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Archive for October, 2005

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Oswiecim: Words?

Saturday, October 29th, 2005

Oswiecim is a small place about an hour and a half from Krakow, in the Southwest of Poland. It is quiet, a bit dusty, bathed in yellow leaves falling from trees. Rows of tour buses sit in a parking lot, people depart from them and walk solemnly towards a red brick building. Groups of school kids stand around outside the building, joking and laughing the way only school kids can. It is a clear day, but there is a bit of chill coming in on the wind. The Germans had a different name for Oswiecim during the Second World War. Auschwitz, they called it.

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Zakopane: Tips

Friday, October 28th, 2005

We were crushed like sardines into a can on our bus from Stary Smokovec to Lysa Polana. It was a delapidated local bus, every seat was taken, and at least twenty people packed the aisles. Lysa Polana was about an hour away, sitting just on the Slovakian side of the Slovak-Polish border. We survived the crush, left the bus, and walked from one country into another; an experience that was way less scary than I thought. Once across the border, we waited for a local bus to take us another hour to Zakopane, a moutain resort town at the Northern foot of the High Tatras. Seated a few metres up the road, also waiting for a bus we assumed were the same three hikers we’d shared the mountain chalet with two nights earlier. After about 15 minutes, a maxi-taxi pulled up and the other three got in.

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Photos: Vysoke Tatry

Friday, October 21st, 2005
The hike. You know what I'm talking about.... Snow. Wow, hey look, there's some snow. Man, I hope we get to see some more later.view image The Path Ahead. Walking up a valley between two huge mountain ranges. Cool.view image Well, ... [Continue reading this entry]

Vysoke Tatry: Snow at 1700

Friday, October 21st, 2005
I pointed to the three dimensional map; "How long to hike this section?" "5 to 6 hours" the old guy in the mountain hiking information centre replied. "But the snow line is down at 1700 metres. This chalet," he pointed to ... [Continue reading this entry]

Photos: Hungary (and Kosice)

Monday, October 17th, 2005
More pics, and the stories behind these ones might even be fresh in your minds, unlike that batch form Slovenia... Poi Master. Dylan doing poi. In the background is the hostel owner Atilla, doing wakeless wakeboarding. What's that? What's wakeless wakeboarding? ... [Continue reading this entry]

Košice: Ghost Town

Monday, October 17th, 2005
From Eger, Bec and I planned to head north, across the Slovakian border, and to the city of Košice. Unsure whether to get a train or a bus, we sussed out the options for both. We tracked down a train ... [Continue reading this entry]

Photos: Slovenia

Monday, October 17th, 2005
Righto, I've put a couple of sweet photos up on our Flickr website (link on the right somewhere). And for your own entertainment I've put some of the not so sweet ones up here for you to check out. No ... [Continue reading this entry]

Eger: Valley of the Beautiful Women

Sunday, October 16th, 2005
After a week in Budapest, partying at the Backpack Guesthouse, we needed to get back to some normalcy - a bit of quiet, a private room, and cheap, cheap wine. Where else to go but Eger, two and a half ... [Continue reading this entry]

Budapest: Water, Fire, and the Backpack Guesthouse

Saturday, October 15th, 2005
I haven't stayed at a whole lot of hostels in my time. So far on this trip, Bec and I have mostly bunkered down in private rooms, enjoying the, er, privacy. Budapest was a different story though. A friend of ... [Continue reading this entry]

Budapest: Who needs anaesthetic, anyway?

Thursday, October 13th, 2005
Milo. When I was a youngin' I used to eat it by the truckload. It's a delicious, granulated choc-malt drinking powder, looks a bit like coffee, that you mix in with milk to make it chocolate flavoured. I wouldn't mix ... [Continue reading this entry]