured to Old Town by bus to save time and grabbed lunch at a brewary that had excellent excellent food. Then we perused through Old Town looking for gifts for the Melbourne guys. Daniel had thought long and hard about what he wanted to get them - but we actually had to find what he was looking for.
We returned to the apartment with our loot and took care of few last things that would get Daniel travel ready. After that we set out for Daniel's last European dinner and a night on the town of Warsaw. We even managed to find a jazz club to check out for a while.
Saturday morning came early - we had both been dreading its arrival for the past few days. We have said goodbye to each other many times, but I don't think it has ever been as hard to part from Daniel as it was at the airport on Saturday. We are a very busy couple - we do not have kids yet to keep us even more busy, but between graduate classes, full work schedules, all of my teaching obligations (track, Model UN, AP) and evertyhing else we don't have a lot of uninterrupted time together. During this vacation we got to experience twenty-three uninterrupted days together, during which we were absolutely inseparable - we were each other's English speaking world. And there were some days when the only people we talked to were each other. It was absolutely wonderful and the past three weeks were some of the best we have ever shared - and because of that, parting was excruciating. I cannot begin to tell you how much it hurts to begin writing the travel journal and blogs with "I" instead of "we."
Ah, what a wonderful trip we shared! Daniel kept a 76 page journal (Mark Shelley you can go ahead and do a double take) that kept track of our adventures in vivid detail - so if you have real detail questions ask him. I kept the blog going and continually picked out the best pictures to showcase our trip so we could share it with all of you. At times I wondered if I was mis-spending my time, but decided that if I didn't do it as we went along, I would never manage to put it all together later. I don't regret sitting down periodically and reflecting and posting about our adventures.
I am currently sitting in the Bristol Hotel waiting to meet up with the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teacher's Program. I have spent two days by myself in Warsaw, feeling a bit like a mute, craving conversation - but any minute now a group of thirty or so dedicated, passionate teachers who share my interests should be wakling through the door.
I will continue the blog as I continue my adventure and quest to acquire a deeper understanding of it all - thank you for reading so far! I am beginning to crave messages from back home - so any emails, comments, or greetings, that you would like to send my way would be greatly appreciated. (beth.hals@gmail.com) :)
On I go!
 |
| Warsaw, Poland |
Ah, well we made it to Warsaw and had a wonderful last two days of our trip. We took a nice, easy, pleasantly breezy morning train to Warsaw, spent an hour wracking our brains to figure out where on earth the 175 bus line was and where we could catch it...and then, once we reached Foksal street and found 12 Foksal, I ended up asking a travel agency on the block to help us - and the woman graciously used her cell phone to call our contact. We waited ten minutes and a cute blond showed up to show us our apartment. Whew. But seriously, actually getting the kilometer or two from the train station up to our apartment took over an hour and a half.
After all that was over, we ate a lunch at a Mexican restaurant - which are actually very difficult to find around here, and then set out to explore. We headed towards Old Town Square, figuring it was a great place to start. It's a moderate walk and we enjoy the scenary along the way, stopping for pictures when we want, peeking into churches, etc. We reach old town and enjoy checking out some of the shops and meandering down the alleys. The exhibit I really wanted to check out was closed indefinitely so that made things a little challenging. We decided to go ahead and get all our stuff sorted out so that we could have a full last day of touring and spent a few hours getting everything sorted out and organized for Daniel's flight on Saturday. After that we set out to explore some more and find a good restaurant for dinner - we found a neat place that had delicious food and really enjoyed ourselves. We wandered around more after that and decided to call it a night. We had gotten up fairly early to catch the train and had not slept well on the night train the evening before - and besides, we wanted to go full throttle on Daniel's last day.
We woke up and Daniel went down and got yummy things from the shop that was on our block. We got ready and set out for a moderate walk to Lazienki Park. We walked through a pretty garden and then reached the park and the Chopin monument. I had visited the palace and the park in January of 2005 while I was on foreign study and had always thought it would be pretty, but wow. The park was absolutely beautiful! A vast variety of wildlife and luscious plants, flowers, and trees abounded. While heading towards the palace (which is in the heart of the park) I was on the lookout for the special squirrels I had seen while on foreign study. They are red, extremely friendly and cute, and have very hairy ears - they just look different than any squirrel you would ever see in the US, and I remembered being floored by how unique and cute they were. We had been walking for a while and no squirrels were to be found anywhere. I was getting worried. But! Just as I said to Daniel "Sigh, I really wonder where the squirrels are!" one popped up!
We had gone to the grocery store prior to heading to the park, and I had happened to buy sunflower seeds as a snack for myself, but ended up pulling them out to try to attract the squirrels. I had remembered that Andy Pendley had crumbs in his pocket and had nearly gotten the squirrel to eat out of his hands. The squirrel was interested, but timid -- but the birds were not! After recovering from the shock of being dive bombed by the birds, I had a truly "Snow White" moment. I scattered a bunch of seeds on the ground for the squirrel adn then refilled my palm with more seeds and stood, palm up. All these really pretty little birds - with blue, grey, and green colors came flying into the palm of my hand! Up to three at a time were flying up, taking a seed and flying back away.
How fun! Daniel took advantage of the situation and snapped away while I delighted in the sensation of the little birds firmly grabbing your finger and taking a seed. They came from all over - there must have been nearly twenty of them swooping in for a snack. We fed them for a while and then headed deeper into the park along the wooded paths, heading for the palace.
When we reached the palace - which basically is sitting on top of a river, so there is water on both sides, we saw peacocks roaming the grounds! They were a brilliant shade of blue and were just milling about all around the palace. It was mating season - as the brown females were taunting the males and the males kept opening up their feathers and pomping just a few feet away from us! It was really neat! We saw field mice, swans, turtles, large fish in the ponds, peacocks, pidgeons, ravens, finches, red furry squirrels - all very fun! We strolled around for a while and managed to take lots of pretty pictures and really soak up the beautiful, peaceful park.
As we were heading out (which was going to take a while, b/c we actually got lost a few times), we were approached by a very friendly, ambitious squirrel! I actually got her to eat out of the palm of my hand! A little while later one approached Daniel and he got to do the same thing as well - a very fun little suprise in our afternoon.
After that we ventured to Old Town by bus to save time and grabbed lunch at a brewary that had excellent excellent food. Then we perused through Old Town looking for gifts for the Melbourne guys. Daniel had thought long and hard about what he wanted to get them - but we actually had to find what he was looking for.
We returned to the apartment with our loot and took care of few last things that would get Daniel travel ready. After that we set out for Daniel's last European dinner and a night on the town of Warsaw. We even managed to find a jazz club to check out for a while.
Saturday morning came early - we had both been dreading its arrival for the past few days. We have said goodbye to each other many times, but I don't think it has ever been as hard to part from Daniel as it was at the airport on Saturday. We are a very busy couple - we do not have kids yet to keep us even more busy, but between graduate classes, full work schedules, all of my teaching obligations (track, Model UN, AP) and evertyhing else we don't have a lot of uninterrupted time together. During this vacation we got to experience twenty-three uninterrupted days together, during which we were absolutely inseparable - we were each other's English speaking world. And there were some days when the only people we talked to were each other. It was absolutely wonderful and the past three weeks were some of the best we have ever shared - and because of that, parting was excruciating. I cannot begin to tell you how much it hurts to begin writing the travel journal and blogs with "I" instead of "we."
Ah, what a wonderful trip we shared! Daniel kept a 76 page journal (Mark Shelley you can go ahead and do a double take) that kept track of our adventures in vivid detail - so if you have real detail questions ask him. I kept the blog going and continually picked out the best pictures to showcase our trip so we could share it with all of you. At times I wondered if I was mis-spending my time, but decided that if I didn't do it as we went along, I would never manage to put it all together later. I don't regret sitting down periodically and reflecting and posting about our adventures.
I am currently sitting in the Bristol Hotel waiting to meet up with the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teacher's Program. I have spent two days by myself in Warsaw, feeling a bit like a mute, craving conversation - but any minute now a group of thirty or so dedicated, passionate teachers who share my interests should be wakling through the door.
I will continue the blog as I continue my adventure and quest to acquire a deeper understanding of it all - thank you for reading so far! I am beginning to crave messages from back home - so any emails, comments, or greetings, that you would like to send my way would be greatly appreciated. (beth.hals@gmail.com) :)
On I go!
Krakow, Poland - July 2, 2008
Click here to see our Krakow Album:
After arriving in Krakow on our overnight train, we stumbled into the blinding daylight and tried to orient ourselves. Out of a combination of brilliance and luck I had managed to book a hostel that was directly across from the train station and one of the cheapest of our trip. So, for the first and only time on our trip we only dragged our luggage about 10 meters to the Golden Hostel of Krakow. Since it wasn't even 7 am and official check-in was actually noon, we weren't able to check-in, but we could go ahead and leave our luggage. We grabbed a few things out of our bags (and out of my stroke of genious grabbed my sweatshirt), got a train schedule and information about how to get to the salt mines, and headed back to the train station. We had about a thirty or forty minute wait (to grab some breakfast pastries from one of the many vendors) and spent the rest of the time hanging out at a bench in the station. It was a beautiful day and wonderful temperature - I actually enjoyed putting on a sweatshirt over my shirt and shorts outfit.
The train took twenty-five minutes and was a really nice local one. Usually the regional trains are the most trashed/in worst condition. This one was very clean, quiet and smooth. We arrived at the stop and followed the people, hoping we would see a sign telling us where to go. We came upon a big fresh produce stand and decided to buy apples to even out our breakfast -- I remembered from foreign study that Polish produce is all organic and very very yummy, so I was excited. When Poland was integrated into the EU, their produce became very popular throughout Europe and the Polish farmers benefited a great deal from the annexation. On foreign study I would sneak an apple or two every morning to eat during the day. I was glad when Daniel agreed that the apples were really really yummy.
So we followed the signs that pointed to what we thought probably translated to salt mines and were luckily correct. We bought tickets and waited twenty minutes for our English tour. The salt mines have been in use for over 700 years and the mining of salt from these mines only stopped in the past twenty or so years, as they ran out of salt to mine. The mines were all carved with pretty primitive tools - all hand held picks and hammers and reinforced with wood to keep the structure solid.
The mines contain lots of salt sculptures -- some of which were extremely talented. There are several churches inside, including a very large church in which nearly everything is carved from salt -- even the chandeliers were made of special salt crystals. Some neat things about it? If you touched the walls and licked your hands it tasted like salt. And, the air felt really really good to inhale - it was supposed to be especially theraputic for people with allergies or asthma. And after all the second hand smoke we've choked on it felt really good to take nice deep breaths of salty air. We also went down tons and tons of stairs - actually over 800 stairs which took us down over 450 feet. (They have a really crazy, dark, creepy elevator that jets you back up in about 45 seconds).
The salt mines were really neat and massive. We ate at the restaurant at the bottom and had some really really delicious local cuisine. And for being 450 feet under the earth, it was actually priced very well. After our salt mine trip we took the train back, checked into our hotel, showered, and got ready to go back out and explore Krakow's old town.
Now, a lot of what I wanted to see in Krakow are sights that I will be visiting during my teachers program next week, so we really just wanted to check out the vibes of the old town, the local churches, and the Wawel Castle Complex. We were somewhat successful, although by the time we made it down to the Wawel section it was too late to take a tour that day...but it was still neat to check out from the outside and take pictures. We saw lots of evidence of the loving relationship between Pope John Paul II and Krakow - monuments, plaques, pictures all over. Krakow was the biggest Polish city near his birth place, so there were very close ties.
It was really weird to walk around and realize this is the city that contained the Jewish Ghetto from Schindler's List and that Auschwitz was forty-five minutes away.
We enjoyed our day in Krakow - it was a place I would have liked to spend more time, but I actually will be spending more time later on this week. We are spending two and a half more days in the Krakow area during our teacher's program.
We got a good night's sleep and were off to Warsaw... :( the last city of Daniel's trip...
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| Krakow, Poland - July 2, 2008 |
After arriving in Krakow on our overnight train, we stumbled into the blinding daylight and tried to orient ourselves. Out of a combination of brilliance and luck I had managed to book a hostel that was directly across from the train station and one of the cheapest of our trip. So, for the first and only time on our trip we only dragged our luggage about 10 meters to the Golden Hostel of Krakow. Since it wasn't even 7 am and official check-in was actually noon, we weren't able to check-in, but we could go ahead and leave our luggage. We grabbed a few things out of our bags (and out of my stroke of genious grabbed my sweatshirt), got a train schedule and information about how to get to the salt mines, and headed back to the train station. We had about a thirty or forty minute wait (to grab some breakfast pastries from one of the many vendors) and spent the rest of the time hanging out at a bench in the station. It was a beautiful day and wonderful temperature - I actually enjoyed putting on a sweatshirt over my shirt and shorts outfit.
The train took twenty-five minutes and was a really nice local one. Usually the regional trains are the most trashed/in worst condition. This one was very clean, quiet and smooth. We arrived at the stop and followed the people, hoping we would see a sign telling us where to go. We came upon a big fresh produce stand and decided to buy apples to even out our breakfast -- I remembered from foreign study that Polish produce is all organic and very very yummy, so I was excited. When Poland was integrated into the EU, their produce became very popular throughout Europe and the Polish farmers benefited a great deal from the annexation. On foreign study I would sneak an apple or two every morning to eat during the day. I was glad when Daniel agreed that the apples were really really yummy.
So we followed the signs that pointed to what we thought probably translated to salt mines and were luckily correct. We bought tickets and waited twenty minutes for our English tour. The salt mines have been in use for over 700 years and the mining of salt from these mines only stopped in the past twenty or so years, as they ran out of salt to mine. The mines were all carved with pretty primitive tools - all hand held picks and hammers and reinforced with wood to keep the structure solid.
The mines contain lots of salt sculptures -- some of which were extremely talented. There are several churches inside, including a very large church in which nearly everything is carved from salt -- even the chandeliers were made of special salt crystals. Some neat things about it? If you touched the walls and licked your hands it tasted like salt. And, the air felt really really good to inhale - it was supposed to be especially theraputic for people with allergies or asthma. And after all the second hand smoke we've choked on it felt really good to take nice deep breaths of salty air. We also went down tons and tons of stairs - actually over 800 stairs which took us down over 450 feet. (They have a really crazy, dark, creepy elevator that jets you back up in about 45 seconds).
The salt mines were really neat and massive. We ate at the restaurant at the bottom and had some really really delicious local cuisine. And for being 450 feet under the earth, it was actually priced very well. After our salt mine trip we took the train back, checked into our hotel, showered, and got ready to go back out and explore Krakow's old town.
Now, a lot of what I wanted to see in Krakow are sights that I will be visiting during my teachers program next week, so we really just wanted to check out the vibes of the old town, the local churches, and the Wawel Castle Complex. We were somewhat successful, although by the time we made it down to the Wawel section it was too late to take a tour that day...but it was still neat to check out from the outside and take pictures. We saw lots of evidence of the loving relationship between Pope John Paul II and Krakow - monuments, plaques, pictures all over. Krakow was the biggest Polish city near his birth place, so there were very close ties.
It was really weird to walk around and realize this is the city that contained the Jewish Ghetto from Schindler's List and that Auschwitz was forty-five minutes away.
We enjoyed our day in Krakow - it was a place I would have liked to spend more time, but I actually will be spending more time later on this week. We are spending two and a half more days in the Krakow area during our teacher's program.
We got a good night's sleep and were off to Warsaw... :( the last city of Daniel's trip...
Budapest, Hungary - June 29, 30, and July 1
Click here for our photo album of Budapest:
After a miserable 12 hour train ride from Sarajevo to Budapest in which we think the train was stopped as much as it was going, we reached Budapest. The train also didn't have a dining car for the entire twelve hour duration. So we arrived in Budapest very hungry and with an hour and forty minutes before the start of the Final Match of the Euro Cup. Budapest is the city in which I had found a local guy who rents apartments out and is willing to meet you at the train station to escort you there. He was a year younger than us and I had read good things about him on several different websites. So, despite Daniel's semi-joking suspicion that he was a serial killer, I booked our apartment through him. We were greeted at the train station and helped aboard to different city buses as we navigated our way to the apartment. The apartment was a new one they had just bought and added to the list to be rented out – it was quite nice. Very cute, great location, etc. We had a few hiccups, but they fixed them quickly. As they had just acquired the apartment, they didn't have the washer yet – so we were given keys and directions to another apartment and were encouraged to wash our clothes there. After we left we discovered the hot water wasn't working (post-attempt at a shower), but they had someone come out first thing the next morning and fix it. So a few hiccups, but they took care of them quickly. Not a big deal.
We settled in quickly and set out to meet one of them at a bar where they had staked out a table to watch the final match from. We mis-navigated and then corrected ourselves, and arrived at the game just before half-time starving and frustrated. The bar was atop a building that had been “remodeled” by the Soviets and was absolutely hideous – but the rooftop had a massive projection screen, good speaker system, and good LCD projector that projected the game for several hundred to see with ease. After getting a sandwich in our tummies we felt much better and were able to enjoy the second half. The game wasn't as exciting as some of the others have been, but we enjoyed it. Germany fought until the last second, but Spain triumphed and played a great game.
The next day we had agreed to sleep in a bit. We would have two full days in the city and felt ourselves getting a little tired. Our focus for the day would be to tour as much of the city as we could while working on completing our laundry at another apartment. We decided – per our hosts recommendations, to visit the Jewish Quarter. The Dohany Synagogue in Budapest is the second largest synagogue in the world (second to the one in NYC) and was very beautiful. The synagogue was built during the latter half of the 19th century by a neo-logue group, so there are elements of Catholicism laced into the construction, in that the convenient is at the front of the synagogue instead of the center, and there are two pulpits. The synagogue was within the Jewish Ghetto during the second world war. Now, because Hungary had aligned with Germany and because of certain politicians, the Jewish population of Budapest was not decimated. The Hungarian Jews from the countryside (which were actually Jews who had fled the USSR, Ukraine, and Poland over the past century), were all deported – most directly to Auschwitz. About one third or so of the Jews killed in Auschwitz were Hungarian. But the Jewish population in Budapest managed to be guarded through different politicians and diplomatic maneuverings, and thus, the Jewish population still thrives there today. There were over eighty thousand Jews living in Budapest today. But, I do not want to suggest that the Jews of Budapest didn't suffer – deportations had begun before the Soviets arrived in the city and the Jews of the city were still given harsh work details and little food.
Regardless, the Jewish population in Budapest still exists and continues to survive. To give context – before WW II, 1.5 million Jews lived in Poland, after WW II there were only 6,000-7,000 left. So to have a population of 80,000 within the city reflects a much more preserved and prominent culture. But I certainly don't want to undermine the vast number of Hungarian Jews that were murdered – the majority of the population was killed.
Our guided tour of the synagogue and the memorial sites, was very informative and interesting. We toured the synagogue, a cemetery full of just shy of 3,000 people that was adjacent to the synagogue – something that is traditionally forbidden according to religious beliefs, but was an exception that had to be made late 1944 and during 1945 when the Soviets and Nazis were duking it out and the traditional Jewish cemetery couldn't be reached. We also walked through their memorial section where they had a beautiful stain-glass monument that depicted a black and grey snake (symbolizing the evil of the Nazis) being burned up by a tri-colored flame (the flecks of the flame were yellow, symbolizing the Star of David, and two shades of orange, symbolizing the flames of the crematoriums). We also saw a commemorative willow tree made of silver and stainless steel. Many of the leaves of the tree had a name engraved on it that represented a Jewish man, woman, or child who never received a proper burial. The museum upstairs has many relics and religious pieces, including very old Torah scrolls. There was also a section of the museum dedicated to the Holocaust that was full of pictures and artifacts – the one I found most chilling was a bar of soap that had been made from human fat.
The synagogue has only been restored since 1995, as it was damaged during WW II but was unable to be repaired under the Soviet regime. (Soviets didn't support organized religions). The wrought iron chandeliers were just recently replaced as Hitler had ordered them to be removed and melted down for weapons. (Although, this didn't just happen in synagogues – I remember hearing several similar stories at various churches in Germany – church bells were a targeted source). The fallen church bells of Lubeck, Germany are one of the few anomalies. Many of the artifacts in the museum – as well as the old Torah scrolls – were hidden during the war by Christians and returned to the Jewish community after the war was over.
We spent our afternoon exploring the city more and our evening hanging our laundry up to dry – very exciting to have clean clothes again!
The next day we get up at a decent time, knowing it’s one of our last days of the trip to take it easy in the morning, but also knowing it is our last day in the city. We had muesli left in our suitcase, so I ask Daniel to get milk from the shop around the corner while I shower and step out to discover he has come home with a bountiful feast. Milk, fresh bakery rolls, cheese, meat, yummy stuff. We eat a big breakfast and head out to the train station to buy our sleeper reservations. (We have East passes that work in Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Poland), but need to pay for our bed for the night. Cheaper than a hotel Unfortunately, the international ticket line is ten people long…and in a thirty minute period four people go through….
Over an hour later, we have gotten to know the mom and son in front of us who are from NJ and are pleased that the sleeper was inexpensive, but exasperated at how long our transaction took. Also relieved that the attendant understood us well enough to help us – language was a pretty big barrier in the Hungarian train station.
We set off to check out the rest of the city. We had spent the previous day touring the lower part of Buda, so the plan was to check out upper Buda and the highlights of Pest. I would say we were fairly successful. We got to see the Parliament building…one of my favorites – I just love its architecture. We walked across the chain bridge, up to the National Gallery, up to the dome to get a nice panorama of the city, over to the Fisherman’s Bastion (which looked like a gigantic sand castle to me), and managed to run out of time pretty easily. We ate a late lunch/early dinner and headed back to the apartment to pack up our newly dry and clean clothes! We made it to the train station fairly seamlessly – we took some public transport, but still dragged our luggage fairly far, and had plenty of time to spare to board our train. After a few inquiries, several platform workers showed me which car we would be on and we began our night train adventure.
First, they take your tickets for the entire night. Which is fine…but in our case they were passes, so if they lost them, they would lose a lot of money’s worth of tickets. Second, we were in a little sleeper cabin that had to columns of three bunks in a very small space. Daniel’s face was priceless. Luckily, all of them were between 20 and 24 and all of them spoke English! What fun! We spent the first twenty minutes getting settled, so that by the time the train started at 8 we were set. We spent the next three or four hours talking with other young travelers! Once again, what fun! Two girls were traveling together and were from Australia, but were studying in the EU at various places and the other two were a couple, one from Finland and one from New Zealand, so they were tackling how to stay together while not being able to legally stay in any place for too long.
We had a great time chatting with them, talking about travels, discussing universities, environmental policies…all sorts of stuff. We all were tired by midnight and did our best to sleep through the bumpy train, but we had a lot of fun!
We woke up about 25 minutes outside of Krakow, with enough time to wake-up and stumble off the train into the 6 am brightness.
Budapest was a lot of fun and by far the most affordable so far – although that’s not to say that it was cheap. But at least affordable – more in our price range…every once in a while we actually felt like we had gotten a great deal! Very pretty city, lots of neat monuments, renovations still occurring all over – it seems there is a distinct priority list of renovations that the city wants to occur to remove as many Soviet marks and facades as possible, but it is definitely coming along and the phrase “can’t judge a book by it’s cover” is a perfect motto for many of the buildings of this city.
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| Budapest, Hungary - June 29, 30 and July 1, 2008 |
After a miserable 12 hour train ride from Sarajevo to Budapest in which we think the train was stopped as much as it was going, we reached Budapest. The train also didn't have a dining car for the entire twelve hour duration. So we arrived in Budapest very hungry and with an hour and forty minutes before the start of the Final Match of the Euro Cup. Budapest is the city in which I had found a local guy who rents apartments out and is willing to meet you at the train station to escort you there. He was a year younger than us and I had read good things about him on several different websites. So, despite Daniel's semi-joking suspicion that he was a serial killer, I booked our apartment through him. We were greeted at the train station and helped aboard to different city buses as we navigated our way to the apartment. The apartment was a new one they had just bought and added to the list to be rented out – it was quite nice. Very cute, great location, etc. We had a few hiccups, but they fixed them quickly. As they had just acquired the apartment, they didn't have the washer yet – so we were given keys and directions to another apartment and were encouraged to wash our clothes there. After we left we discovered the hot water wasn't working (post-attempt at a shower), but they had someone come out first thing the next morning and fix it. So a few hiccups, but they took care of them quickly. Not a big deal.
We settled in quickly and set out to meet one of them at a bar where they had staked out a table to watch the final match from. We mis-navigated and then corrected ourselves, and arrived at the game just before half-time starving and frustrated. The bar was atop a building that had been “remodeled” by the Soviets and was absolutely hideous – but the rooftop had a massive projection screen, good speaker system, and good LCD projector that projected the game for several hundred to see with ease. After getting a sandwich in our tummies we felt much better and were able to enjoy the second half. The game wasn't as exciting as some of the others have been, but we enjoyed it. Germany fought until the last second, but Spain triumphed and played a great game.
The next day we had agreed to sleep in a bit. We would have two full days in the city and felt ourselves getting a little tired. Our focus for the day would be to tour as much of the city as we could while working on completing our laundry at another apartment. We decided – per our hosts recommendations, to visit the Jewish Quarter. The Dohany Synagogue in Budapest is the second largest synagogue in the world (second to the one in NYC) and was very beautiful. The synagogue was built during the latter half of the 19th century by a neo-logue group, so there are elements of Catholicism laced into the construction, in that the convenient is at the front of the synagogue instead of the center, and there are two pulpits. The synagogue was within the Jewish Ghetto during the second world war. Now, because Hungary had aligned with Germany and because of certain politicians, the Jewish population of Budapest was not decimated. The Hungarian Jews from the countryside (which were actually Jews who had fled the USSR, Ukraine, and Poland over the past century), were all deported – most directly to Auschwitz. About one third or so of the Jews killed in Auschwitz were Hungarian. But the Jewish population in Budapest managed to be guarded through different politicians and diplomatic maneuverings, and thus, the Jewish population still thrives there today. There were over eighty thousand Jews living in Budapest today. But, I do not want to suggest that the Jews of Budapest didn't suffer – deportations had begun before the Soviets arrived in the city and the Jews of the city were still given harsh work details and little food.
Regardless, the Jewish population in Budapest still exists and continues to survive. To give context – before WW II, 1.5 million Jews lived in Poland, after WW II there were only 6,000-7,000 left. So to have a population of 80,000 within the city reflects a much more preserved and prominent culture. But I certainly don't want to undermine the vast number of Hungarian Jews that were murdered – the majority of the population was killed.
Our guided tour of the synagogue and the memorial sites, was very informative and interesting. We toured the synagogue, a cemetery full of just shy of 3,000 people that was adjacent to the synagogue – something that is traditionally forbidden according to religious beliefs, but was an exception that had to be made late 1944 and during 1945 when the Soviets and Nazis were duking it out and the traditional Jewish cemetery couldn't be reached. We also walked through their memorial section where they had a beautiful stain-glass monument that depicted a black and grey snake (symbolizing the evil of the Nazis) being burned up by a tri-colored flame (the flecks of the flame were yellow, symbolizing the Star of David, and two shades of orange, symbolizing the flames of the crematoriums). We also saw a commemorative willow tree made of silver and stainless steel. Many of the leaves of the tree had a name engraved on it that represented a Jewish man, woman, or child who never received a proper burial. The museum upstairs has many relics and religious pieces, including very old Torah scrolls. There was also a section of the museum dedicated to the Holocaust that was full of pictures and artifacts – the one I found most chilling was a bar of soap that had been made from human fat.
The synagogue has only been restored since 1995, as it was damaged during WW II but was unable to be repaired under the Soviet regime. (Soviets didn't support organized religions). The wrought iron chandeliers were just recently replaced as Hitler had ordered them to be removed and melted down for weapons. (Although, this didn't just happen in synagogues – I remember hearing several similar stories at various churches in Germany – church bells were a targeted source). The fallen church bells of Lubeck, Germany are one of the few anomalies. Many of the artifacts in the museum – as well as the old Torah scrolls – were hidden during the war by Christians and returned to the Jewish community after the war was over.
We spent our afternoon exploring the city more and our evening hanging our laundry up to dry – very exciting to have clean clothes again!
The next day we get up at a decent time, knowing it’s one of our last days of the trip to take it easy in the morning, but also knowing it is our last day in the city. We had muesli left in our suitcase, so I ask Daniel to get milk from the shop around the corner while I shower and step out to discover he has come home with a bountiful feast. Milk, fresh bakery rolls, cheese, meat, yummy stuff. We eat a big breakfast and head out to the train station to buy our sleeper reservations. (We have East passes that work in Austria, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, and Poland), but need to pay for our bed for the night. Cheaper than a hotel Unfortunately, the international ticket line is ten people long…and in a thirty minute period four people go through….
Over an hour later, we have gotten to know the mom and son in front of us who are from NJ and are pleased that the sleeper was inexpensive, but exasperated at how long our transaction took. Also relieved that the attendant understood us well enough to help us – language was a pretty big barrier in the Hungarian train station.
We set off to check out the rest of the city. We had spent the previous day touring the lower part of Buda, so the plan was to check out upper Buda and the highlights of Pest. I would say we were fairly successful. We got to see the Parliament building…one of my favorites – I just love its architecture. We walked across the chain bridge, up to the National Gallery, up to the dome to get a nice panorama of the city, over to the Fisherman’s Bastion (which looked like a gigantic sand castle to me), and managed to run out of time pretty easily. We ate a late lunch/early dinner and headed back to the apartment to pack up our newly dry and clean clothes! We made it to the train station fairly seamlessly – we took some public transport, but still dragged our luggage fairly far, and had plenty of time to spare to board our train. After a few inquiries, several platform workers showed me which car we would be on and we began our night train adventure.
First, they take your tickets for the entire night. Which is fine…but in our case they were passes, so if they lost them, they would lose a lot of money’s worth of tickets. Second, we were in a little sleeper cabin that had to columns of three bunks in a very small space. Daniel’s face was priceless. Luckily, all of them were between 20 and 24 and all of them spoke English! What fun! We spent the first twenty minutes getting settled, so that by the time the train started at 8 we were set. We spent the next three or four hours talking with other young travelers! Once again, what fun! Two girls were traveling together and were from Australia, but were studying in the EU at various places and the other two were a couple, one from Finland and one from New Zealand, so they were tackling how to stay together while not being able to legally stay in any place for too long.
We had a great time chatting with them, talking about travels, discussing universities, environmental policies…all sorts of stuff. We all were tired by midnight and did our best to sleep through the bumpy train, but we had a lot of fun!
We woke up about 25 minutes outside of Krakow, with enough time to wake-up and stumble off the train into the 6 am brightness.
Budapest was a lot of fun and by far the most affordable so far – although that’s not to say that it was cheap. But at least affordable – more in our price range…every once in a while we actually felt like we had gotten a great deal! Very pretty city, lots of neat monuments, renovations still occurring all over – it seems there is a distinct priority list of renovations that the city wants to occur to remove as many Soviet marks and facades as possible, but it is definitely coming along and the phrase “can’t judge a book by it’s cover” is a perfect motto for many of the buildings of this city.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Sarajevo, Bosnia i Herzegovina - June 27 & 28, 2008
Click on this photo to see our album:
I wanted to give myself a day to process my thoughts and reflections from our visit to Bosnia and the beautiful town of Sarajevo. I had intended to write on the train from Sarajevo to Budapest, but the train was miserable and making myself hotter by having a warm laptop in my lap was not an option. Entering Bosnia was one of the most relaxed border checks I have ever encountered. Our passports were not even stamped. Some people just waved their ID card at the patrolman. As we entered the country I nearly immediately noticed an increase of abandoned buildings – many of which were not just abandoned, but were demolished – caved in or hollowed out with trees and shrubs growing out through the windows. We passed many cemetaries that seemed very full, but were also very unkempt – with grass growing higher than many of the stones. We also passed many, many, many works in progress and buildings at various stages of construction.
The randomness of which buildings were damaged was especially apparent. We saw a beautiful church – perfect, pristine, intact – juxtaposed with the connecting fellowship hall that was completely hollowed out and destroyed. We noticed that abandoned buildings often occurred in strings, with five or six all in a row. As we drove through Mostar, the effects of war were especially noticeable compared to the countryside and a large number of the buildings were damaged. On one of the main streets our bus drove us down we saw a cafe, a clothing shop, a shell of a building in which the only living things were trees and birds, a pub, a shoe store...
Now I must mention that Daniel really gave me free reign while planning this trip. I told him what I was planning along the way – but as he wasn't the one researching each step, he wasn't processing all the details the same way I was. Now, with that in mind – I definitely told him we would be going to Bosnia and I did mention that there were still visible signs of the war that occurred over a decade ago. But I guess it hadn't processed. The look on his face as we drove into the next city of our vacation – a city that was full of bullet holes and bombed out buildings and piles of rubble and barbed wire fences... well his face was priceless. But his trust in me was unwaivering (I think), and I quickly won him over once we arrived with a walk through the city and a yummy Bosnian meal.
After surviving our bus ride – which was supposed to be seven hours, but took eight, we finally arrived at the bus stop. We immediately sought an ATM and got some BAM out. :) Bosnia and Herzegovina are two different regions. Bosnia's capital is Sarajevo, Herzegovina's capital is Mostar. The country is most frequently seen abbreviated at BiH (the “i” being like our “and”). Money is noted on the world market as BAM, but frequently referred to as KM (Konvertible Markas). The country is also abbreviated as “Ba” sometimes – like on websites.
Anyway, we reached the bus stop, got some BAM, and hailed a taxi. About ten bucks later we found ourselves at Hotel Michele – which ended up being a fabulous choice – a little pricey – but by far the nicest room we've ever had in our lives. It was our sanctuary. We also later found out that Richard Gere had stayed in the apartment above us, Michael Moore in the apartment across from us, and Steve Buscemi had stayed in our apartment. (Yes, the aparmtent really was that nice). The front desk was wonderful, very helpful and welcoming, and whisked us upstairs to our gorgeous room. Our room was larger than our own apartment – all hard wood and full of furniture you usually find roped off in palaces or museums. We spent the first five minutes standing in amazement and trying to figure out which of the fifty light switches did what. We realized we had gotten in just in time – because for the first time of our trip, it started storming. Not just thunderstorming, but actually hailing almost quarter size hail. And that was it for our hot weather. The temperature dropped to sixty and we were in heaven.
We showered while it stormed – finally cool after our days in sweaty Hvar and the dreadful bus ride, we were ready to explore! We discovered that we were two or three blocks from the old town area that is open only to pedestrians and includes lots and lots of little shops. We walked down towards the water and City Hall and made our way to a restaurant called Inat Kuca that our hotel had recommended to us. The restaurant served authentic Bosnian dishes and was wonderful. I ate a dish called “dolmas” which was vegetables (peppers, onions, and rolled herb leaves) stuffed with meat and rice and Daniel got a dish that was the equivalent of the Tour of Italy at Olive Garden, giving us a tour of Bosnian food from Inat Kuca (some dolmas, sis kabob, and other things). The food was excellent. I will also mention that my excitement continued to heighten, because as we ate dinner, one of the calls to prayer began to echo through the city from the loudspeakers of some of the minarets. We had made it to Sarajevo and I was loving it!
We headed in fairly early and got a good nights sleep so that we would be ready for a full day of exploring. We woke up early – had an incredibly fancy breakfast, and set out to see what we could. In daylight we realized that our hotel truly was an oasis amidst a row of buildings that had been severely damaged. The building directly beside ours was uninhabitable, the one beside that was a pile of rubble, the one beside that was standing and functional – but barely. We passed a tall apartment building on the way to the main road and realized that some of the stories were missing chunks of their exterior walls – we could see into some of the people's apartments as they drank coffee and read the newspaper. We walked down the road past a building chock full of bullet holes – listening to several different instruments practicing all at one – and realized at the bottom that it was actually a music academy.
We wandered through one of the main bazaars, stepped into the Cathedral of Jesus' Sacred Heart, and signed up for a tour of the Tunnel Museum at the tourist center. We spent a few hours wondering around, checking out the Kazandziluk road full of copper, nickel, and silver pieces and looking at the City Hall/National Library that lost over 90% of its books during an attack and is currently under rennovation. The City Hall's architecture is extremely beautiful and we could definitely see how beautiful a building it once was – but the damage was extremely evident, and though under rennovation, it was very obvious that there was a tremendous amount of work to be done. From there we headed down to the Latin Bridge, which is very close to the sight where Austria-Hungary's Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914...hopefully you know what happened after that... We took pictures of the plaque marking the spot and went into the museum that had the pistol used by Gavrilo Princips and some other items of the Black Hand conspirators. Good pictures for a history teacher to have.
We ate a quick lunch of cevapi – pita and sausage, and headed on to the tourist center to meet our tour guide. We were sent with eight other English speaking tourists down two or three blocks to meet up with a man named Tak who would serve as our escort to the Tunnel Museum. The tour included transportation, guided information, and admittance to the museum. During Bosnia's quest for independence – a war from 1992-1995, Sarajevo became beseiged by the Serbains and the city itself because nearly surrounded. The city was essentially bottlenecked, with a very narrow corridor linking the city to the rest of free Bosnia. This narrow corridor was their only hope to receive supplies, food, weapons, etc. The corridor linked up into the Olympic mountains – in which their was one road that remained open to connect them to the other side of the mountain pass. Now, this was a very modern war and the Serbians has sniper rifles, night vision, and a number of other tools that empowered them to shoot anything that moved along the corridor; thus inhibiting any supplies from reaching Sarajevo. During 1993, (a year in which our guide told us was a year in which the entire city went with no electricity), a tunnel was built by a group of volunterrs that ran underground for 800 meters through the narrow passage, linking the city of Sarajevo to a series of houses by the mountain pass. During the war the tunnel shuttled over 4,000 people a day from one side to the other, along with millions of pounds of essential goods to keep the city running. Our guide said he actually had to use the tunnel to leave the city for a while, but as a fifteen year old male who was expected to serve in the military at seventeen he only received a one month visa to go to the other side.
As part of our tour we drove through the city as our guide pointed out various buildings and their relevance during the war. As we approached sniper row he explained that the Holiday Inn was the location where all of the journalists and UN workers stayed and it was the only building from which no one died. He told us that during the seige supplies were extraordinarily low and that it was difficult to find necessary supplies without leaving your home – but, sniper row was a very difficult place to need to leave your home. He pointed out the one section of the city that had big trees older than thirteen years old and said the city government had protected those few trees, but all other trees were cut down at some point and burned for fuel during the long winters. He discussed the conditions of the rows and rows and rows of apartments that looked very similar to the aparmtnets in Croatia – essentially tenements. Tak explained that the aparmtnes rose up as homes to accommodate factory wokers – but that after the war the factories oved and unemployment was especially high.
We continued on through the city and eventually reahced the tunnel museum near the airport. Homes were used on each side to serve as entrance and exit points – to offer shelter as you came up out of the tunnel. We entered the home and went down to a bunker like area to watch a twenty minute film. The film had all first hand footage and showed various artillary attacks on the city, cars flying down sniper ally, city hall burning with the national library's contents inside, etc; the second half showed the interior of the tunnel (which was very narrow and not tall enough for anyone to stand up straight in) and soldiers and civilians using the tunnel to bring goods and wounded soldiers back and forth. The footage itself was quite good, but there was no narration or any form of guidance to explain what you were watching.
From there we were invited to walk through a 20 or 30 foot section of the tunnel, so see it first hand. The tunnel had many problems with water leakage and was difficult to maintain, so only part of it has fully been preserved. There were tracks at the bottom for the little carts they would use as gourneys to transport the wounded soldiers out of the city. They had a large map with the boundaries of the Serbian and Bosnian military forces clearly marked to better explain the “bottle-neck seige” I attempted to explain earlier. Our guide used a little stick to show us where everyone was situated, as well as sniper ally and how Sarajevo is kind of in a bowl that was surrounded by Serbians on the hills. He also pointed out some of the mountains that the Bosnians filled with land mines to make it more difficult to traverse. He pointed to one mountain and said - “This one is so full of land mines we can't even think about trying to remove all of them. We'll wait one hundred years and then start using the mountain again...”
After that we went upstairs and saw different artifacts from the war – some of the different kinds of carts, some old artillery, and lots and lots of pictures. Their were lots of pictures from the war and further demonstrating the use of the tunnel, and there was also a wall full of pictures of famous people who had visited the tunnel with lots of letters and notes from political officials and diplomats. We saw pictures of John McCain, Michael Moore, Jeremy Irons (voice of Scar), Daniel Craig (new James Bond), Richard Gere, and Fred Thompson, as well as pictures and letters from the US Ambassadors to Bosnia and their families from over the past decade.
The tunnel musuem was definitely one of my favorite things that we did in Sarajevo – and I agree with Daniel whole-heartedly that our tour really made it all click and helped us really understand what we were seeing. Our hotel had tried to make it sound like it was too far away and not worth doing, but the tourist office was very helpful and contrary to what our hotel said, it took about 30 minutes to drive out each way and the trip was well worth it.
Next, I really wanted to go into one of the mosques – but I was in shorts and a t-shirt...which wasn't really acceptable. So, we went back to the apartment and relaxed for a little bit, got our stuff together (I have a black pull on skirt and a sarong to cover my head and arms for religious sites we're going to visit on the Holocaust trip), and headed back out. We got to squeeze in a trip to the Gazi Husrevbeg Mosque before it closed – which was very beautiful. Daniel got to stand there while I had to cover my legs, arms, and hair. We lucked out because our guide needed to be somewhere else, so he let us in and we got to take our time and explore on our own.
We spent the rest of the evening walking through markets and further exploring the city. I think I have a soft spot for countries and cities that have overcome adversity. The have a more palpable spirit that the others and I definitely thought this was the case in Sarajevo. I was romanced by the beautiful markets, the wonderfully delicious food, the beautiful mosques, churches, and synagogues, the courteousness of the people, and the lilting voice that emanated from the minarets. One of the continual themes of Bosnia is “making it work” and working with what you have. Another is that it's all a work in progress...the whole city is a laundry list of reconstruction projects – but they really and truly are working on it, it's just going to take a long time. It seems to be a combination of need for money, organizational issues, and the sheer number of projects that inhibit speedy reconstruction. And yet, there's the spunk, the perseveriance and belief that, no matter how long it takes, we will overcome it, we will reconstruct it, we will rebuild it, and as the cemetaries echo from the hills and as it commands on the plaque of Sarajevo's City Hall, “Do Not Forget!”
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| Sarajevo, Bosnia i Herzegovin |
I wanted to give myself a day to process my thoughts and reflections from our visit to Bosnia and the beautiful town of Sarajevo. I had intended to write on the train from Sarajevo to Budapest, but the train was miserable and making myself hotter by having a warm laptop in my lap was not an option. Entering Bosnia was one of the most relaxed border checks I have ever encountered. Our passports were not even stamped. Some people just waved their ID card at the patrolman. As we entered the country I nearly immediately noticed an increase of abandoned buildings – many of which were not just abandoned, but were demolished – caved in or hollowed out with trees and shrubs growing out through the windows. We passed many cemetaries that seemed very full, but were also very unkempt – with grass growing higher than many of the stones. We also passed many, many, many works in progress and buildings at various stages of construction.
The randomness of which buildings were damaged was especially apparent. We saw a beautiful church – perfect, pristine, intact – juxtaposed with the connecting fellowship hall that was completely hollowed out and destroyed. We noticed that abandoned buildings often occurred in strings, with five or six all in a row. As we drove through Mostar, the effects of war were especially noticeable compared to the countryside and a large number of the buildings were damaged. On one of the main streets our bus drove us down we saw a cafe, a clothing shop, a shell of a building in which the only living things were trees and birds, a pub, a shoe store...
Now I must mention that Daniel really gave me free reign while planning this trip. I told him what I was planning along the way – but as he wasn't the one researching each step, he wasn't processing all the details the same way I was. Now, with that in mind – I definitely told him we would be going to Bosnia and I did mention that there were still visible signs of the war that occurred over a decade ago. But I guess it hadn't processed. The look on his face as we drove into the next city of our vacation – a city that was full of bullet holes and bombed out buildings and piles of rubble and barbed wire fences... well his face was priceless. But his trust in me was unwaivering (I think), and I quickly won him over once we arrived with a walk through the city and a yummy Bosnian meal.
After surviving our bus ride – which was supposed to be seven hours, but took eight, we finally arrived at the bus stop. We immediately sought an ATM and got some BAM out. :) Bosnia and Herzegovina are two different regions. Bosnia's capital is Sarajevo, Herzegovina's capital is Mostar. The country is most frequently seen abbreviated at BiH (the “i” being like our “and”). Money is noted on the world market as BAM, but frequently referred to as KM (Konvertible Markas). The country is also abbreviated as “Ba” sometimes – like on websites.
Anyway, we reached the bus stop, got some BAM, and hailed a taxi. About ten bucks later we found ourselves at Hotel Michele – which ended up being a fabulous choice – a little pricey – but by far the nicest room we've ever had in our lives. It was our sanctuary. We also later found out that Richard Gere had stayed in the apartment above us, Michael Moore in the apartment across from us, and Steve Buscemi had stayed in our apartment. (Yes, the aparmtent really was that nice). The front desk was wonderful, very helpful and welcoming, and whisked us upstairs to our gorgeous room. Our room was larger than our own apartment – all hard wood and full of furniture you usually find roped off in palaces or museums. We spent the first five minutes standing in amazement and trying to figure out which of the fifty light switches did what. We realized we had gotten in just in time – because for the first time of our trip, it started storming. Not just thunderstorming, but actually hailing almost quarter size hail. And that was it for our hot weather. The temperature dropped to sixty and we were in heaven.
We showered while it stormed – finally cool after our days in sweaty Hvar and the dreadful bus ride, we were ready to explore! We discovered that we were two or three blocks from the old town area that is open only to pedestrians and includes lots and lots of little shops. We walked down towards the water and City Hall and made our way to a restaurant called Inat Kuca that our hotel had recommended to us. The restaurant served authentic Bosnian dishes and was wonderful. I ate a dish called “dolmas” which was vegetables (peppers, onions, and rolled herb leaves) stuffed with meat and rice and Daniel got a dish that was the equivalent of the Tour of Italy at Olive Garden, giving us a tour of Bosnian food from Inat Kuca (some dolmas, sis kabob, and other things). The food was excellent. I will also mention that my excitement continued to heighten, because as we ate dinner, one of the calls to prayer began to echo through the city from the loudspeakers of some of the minarets. We had made it to Sarajevo and I was loving it!
We headed in fairly early and got a good nights sleep so that we would be ready for a full day of exploring. We woke up early – had an incredibly fancy breakfast, and set out to see what we could. In daylight we realized that our hotel truly was an oasis amidst a row of buildings that had been severely damaged. The building directly beside ours was uninhabitable, the one beside that was a pile of rubble, the one beside that was standing and functional – but barely. We passed a tall apartment building on the way to the main road and realized that some of the stories were missing chunks of their exterior walls – we could see into some of the people's apartments as they drank coffee and read the newspaper. We walked down the road past a building chock full of bullet holes – listening to several different instruments practicing all at one – and realized at the bottom that it was actually a music academy.
We wandered through one of the main bazaars, stepped into the Cathedral of Jesus' Sacred Heart, and signed up for a tour of the Tunnel Museum at the tourist center. We spent a few hours wondering around, checking out the Kazandziluk road full of copper, nickel, and silver pieces and looking at the City Hall/National Library that lost over 90% of its books during an attack and is currently under rennovation. The City Hall's architecture is extremely beautiful and we could definitely see how beautiful a building it once was – but the damage was extremely evident, and though under rennovation, it was very obvious that there was a tremendous amount of work to be done. From there we headed down to the Latin Bridge, which is very close to the sight where Austria-Hungary's Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in 1914...hopefully you know what happened after that... We took pictures of the plaque marking the spot and went into the museum that had the pistol used by Gavrilo Princips and some other items of the Black Hand conspirators. Good pictures for a history teacher to have.
We ate a quick lunch of cevapi – pita and sausage, and headed on to the tourist center to meet our tour guide. We were sent with eight other English speaking tourists down two or three blocks to meet up with a man named Tak who would serve as our escort to the Tunnel Museum. The tour included transportation, guided information, and admittance to the museum. During Bosnia's quest for independence – a war from 1992-1995, Sarajevo became beseiged by the Serbains and the city itself because nearly surrounded. The city was essentially bottlenecked, with a very narrow corridor linking the city to the rest of free Bosnia. This narrow corridor was their only hope to receive supplies, food, weapons, etc. The corridor linked up into the Olympic mountains – in which their was one road that remained open to connect them to the other side of the mountain pass. Now, this was a very modern war and the Serbians has sniper rifles, night vision, and a number of other tools that empowered them to shoot anything that moved along the corridor; thus inhibiting any supplies from reaching Sarajevo. During 1993, (a year in which our guide told us was a year in which the entire city went with no electricity), a tunnel was built by a group of volunterrs that ran underground for 800 meters through the narrow passage, linking the city of Sarajevo to a series of houses by the mountain pass. During the war the tunnel shuttled over 4,000 people a day from one side to the other, along with millions of pounds of essential goods to keep the city running. Our guide said he actually had to use the tunnel to leave the city for a while, but as a fifteen year old male who was expected to serve in the military at seventeen he only received a one month visa to go to the other side.
As part of our tour we drove through the city as our guide pointed out various buildings and their relevance during the war. As we approached sniper row he explained that the Holiday Inn was the location where all of the journalists and UN workers stayed and it was the only building from which no one died. He told us that during the seige supplies were extraordinarily low and that it was difficult to find necessary supplies without leaving your home – but, sniper row was a very difficult place to need to leave your home. He pointed out the one section of the city that had big trees older than thirteen years old and said the city government had protected those few trees, but all other trees were cut down at some point and burned for fuel during the long winters. He discussed the conditions of the rows and rows and rows of apartments that looked very similar to the aparmtnets in Croatia – essentially tenements. Tak explained that the aparmtnes rose up as homes to accommodate factory wokers – but that after the war the factories oved and unemployment was especially high.
We continued on through the city and eventually reahced the tunnel museum near the airport. Homes were used on each side to serve as entrance and exit points – to offer shelter as you came up out of the tunnel. We entered the home and went down to a bunker like area to watch a twenty minute film. The film had all first hand footage and showed various artillary attacks on the city, cars flying down sniper ally, city hall burning with the national library's contents inside, etc; the second half showed the interior of the tunnel (which was very narrow and not tall enough for anyone to stand up straight in) and soldiers and civilians using the tunnel to bring goods and wounded soldiers back and forth. The footage itself was quite good, but there was no narration or any form of guidance to explain what you were watching.
From there we were invited to walk through a 20 or 30 foot section of the tunnel, so see it first hand. The tunnel had many problems with water leakage and was difficult to maintain, so only part of it has fully been preserved. There were tracks at the bottom for the little carts they would use as gourneys to transport the wounded soldiers out of the city. They had a large map with the boundaries of the Serbian and Bosnian military forces clearly marked to better explain the “bottle-neck seige” I attempted to explain earlier. Our guide used a little stick to show us where everyone was situated, as well as sniper ally and how Sarajevo is kind of in a bowl that was surrounded by Serbians on the hills. He also pointed out some of the mountains that the Bosnians filled with land mines to make it more difficult to traverse. He pointed to one mountain and said - “This one is so full of land mines we can't even think about trying to remove all of them. We'll wait one hundred years and then start using the mountain again...”
After that we went upstairs and saw different artifacts from the war – some of the different kinds of carts, some old artillery, and lots and lots of pictures. Their were lots of pictures from the war and further demonstrating the use of the tunnel, and there was also a wall full of pictures of famous people who had visited the tunnel with lots of letters and notes from political officials and diplomats. We saw pictures of John McCain, Michael Moore, Jeremy Irons (voice of Scar), Daniel Craig (new James Bond), Richard Gere, and Fred Thompson, as well as pictures and letters from the US Ambassadors to Bosnia and their families from over the past decade.
The tunnel musuem was definitely one of my favorite things that we did in Sarajevo – and I agree with Daniel whole-heartedly that our tour really made it all click and helped us really understand what we were seeing. Our hotel had tried to make it sound like it was too far away and not worth doing, but the tourist office was very helpful and contrary to what our hotel said, it took about 30 minutes to drive out each way and the trip was well worth it.
Next, I really wanted to go into one of the mosques – but I was in shorts and a t-shirt...which wasn't really acceptable. So, we went back to the apartment and relaxed for a little bit, got our stuff together (I have a black pull on skirt and a sarong to cover my head and arms for religious sites we're going to visit on the Holocaust trip), and headed back out. We got to squeeze in a trip to the Gazi Husrevbeg Mosque before it closed – which was very beautiful. Daniel got to stand there while I had to cover my legs, arms, and hair. We lucked out because our guide needed to be somewhere else, so he let us in and we got to take our time and explore on our own.
We spent the rest of the evening walking through markets and further exploring the city. I think I have a soft spot for countries and cities that have overcome adversity. The have a more palpable spirit that the others and I definitely thought this was the case in Sarajevo. I was romanced by the beautiful markets, the wonderfully delicious food, the beautiful mosques, churches, and synagogues, the courteousness of the people, and the lilting voice that emanated from the minarets. One of the continual themes of Bosnia is “making it work” and working with what you have. Another is that it's all a work in progress...the whole city is a laundry list of reconstruction projects – but they really and truly are working on it, it's just going to take a long time. It seems to be a combination of need for money, organizational issues, and the sheer number of projects that inhibit speedy reconstruction. And yet, there's the spunk, the perseveriance and belief that, no matter how long it takes, we will overcome it, we will reconstruct it, we will rebuild it, and as the cemetaries echo from the hills and as it commands on the plaque of Sarajevo's City Hall, “Do Not Forget!”
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Checking in from Sarajevo
Sarajevo has been absolutely wonderful -- by far one of my favorites. We have a twelve hour train ride to Budapest in the early am to formulate our thoughts and write our next blog...so we're working on it. Daniel has asked me to mention that each of the smaller square pictures in the blog are actually picassa albums - so if you click on them you will find quite a few pictures.
The weather has cooled, our hotel has been amazing, and the city is just wonderful. Much more information to come - we've seen bullet riddled buildings, bazaars, mosques, the site where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and much more - but for now I am off to sleep for a few hours before we head off to Budapest! :)
The weather has cooled, our hotel has been amazing, and the city is just wonderful. Much more information to come - we've seen bullet riddled buildings, bazaars, mosques, the site where Franz Ferdinand was assassinated and much more - but for now I am off to sleep for a few hours before we head off to Budapest! :)
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Hvar, Croatia - June 25 and 26, 2008
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| Hvar, Croatia - June 25-26, 2008 |
We are currently on a bus on our way to Sarajevo. We woke up very early this morning to shower and catch the 6:30 am ferry from Hvar to Split and then to take the bus from Split to Sarajevo. We are currently on the mountain roads between Mostar and Sarajevo. We have survived the temperature of our bus, the terrible traffic outside of Split, the twisty, turny roads around Markarska, the Bosnian-Croatian border, and the jarring views of the war torn city of Mostar.
As we have left Western Europe this past week and entered the Balkans we certainly have seen a transition in the conditions of the buildings, facilities, transportation, etc. Though I will admit we only viewed Slovenia from the lens of the train tracks – and I know how scary New Jersey can look from the train headed into New York City, I was a little surprised to see such a stark contrast in economies and living conditions between the West and Slovenia when Slovenia is a country who transitioned so well to the EU after 2004 that they were introduced to the euro in 2007 and are the only 2004 EU annexee to do so.
For lack of a better description – the Balkans have a “2nd World” feel to them. Brodarica was beautiful – a laid back Adriatic coastal town. The buildings weren't prime examples of sophisticated architecture – but neither are the buildings of Key Largo. It had a similar feel. It was a coastal town. The city in which the struggle to comfortably support the population was evident was Split. There were dozens and dozens of high rising apartments that were of a Soviet-met-Adriatic-style, the type of buildings you only see in communist or post-communist societies – the buildings are basically concrete tenements. I will admit that for a city that felt as dirty as Split did, there was little trash to be seen (nothing like the littered streets of Amsterdam). The tourist areas are very nice and well kept, but when you wander off the beaten path you get a much better idea of how the people are really living.
Wednesday morning we woke up and headed on to Hvar. We walked down our six flights of stairs (with only what was asbolutely needed for the night since we had the car...and six flights of stairs to hike up) and drove down to the ferry station to buy tickets. We safely returned the car and made our way down to the loading dock for the catamaran.
The catamaran was especially nice and only took an hour to quickly take us to the island of Hvar. Upon arrival we were bombarded by about a dozen different people all wanting to know if we needed accommodations for tonight. A lot of locals rent out their rooms and pick up travellers at the port – and some travellers rely on this to find a place to sleep for the night. After saying no about fifteen times and asking the right people the right questions I managed to find a man with our hotel shirt on who had a cart to drive our luggage arcross the harbor. The city is essentially a big “U” shape. The catamaran dropped us off at the upper tip of one side and we needed to walk to the upper tip of the other. Possible to do with luggage (we did it this morning), but much more fun to do without.
Hvar, Hvar is beautiful. It truly is right out of a postcard. The buildings line the U shaped harbor and hten stack up, as the island is mountainous. From our balcony we had a perfect view of the houses stacked up onto the hill and the city fortress on at the top. The Italian influence was undeniable as historically Venetian merchants had major trading ties with Hvar. I had been warned by a mainlander in Split that Hvar was more expensive, but as we set out for food it really wasn't any worse than Split.
Now, the ups and downs of Hvar. Ups? The city has a really fun spirit to it, very very pretty, and really felt like a vacation from our vacation. Downs? Our hotel had no air conditioning and it was 95 degrees outside with at least 90% humidity. We had a balcony but could not pick up a breeze to save us. We were on the top floor so the room was truly just baking and stifling. We went to reception to inquire about a fan and the clerk rudely told me (from behind a fan) that there weren't any available to guests.
So we set out to try to remedy our problem in some way. We checked another local hotel to see if we could save face and transfer over...but the next hotel was over 320 euros a night...far far more than our hotel or any hotel we have ever paid for has cost. We began walking to look for shops, if we could buy a fan, perhaps we could improve our situation...we stopped at the tourist info center to see where we could find a store to buy a fan – because stores are much more specialized in Europe. No Walmarts. (Not that that is a bad thing...)
The tourist office said it was actually Croatia's independence day and that all those kinds of stores were closed. Crap. We started checking the supermarkets – some of them have a beach section with touristy things in them – some even have flat screen TV's around the corner from the cereal isle. The third grocery store we found had a fan!!! They had three left and we bought one immediately for 14 dollars. (70 Kuna). Woohoo!
There was a little more than some assembly required, but Daniel managed and we decided that would have to do. If we got too hot otherwise we would take quick cold showers. We decided to get sunblocked up and head down for a dip in the Adriatic. The beaches here aren't our definition of beaches – picture Greece's coastline...jagged, rocky, sharp. Croatia's shore lines are the same way. We quickly discovered that trying to get in along the water's edge was a very bad idea. The rocks were sharp, the ledges were jagged, and after trying for a few minutes we relented and headed to the slightly more crowded pier. From the pier you could jump right in and then just pull yourself back out – so we settled for that.
We swam for quite a while – Daniel was pleasantly surprised to discover that some stretches of the beach (and don't forget by beach I mean rocks) are nudist beaches. Mainly cute topless girls and hairy, overweight old men in speedos. I think I got the short end of the deal. Because it's not sandy, the water is crystal clear and you can easily see 20 or 30 feet down, probably even deeper. When we swam in to get out, I tried to sitck my foot down to see if I could touch – big mistake. While I had looked to see if there was a rock beneath me to touch, I didn't notice that there was also a black/dark purple spiky sea urchin and I stepped right on top of it. I pulled my foot up right away and as I was trying to pull out some of the bigger spikes that were in my foot, I almost slammed my body into the pier – which I simultaneously realized was covered with a vertical wall of spiny sea urchins. I had a bit of a panic moment as I blurted out explitives and tried to swim away from the wall of spikes and nurse my foot. Daniel came to the rescue – although he took two little spikes to the toe and helped me stay afloat while I got the big spikes out and then helped me navigate to shore – because since we couldn't get up the pier we were going to have to climb out on the rocks without stepping on more urchins. The funny part of the story is actually when I was like..."Daniel, it got me, help!" (and showed him my foot) and he was like..."Beth, how on earth did you do that, here let me help you...OW!" (and then held up his foot to reveal two spikes in his toe)...
When stuck by sea urchin spines within a few minutes it starts burning and stinging – a lot like a jelly fish sting. So we weathered the burning and stinging sensations in my foot and Daniel's toe as I limped back to the hotel to tackle my foot with a pair of tweezers. I would love to say the spines just come right out but they don't. After picking for half an hour I had kinda gotten two or three out and decided to abandon the project. We had planned to spend the late afternoon walking through Hvar, but weren't really able. I took some IB profen and worked on some things and took a few hours off. We looked up info and online and decided not to side with the people who said rush to the doctor immediately, but rather the people who said - eh, leave em in, no big deal. I also read somewhere that not every mark is a spine (b/c I have ten to fifteen dark spots in my foot), but that a lot of the marks are just stains from the spines.
I will say that ultimately my foot is fine (by day 3 it didn't hurt at all) and it certainly didn't slow us down more than the few hours that we took off that afternoon. We went out that evening to watch the soccer game between Germany and Turkey and found ourselves at a tuna party. The restaurant had caught a forty kilo tuna that morning and had a special on tuna steaks so Daniel was sold. We spent our evening in a small room with our little table and a large table of ten or twelve Germans, all cheering Germany on – watching their very very exciting win of 3-2 in the last two minutes of the game. Watching the EuroCup in Europe has really been a lot of fun and it's been a great thing to do in the evenings. Daniel had some of the best tuna he's ever had in his life and I actually had my first real steak that I've ever gotten in Europe. On several occasions I have ordered things called “beef steak” but I've never actually gotten steak. I was very pleasantly surprised.
On Thursday we woke up pretty early because we were very hot and had not slept well. We ate breakfast and decided to look into some kind of boat excursion. After asking around we decided to rent a boat for the day! We went out to the store and bought a few snacks, two masks and a snorkel, went back to our room and did some serious sunblocking, and headed out for the day. The boat was due back by 7 pm. Our rental guy showed Daniel the basics, how to drive, anchor, etc, and a map of the local islands, inlets, and bays. We left his drivers license as collateral, paid the guy, and drove off.
The boat couldn't go very fast but we definitely enjoyed puttering around. We anchored off to the side of the main traffic lane and swam around for a little bit – althought getting back in the boat was very tricky (no ladder) – and actually took a fish flopping strategy. After getting in and out three or four times each by the end of the day we have found ourselves full of little sore spots and bruises, but it was a lot of fun. One of the times I actually slammed my forehead into the pole that held up our awning -- Daniel likened my expression to a bird flying into a window. The next stop was an inlet that had several really neat restaurants and a sand beach (the only in the area). Yay! No sea urchins! (Even though they are evidently a delicacy to the Italian families). We spent a few hours here and a few hours at another location snorkeling and checking out the few fish we could spot in the Adriatic. It was a really nice afternoon and the freedom to explore the different coves was really fun. We returned, de-salted in the shower, and headed downstairs to the sports bar and grill in our hotel to watch the semi-final football game between Spain and Russia. This game wasn't as exciting and once Spain was winning 3 to 0 we actually left to work on packing and organizing stuff in our room since we were leaving at 5:30 am.
Hvar? A wonderful, warm, friendly, laid-back, Adriatic port city. A city which would be even more wonderful if there weren't spiky sea urchins along every square foot of the coastline and if there were air conditioners or at the very least fans in the hotel rooms, restaurants, shops, etc. But, we really were glad we had decided to visit – the atmosphere was very unique and fun. And the view of the harbor at 5 am was very serene...and yet anticipatory of yet another vacation day as youth from the night club poured out into the streets at 5 am, loudly laughing and talking about their amazing time while fisherman prepared their boats to head out to find another tuna for another restaurant to have its own tuna party.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Safe arrival in Hvar and Safe return of the Rental Car :)
Checking in -- so the theme of our trip is when the hotel says there will be internet it's not there and when they say no internet available...they actually have internet.
We have safely reached Hvar and are enjoying it quite a bit -- it's a beautiful, beautiful port town. We had a nice one hour catamaran over and have been enjoying the afternoon here. We are off for a swim, but wanted to note that the rental car was returned safely, inspected in front of us, and cleared -- so there is no longer $20,000 pending on our credit card statement! Whew! :)
Off we go!
We have safely reached Hvar and are enjoying it quite a bit -- it's a beautiful, beautiful port town. We had a nice one hour catamaran over and have been enjoying the afternoon here. We are off for a swim, but wanted to note that the rental car was returned safely, inspected in front of us, and cleared -- so there is no longer $20,000 pending on our credit card statement! Whew! :)
Off we go!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Split, Croatia - June 24, 2008
Our Anniversary Picture
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| Split, Croatia -- June 24, 2006 |
Greetings from Split, Croatia :)
I am going to apologize in advance for any weird typing errors. Zs are very common here and take the place of the y on the keyboard -- they are actuallz switched. I still have yet to find the apostrophe...so here goes.
We have had quite an adventurous day. We slept in a little (we are really loving the sleep), enjoyed a nice breakfast, and hit the road to head to Split. It was a nice picturesque drive and we reached Split within the estimated time. Once we go to the city, however, it got more complicated...
We managed to navigate through the city and arrived in Podstrana (the seaside suburb just outside the city where our hotel is located), but then found it nearly impossible to find our hotel. We drove up and down the main road looking for Grzlaska something or the name of our hotel continually coming up drz. We turned down several eensy weensy scary looking side roads labeled with the same name as the road our villa was on only to end up doing a fifteen point turn to get out. We spoke to toothless men as well as guys who spoke no English at all and just talked verz loudlz at us in Croatian...halfway through our Odyessey my need to pee reached desperation and I resorted to seeking solace in someones garden and doing things that men do with much more ease than I. We eventually found our villa, but after a great deal of difficulty. Once we actuallz got here we fell in love with our view and our nice accommodations, but we certainlz have some interesting stories.
We spent the afternoon at Diocletians Palace, looking at really neat Roman ruins, caving and buying some beautiful suveniers, taking care of details like ferry times and bus schedules for our upcoming travel plans, and soaking in Split. It is still quite hot and the city itself seems pretty crowded -- the apartments we saw looked miserable, almost like tenaments. We have had more frustrations in Croatia, but when we succeed in completing a task we feel much more accomplished and successful... I will have to write more later -- it is later than I thought and we have a rental car to return in the morning and a ferry to a beautiful Adriatic island to catch... :)
Oh, and my rant -- Croatia hits the tourists where they can. If you ever thought Orlando tolls were bad...try a toll the equivalent of over 30 US dollars for their highway from the capital to Sibenik. Goodness. It was also over 30 US dollars to enter their National Park. Also a hard hit on the wallet.
Regardless -- we are still having a marvelous time and are very glad to be off the Euro. :)
Salzburg June 21, 2008 and Sibenik June 22-23, 2008
Written the night of June 23, 2008:
It is the eve of our departure from Sibenik, Croatia (also the eve of our second wedding anniversary) and I must admit that I am feeling extremely relaxed and content. Our big worry was whether or not we would get lost on our way from Zagreb to the Guesthouse Zlatna Ribica in Brodarica, Croatia – and we did so with ease. We are currently staying in a beautiful little Adriatic hotel with a brick walk down to the waterside, pretty Mediterranean olive, lime, and apple trees along with grape vines, and! our vehicle to freedom – our rental car!
Okay, so Saturday was a lot of fun. We woke up early, ate a wonderful breakfast at Sallerof and were picked up by a local tourist agency to go on our Sound of Music tour. We started in Mirabelle gardens in Salzburg, boarded a bus and were toured all throughout the city and the outer lying areas. We saw the front of the house used in the movie, the back of the house used in the movie, as well as the gazebo, the lane from “I have confidence” and when the kids are swinging through the trees, along with the church from the wedding, and many other things. We also traveled to the town of Mondsee and were able to sneak away from the group and take some beautiful pictures along the lake and mountains. All in all a good time. Beth bought into the cheesiness and Daniel was very well behaved and tolerated it all quite well.
After being dropped back off at Mirabelle gardens we took a few more pictures (of the tunnel, the fountain, and the steps) and were off to explore the city. We spent the afternoon exploring the interiors of the churches, catching a glimpse of the exterior of Mozart’s birthplace, and hiking the city wall to get a beautiful view of the city. Now, the only problem was that Saturday was extremely warm – beautifully clear and sunny, but very warm to be out and about from 9 am to 6 pm – especially when the majority of the stores and restaurants have no air conditioning. So, I discovered the best way to get Daniel to church is to let him discover that churches are literally the coolest buildings. We spent quite a while exploring nearly all of the local churches and cathedrals. Unfortunately, we did not realize quite how much there was to do and see when you hike up the city wall and walk along the top. We ended up feeling a little pressed for time and were continually concerned about making it up to the fortress in time for the dinner and Mozart concert we had already paid for… Thus, we walked very fast, hiked very quickly, and became very very hot. We arrived at dinner drenched and overheated only to discover that the room dinner was served in was rather warm. I would love to say we had a fabulously romantic dinner and that we relaxed and gazed out the window of the fortress looking at the mountains…but we were dying, the room was stifling, so we continually took turns going to the restrooms (which were cooler – and had icy water you could run on your hands and splash your face with). The old people at the dinner probably thought we had issues. It was pretty bad. And almost all our food was warm so we kept feeling hotter and hotter…
Luckily after dinner we had fifteen extra minutes to step outside. The sun was beginning to go down, the breeze was picking up, and we cooled off considerably and were able to feel much more comfortable in time for our concert. The concert was in a small room off to the side in the fortress – very much the type of concert you would have witnessed back then. It felt like a private performance and was performed by a string quarter (my favorite). Overall we really enjoyed ourselves and Daniel (the harsher critic) was very happy. After the concert we snuck off and snapped a few more pictures of the city at night and had a few minutes of panic as we realized we might have missed the last cable car down and might be stuck up in the fortress overnight…but then ran into the concert performers and knew we would be able to make it down from the high hill. We came home quite tired, relieved to catch the second to last bus out of the city, and returned to discover that the internet was down throughout the hotel. I do not like to admit my dependence on the internet, but when you expect to be able to check your mail and the emails coming in from family and friends one last time before you lose internet for a week, it is very disheartening. I was embarrassed to feel so emotional, but I felt crushed. After being in a world where most don’t speak English – or if they do it’s enough English to take your order or tell you where the train station is, emails from home are nice.
Sunday morning came early – we got up at 5 am to pack and get ready (and hoping the internet would be working so I could email a few upcoming accommodations to iron out last minute details, check the train schedule one last time, and check the Croatian Kroner exchange rate…but no luck.). We finished packing, convinced housekeeping to let us sneak in and grab breakfast early, paid our bill and left by 7:25 so we could catch the bus to the train station. Most days the train we need left nearly every hour, but today the train to Zagreb left at 9:04 and at 13:04. A large margin of time, so missing our morning train was not an option. Fortunately we caught our train and luckily chose the correct car because every single other car the we started with was disconnected at various stations and connected to other cars. Over the duration of our 7 hour train ride we went from being the first car in the line-up to being the middle to being the last, and our train had two entirely different dining cars during different parts of our trip. We had a nice cabin of our own for at least 6 of the seven hours and were able to each sprawl out over three seats a piece and sleep for hours. We spent over 30 minutes at the Croatian border as all of our names were read by the passport officials over their headpieces to central control and they made quite a few people change cars. The ultimate destination of our train was Beograde (Belgrade, Serbia) – so I knew we definitely didn’t want to miss our stop. We reached Zagreb about 30 minutes late, immediately went to the ATM, and then hailed a taxi to quickly get us to the airport to pick up our rental car. Our taxi driver was efficient, even though we think we might have been ripped off a little, and drove us to the airport in 25 minutes time. We quickly found our rental company and started up the paperwork.
The rental company informed us that they had just gotten the new cars for the season and we would be driving a brand new car – which meant that Daniel leaned in and said “So you mean, I can’t blame anything on the guy before me?” :) He definitely illicited a laugh from our agent. We had also researched and discovered that as long as we pay for the rental on our credit card, the rental will be insured – thus we could decline additional insurance from the rental company. ...But, this meant that we had to allow a 90,000 Kuna “reservation/hold” be placed on our credit card – which for is actually 20,000 US Dollars – the supposed value of the car. Gulp. (Not actuallz a charge...just a reservation to be charged if we ran off with the car or something...but nevertheless a little nerve wracking to agree to...) So far so good -- please keep your fingers crossed for us until around 11 am tomorrow which is when we will have hopefully safely surrendered the car. Our agent was extremely helpful – he gave us an excellent map and great advice. He told us that all accidents have to have a police report for insurance companies to help and that all traffic violations are infinitely cheaper if you offer to pay them on the spot. Good stuff to know. So, we were off to Sibenik. The next two concerns? 1 – Would we get lost or would we actually be able to find out hotel… 2 – Our hotel reception was going to be closed for at least an hour by the time we were going to be able to make it down there, I had emailed them a few days ahead about this, but had not received a response….we were worried we might end up sleeping in our car…
The drive was nice and easy. Well labeled, well marked, nice new car with a nice new car smell. We had a cute, silver, VW Polo – and Daniel drove it very well. We cruised at our nice 130 kilometer speed limit and made pretty good time. We made it all the way down to the road we would find our hotel off of without any problems and really the only stress once we made it there was just figuring out while hotel was ours – looking for names and numbers, etc. Not a biggy. We didn’t even have to turn around. We pulled up to our hotel and realized it was adjoined to a restaurant. We crossed our fingers and went inside to inquire if we were in the right place. Yes, we were – and the restaurant manager had our keys and would be happy to escort us to our room We did a mental happy dance. We followed him through the parking lots, past a lime tree and the waterfront, up a flight of stairs, and into a beautiful hotel room – that had a balcony almost the size of our room with an outside fridge, sink, and range, and an air conditioner on the inside. We bid him farewell and then physically did the happy dance! We had made it! It was beautiful! Oh! And the restaurant was open until 11!! (And we really hadn’t eaten all day).
Our meal was yummy – they had a salad bar and it was wonderful to get some fresh veggies in. We walked down by the water and even in the dark could see how ridiculously clear the Adriatic is. And we returned to our room with the AC cranked up and blissfully fell asleep.
We were naughty and slept in. We stopped at a local grocery store and picked up breakfast and food to picnic at Krka, and we were off to the Croatian National Park I had chosen to visit! Krka was absolutely beautiful – it’s a park that has a big long waterfall through the middle of it, with beautiful wooded paths over many of the rapids and a swimming area at the foot of the falls. The water was quite cold – but after the increasing temperatures in Salzburg and the hike down to the falls we were ready to cool off and it felt absolutely wonderful. We spent the whole afternoon in the park, picnicking, working our way down to Skradinski Buk (the main falls), finding a place to change, and swimming. We also chose to hike back up the steep 800 meter hill of the loose, rocky, footpath and once again saw absolutely no one – which was when we realized that the shuttle from the entrance to Skradinski Buk was either free…or we were the only stubbornly cheap people willing to endure the hike straight up.
On the way home we drove to the local grocery store and picked up ingredients for dinner! I was very excited to cook a meal on the little range we had on our balcony and enjoyed making the best out of the few kitchen utensils and pans we had. It certainly made me appreciate all the wonderful things we received as wedding gifts. I made a one skillet meal of chicken, onions, mushrooms, potatoes, and wine sauce and made some mini ravioli to go with it – a wonderful meal. We stayed in and ate dinner on the balcony with a beautiful view of the water and concluded our evening with a sunset swim.
Having a rental car and the ability to cook our own food has made it almost seem like we’re back home, as we suddenly have freedoms and abilities more associated with home. It was nice to break the city-touring mode and explore the country side. Krka was an absolutely beautiful national park and we really enjoyed the nice workout we got and the nice cold mountain water swim. Tomorrow we are off to Split for a night and then onto the island of Hvar for two more nights – so we have a few more days of Adriatic delight! It’s a different pace, nice and relaxed -- more vacation like in some ways. I’m very proud of my planning because it’s been a perfect way to break up our trip and add in variety.
I’m off to sleep – I’m finally getting lots of it – which is the other glorious thing that comes with summer. It is crazy to think I have almost a full month left over here… We reached the halfway mark of our trip today, so it really feels like we have another whole vacation left. And with my ramblings – I bid you farewell…
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| Salzburg! June 21, 2008 |
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| Sibenik, Croatia and Krka National Park - June 22 and 23, 2008 |
It is the eve of our departure from Sibenik, Croatia (also the eve of our second wedding anniversary) and I must admit that I am feeling extremely relaxed and content. Our big worry was whether or not we would get lost on our way from Zagreb to the Guesthouse Zlatna Ribica in Brodarica, Croatia – and we did so with ease. We are currently staying in a beautiful little Adriatic hotel with a brick walk down to the waterside, pretty Mediterranean olive, lime, and apple trees along with grape vines, and! our vehicle to freedom – our rental car!
Okay, so Saturday was a lot of fun. We woke up early, ate a wonderful breakfast at Sallerof and were picked up by a local tourist agency to go on our Sound of Music tour. We started in Mirabelle gardens in Salzburg, boarded a bus and were toured all throughout the city and the outer lying areas. We saw the front of the house used in the movie, the back of the house used in the movie, as well as the gazebo, the lane from “I have confidence” and when the kids are swinging through the trees, along with the church from the wedding, and many other things. We also traveled to the town of Mondsee and were able to sneak away from the group and take some beautiful pictures along the lake and mountains. All in all a good time. Beth bought into the cheesiness and Daniel was very well behaved and tolerated it all quite well.
After being dropped back off at Mirabelle gardens we took a few more pictures (of the tunnel, the fountain, and the steps) and were off to explore the city. We spent the afternoon exploring the interiors of the churches, catching a glimpse of the exterior of Mozart’s birthplace, and hiking the city wall to get a beautiful view of the city. Now, the only problem was that Saturday was extremely warm – beautifully clear and sunny, but very warm to be out and about from 9 am to 6 pm – especially when the majority of the stores and restaurants have no air conditioning. So, I discovered the best way to get Daniel to church is to let him discover that churches are literally the coolest buildings. We spent quite a while exploring nearly all of the local churches and cathedrals. Unfortunately, we did not realize quite how much there was to do and see when you hike up the city wall and walk along the top. We ended up feeling a little pressed for time and were continually concerned about making it up to the fortress in time for the dinner and Mozart concert we had already paid for… Thus, we walked very fast, hiked very quickly, and became very very hot. We arrived at dinner drenched and overheated only to discover that the room dinner was served in was rather warm. I would love to say we had a fabulously romantic dinner and that we relaxed and gazed out the window of the fortress looking at the mountains…but we were dying, the room was stifling, so we continually took turns going to the restrooms (which were cooler – and had icy water you could run on your hands and splash your face with). The old people at the dinner probably thought we had issues. It was pretty bad. And almost all our food was warm so we kept feeling hotter and hotter…
Luckily after dinner we had fifteen extra minutes to step outside. The sun was beginning to go down, the breeze was picking up, and we cooled off considerably and were able to feel much more comfortable in time for our concert. The concert was in a small room off to the side in the fortress – very much the type of concert you would have witnessed back then. It felt like a private performance and was performed by a string quarter (my favorite). Overall we really enjoyed ourselves and Daniel (the harsher critic) was very happy. After the concert we snuck off and snapped a few more pictures of the city at night and had a few minutes of panic as we realized we might have missed the last cable car down and might be stuck up in the fortress overnight…but then ran into the concert performers and knew we would be able to make it down from the high hill. We came home quite tired, relieved to catch the second to last bus out of the city, and returned to discover that the internet was down throughout the hotel. I do not like to admit my dependence on the internet, but when you expect to be able to check your mail and the emails coming in from family and friends one last time before you lose internet for a week, it is very disheartening. I was embarrassed to feel so emotional, but I felt crushed. After being in a world where most don’t speak English – or if they do it’s enough English to take your order or tell you where the train station is, emails from home are nice.
Sunday morning came early – we got up at 5 am to pack and get ready (and hoping the internet would be working so I could email a few upcoming accommodations to iron out last minute details, check the train schedule one last time, and check the Croatian Kroner exchange rate…but no luck.). We finished packing, convinced housekeeping to let us sneak in and grab breakfast early, paid our bill and left by 7:25 so we could catch the bus to the train station. Most days the train we need left nearly every hour, but today the train to Zagreb left at 9:04 and at 13:04. A large margin of time, so missing our morning train was not an option. Fortunately we caught our train and luckily chose the correct car because every single other car the we started with was disconnected at various stations and connected to other cars. Over the duration of our 7 hour train ride we went from being the first car in the line-up to being the middle to being the last, and our train had two entirely different dining cars during different parts of our trip. We had a nice cabin of our own for at least 6 of the seven hours and were able to each sprawl out over three seats a piece and sleep for hours. We spent over 30 minutes at the Croatian border as all of our names were read by the passport officials over their headpieces to central control and they made quite a few people change cars. The ultimate destination of our train was Beograde (Belgrade, Serbia) – so I knew we definitely didn’t want to miss our stop. We reached Zagreb about 30 minutes late, immediately went to the ATM, and then hailed a taxi to quickly get us to the airport to pick up our rental car. Our taxi driver was efficient, even though we think we might have been ripped off a little, and drove us to the airport in 25 minutes time. We quickly found our rental company and started up the paperwork.
The rental company informed us that they had just gotten the new cars for the season and we would be driving a brand new car – which meant that Daniel leaned in and said “So you mean, I can’t blame anything on the guy before me?” :) He definitely illicited a laugh from our agent. We had also researched and discovered that as long as we pay for the rental on our credit card, the rental will be insured – thus we could decline additional insurance from the rental company. ...But, this meant that we had to allow a 90,000 Kuna “reservation/hold” be placed on our credit card – which for is actually 20,000 US Dollars – the supposed value of the car. Gulp. (Not actuallz a charge...just a reservation to be charged if we ran off with the car or something...but nevertheless a little nerve wracking to agree to...) So far so good -- please keep your fingers crossed for us until around 11 am tomorrow which is when we will have hopefully safely surrendered the car. Our agent was extremely helpful – he gave us an excellent map and great advice. He told us that all accidents have to have a police report for insurance companies to help and that all traffic violations are infinitely cheaper if you offer to pay them on the spot. Good stuff to know. So, we were off to Sibenik. The next two concerns? 1 – Would we get lost or would we actually be able to find out hotel… 2 – Our hotel reception was going to be closed for at least an hour by the time we were going to be able to make it down there, I had emailed them a few days ahead about this, but had not received a response….we were worried we might end up sleeping in our car…
The drive was nice and easy. Well labeled, well marked, nice new car with a nice new car smell. We had a cute, silver, VW Polo – and Daniel drove it very well. We cruised at our nice 130 kilometer speed limit and made pretty good time. We made it all the way down to the road we would find our hotel off of without any problems and really the only stress once we made it there was just figuring out while hotel was ours – looking for names and numbers, etc. Not a biggy. We didn’t even have to turn around. We pulled up to our hotel and realized it was adjoined to a restaurant. We crossed our fingers and went inside to inquire if we were in the right place. Yes, we were – and the restaurant manager had our keys and would be happy to escort us to our room We did a mental happy dance. We followed him through the parking lots, past a lime tree and the waterfront, up a flight of stairs, and into a beautiful hotel room – that had a balcony almost the size of our room with an outside fridge, sink, and range, and an air conditioner on the inside. We bid him farewell and then physically did the happy dance! We had made it! It was beautiful! Oh! And the restaurant was open until 11!! (And we really hadn’t eaten all day).
Our meal was yummy – they had a salad bar and it was wonderful to get some fresh veggies in. We walked down by the water and even in the dark could see how ridiculously clear the Adriatic is. And we returned to our room with the AC cranked up and blissfully fell asleep.
We were naughty and slept in. We stopped at a local grocery store and picked up breakfast and food to picnic at Krka, and we were off to the Croatian National Park I had chosen to visit! Krka was absolutely beautiful – it’s a park that has a big long waterfall through the middle of it, with beautiful wooded paths over many of the rapids and a swimming area at the foot of the falls. The water was quite cold – but after the increasing temperatures in Salzburg and the hike down to the falls we were ready to cool off and it felt absolutely wonderful. We spent the whole afternoon in the park, picnicking, working our way down to Skradinski Buk (the main falls), finding a place to change, and swimming. We also chose to hike back up the steep 800 meter hill of the loose, rocky, footpath and once again saw absolutely no one – which was when we realized that the shuttle from the entrance to Skradinski Buk was either free…or we were the only stubbornly cheap people willing to endure the hike straight up.
On the way home we drove to the local grocery store and picked up ingredients for dinner! I was very excited to cook a meal on the little range we had on our balcony and enjoyed making the best out of the few kitchen utensils and pans we had. It certainly made me appreciate all the wonderful things we received as wedding gifts. I made a one skillet meal of chicken, onions, mushrooms, potatoes, and wine sauce and made some mini ravioli to go with it – a wonderful meal. We stayed in and ate dinner on the balcony with a beautiful view of the water and concluded our evening with a sunset swim.
Having a rental car and the ability to cook our own food has made it almost seem like we’re back home, as we suddenly have freedoms and abilities more associated with home. It was nice to break the city-touring mode and explore the country side. Krka was an absolutely beautiful national park and we really enjoyed the nice workout we got and the nice cold mountain water swim. Tomorrow we are off to Split for a night and then onto the island of Hvar for two more nights – so we have a few more days of Adriatic delight! It’s a different pace, nice and relaxed -- more vacation like in some ways. I’m very proud of my planning because it’s been a perfect way to break up our trip and add in variety.
I’m off to sleep – I’m finally getting lots of it – which is the other glorious thing that comes with summer. It is crazy to think I have almost a full month left over here… We reached the halfway mark of our trip today, so it really feels like we have another whole vacation left. And with my ramblings – I bid you farewell…
Friday, June 20, 2008
Grodig, Austria -- June 20, 2008
Okay! I am making this one quick! :) We are currently in Grodig, Austria -- a suburb just outside of Salzburg. We are staying in a positively delightful little lodge called Sallerof and have far more comfortable digs than we ever could have afforded in Salzburg. Tomorrow we are going on the Sound of Music tour, spending our afternoon wandering the streets of Salzburg, and are then off to a Mozart dinner and concert in the Hohensalzburg fortress! :) Very very very excited!
Once we actually made it out to Grodig today we decided to spend our afternoon exploring this little town -- very quaint and pretty. Our major expedition of the afternoon was a really neat cable car ride up the side of the nearest peak -- which had a fabulous panorama view of the nearby mountains and villages!
That's all for now -- we've tried to update as much as we could tonight. We're going incommunicado as we head into Croatia. Til then --
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| Grodig, Austria (Suburb of Salzburg) June 20, 2008 |
Once we actually made it out to Grodig today we decided to spend our afternoon exploring this little town -- very quaint and pretty. Our major expedition of the afternoon was a really neat cable car ride up the side of the nearest peak -- which had a fabulous panorama view of the nearby mountains and villages!
That's all for now -- we've tried to update as much as we could tonight. We're going incommunicado as we head into Croatia. Til then --
Munich and the Neuschwanstein Castle! June 18-19, 2008
Written on the morning of June 20, 2008:
Ah, so as I sit on a train to Salzburg listening to my Sound of Music soundtrack (and getting very very excited!), we are surrounded by jubilant German football fans who are celebrating their win in the Euro Cup quarter finals last night. We have absolutely loved Munich – here's why --
We arrived by train, a little late, as we had slept in a bit in the castle. We took the S-Bahn three stops to Isartoplatz and dragged our luggage a few blocks over the larger German block sidewalks and arrived at Pension Beck. Our hotel was pretty nice, great location and great price. We got settled in and set off to find dinner. I had read that there was a great restaurant in the middle of the English Garden so we decided to head North. The English Garden is the biggest city-owned park in Europe and is absolutely beautiful. Lots and lots to do from laying out nude to playing frisbee, to riding the equastrian trails, etc. After walking for a few minutes we heard the sound of rushing water and went to check it out. We discovered that not only was there a fast paced river running through the park, but that as it entered the park through a bridge the water was tumultuous enough that you could go surfing! There were about five or six guys in wetsuits taking turns leaping off the edge of the river bank, surfing the water until they wiped out and swam for shore while the next guy leapt out into the river. Awesome!
We found the restraunt we were looking for and enjoyed a traditional Munchen meal, and set out to explore the rest of the city. We quickly found one of the city squares – Marianplatz, took lots of pictures, found marzipan icecream for Beth (!!!), and made our way to the HaufBraus House – which did not disappoint. The beer hall was full of rowdy, good-spirited tourists along with a fun, more traditional German quartet.
The next morning we set out for Neuschwanstein Castle (yes, the Disney Castle). It was a longer train ride out than we had anticipated but proved to be well worth it. We got to look at more German countryside as we neared the Bavarian Alps. Upon arrival in Fussen we had to take a fifteen minute bus ride that was so full of people it was standing room only. We bought tickets for the English tour of the castle and opted to hike up the mountain to reach the castle (no horse drawn buggy for us, it's not as romantic as it may sound). As we reached the top we realized how beautiful the view was going to be when we reached the top. Our best pictures came from the windows of the upper floors of the castle. There were beautiful views of clear mountain lakes, snowy mountains, summer waterfalls, just Beautiful.
On the way down the mountain I think I had my favorite meal so far – minced pork (basically like a pork meat loaf) smothered in mushrooms and creamy sauce with “egg noodles” - although their version of egg noodles is very different from ours. We caught a bus to the train and headed back feeling very accomplished.
We got back into Munich around 7:30 and had a light snack and then headed to the HaufBraus house again for once last taste of Munich – only to discover that there was a German football game on and that the HaufBraus House was defnitely the place to be to watch this event! The cheers were deafening as the German team scored two points in the first half – the whole place (which is full of over a thousand people,) went crazy. We managed to inch our way to a table that had a good view of a TV and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and the excitemment.
Munich is one of the cities that has its own category – like St. Petersburg and Vienna. Each are cities that we could never begin to explore all of the museums and sights within one visit. We struggled with whether or not to spend Thursday exploring the city or making a day trip to the castle – although ultimately I'm glad we chose to go out into the countryside, but Munich is certainly a city to which we will have to return! Overall the city had a very laid-back, but cheerful feel to it and you certainly could sense the grandeur, pride and strength of the city from the majestic buildings that lined each street. Munich was a very classy yet welcoming city...
And now, as the Germans launch into another rousing song, I am going to drown them out with my Sound of Music soundtrack and keep my eye on the mountains that are growing bigger and bigger as we approach Salzburg! :)
Ah, so as I sit on a train to Salzburg listening to my Sound of Music soundtrack (and getting very very excited!), we are surrounded by jubilant German football fans who are celebrating their win in the Euro Cup quarter finals last night. We have absolutely loved Munich – here's why --
 |
| Munich and Castle Neuschwans |
We arrived by train, a little late, as we had slept in a bit in the castle. We took the S-Bahn three stops to Isartoplatz and dragged our luggage a few blocks over the larger German block sidewalks and arrived at Pension Beck. Our hotel was pretty nice, great location and great price. We got settled in and set off to find dinner. I had read that there was a great restaurant in the middle of the English Garden so we decided to head North. The English Garden is the biggest city-owned park in Europe and is absolutely beautiful. Lots and lots to do from laying out nude to playing frisbee, to riding the equastrian trails, etc. After walking for a few minutes we heard the sound of rushing water and went to check it out. We discovered that not only was there a fast paced river running through the park, but that as it entered the park through a bridge the water was tumultuous enough that you could go surfing! There were about five or six guys in wetsuits taking turns leaping off the edge of the river bank, surfing the water until they wiped out and swam for shore while the next guy leapt out into the river. Awesome!
We found the restraunt we were looking for and enjoyed a traditional Munchen meal, and set out to explore the rest of the city. We quickly found one of the city squares – Marianplatz, took lots of pictures, found marzipan icecream for Beth (!!!), and made our way to the HaufBraus House – which did not disappoint. The beer hall was full of rowdy, good-spirited tourists along with a fun, more traditional German quartet.
The next morning we set out for Neuschwanstein Castle (yes, the Disney Castle). It was a longer train ride out than we had anticipated but proved to be well worth it. We got to look at more German countryside as we neared the Bavarian Alps. Upon arrival in Fussen we had to take a fifteen minute bus ride that was so full of people it was standing room only. We bought tickets for the English tour of the castle and opted to hike up the mountain to reach the castle (no horse drawn buggy for us, it's not as romantic as it may sound). As we reached the top we realized how beautiful the view was going to be when we reached the top. Our best pictures came from the windows of the upper floors of the castle. There were beautiful views of clear mountain lakes, snowy mountains, summer waterfalls, just Beautiful.
On the way down the mountain I think I had my favorite meal so far – minced pork (basically like a pork meat loaf) smothered in mushrooms and creamy sauce with “egg noodles” - although their version of egg noodles is very different from ours. We caught a bus to the train and headed back feeling very accomplished.
We got back into Munich around 7:30 and had a light snack and then headed to the HaufBraus house again for once last taste of Munich – only to discover that there was a German football game on and that the HaufBraus House was defnitely the place to be to watch this event! The cheers were deafening as the German team scored two points in the first half – the whole place (which is full of over a thousand people,) went crazy. We managed to inch our way to a table that had a good view of a TV and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and the excitemment.
Munich is one of the cities that has its own category – like St. Petersburg and Vienna. Each are cities that we could never begin to explore all of the museums and sights within one visit. We struggled with whether or not to spend Thursday exploring the city or making a day trip to the castle – although ultimately I'm glad we chose to go out into the countryside, but Munich is certainly a city to which we will have to return! Overall the city had a very laid-back, but cheerful feel to it and you certainly could sense the grandeur, pride and strength of the city from the majestic buildings that lined each street. Munich was a very classy yet welcoming city...
And now, as the Germans launch into another rousing song, I am going to drown them out with my Sound of Music soundtrack and keep my eye on the mountains that are growing bigger and bigger as we approach Salzburg! :)
Castle Liebenstein!!! June 17, 2008
Written the morning of June 18, 2008:
All I can say is: I SPENT THE NIGHT IN A GERMAN CASTLE!!!! :)
Castle Liebenstien was absolutely gorgeous! The castle had a wonderful medieval feel and an absolutely breakthaking view of the Rhine and the mountains. The bed had wonderful fluffy down blankets and pillows, the food was excellent, and we sat through the entire sunset on our window seat looking out at our fabulous view just soaking it all in. Now the story of how we actually reached the castle is an interesting one...
Now, for those of you who didn't know, one of the biggest unknowns of our trip was how we were actually going to get to the castle. The internet information was terrible. We woke up Tuesday morning in Brussels, showered, packed, ate a nice breakfast at our B&B and were all ready to go. We walked three blocks...once again dragging our luggage across the uneven cobblestone (heaven help our poor suitcases) and took the metro to Brussels Midi/Zuid. (South Brussels Station – their main one). We waited in line at the international kiosk. And bought two reserved seats on the train to Koln. We took that train from noon to 2:15 and then switched and road a train from Koln to Koblenz. We arrived in Koblenz hoping we would find some answers. The papers I had printed from the internet mentioned a ferry, but nothing at the Koblenz station suggested one existed. The information desk didn't speak English. So, we went to find a taxi. Our routine when we have all the luggage is to leave one of us to guard and the other goes out to hunt (whether it's Belgian waffles, reservations to Koblenz, a taxi driver who actually knows where we're going, etc...) I approached the taxi drivers:
Me: English?
Re: Little
Me: Castle Liebenstien?
Re: Where?!
Me: (Mentally – great, we're never going to find my castle!) Kamp-Bonhofen, Castle Liebenstien?
One of the five or six taxi drivers: Ah, yes....
Me: (Mental woohoo!!!)
They gave us an estimate – a little pricey, but at that point we were pretty lost and desparate. Of course I had picked to initially talk to the taxi driver who had the tiniest car, but we somehow crammed in all of our stuff and set off for the castle! We drove through beautiful German countryside – and saw lots of pretty little villages. We drove for a good twenty minutes or so, trying to have conversation with our cab driver. While trying to figure out how long he had lived in Koblenz, we discovered he had a thirty-six year old kinder and that he had lived in Koblenz for 25 years and Dresden before that. He was pretty old, so of course I then wanted to know if he was a child in Dresden when it was fire bombed...but I started confusing him and he wasn't watching the road as much, so I gave up. Soon after he told Daniel he needed to pull into the store to ask for directions. This is the best part.
So he pulls in and basically blocks a woman in to ask her if she knows of Castle Liebenstien. Ah yes, she smiles, holds up a finger and pulls a map of all the German castles out of her car – since everyone travels around with those... But she doesn't know how exactly to get there, so she turns to ask another gentleman who is putting his groceries in his car. He doesn't know, so the woman shouts across the parking lot. Two or three people answer back – so before we know it, our taxi driver is talking across the parking lot with five or six different people from the local village trying to discern where on earth the castle is...at this point Daniel and I are sitting in the cab laughing and laughing – what else can you do? By a stroke of luck one of the women leaving the grocery store says she lives up on the same mountain and that the taxi driver can follow her! Woohoo!
So our driver follows her and we make the poor guy drive us and all our luggage up these steep tiny winding mountain roads. We initially missed the turn, but ultimately reach the castle to discover an absolutely beautiful, breathtaking view of the Rhine River gently cutting a path through the green mountains with several little villages below all nestled into their section of the mountains. And even better, after we paid the driver and found ourselves standing atop this beautiful peak beside the castle, they had our names on the books and were excited to see us! They quickly brought us upstairs to room 5 and negotiated what time we were hoping to eat dinner.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon taking lots and lots of pictures, climbing to the top of one of the castle's towers, and staring out at our awesome view. We stayed in one of the two castles of Kamp-Bonhofen, the other castle was directly across from us and supposedly belonged to the original owners brother – so they were feuding castles. For dinner we got to sit at a window that gave a perfect view of the other castle and the Rhine and truly made us realize where we were.
We had a wonderful evening and had a delicious breakfast in the morning – it was really fun to wake up and realize where we actually were. The owners were very helpful and friendly and one of them drove us down to a local train station this morning. We have spent the rest of the day on the trains and should arrive in Munich in another two hours. Overall a fabulous experience – one of those fun realized fantasies :)
Since we've stayed in a different place the past two nights we're really excited to stay in just one spot for the next two nights – which probably doesn't sound like a very long time, but two nights is much more relaxing than just one. Onward we go! :)
All I can say is: I SPENT THE NIGHT IN A GERMAN CASTLE!!!! :)
 |
| Castle Liebenstei |
Castle Liebenstien was absolutely gorgeous! The castle had a wonderful medieval feel and an absolutely breakthaking view of the Rhine and the mountains. The bed had wonderful fluffy down blankets and pillows, the food was excellent, and we sat through the entire sunset on our window seat looking out at our fabulous view just soaking it all in. Now the story of how we actually reached the castle is an interesting one...
Now, for those of you who didn't know, one of the biggest unknowns of our trip was how we were actually going to get to the castle. The internet information was terrible. We woke up Tuesday morning in Brussels, showered, packed, ate a nice breakfast at our B&B and were all ready to go. We walked three blocks...once again dragging our luggage across the uneven cobblestone (heaven help our poor suitcases) and took the metro to Brussels Midi/Zuid. (South Brussels Station – their main one). We waited in line at the international kiosk. And bought two reserved seats on the train to Koln. We took that train from noon to 2:15 and then switched and road a train from Koln to Koblenz. We arrived in Koblenz hoping we would find some answers. The papers I had printed from the internet mentioned a ferry, but nothing at the Koblenz station suggested one existed. The information desk didn't speak English. So, we went to find a taxi. Our routine when we have all the luggage is to leave one of us to guard and the other goes out to hunt (whether it's Belgian waffles, reservations to Koblenz, a taxi driver who actually knows where we're going, etc...) I approached the taxi drivers:
Me: English?
Re: Little
Me: Castle Liebenstien?
Re: Where?!
Me: (Mentally – great, we're never going to find my castle!) Kamp-Bonhofen, Castle Liebenstien?
One of the five or six taxi drivers: Ah, yes....
Me: (Mental woohoo!!!)
They gave us an estimate – a little pricey, but at that point we were pretty lost and desparate. Of course I had picked to initially talk to the taxi driver who had the tiniest car, but we somehow crammed in all of our stuff and set off for the castle! We drove through beautiful German countryside – and saw lots of pretty little villages. We drove for a good twenty minutes or so, trying to have conversation with our cab driver. While trying to figure out how long he had lived in Koblenz, we discovered he had a thirty-six year old kinder and that he had lived in Koblenz for 25 years and Dresden before that. He was pretty old, so of course I then wanted to know if he was a child in Dresden when it was fire bombed...but I started confusing him and he wasn't watching the road as much, so I gave up. Soon after he told Daniel he needed to pull into the store to ask for directions. This is the best part.
So he pulls in and basically blocks a woman in to ask her if she knows of Castle Liebenstien. Ah yes, she smiles, holds up a finger and pulls a map of all the German castles out of her car – since everyone travels around with those... But she doesn't know how exactly to get there, so she turns to ask another gentleman who is putting his groceries in his car. He doesn't know, so the woman shouts across the parking lot. Two or three people answer back – so before we know it, our taxi driver is talking across the parking lot with five or six different people from the local village trying to discern where on earth the castle is...at this point Daniel and I are sitting in the cab laughing and laughing – what else can you do? By a stroke of luck one of the women leaving the grocery store says she lives up on the same mountain and that the taxi driver can follow her! Woohoo!
So our driver follows her and we make the poor guy drive us and all our luggage up these steep tiny winding mountain roads. We initially missed the turn, but ultimately reach the castle to discover an absolutely beautiful, breathtaking view of the Rhine River gently cutting a path through the green mountains with several little villages below all nestled into their section of the mountains. And even better, after we paid the driver and found ourselves standing atop this beautiful peak beside the castle, they had our names on the books and were excited to see us! They quickly brought us upstairs to room 5 and negotiated what time we were hoping to eat dinner.
We spent the remainder of the afternoon taking lots and lots of pictures, climbing to the top of one of the castle's towers, and staring out at our awesome view. We stayed in one of the two castles of Kamp-Bonhofen, the other castle was directly across from us and supposedly belonged to the original owners brother – so they were feuding castles. For dinner we got to sit at a window that gave a perfect view of the other castle and the Rhine and truly made us realize where we were.
We had a wonderful evening and had a delicious breakfast in the morning – it was really fun to wake up and realize where we actually were. The owners were very helpful and friendly and one of them drove us down to a local train station this morning. We have spent the rest of the day on the trains and should arrive in Munich in another two hours. Overall a fabulous experience – one of those fun realized fantasies :)
Since we've stayed in a different place the past two nights we're really excited to stay in just one spot for the next two nights – which probably doesn't sound like a very long time, but two nights is much more relaxing than just one. Onward we go! :)
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