Blog Revisited Jan 2011

It is January 24, 2011, and I am finally getting back to working on my blog! Besides enjoying Christmas month in Vienna, I really couldn't work too much on the blog because I have been working on plans for the rest of our trip.

Jack had some idea of where to go, but we have revised our ideas several times, which was fortunate for us. First, we were going to spend the winter in north Africa, as we did back in 2008 by visiting Morocco, Egypt and then onto Turkey. We gave up that idea for the one of just visiting Italy - going south, even to Sicily. I wanted to spend Christmas in Rome, but Jack got it into his head that Vienna would be a beautiful place for Christmas.

We were seriously thinking of going to Tunisia - and we would have been caught up in their terrible troubles right now! We would have either been unable to get there, or we would have been there and not been able to get out. Either way, we are very glad we decided not to visit that country at this time.

Sicily is also having troubles with its volcano, so we are glad that we did not venture down there this time. And Vienna in December is fabulous. Its beauty, its Christmas markets and all of the celebrations and decorations and extra musical programs are not to be missed. Sure, it was cold there, but we were prepared, and we survived. We were very glad to spend that month in Vienna. We are already talking about going there in the spring some year.

However, it was hard to find places to stay for over a week in Vienna at that time of year, because, as we found out first hand, there are lots of tourists who come to Vienna at that time to celebrate Christmas and New Year's. During the month we were there, we had to book three different hotels.

But before Vienna, we decided to visit Krakow after Berlin. At the time, we did not have a decent map - I made sure to buy one of Europe as soon as we got to Krakow - so I really didn't realize how far east we were going from Berlin. The long train ride to Krakow was really an experience - I will go into detail about that in my Krakow blog - and once we got there I was really appalled. We had come from Germany, which is a country that is not only new - we had bombed it to pieces during the second world war - but it is thriving. The stores, the restaurants, the hotels are all prosperous. Poland, on the other hand, is still very poor. Jack had to remind me over and over that noone helped Poland after the war, and they are still struggling to be a good member of the European Union.

Jack also said that we should go to Prague. Everyone talks about going there, so since we are in the "neigborhood", we should stop there for a few days. That train ride was going to be just about seven hours from Krakow, with a stop or two. We still had time before December, so I said - well, why don't we jog over to Budapest? It is supposed to be beautiful and we have time and it is not too far...

Another long train ride from Prague to Budapest! We were glad to have seen that city, but finally we were going to get to Vienna. That train ride was not too bad, only about three hours.

We had a month there to think about the next part of our journey, but the problem was, that Jack was so taken by Vienna that he really didn't want to think about going anywhere else! He did mention that we should go to Salzburg, and then I had to figure out, train-schedule wise- how to get to Italy. It is not easy, because of the mountains. The train rides are hours long. I did not want to take another train ride that lasted ten or twelve hours, with several changes, so I decided that we would have to spend a few days here and there before we actually got to our destination.

It was an easy hop from Salzburg to Munich, and Jack wanted to stay in Munich several days. That sounded good to me too, until I started investigating the prices of hotels. Way too expensive for our budget. I wasn't sure why the jump in prices, but it probably was the ski season and businesses got back to work after December. Maybe a lot of business travelers to Munich. I don't know, but we could only afford to stay about five days in Munich before the hotel rates hiked way up.

Jack was not happy with that, but I stood firm. I still had to get from Munich to Bologna, Italy - Munich's trains wind around and catch up with the Italy trains, but there was only an overnight train to Bologna. So I said we are going to have to stay in Milan a few nights. He didn't like that either - Milan is a huge city, but other than that it has little to offer. We had already seen the duomo, the galleria and La Scala. Again, I insisted that we stay there to break up the trip.

We did and had a good time, though the pollution there is horrible, and my allergies kicked in those days. We had a good three days, but we were ready for Bologna.

We had already planned to spend a couple of months in Italy and then head back up through Germany to Belgium. Belgium is a small country like Holland, but we spent three months in Holland, so maybe we could find things to see in that amount of time also. Wrong! First of all, there were nine cities in Holland that we visited. There are only four in Belgium that might be interesting. We don't think there is as much art as in Holland, either. Basically, I had an extra month to work with.

We had already decided that we would sail to New York on the Queen Mary 2 in late June. I had checked airline prices from Paris to Dallas and from London to Dallas, and they were outrageous! And the press and TV was full of the horror stories about full body scans and pat downs, etc. Not only are you humiliated when you try to get on these planes, but then you are squeezed into a tiny seat, with no food or water for hours. And you pay extraordinary amounts for this? What is the point? We had the time; we were not going to step foot in an airport.

I checked the schedules for the QM2 and discovered that it goes from Southampton to New York in late June. They don't take reservations online, so we had to ask our travel agent, Paul of Salisbury, as Jack calls him, to handle all the arrangements. We met him back in summer of 2007, when we were in Salisbury, England, and he had designed and handled our trip through Morocco, Egypt and Turkey. We had kept up correspondence with him, and he was more than happy to help us with trip arrangements for the QE2. Since it leaves from Southampton, we can look forward to seeing him again as we pick up our travel tickets, etc.

So, since we knew the end date of our trip, I had to work out the details of meshing where we were and where we would be until June 24. It turned out to be sort of complicated.

Krakow November 2010

Above: a faded building in Krakow; the Wawel cathedral in central Krakow. Left, detail of the cathedral.

We had spent three months in Germany, so we were forced to move on to another country. We could stay in a European country for three months without a visa; hence, the three-month rule.

We wanted to visit Krakow, but boy, oh boy, the train ride was going to be nine hours! We looked at the map and saw that from Berlin to Krakow was a huge space. We decided to come back to Berlin for a couple of nights, because we would have had to come back to Berlin anyway from Dresden to catch the train east. We stayed at StadMitte because there are so many restaurants around there and very easy to get around.

The day we were leaving was November 3, the day after the mid-term elections in the US. Of course, on a travel day, I woke up about 5:00 am and turned on CNN - it was only about 11:00 pm there, and not many elections had even been decided. But it looked like the Democrats were losing the House badly. We watched the news as long as we could, but we had to leave in order to catch the 9:30 train at the Berlin Hauptbanhof.

We left for the train station about 8:00; had a quick breakfast at the train station and went to sit at the track. Jack and I have differences of opinion about catching the train: I like to get there early and scope the place out and figure out the ropes, etc. He would rather get there just before the train is ready to pull of the station (I exaggerate a little) but he does not like to wait. But I won out for this train.

It was going to be a long ride, but we had first class tickets and we did not have to change trains. So far so good. However, an announcement came over the loud speaker that our train was going to be one half hour late due to an accident... The half hour turned into an hour, then into two hours! Then it announced something - in German, of course - that we did not catch. The lady also waiting there said that they just cancelled the train, but they apologized for any inconvenience.

Jack went up to the information booth or the reservation booth - I am not sure - to find out what our options were. I stayed with the luggage. He came back with the news that there was another train leaving in about half hour to Warsaw, and then we could change trains there to Krakow. But no first class left on that train. The lady gave Jack some paperwork to send into Deutchebon to get our money back on our first class tickets. I carried all this stuff around for a couple of months but Jack said he was not going to fill it out - all in German - so to just throw it away.

We dragged our bags upstairs - they fortunately have escalators - and found the train to Warsaw. We took second class seats, stuffed our bags somewhere and settled down for the five hour train ride.

The second thing to go wrong was that this train was half hour late in leaving the station; our connection in Warsaw to Krakow gave us only a half hour, so already we had missed the connection. Of course, I worried about this all across eastern Germany and into Poland.

We did get in about six o'clock pm, too late to catch the other train to Krakow. When I tried to ask the conductor before we reached the station about which track we were coming in on, he could not answer me because he could not speak English, and I, of course, did not have a word of Polish. There was a young man who translated to me and he said that they have no idea what track they are coming in on and they have no idea which track is the train for Krakow...

We got there and dragged our bags into the station to see if there was another train to Krakow that night. I was struck by the condition of the train station. It was undergoing reconstruction, but the existing station was very old and in very bad shape and overrun by people trying to catch trains. We found a lady in a little booth selling tickets. She did not speak English and Poland does not use the euro. Fortunately I was standing next to an ATM machine so we got some Polish money and Jack went back to try to find out about a train.

There was a train to Krakow in about an hour. He bought tickets and we set out to find the track for this train. Somehow we found it and we stood there until the train came in. We happened to notice a couple also waiting for the train, and I recognized them from the station in Berlin earlier that morning. We ended up sitting with them in a compartment all the way from Warsaw to Krakow. We talked to them - they were Dutch and the woman had good English - about where they lived and where they were going, etc. In the meantime, the train was barreling down the tracks - it never stopped until we got to Krakow. It was pitch black so we could not see any of the countryside we were racing through.

We finally got to the Krakow station, which was also under construction, somehow found a cab, even though it was close to midnight, and got to our hotel. I looked up and saw the castle lit up and thought at least we are in a good location. I had picked this hotel because it was near the castle, but sometimes the distances are not as close as the advertisement would have you believe.

Unfortunately, the restaurant was closed for the night, so we had to go to bed hungry. But the hotel room was great; the bed was comfortable and it was quiet. The next morning the shower was hot and roomy and the breakfast, which was included in the room, was fabulous. I had nothing but praise for this hotel.

Next morning we got a map and walked to the square, about a fifteen minute walk from the hotel. I was really not prepared for Krakow. I had spent too much time in Germany, which is thriving, new and energizing. Krakow is none of those things. I will save the details in the next edition.