around the world in 180 days

Yesterday we had the distinctive pleasure of meeting and sharing a room with 2 Irish gentlemen from Manchester, Dean and Bob. It was Dean’s 26th birthday and so, by the time we met them, they were both as drunk as Ted Kennedy on the 4th of July (which is to say “barely conscious”). They were both self-described English red-necks and were quite possibly the stupidest people we’ve met who didn’t have some kind of brain injury or deformity to blame it on.

They kept saying things like “I’m not racist, but those damn Pakistanis . . .” I’m no expert on racism, but I’ve found that whenever someone says the words “I’m not racist but . . .” it means that they’re racist pretty much every time. They were also disgusting, belching, farting and grabbing their crotches constantly. At one point, Dean claimed that a person has to be gay to get hired at the BBC. It’s company policy. Of course. He followed it up with the old “I don’t hate gay people. I’ve got gay friends. I just don’t want to partake in their activities.” Yep. You’ve got so many gay friends that you’re worried they’re going to try to rape you.

The next day, Bob asked me for some paracetamol, or aspirin. I told him I had ibuprofen, and when I was getting it, he launched into a bout of classic alcoholic’s remorse. “I was pretty bombed last night. We drank three bottles of vodka, were drinking since 8 in the morning. I don’t know what I said. I’m afraid I made a complete ass of myself. I’m sorry if I said anything that offended you.” Sure, Bob. You’re sorry today, but you’ll do it again tomorrow to some other unlucky soul.

Still, it’s part of the experience. Meeting people is the best thing and the worst thing about staying in hostels. Especially in the places we’ve been in in Hungary and Poland, which are old converted apartments, there is no avoiding the common areas, because there’s no where else to go. Bob and Dean have been far and away the worst we’ve met, but it was fun to make fun of them, but when they were talking to us and yesterday as we walked around town.

We told ourselves it was a good thing we met them, but I still can’t say why. Maybe it shows that idiots aren’t endemic to the USA, that the whole world’s got backward, stupid morons and that most people aren’t like that. It makes you appreciate the quiet ones that spend the evenings with their noses buried in a book or a laptop.

The Nazi death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau are an 1.5 hour bus ride from Krakow, so we spent yesterday visiting the site of some of the most horrible crimes humanity has ever committed. Auschwitz-Birkenau is the sort of place you go to knowing that you’re not going to have a pleasant day, and it’s not the sort of place you leave with a spring in your step and joy in your heart. All the same, for the terrible crimes and the awful things that happened there, it is located in a pleasant, almost beautiful setting.

Heinrich Himmler chose Auschwitz-Birkenau as a location for the Nazi death camps because of its seclusion from the outside world. It was (and is again) a small town called Oschweim, but the Nazi’s “evacuated” everyone in the area, to remove the witnesses. The camps are surrounded by trees and farmland and if it weren’t for the rows of brick buildings, the ruins of the gas chambers and creamatoria and the throngs of tourists, they might be peaceful places. In some ways, the setting makes everything all the more horrible.

We toured both camps, Auschwitz I, the original camp where the Nazi’s practiced and perfected their killing machines and which houses the bulk of the museum, and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the camp that was designed and built to carry out the Nazi’s infamous “final solution:” complete liquidation of the Europe’s Jewish populations. 1.5 million people died in both camps during the war and thousands more were scarred for life. The museums covered all aspects of the prisons, including inmate life, prison resistance movements, living conditions, and many other things.

This is difficult to properly convey in writing. The place is both horrible and wonderful; it is something that makes you want to curl up in a ball and give up on humanity and at the same time scream out in joy for the strength the prisoners showed in the face of torture and death. It evokes powerful, complicated feelings, both of revulsion and disgust, but it also makes you wonder where you would have fit in, had you been alive. Would I have fled Germany before the war? Would I have stayed? Would I have served in the army? Followed orders? Tortured people? What if I was in Auschwitz? Would I have been in the resistance or would the constant abuse have crushed my soul and extinguished all hope? I like to think I know the answers to these questions and they’re all noble and great, but I have to admit that it’s impossible to know how anyone will react in such extreme situations. I think we would all be best in praying, passionately and frequently, that such atrocities never happen again.

But the whole time we walked through the prison, I couldn’t help but think that the same sorts of things are happening again, just nowhere near the same level of intensity or monstrousness. We saw cells where Auschwitz inmates were forced to stand for 24 hours at a time and I thought of the terror suspects in Guantanamo, who are also forced to stand for extended periods of time. We saw cells were prisoners were starved to death by Nazis and I thought of those same terror suspects, starving to death (by choice, critical difference, of course) in Guantanamo. Of course of course of course what is going on in Guantanamo is nowhere near as awful and evil as what the Nazi’s did and I don’t mean to suggest anything like that. If Auschwitz is a 10, then Guantanamo is perhaps a 2 or a 3. Still, any movement in that direction is worrying. Anti-muslim hate is growing in the western world and in some areas is being deliberately fostered. Will a politician arise who will use this as a route to power and a route to annihilation?

I sincerely hope not. I don’t expect it. It is, however, something that should be in the back of our minds when we read about places like the US prison in Guantanamo. Auschwitz is a testament to just how horrible human beings can be to other human beings. We must not delude ourselves by thinking this can never happen again. It can and it will, unless us average citizens remember that it is our duty to prevent it.

Three weeks from today, with a little bit of luck, we’ll be at home. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Probably, like everything else, it’ll be a little of both.

When I was 3 or 4, my parents took me to the winter carnival in St. Paul. I’m not sure if they still do it, but they used to build enormous ice castles out on Harriet Island or somewhere and at night they’d light it up with colored spotlights. On the grand finale night, they’d light off a bunch of fireworks and put on a nice show. We were down to watch the fireworks and I remember being terrified that they were so low, they were going to land on us. It was probably the first time I’d seen fireworks, and they scared the crap out of me.

I’ve since become quite fond of fireworks. We’ll still be out of the country for the 4th of July, so we’ll miss all of them in the US for the summer. In Krakow, though, they have a huge celebration for the solstice (only they hold it like 2 days later–I’m not sure what the deal is with that), with live music, wagons of sausages (polish, naturally), and fireworks. We walked down to the river and waited around for about 1 hr, watching the crowd, before they started.

It was a hell of a show, one of the best I’ve ever seen. There were continuous explosions, lights bursting everywhere, and when they lit off the finale, bits of fireworks did rain down on the crowd. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The lights faded from the sky almost completely, falling and disappearing, until some of them crashed into the crowd in showers of sparks. No one seemed to be hurt, but I thought of that time when I was a little kid and I was worried about that happening. I’d never seen it once until now.

Anyway, enough of the fireworks. We’re in Krakow, Poland. It’s a great old town, one of the few in this part of Europe that wasn’t completely or mostly destroyed in WWII. There’s tons of old churches and synagogues and culture and I guess they look different from the ones in Budapest and Vienna, but I’m starting to have trouble noticing.

We went to Weilicjia (that can’t be right) salt mines today. I think it would have been a great experience, if we hadn’t been in a group of about 50. It turned into a sort of hurry up and wait game: we’d rush out of an awesome underground cavern with incredible carvings, sculptures and bas-reliefs and into a hallway, where we’d wait around for 10 mins. It was stupid and kind of a waste of money, which is a shame, because the mines were pretty incredible. We just didn’t get to see them.

Tomorrow or the next day, we’ll go to Auschwitz, which I expect will be horrifying. I suppose that’s kind of the point, though. We won’t be going with a tour, which should make the whole experience a bit better.
Anyway, I guess that’s about every single thing that’s happened to us since I last posted. Talk to you again soon!

We’ve just arrived back in Budapest after spending the last three days on the shores of lake Balaton, in southwestern Hungary. We stayed in a town called Siofok that was a popular weekend beach destination for Austrians and Germans. It was strange, but we had more language difficulties there than anywhere else on our trip. Almost everyone spoke Hungarian and German, but English speakers were rare.

I’m willing to call the Strand at Siofok the best beach in the world because every other beach I’ve been to has been full of sand, which then gets in your swinsuit, in your hair, sticks to your legs, arms and chest and gets in your blankets and towels. There are some people who love sand on a beach, but I’ve come to regard it as a nuisance. The Strand at Siofok had no sand at all. It was a large grassy area that went right to the edge of the lake, which was a perfect temperature and stayed about 3 feet deep for maybe 500 meters from shore. We had a great time sitting in the sun and jumping in the lake when we got too sweaty.

Tonight we’re on our way to Krakow in Poland. We’ll arrive at 5 in the morning, bright eyed and bushy tailed, I’m certain, being the morning people that we are, and try to find a place to store our bags until we can check into our hostel. We’ve got 4 days in Krakow, one of which we’ll use to see Auschwitz, and other to see some salt mines that are supposed to be quite remarkable.

About a month or so ago, Beth asked me to write more about the crazy people we’ve met along the way. I remembered this last night as I was falling asleep and thinking about some of the crazy Hungarians we’ve met already. It was a good idea a month ago and it’s a good idea now, so here goes.

One of the first Hungarians we met was an old lady at the train station who held a thick folder that said “Zimmer / Room” on it. We stopped and asked her about the details: how much, where it was located, private bath, how many beds, kitchen, etc. It sounded good. The price was right, it was centrally located and had everything else we were looking for. Still, we learned in India that a room should be viewed before it is rented, so we asked if we could see it.

This lady was about 65 or so. She had short, silver curly hair and looked exactly like the grandmother she probably was. She had more smile lines than frown lines and seemed tired but eager to please. She claimed that she spoke english, but really, she spoke german which she peppered with a few english words. I know enough german so I could understand her, but I had to reply in english. We rode the metro with her to the apartment (five stops, schnell, she kept saying) and then switched to a bus. “Zwei minuten zu Fuss, aber Ich bin Müde, she explained as we sat on the bus for 5 minutes before it left (2 minutes by foot, but I am tired).

“No boom boom,” she said about 15 times once we arrived at the apartment. It was an old Soviet-era building that looked more like a bunker than a place to live. The walls were covered in graffiti and the elevator, which we rode in once, seemed like a horrible and somewhat likely place to die. The apartment was dingy and dirty and smelled like stale sweat. Anna and I stood out on the balcony and tried to figure out how to tell this lady that we weren’t interested. She’d come all the way across town and was very eager for us to rent the place, but it just wasn’t what we wanted, in that it was a scary craphole. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not what we wanted.

When we told her we weren’t interested, she lowered her price a very little bit and then hung her head and said, “Ich bin schade” (i am sad) before we hightailed it down the steps (not the elevator) and out of her life. We felt a little bad, but we didn’t want to pay 30 euros for a place that was scary and dirty. We slept in places like that in India and paid a tenth of that.

We ended up in a hostel back by the train station called the Red Bus Hostel. The night staff there was a 32 year old woman who’d spent 5 years in NYC and 2 more working for Carnival cruise lines in the Carribean, through the Panama canal and in Alaska’s inside passage. She was quite honestly the most sarcastic person I’ve ever met. As we talked with her about her experiences and our own, she’d chastise people who were using the hostel’s computer when it froze, blaming them when it wasn’t their fault and telling them they’d go to Hungarian prison if they told anyone the computer’s password, both of which were totally tongue in cheek and mortifying for the people she was talking to. She told us a bunch of stories about the cruise industry, including the fact that on every cruise 3-4 people die from overeating. That’s a statistic you don’t hear often. She said the ships have big refridgerators to hold the bodies until they get back to port. Gross.

We also met a Romanian at the hostel who was sharing a room with us. He was a big fan of George Bush (which is less rare overseas than you might think) and was dead certain that Rudi Guliani (sp?) would be the next president of the USA. He looked to be about 40 or 45, had a ring of salt and pepper hair that was reminiscent of bozo the clown and was very strange. He left after one night and with a little luck, we’ll never see him again.
These character sketches of people we’ve run across are fun to write and I’ll try to keep doing them as I have the time and the inclination. There are a bunch of people from earlier in our trip that merit a mention and I’ll try to gather the best/strangest together and post them here, one by one.

Sharks drown if they stop moving because they can’t force water over their gills like regular fish can. I’m not sure what happens to us if we stop moving, but we’re not going to find out for a while. We spent 3 days in Munich, 3 days in Austria, now we’ll spend 3 days in Budapest before going to a lake in Southern Hungary for (you guessed it) 3 days.

Budapest had a very different history over the last 50 years than Vienna did, and it shows in the streets of the city. While the Soviets and communism have been gone for the better part of 20 years, there are still some scars visible. Vienna is clean, sparkling, a spotless museum of a town that celebrates it’s history of Habsburg rule. Budapest is covered in graffiti, many buildings are concrete rectangles, and many of the archetectural remnants of the Habsburgs aren’t in the meticulously restored state they are in Vienna.

Still, Budapest seems to have a lot of character. It sits on an economic divide between the eastern world and the western world: it’s one of the few places in the world where we could see a real, Italian opera performed in a beautiful theatre for 4 bucks. We saw “Don Pasquale” and our seats were worth 4 bucks (they were on the side and 4 floors up, so we had to lean forward during the whole performance) but elsewhere in the world, they’d cost maybe 8 or 10 times that price. I’ve never seen an opera before, but it was actually entertaining. We were dressed in our normal traveling clothes and many of the other people were dressed in formal wear, suits and ties and fancy dresses, but we were in the corner so it didn’t matter.

On our last day in Vienna, we went to 2 of the city’s many famous museums: the Haus der Musik, which is a music museum and the MAK, which is an abbreviation that translates to Museum of Applied Arts. The music museum was cool; there were lots of interactive exhibits, but it was 17 Euros, which is kind of a lot for what the place was. I had fun going, but I’m not sure I could recommend it.

The MAK, though, was fantastic. The only reason we even went there is because it was free on Saturdays. It’s a museum of design: a lot of industrial design, like chairs and desks and things, a lot of porcelain, some textiles and a whole wing of modern photography, film and sculpture art. We were there for 3 hours before it closed and it was the sort of place where you could visit every week and always get something new out of  it. A lot of the short films and photography they showed were thought-provoking to the extent that I spent much of our time in that wing trying to wrap my head around some big ideas.

The other thing we did in Vienna that was a little out of character was go to a mass service at St. Stephen’s cathedral, in the middle of Vienna. We’d visited the church the day before and toured the catacombs beneath it and had read that there would be an organ and orchestral performance the next day at 9:30 am. When we got to the church, though, we found out that the performance was was part of mass. We decided to stay anyway and are glad we did. The music was fantastic. The musicians were professionals and it was far and away the best music I’ve ever heard in a church. The strangest thing about the service was that they never collected offering. I’ve never been to a church where they didn’t do that.
Anyway, we’re off to see more of Budapest. There’s castles and cathedrals and who knows what else. Ciao!

In an uncharacteristically organized move, Anna and I have figured out exactly where we’re going and when for the remainder of our trip. We were prompted to do this by an unusually helpful tourist info office in the Munich train station, Euraide, sponsored by Deutsche Bahn, the German rail company. We went in initially to find out if it made sense to buy a rail pass or if point to point tickets were the way to go. There are no Eurail passes for Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, so that made our decision simple.

The impressive thing, though, was when we decided to book our ticket from Munich to Vienna. The lady helping us told us our options, got us the cheapest fare possible and suggested a stopover in Salzburg, which we enjoyed immensely. We were pretty excited after our experiences in India and Nepal with tourist bureaus. No comission, no nonsense, just straight answers and efficient work. God bless the Germans.

While we were in there, we asked if these Euraide stations were all over the place. They aren’t. They’re only in Berlin and Munich. The process was so easy, and the people so pleasant to work with, that we decided to book the remainder of our train tickets. We spent a day figuring out dates and went back yesterday morning to book the rest.

So here’s our plan: we’re in Vienna for 3 days, and then leaving on the 17th for Budapest in Hungary. We stay there for 5 days and then take a night train to Krakow on the 22nd. We’re in Krakow for 4 days, then move to Warsaw for 3 days, and end up in Prague for 4 days. After Prague, we take a night train to Frankfurt, arriving in the morning on the 4th of July, and then fly to Marrakech in Morocco the next morning, July 5. We’ve a week in Morocco, then fly back to Frankfurt on the 12th. We’ll take a train to Amsterdam on the 13th and fly home from there sometime on the 15th, with a little luck.

Steve has offered to come over to AMS and meet us, as it would be easier for us to get on a flight with his higher preference number, but there are 8 flights a day that NWA operates between AMS and either MSP or Detriot. I think our odds are pretty good even if he doesn’t want to come over. Of course, with 8 flights and Steve’s higher number, that gives us a shot at first class, depending on how full the flights are. It’d also be fun to see Steve again, and wander around Amsterdam with him for an evening.

Today we’re going to check out some of Vienna’s world famous museums. The whole center of the city is packed with museums, old churches and palaces from the days of the Habsburg empire. It is a very cool city, with tons of culture and history and I’m excited to spend a few days here poking around.

This is a fun way to travel: a few days here, a few days there, and on the train to the next town. You never have a chance to get bored, because by the time you do, you’re in another town.

It took us 2 days to get here, but last night Anna and I landed in Munich, Germany. We took the last flight out of Chiang Mai on Sunday night, spent the night in the Bangkok airport on metal benches in a quiet corner of the airport, and flew out Monday morning at 9 for Doha. We flew on Qatar Airlines because it was the cheapest flight we could find and because we’d had a previous and very positive experience with Emirates Air and gambled that Qatar Air would be comparable. It was. It’s hard to make 12 hours in coach comfortable, but the food was good (we ate 4 times), we had personal televisions with a huge choice of tv shows and movies and we actually had a little legroom. It was nice.

By the time we got to Munich, though, it was already past 2am in Bangkok and we were wiped out. I fell asleep on the train from the airport and we both went to asleep almost right away after checking into our room. We’re in dorms again, for the first time since Auckland, but the experience has, so far, been much more positive. The beds are clean and so are the people sharing the room with us.

We’ve spent much of today taking care of business. We washed our clothes, mailed some souvenirs and our hiking boots back to the US and Anna just got registered for classes at St. Thomas this fall.

We haven’t used a washing machine in a long time, and it showed today. I mean, they’re not the most complicated machines, but there are a few things you have to remember. Maybe most important is that if you wash colors with whites and you use hot water, the whites will turn colors. We turned a bunch of Anna’s underwear, a shirt that I bought in Bali and really liked and a few other things a lovely shade of lavender today by forgetting this rule. The culprits were two new items: a blue skirt Anna got in Thailand and a blue shirt I got in Nepal. We washed everything that changed color again and most things changed back, but the shirt is ruined and Anna now has purple underwear instead of white. Oh well.

We’re trying to figure out what we want to do with our five weeks in Europe. We’re thinking that we want to fly down and spend a week in Morocco and spend the rest of our time in Germany, Austria, Poland, Czech Republic and Hungary, which should help keep our expenses down, at least once we leave Germany and Austria. The end of our trip is approaching all too quickly, but I think I’m ready to go home. We’re tired. Traveling is fun and I want to do this again, many times, I hope, but we will be happy to land in MSP.

As I mentioned previously, we planned on taking a trek in the jungle to spend a night in a hill tribe village while in Chaing Mai. We’ve just returned from the trek and I can say that it was not what I expected, and that’s not a bad thing.

I was ready for a trip that was more like a tour–something designed for everyone, with nothing too difficult and no long walking periods. Everything we’d read reinforced this assumption, and so we didn’t really think our trek would be much of a trek. We did think it sounded like a damn fine time, though, with elephant rides and whitewater rafting along with our village stay.

So yesterday morning, we climbed in the back of a pickup truck, collected two more people and drove off to visit the “long-necks” a tribe of the Karen people (I think) from Burma who, in a spurt of entrepreneurialism, have set up a “village” that is really more of a tourist attraction. The “villagers” sit around, weaving, waiting for tourists, and then pose for authentic photos and try to sell them handicrafts. They charge like $12 a head, so even if you don’t buy anything, they’re doing well for themselves. It seems like a decent way to support the village, and if it helps to preserve their traditional ways of life, then I’m all for it. It was just a bit strange to walk around in. It felt like a museum with living exhibits.

After the long necks, we met up with the rest of our group (who hadn’t paid to go to the living museum) and drove to an elephant camp. We ate lunch and set off into the jungle on foot. After about 30 mins, we stopped at a wooden stand in the woods and waited for the elephants. They came ambling down the path about 5 mins. later, gigantic and almost unreal. We climbed into a box on their backs and bounced and jostled our way through the jungle again, this time as passengers.

It was an incredible ride. Elephants are enormous, and you’re keenly aware of this when you’re atop one. They did all kinds of normal elephant things, like spray water with their trunks, eat leaves with their trunk and make that funny elephant sound (with their trunk), but it was all very very cool.

After the elephant ride, we continued to climb an enormous hill for about 2 hours, until we came out of the jungle an into a field of corn planted by farmers from the village we were staying at. The views were excellent. We could see another village across a river valley and Chaing Mai, way off in the distance (I think that’s what it was, anyway).

In the evening, we ate dinner and sat around talking. Our tour guide, Willow, was a Thai man from a small village not far from the elephant camp. He was constantly making jokes and laughing, and he was fun to be around and talk to. We stayed up later than we probably should have listening to him talk and crack jokes.

Today, we started by climbing down the enormous hill we climbed yesterday, ending at a waterfall, where we rinsed off the sweat from hiking in the river. We followed the river for another hour and then went rafting for about 1 hr, which was just about right. I was just starting to get tired and sore when we stopped. It’s almost like they do that for a living. . .

The rafting was great, but I kept comparing it to our canoe trip in NZ, and it wasn’t quite as thrilling because (1) we weren’t in control of the boat and (2) it didn’t matter if we hit any rocks, because our boat was made of rubber. In the canoe, it was nerve-wracking, because if you ended up sideways, you went for a swim, and if you hit a rock, you wrecked your boat. It was still a lot of fun. Our driver was great. He had us going through rapids backwards and sideways, he told us to jump out at a slow point and float in the current and was crashing into and splashing the other boats. He was hilarious.

And now we’re back in Chaing Mai, at the night bazaar, where we seem to end up every night. This is our last shot at cheap souvenirs, so we feel like we’d better take advantage of it. The trouble is, like most markets, most of what they sell here is crap. Oh well. It’s fun to walk around and look at all the people and sometimes it’s fun to see how angry a vendor will get if you don’t offer a reasonable price.

On an unrelated note, Anna and I would like to congratulate Josh and Jenny Ross on the birth of their second child together. Good luck with the new baby, guys!!

We took lessons today at the best Thai cookery school. It said so on our aprons. We were picked up from our hotel this morning around 9:30 and rode in the back of a pickup truck to a nearby fruit and vegetable market. Our guide, driver, teacher and the owner of the school showed us around, pointing out different vegetables we’d be using later in the day and giving us a little info about them. He also showed us the different kinds of rice (there were 20 in the market we visited) and kinds of noodles. It was interesting, but it seemed like it was cooking class hour at the market, as almost everyone there was foreign, in a group and being led around. I’m sure the locals know how to avoid the tour groups.

After the market, we rode in the back of the pickup again to the owner’s home, in what amounted to suburban Chaing Mai. This is where the magic began; the magic being the school transforming me, who has been known to eat nothing so as to avoid cooking, into someone who enjoyed cooking. The secret is taking all of the crappy parts out of cooking, like prep work, clean-up and the like, and just leaving the fun stuff, like playing with fire. Between the two of us, Anna and I made 11 different dishes, including green curry chicken, pad thai noodles and tom yam soup. The best dish we made was cashew chicken, which was the best cashew chicken I’ve ever had. Of course, we really just mixed the ingredients we were given in the proper order and the prep cooks did the rest, but we got a feel for it.

It was great fun. At one point, when we were making stir-fried dishes, we got to choose between plain cooking and adventure cooking, which meant choosing between having a huge fireball erupt from our wok or not. It was an easy decision for me and the fireball was particularly satisfying, as it added to the flavor of the food. We ate everything we cooked and it was too much food, but it was delicious.

I think we’re going to do an overnight, organized trek to hill-tribe villages. They’re kind of one of the big things to do in Chaing Mai, like the cooking courses and the night market, but they sound like a lot of fun. Trekking is sort of an exaggeration with these; you do about 5 or 6 hours total between the two days, but they keep you busy with elephant rides, whitewater rafting, visiting markets and I can’t even remember what else. The trips go for about $50 a head, but for two days and including food and lodging, that ain’t bad.

We’re spoiled with these cheap Asian prices. Thailand seemed expensive after Nepal and we’re flying to Germany in less than a week. Thailand is dirt cheap compared to Europe. We’ve worked out the numbers though, and especially with the cheap flights home, we’ll be fine. It’ll just take a bit of adjustment.

I’m looking forward to Europe, though, very much. I’ve never been there and there’s a lot of history to see and experience. It’ll be another huge transition, though, but with luck, we’ll be able to drink the water from the faucets and worry less about these damn stomach bugs. The bacteria should be more familiar, I would think. We’re flying to Munich on Monday, and are planning on staying east of Germany, visiting Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Krakow, Warsaw and the like. We’ll be back in the western world, but we’ll be as far east as you can possibly be. I’m hoping to tour a ex-Soviet prison.