Krakow, etc

Hello,

So now we're down in Krakow, a five hour train ride south of Warsaw - a train that never went faster than about 20 km/h I might add. When we arrived, we hiked from the train station a few km to where we thought we'd be staying, but instead found a sign on the door with my name on it directing us to a bar. We went and got some drinks while waiting for the owner to show up and drive us to the place. The evil place. I'll explain later.

The next day we took a bus to Auschwitz. We took a guided tour and were herded around with mass amounts of tourists. Nonetheless it was a good experience, I'm glad it's over, but very glad we did it. I think it was more important to Eric to see it, but I really learnt a lot.

The day after, we went to see the main sight in Krakow, Wawel hill, which has a castle and a cathedral on it. It was really cool, we picked the perfect time of day to go see it because a huge thunderstorm came crashing down on us as soon as we got to the top. The storm must have been right above us, I don't think I've been frightened by lightning before! Anyways, after this we walked around the old town, which was really cool, but not as great as we'd been led to believe. We both agreed that the fact that all the old buildings had huge chain stores in them took away from the 'medieval' feel of the place, and instead we felt more like we were in a mall. A really nice mall. Anyways, I think perhaps we're being spoiled with old towns and now we're being more choosy. In my mind Riga is still the best, but maybe that's because it was the first one I saw and now they're all blending together. But maybe it really was better!

The next day was a non-day. We tried to go to the salt mine outside of Krakow, but got stopped right at the door. We were locked in our apt by the other guests who hadn't realized that if you double lock the door you can't open it from the inside. This was fine we thought, a little annoying, but not the end of the world. We were, afterall, checking out that day so we just had to wait for housekeeping. Unfortunately, housekeeping never showed up, as the room apparently wasn't booked for that night. We didn't have any luck shouting down to the street for help either because everyone spoke Polish... and we honestly didn't try to hard because we kept thinking someone would show up. Around 12 at night the other guests finally came back and we charged downtown for some much needed kebabs and icecream. Luckily we hadn't starved all day because there was some brown rice in the cupboard that we cooked in the kettle. We've decided, to keep our spirits up, that this day never actually existed, and will therefore hopefully never speak of it again.

Today we went to the salt mine, which I must say was worth the wait. It was really interesting, and (thankgod) cold! I think we've only had one day under 30 degrees since we arrived in Europe. We had an awesome tour and our guide gave us some salt crystals (illegally, shhhh she could lose her job). Afterwards we went to our favourite perogi restaurant and then ate icecream from Poland's best icecream place. We assume it was anyways, for some reason this place had the hugest line up of locals despite the fact that there were many other icecream places around. Eric likened it to the soup nazi episode of Seinfeld and since I haven't seen this episode I'll take his word for it. Except that the people inside were really nice even thought they were so rushed. I don't get the logic, but fair enough.

Anyways, I'm sure your eyes are sore now....
I'll let you all return to your lives in Canada, and I'll be sure to write again soon and let you know what's going on... We're heading to the mountains and then to Slovakia, then Czech Republic... we think.

Miss everyone lots,

Joce