Krakow, Poland--Day 10

We were ready and off on our tour of Auschwitz and Birkenau by 0930. It was a very sobering experience. We were with a small group of 13 people and on the 1-1/2 hour drive, we watched a video that explained the things we would see and what the people of that time experienced. It set the tone; at the end of the video, no one talked. There are no words to describe what we saw. I will always remember the eyes of people that looked out at us from their picture. I will remember the pictures of the little kids, they looked so innocent, and they didn't know they were going to die. It is hard to believe humanity can treat others in that way. It was very sad. There was a saying that caught my eye, 'Those that do not learn from the past will be condemned to relive it'.

Krakow, Poland--Day 9

We had quite the adventure by train from Prague to Krakow. We had purchased a sleeping car on line a month ago. When we got to the train the conductor said--'Car Two' so I saw a car with a 2 and we got on that car--but it wasn't a sleeping car. We asked the man again and he all but pushed us away and locked the door between trains behind us. We asked the woman who came around to look at our tickets, she was not helpful and was very abrupt and indicated we were to stay where we were. So we had that cubical to ourselves and we each took a narrow sofa bench and tried to sleep. We were not very successful as the train stopped every 30-40 minutes.

At 3:00 AM when another woman checked our tickets, we asked her about the sleeper car--she told us we should have been two cars up. When we got off the train, we glanced where we should have been and it was very nice, two bunk beds with linen, a sink, closet, table. Live and Learn. We did meet a young man from Kansas traveling alone and we talked with him when we got on the train and for the last hour of our eight hour trip.

When we got off the train at 0630, we tried to ask how to get bus tickets, but people were not helpful in that regard. We couldn't find anyone who spoke English, so we took a cab to the hotel where we met up with David and Lisa.

It is a lot of fun being here with them and an added bonus is that they can both converse in the language. In fact our tour guide today kept asking David if he was sure he wasn't Polish. Both David and Lisa do really well with the language.

Prague, Czech Republic--Day 8

We had a wonderful breakfast before setting off this morning. The breakfasts are so good that we seem to only eat two meals a day.

Today we didn't need to worry about rain. We headed off to the Dvorak where we learned more about Antonin Dvorak. It was very interesting. There was a lot there about, 'New World Symphony', which was written in New York.

Then we headed to the castle where we listened to a concert--piano and viola. After that we toured the castle, and the cathedrals, and towers. The castle was built in 870 and is the largest ancient castle in the world.

We had a three mile walk back to the hotel where we were storing our luggage. We stopped at a restaurant and had authentic Czech food--James had Svickova and I had gulas. James' was better. It was sweetened with carrots and sour cream. Mine had beef, and a gravy like sauce and two different kids of dumplings--one of which was Knedlicky.

Now it is a little after 9:00 PM and we are waiting for a taxi to pick us up at 9:40 and take us to the train station. Our train to Krakow leaves at 10:30 PM and we arrive in Krakow at 5:45 AM. Lauren's parents, David and Lisa are arriving in Krakow from Gdansk tonight and we will meet up with them in the morning.

Prague, Czech Republic--Day 7

We were up early this morning, had breakfast and drove to the train station where we turned in our rental. We were very happy to have the car for the first part of the trip, and grateful to not be driving now.

Stuttgart, Germany--Day 6

The first thing James said to me this morning is, 'if I give up 30 min at the Mercedes-Benz Museum (Wow, is he giving me 30 more minutes of shopping?) can we take just 30 minutes and walk through the Porsche Showroom? (*sigh*). So we walked through the showroom, and looked at the brand-new Porsches at the dealer--and then walked around all the Porches that had just arrived from an automobile club in Italy, and were now parked outside the Porsche Museum--at last we headed to the train and towards Mercedes-Benz Museum. First thing we did was take the tour through their factory. No pictures were allowed but we watched as people and huge robotic machinery that looked like people put together huge engines piece by piece. It was an incredible 90 minutes. We thought we were in the wrong tour; we went up to a woman and said, 'We're in the wrong tour, we need an English tour.' The woman looked at us startled and said, 'He is speaking English.' Oops, I guess he was--with a very heavy German accent!

Stuttgart, Germany--Day 5

We left Schwangau shortly after breakfast and headed north toward Stuttgart. The Alps as we drove away were breathtaking. I didn't know that we had already been on the autobahn a few days ago, (I just thought James was driving fast!) I thought we had to go through a gate or something; seems we don't. We were driving on the autobahn and we did it again today. The Mercedes we have is very comfortable and it cruises comfortably at 160-180 km/hour which 100-110 mph. We did that a lot with people still passing us on the left. James was able to get up to 199 km/hr which s about 125 mph, but although he really tried to get the car to go faster, he couldn't. It didn't feel like we were going that fast, maybe because everyone else was too. But let me tell you--when we had to slow down to 60 km/hr for construction, it felt like we were crawling!

We arrived in Stuttgart at 1230. (Poor GPS had to recalculate the time because of our speed.) we couldn't check into the hotel but we were able to park in the garage and walk to the Porsche Museum.

James looked just like a little boy on Christmas morning. He has wanted to come to the museum for a long time. I asked the lady how long it usually takes to go through the museum, she said 1-1/2 hours. There were 80 cars and it took James 4-1/2 hours. It was fun to watch him he was so excited! They gave us headsets and I kept having to push the numbers to hear about each car for him as he would forget in his excitement at looking at each car! We would still be there I am sure had I not done that.

Schwangau, Germany--Day Four

Happy 33rd Anniversary to us! It is hard to believe it has been that long; it sure has gone by fast!

We have had a wonderful day! After a substantial breakfast we started out by foot on a quest to cross the bridge above Neuschwanstein Castle. After a wrong turn that took us down to the waterfalls below the castle, we climbed back up the trail, followed it along and found ourselves looking down from the bridge, (overlooking the castle) that King Ludwig the second had built. The view from the bridge was amazing--but did not compare to what lay ahead of us.

For the next two hours we hiked (for the most part, just us) onward past the bridge hoping to see the castle from the top of the mountain. Many times we thought it impossible, but didn't want to turn around in case the view we searched for was just around the corner.

At last we arrived at the edge of the mountain. Before us was a 1000 foot shear drop down the side of the Pollat Gorge. The view was spectacular!

Swangau, Germany--Day Three

When when we woke up Tuesday morning, the first thing James said was that we needed to go back to Nafenhaus. He said, 'this is my last chance; I'Ve got to knock on the door, we didn't come 5,000 miles not to try.'

Our meals here were really good and as we would eat our breakfast and dinner in the dining area, there was a cat that would wander around and spend time over at our table. We would never feed it, but I did scratch him behind the ears as we left. Little did we realize, until we were checking out, the faux pax we were making.

Switzerland Day Two

When we got up at 0630; the mist and fog were down the mountains and James had heard it raining pretty hard during the night. We headed down to breakfast hoping we wouldn't get all wet on our adventures. Breakfast consisted of muesli, yogurt, paper thin cuts of meat and cheese as well as fresh fruit and bread. It was very good.

What? No Alps?

We are safely in Switzerland, very tired as neither one of us slept on the flight--which was uneventful.

We got our rental car--a Mercedes B180 Diesel. Aaron had spent a lot of time getting us a good deal on the car--even looking at the fine print. However, to our astonishment we were told that because we would be leaving the car in the Czech Republic, there was a $2000 franc charge (to transport it back) and because we were getting a GPS there was a $180 charge to transport it back. The lady worked with us and got us a German car (Didn't need to bring it back) we still had to do the GPS charge. Plus the $43 Francs to drive on the autobahn. It ended up a little more than what we had planned, but better than what we were told at first. Oh, I guess I should say we are leaving the car in Stuttgart Germany and taking a train from there to Prague. No Problem--we are having an adventure and enjoying ourselves!

Switzerland is beautiful with rolling brilliant green hills and beautiful lakes. The trees look like they could be Pacific Northwest transplants. The homes all have that Swiss look to them. There are a lot of older buildings in the city of Zurich as well as out in the country here in Kloster Kappel.