Mike and Michele’s Global Wanderings

Mike writes (with Michele’s supervision)…

We awoke at 5:00 a.m. Wednesday morning to begin our long journy to Budapest, Hungary. We started with a 15 minute walk to the bus station where we would catch a bus to Cesky Budejovice from where we would catch the first of two trains. We had intended to take the 6:40 a.m. bus but arrived early enough to take the 6:30 bus (which was actualy scheduled to arrive just 5 minutes before the 6:40). As we were searching around for the appropriate bus, we noticed another couple. The woman had a big backpack but the bloke (he he) was dragging around one of the biggest rolling suitcases i had ever seen. This struck me as quite odd since normally one might see these rolls reversed. We found out they were from Australia and were also headed to Budapest.

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Mike (with Michele’s supervision) writes…

We have gotten a bit behind with the blog because we have been very busy so we will be posting two blogs today to try to get up to date.

On Sunday, August 21st we rode for about 3 hours on a bus from Prague to Cesky Krumlov (both Czech). We arrived in Cesky (pictured below) at about 1:15 p.m., walked by Tourist Information only to find they would be closed until 2:00 p.m. Then we proceeded through the old town square towards our accommodations for the next 3 nights. Ametyst Pension was located just 5 minutes away from the town square and was much nicer than our accommodations in Prague (and much cheaper!). The town of Cesky is much like Prague only but on a smaller scale. Walking across the town takes only about 10 minutes. I immediately liked Cesky a lot better than Prague. I feel that it has a lot more charm and has not been quite as corrupted by tourism as Prague. Don’t get me wrong. There were still plenty of tourists. After getting settled, we walked back to the Tourist Information office to figure out how we would travel from Cesky to Budapest. Then it was time to find some dinner. We found this great little medieval-style Czech restaurant. This great little spot had outdoor seating at picnic tables right on the river that runs through town. I had roast chicken with millet cake and Michele had and mushrooms and puffed barely which we washed down with some Czech mead. Michele drank her mead warm while I took mine cool. About the time we were finising our meal two young men looking around for a place to sit asked (in English) if they could just sit at our table. We welcomed them. It turned out they were a couple of twentysomething students from Switzerland. We sat and talked to them and had some beer and more mead while they ate their meals. Then the four of us went to a local underground (looked a bit like a cave) bar for a few more beers and more conversation. While we were here, I met a couple of Czech guys who had been travelling around for a bit and looked pretty road weary. Conversation with these two guys was quite difficult since they each spoke only about 10 words of English. We tried to communicate by drawing pictures in my journal and acting out forms of transportation. This was very interesting not to mention very difficult. At the end of the night we agreed to meet our two Swiss friends, Nick and Ben, in the town square at noon the next day to get lunch together. See the picture below.

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Hello…Michele here. It is Friday, August 19th and we are still in Prague. Today Mike and I went to Kutna Hora for a day trip. This is a town about 1 hour (by train) outside of Prague with a population of about 20,000 people. We did not have any problems buying a train ticket to Kutna Hora in part because the guy at the information window spoke some English. However, we were confused as to whether or not we had purchased a round trip ticket or not. A very nice lady sitting next to us on the train heard us talking and said she would help us by explaining our ticket to us. Her English was not very good but she said she liked to practice and did get the message across that our ticket was good for both trips (to Kutna Hora and back). She said she liked the train because it was relaxing. Then she took a sip of a beer she had hidden behind her. This was at 10:15am. In the U.S. this is probably seen as alcoholic type of behavior but not so in Europe. Many people have a beer in the mid morning or afternoon or with their lunch.

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Michele here…this is the third blog I have posted today but this will be short. Over the past several days we have uploaded a bunch of Poland photos and Mike wrote some captions. You can see them by clicking here
here .

Hope everyone is having a great summer!

We love blog comments but if for some reason you want to say something to us more directly, please email us — mikeandmichelertw at hotmail dot com (appropriate punctuation changes will be required of course).

Michele here….Today is Thursday, August 18th. We are now in Prague, Czech Republic and have been here since very late Tuesday night, August 16th. We had a bit of an adventure getting to Prague from Krakow, Poland on Tuesday. We took our first train from Krakow to Katowice, Poland with no problem. There we were supposed to change trains to go from Katowice, Poland to Prague. Well, there was confusion on the part of the train station as to which track our train would be arriving (and therefore leaving from). To make a long story short, we waited on platform 3 for the train and we learned from several sources that this was where the train was to arrive and leave from. However, it normally leaves from track 1 (but reportedly it had changed to track 3). We waited on track 3 for our train to arrive but it never did. After a while there were 6 English-speaking people standing there – me and Mike, plus a couple from England, and a couple from Tazmania. What did we all have in common? None of us spoke or understood Polish and all the annoucements were in Polish. We later learned that the train had in fact come through on track 1. We went downstairs to figure out what to do and none of the employees spoke English. A nice Polish man said he would interpret for us, although his English was somewhat limited. Anyway, we learned we could get to Prague but it wouldn’t be until midnight and we would have to travel south all the way to the Slovakia border quite a bit out of the waz. So that’s what we did. In some ways it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because we met some great people waiting for the next Prague train and also while we were on the train. On the way to Prague we sat in a 6 seat booth next to two guys who were traveling for 6 months and had just finished their undergraduate degrees. The other two seats were taken by a couple who also quit their jobs but were only traveling for 6 months. We had a great time talking about life on the road, where we had been, and where we were going.

Anyway….we arrived in Prague after midnight and a very kind young man from the Czech Republic said he would negociate the price of our cab ride for us so that we would not get ripped off. We finally arrived at where we thought we would be staying but the managers told us we were staying in an apartment down the street. Hmm….apartment…this should be interesting. Well, it is sort of an apartment. It is a very large room in a run down building. Although it is spacious, it has a bit of a depressing feel to it because it is old and sort of falling apart, as is the building it is in. On the positive side, the location is excellent. It is close to everything you would ever want to see in Prague.

We have been on a site seeing rampage here the last two days. On Wednesday, we started by going to Stare Mesto, or the Old Town, with beautiful buildings, including the astronomical clock, and the gothic Tyn Church. Here is a picture

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[I wrote this on Monday, Aug 15th but am just posting this today, Thurs, Aug. 18th]
Michele here….we are back in Krakow for our last night in Poland. As I mentioned in our last post, we spent the weekend hiking in the Tatra Mountains in southern Poland.
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Dzien dobry! (pronounced jen-yuh dobra) – means hello in Polish.

It is Sunday night, August 14th at 9:45pm…this is Michele (with Mike supervising). Just wanted to post a quick update. We are in southern Poland in a “resort” type of town called Zakopane. We arrived here on Friday evening and have been hiking in the Tatra mountains all weekend. On Saturday we hiked to the Slovakia and I took a great picture of Mike standing on the Poland-Slovakia border that I will post tomorrow. And speaking of tomorrow…we will be taking the bus back to Krakow tomorrow (Monday) afternoon , staying one night there, and then taking a train to Prague, Czech Republic on Tuesday. I hope to upload a bunch of pictures from Poland when we are back in Krakow so check back tomorrow. Gotta run!
Do widzenia! (Goodbye in Polish)

We love blog comments but if for some reason you want to say something to us more directly, please email us — mikeandmichelertw at hotmail dot com (appropriate punctuation changes will be required of course).

Hello from Krakow, Poland! This is Michele…it is Wednesday night, August10th, and it is cold in Krakow! Mike and I have been wearing our fleece here.

In the last blog I said I would tell the story of buying the Krakow train tickets at the Warsaw train station. The thing is that it is well known here that none of the women working in the train station speak any English. Because of this, the hostel staff have type written on a piece of paper the following message in Polish. “I would like second class train tickets to _______ city on _______ (date) at ______ (time) for ______ adults in a nonsmoking carriage/car.” All we are supposed to do is fill in the blanks, which we did. We did this and the staff person at the hotel checked it and said it was perfectly clear. However, when we went to the train station, the woman there did not understand what we wanted. She tried to talk to us in Polish. We just stood there. She got someone else. That person did not understand the type written note either. She tried to speak to us in Polish. Again, we stood there saying “sorry” in English (which I don’t think they understood). They both left together. Five minutes later they came back after consulting a third person. This time, the woman printed out the tickets we needed. We still don’t understand what happened but I guess it doesn’t matter now.

Along these same lines…I found a pretty good air fare price on a Hungarian airline from Budapest, Hungary to Instanbul, Turkey. The problem was that to get this price you couldn’t “do” an e-ticket. You had to get a paper ticket. I saw one of the options was to have the paper tickets sent to an office in the Budapest airport. So, I checked that box and we are now planning on flying from Budapest to Instanbul after we pick up these tickets at some office in the airport. I have a feeling I could be writing a little travel story about this but we’ll see….

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Hello, Michele here…today is Sunday, August 7th.

We spent Wednesday, August 3rd in Malmo, Sweden. Unfortunately, most of our one day there was spent doing errands so we did not get to do much sight seeing but the parts of the city we did see were quite beautiful and we ate at a restaurant in one of the many small town squares filled with flowers and foutains. Anyway…

We are now in Warsaw, Poland! I love this city because it is so rich in history. We took a flight from Malmo, Sweden to Warsaw, Poland last Thursday with no problem. However, we took bus #175 from the airport to our hostel and this was quite an adventure. There is no such thing as “the bus is full”. No sir, each and every square inch of this bus was taken up with people and luggage. We tried to pay the bus driver but he wouldn’t take our money and seemed somewhat overwhelmed himself by the number of people crammed into this city bus. It really was crazy because at each stop I was thinking there is NO WAY one more person can get on this bus. And then 5 more people would get on.

Our hostel in Warsaw is only 2 weeks old and the owners are 30 years old. We are staying in the only room with its own bathroom (we decided to give ourselves an upgrade and booked a room with a private bathroom this time). The staff who work there are all young (in their 20s and 30s) and we have spent a lot of time talking to them about life in Poland.

So, what have we been doing? On Friday, August 5th, we walked to Old Town through the Royal Castle Square, passing many statues of poets and famous Polish historical figures along the way. We also went into several churches. I thought one church was quite fascinating and very ornate (St. Anne’s Church) and there I was taking a picture when I noticed a bride at the back of the church ready to walk down the isle. Oops! On this day we also went to the Warsaw Historical Museum and saw a film about the destruction of Warsaw during WWII. The cost was $3 and there were rooms and rooms filled with very interesting historical exhibits. During our pierogi lunch Mike had a warm beer with honey and cloves and I had a beer with strawberry juice. When I was talking to a young Polish woman at the hostel about how strange it was to have a beer with juice in it, she said she had never had a beer in her life without juice and thought it was very strange that a woman would drink plain beer with no fruit juice poured into it. After lunch we saw the crypts in St. John’s cathedral, the oldest church in Warsaw, and saw the Church of the Hoily Cross with Chopin’s heart boxed into one of the columns. (You know Chopin…he was a very famous piano player and if anyone took piano lessons as a child, yea, well, you know his music.) Finally, we saw Barbican, part of a medieval wall that once encircled Warsaw then walked to Saxon Gardens where the tomb of the unknown soldier is under guard. The tomb is surrounded by a fragment of an 18th century royal palace destroyed in WWII. As you may or may not know, most of Warsaw was destroyed during WWII and has since been maticulously rebuilt to look the same as before the war.

Yesterday we focused on seeing many sites associated with the Warsaw Ghetto. If you have seen the movie The Pianist or Schindler’s List then you would know about Warsaw’s Jewish Ghetto and the uprising. During WWII the Nazis established a Jewish Ghettoand in April 1943, the Jews fought back, refered to as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. We saw parts of what is left of the ghetto wall, the Monument of the Heroes of the Ghetto, and the newer (built in 1989) Monument to the Warsaw Uprising. Then we went to the Pawiak Prison Museum, which is in the former building used as a Gestapo prison during Nazi occupation. The whole afternoon was very moving for me.

Today we slept in a bit then walked to the Royal Lazienki Park where we saw a palace on an island in the middle of a lake and a theatre on a different island in another lake. The park was huge (we spent hours there) and it had many fountains, flowers, and statues in it.

I will try to upload photos within the next couple of days. Tomorrow we take a train to Krakow (and in the next blog I will have to tell you the story of buying the train tickets!)

We love blog comments but if for some reason you want to say something to us more directly, please email us — mikeandmichelertw at hotmail dot com (appropriate punctuation changes will be required of course).

Hi friends!

Michele here…today is Wednesday, August 3rd, 11:00am our time, 5:00am Washington DC time. We have been traveling a lot from town to town lately. Most of our travels recently have been in southern Norway and southern Sweden. Here has been our schedule:

Wednesday, July 27 – Olso, Norway
Thursday, July 28 – Oslo, Norway to Gothenburg, Sweden
Friday, july 29 – Gothenburg, Sweden to Varberg, Sweden
Saturday, July 30 – Gothenburg, Sweden
Sunday, July 31 -Gothenburg, Sweden
Aug 1 – Gothenburg, Sweden to Ystad, Sweden
Aug 2 – Ystad, took day trip to Kåseburga
Aug 3 (today) – Ystad, Sweden to Malmö, Sweden

Our last few days in Oslo, Norway we got our India visas, went to the King’s castle, and visited a reptile park. Getting the India visas was important because you MUST have the visa before you even get on the plane to India. Most of the other countries we are going to you can get the visas in the airports but no so for India. We basically visited the King’s castle because it was on the way to the reptile park. The reptile park was quite funny. It was on the 4th floor of an office building and there was nothing really park-like about it. However, it was definitely more quality than quantity, meaning that although there were not a lot of reptiles the ones there were really quite spectacular.

The first night in Gothenberg, we somehow got into a suite in a hotel.
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