Arriving home? - Istanbul, Turkey
3 Stars This place was Average visited Sep 12, 2005
Driving towards Istanbul, I am reading the Salman Rushdie article in the book of travel stories i've been carrying for months. He writes about returning to India after more than 12 years away - after the Satanic Verses brouhaha. It's interesting to read something about going home while driving towards what will be my new home. At least for a while! The European Turkish countryside is noticeably different from Bulgaria and Romania. For a start, the roads improved the moment we crossed the border, and we are travelling on a 6 lane engineered marvel - better than we've seen since Hungary, I should think, and more of it too. The landscape consists of gently rolling hills, but the road doesn't go up and down much - instead there are long viaducts built over the valleys - each with a sign at the beginning to tell you the name of the bridge and exactly how many metres long it is. Without these signs I might not have noticed, as the bridges are no different to the roads, and unless you are looking at the side of the road, you don't notice that the tree tops are suddenly at road height! Another major difference is a lack of people. Instad of the road winding through constant villages, we have nothing but the occasional town huddled on a distant hillside. The fields are huge, obviously worked by machine (unlike Romania) and currently burnt to the colour of dust. The heat and dust haze means the sky is almost the same colour. 30 Km from Istanbul, according to the signs, and it feels like we are on the outskirts of a big city. 25 Km from Istanbul, I see a corpse. The traffic stops all of a sudden, an ambulance races past us on the hard shoulder, and everyone is changing into the far inside lane. When we get to the accident, there is a body lying in an unnatural heap with a few sheets of newspaper over the head and shoulders, and a growing bright red pool of blood seeping out from under it. The ambulance is already there, but the paramedics are just standing around. A few metres further on, an old beaten up truck with what looks like a scrape of red paint on one corner has stopped at the end of a long pair of skid marks. Maybe we won't stand on the side of major roads and wave our thumbs at passing traffic in Istanbul...

Friendly border guards!?! - Istanbul, Turkey
5 Stars This place was Amazing visited Sep 11, 2005
We crossed the Turkish border at about lunchtime today. Borders have been getting more and more complicated lately, and this one needed a map and directions. For some reason we couldn't just stay in the truck and have our passports checked there, but had to walk half a mile through no-man's land to the a gi-normous parking lot with a few little booths in it. There were no signs, so we lined up with everyone else, who seemed to be clutching bits of paper along with their passport, which worried us. When we finally got to the window we were utterly astonished to find a helpful border guard! After barking an initial impatient 'paper?' question at us, he realised we had no idea what we were doing, and came out of his little booth to point us toward the border police booths. Turns out we were lining up to declare our cars or something. Oops. Amazingly, the next border guard was also helpful and friendly. I presented my passport at a booth that had no line (turns out it was for turkish people only, or something). The guy took it, looked up my name, and then used it, nicely, while pointing us to the office where I had to buy my visa. And even that was easy. We returned, en-visa'd, to the next booth (which now had a shorter line than the first) and were shown yet more displays of amiability! My visa was stamped without comment, but Kate's student visa earned her a nod of respect! And then we had to explain that we were walking back the way we came to find our truck, which got more surprised and impressed noises from both the guards (the man from the first booth had come over to chat with his colleague while we were still there). Wonders will never cease.

Two days in the life of a Turkish Truck Driver. - Veliko Turnovo, Bulgaria
This place was Amazing visited Sep 10, 2005
Rides: 2 cars and a truck Countries: +1! (even though all we saw of Bulgaria was its Turkish truck stops) Drive 2 hours, stop for tea in a turkish truck stop (even in Bulgaria). Drive two hours, bribe a border guard or 6 - either with chocolate or euros. Lunch in a turkish truck stop. More tea. Drive two hours, drink more tea - yes, again in a turkish truck stop, even in Bulgaria. There seems to be a whole network of truck stops run by turks and catering exclusively to turks spaced a neat 2 hours apart all along what passes for the highway through Bulgaria. Sleep 7 or so hours (outside a turkish truck stop, after drinking copious quantities of tea), repeat. Leaving Bucharest, we caught buses and a tram and a minibus to the edge of town (which took about 2 hours longer than it should due to trams marked on the map no longer existing...), then stood on the side of a road in what seemed to be a small satellite village. Although it wasn't marked, I think we were standing at the local bus stop, and a few other people came and stood about waiting too, including an elderly woman, who did her best to chat to us. My Romanian was better than it had been a week earlier, but still pretty minimal, so it was fun attempting to communicate. She, and another lady who was also waiting, explained that we should take a bus, or a train. And we explained that we prefer to hitch. And they explained there was a bus, and a train. And we explained we wanted to hitch! Random side of the road conversations can be fun! And the old lady explained how she wanted to be as big as me, and that both she and Kate were two skinny, and that her sister was a big woman, but she herself never managed it. Eventually we were picked up by a young stockbroker in a tiny trendy-yellow car. He was off to play paintball about 20km up the road with a friend in the purple convertible that was following. After an in depth discussion of Romanian economy and all the countries he had travelled to on business and holidays, he dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, where another car pulled up to pick us up almost before we had got out of the first one! The second lift was an ancient battered 4WD with sideways bench seats in the back and four grubby, smoking men in it. It was towing a trailer that had in it, among the junk, a couple of live geese. We were squeezed into the back with two of the guys, and were taken to what we were told was the border, which runs through the town of Giurgiu. It didn't look very open - there were fences across the road, and when we we wandered towards a guard he waved us to left. So we tried the left side of the building. Another guard waved us to keep going. There seemed to be nothing to the left but a street with houses along it, so I turned back to the guard in confusion, and he made a big waving gesture as if to say it wasn't close. After studing the passing traffic of buses and trucks, we determined that the buses with "Istanbul" on the front were indeed going left and disappearing around a far corner. So we followed. Around the corner we could at least see the border station they were going to - a kilometre or two away. We had cut a corner in our efforts to see further, so we made our way back to the road, waving our tumbs at the trucks as we got close, and although we weren't exactly expecting them to see us until we were actually on the road, one stopped before we even got there! The truck was driven by Hasan, a middle aged turkish truck driver, who lived in Istanbul, but he and his colleague in the next truck were delivering a load of timber from Germany to the Iraqi border for the US Army, and planned to spend a night in Istanbul on the way. He spoke about 20 words of German, which was useful. Over the next 2 days he looked after us very well: refusing to let us pay for our meals and letting us sleep in his truck alone (at a turkish truck stop somewhere in Bulgaria), while he took the spare bed in his colleague's truck. We hadn't planned to spend a night with them - we had planned to stop in Veliko Tarnovo, but just as I was thinking "it should be close now, we should tell him we want to get off" I saw a sign for the turn off go past. We'd missed it! It wasn't much of a problem, as we'd been debating whether or not to stop, anyway. Kate wanted to get to Istanbul a few days earlier than planned, and we knew that it would be easy to return to Bulgaria from Istanbul. At least, easier than, say, Estonia. There were a few eye-openers on this trip, such as the state of the average truck stop toilet (actually, that wasn't a surprise at all). The fact that there are cleverly placed truck stops run by turks every two hours along the highway, so that the drivers never have to miss their teabreaks. The fact that they ate lentil soup for breakfast. The number of bribes of german chocolate or 5 euro notes it took Hasan to get his truck easily and relatively quickly through the bulgarian border. The fact that a truck driver existed who wouldn't try something inapropriate on Kate! Hasan was the model of decency. Unfortunately, his mate wasn't so good. At one of the stops, Hasan had suggested that one of us travel with his colleague, but we had refused as we always prefer to stick together, of course. Also, the colleague seemed like a bit of a dunce. We felt really bad when the bulgarian police stopped us late on the first night and Hasan had to give him a 10 euro bribe to not fine us for having more people than seatbelts. After that, Kate travelled with the colleague most of the time. As he spoke a few words of russian (about as many as Kate, really) and no german, it seemed to make sense that she went with him, and I stayed with our friend Hasan. Unfortunately, by midday on the second day, he was getting creepy, and holding her hand and that sort of thing. The usual. Somehow I'm exempt from the usual truck driver attentions, but my presence never seemed to stop them trying for Kate. For these reasons, we were very grateful when Hasan offered his truck for our first night. Unfotunately, unlike most trucks, his only had one bunk, and a very narrow one at that. Kate and I did, however, manage to get some sleep while sharing it. We probably would have been more comfortable in our tent, but safer in the truck! Hasan even gave us his keys and told us to lock the doors. Spending two days with a decent and hospitable turk was a great introduction to Turkey. Although he gave us his phone number, we never did contact him afterwards, which I still feel slightly bad about. I think he might have been hoping that we'd sponsor him to come to Australia or something, though, and I didn't really want to get into that. Still, I'm very grateful to him, and hope he doesn't think badly of us for not getting in touch after he looked after us so well!

Erk - Bucharest, Romania
1 Stars This place was Awful visited Sep 10, 2005
Bucharest was a horrible city. WE had been warned that we might not like it, and that we shouldn't plan to spend more than a day or two there, but that hadn't prepared us for the reality of Bucharest. After loving the rest of Romania, and appreciating the countryside and rural scenes and fresh air, Bucharest was a horrible shock. Dirty, dusty, even their big impressive buildings look run down and unimpressive. The so called historical quarter wasn't, and the ginormous "Palace of the People" that Ceausescu (the second and last of their communist era megalomaniacs) bulldozed a 6th of the city to build was hard to get to, hard to find the right entrance to, and they wanted a ridiculously overpriced entry fee to see inside. To improve our impression of the place, our hostel was grotty and felt dodgy, and with reason. We left some things in the fridge while we went sightseeing all day, and they got nicked. Including about half our dinner ingredients, and things that were in a plastic box tied up in a plastic bag (about as secure and "owned" as you can get in a hostel fridge). Luckily some friendly germans helped us out with a couple of ingredients and we were able to make dinner. A few hours after we left the hostel, I discovered my camera was missing. I like my camera, and it's the only one I've got, but the 100 photos on it are all the photos we had of Romania, as we weren't really using kate's camera at all. I was going to download them in that hostel but felt the place wasn't secure enough to display that I was carrying a laptop, and so I didn't want to get it out). So annoyed. Don't bother with Bucharest, just spend all your time in the rest of Romania.

Even worse... - Bucharest, Romania
1 Stars This place was Awful visited Sep 10, 2005
Just to top off our wonderful experience of Bucharest: a few hours after leaving, I happened to be rumaging around in my day pack, and for some reason noticed there was something missing. Namely, my camera. Yes, after years of not having anything much stolen (nothing but a dictaphone and expensive sleeping bag in Italy in 2003 and a travel-sized bottle of sunscreen in Oradea a week before Bucharest) I have had my camera stolen from my day pack in a hostel room. It must have been while we were cooking dinner (with half the ingredients as the rest had been stolen as well), which is, I think the only time it was out of my sight and unlocked. Pretty silly to leave it unlocked, but I had met many of the people in the dorm by then, and they all seemed trustworthy. The camera itself is a loss - I had got quite used to it - but Kate has a digital camera with better resolution, so I'll just have to work out how to use hers properly, and borrow it often. More of a loss are the 100 or so photos that were on the camera. I had noticed the day before that the card was nearly full, but didn't download them to my laptop, because I didn't feel the hostel was secure enough to display the fact that I was travelling with a computer. Those 100 photos were almost all the photos we had of Romania. We hadn't been using Kate's camera at all. There are a few of Oradea, which I will upload when I get around to writing that blog post, but apart from that, I have no photographic record of our time in Romania - the country I think I have enjoyed most this trip. I bet it was the same git who stole our dinner too.

Sighisoara, Romania

3 Stars This place was Average visited Sep 5, 2005
We arrived in Vienna around lunchtime, and were dropped miles from the centre, which isn't a problem, and not in sight of any form of public transport, which was. After walking a mile or three, we found a tram stop, and hopped on the next tram heading to the centre. We had managed to contact Kate's friendBojana, whom she had met in Russia, and after depositing our packs in a locker in West Bahnhof, we managed to meet her, and spend a lovely afternoon wandering about, sitting in a park, and exploring the international food festival that happened to be on (without actually eating any of it, as it was all extremely overpriced). As Bratislava was not far away, and we wanted to have time to spend with Bojana in Vienna, we decided to take a train rather than hitch. It also meant we didn't have to spend a night paying for accomodation in expensive Euroland, but could retreat back to Eastern Europe as quickly as possible!

Well, a campsite outside Cluj, anyway... - Cluj-Napoca, Romania

3 Stars This place was Average visited Sep 4, 2005
We arrived in Vienna around lunchtime, and were dropped miles from the centre, which isn't a problem, and not in sight of any form of public transport, which was. After walking a mile or three, we found a tram stop, and hopped on the next tram heading to the centre. We had managed to contact Kate's friendBojana, whom she had met in Russia, and after depositing our packs in a locker in West Bahnhof, we managed to meet her, and spend a lovely afternoon wandering about, sitting in a park, and exploring the international food festival that happened to be on (without actually eating any of it, as it was all extremely overpriced). As Bratislava was not far away, and we wanted to have time to spend with Bojana in Vienna, we decided to take a train rather than hitch. It also meant we didn't have to spend a night paying for accomodation in expensive Euroland, but could retreat back to Eastern Europe as quickly as possible!

Oradea - Nagy-Varad, Romania
This place was Amazing visited Sep 3, 2005
I have finally worked out what this website calls Oradea! I'm gradually adding photos and more writing to the (recently renamed) "Helsinki to Istanbul" itinerary. I just have Hungary and Romania to write now, and I'm nearly finished uploading photos for it! Unfortunately, these are the only photos of Romania that I have, as my camera was stolen in Bucharest, and I hadn't downloaded the hundred or so photos I had taken. Of all the countries we went on this trip, Romania was probably the most interesting and most beautiful. The loss of the camera was annoying, but the loss of the photos was far worse. I will write more about this later when I fill in the rest of the writing that needs doing. Just as well I have a good memory!

- Budapest, Hungary
4 Stars This place was Great visited Sep 2, 2005
We arrived in Vienna around lunchtime, and were dropped miles from the centre, which isn't a problem, and not in sight of any form of public transport, which was. After walking a mile or three, we found a tram stop, and hopped on the next tram heading to the centre. We had managed to contact Kate's friendBojana, whom she had met in Russia, and after depositing our packs in a locker in West Bahnhof, we managed to meet her, and spend a lovely afternoon wandering about, sitting in a park, and exploring the international food festival that happened to be on (without actually eating any of it, as it was all extremely overpriced). As Bratislava was not far away, and we wanted to have time to spend with Bojana in Vienna, we decided to take a train rather than hitch. It also meant we didn't have to spend a night paying for accomodation in expensive Euroland, but could retreat back to Eastern Europe as quickly as possible!

Untitled - Bratislava, Slovakia
4 Stars This place was Great visited Aug 31, 2005
We arrived in Vienna around lunchtime, and were dropped miles from the centre, which isn't a problem, and not in sight of any form of public transport, which was. After walking a mile or three, we found a tram stop, and hopped on the next tram heading to the centre. We had managed to contact Kate's friendBojana, whom she had met in Russia, and after depositing our packs in a locker in West Bahnhof, we managed to meet her, and spend a lovely afternoon wandering about, sitting in a park, and exploring the international food festival that happened to be on (without actually eating any of it, as it was all extremely overpriced). As Bratislava was not far away, and we wanted to have time to spend with Bojana in Vienna, we decided to take a train rather than hitch. It also meant we didn't have to spend a night paying for accomodation in expensive Euroland, but could retreat back to Eastern Europe as quickly as possible!

An afternoon in Vienna - Vienna, Austria
4 Stars This place was Great visited Aug 29, 2005
We arrived in Vienna around lunchtime, and were dropped miles from the centre, which isn't a problem, and not in sight of any form of public transport, which was. After walking a mile or three, we found a tram stop, and hopped on the next tram heading to the centre. We had managed to contact Kate's friendBojana, whom she had met in Russia, and after depositing our packs in a locker in West Bahnhof, we managed to meet her, and spend a lovely afternoon wandering about, sitting in a park, and exploring the international food festival that happened to be on (without actually eating any of it, as it was all extremely overpriced). As Bratislava was not far away, and we wanted to have time to spend with Bojana in Vienna, we decided to take a train rather than hitch. It also meant we didn't have to spend a night paying for accomodation in expensive Euroland, but could retreat back to Eastern Europe as quickly as possible!

On a mission - Prague, Czech Republic
2 Stars This place was Poor visited Aug 28, 2005
The reason we suddenly decided to take a detour into Prague was a) because Nicola offered to drive us as far as Wroclaw, and, more importantly, b) because Kate's backback, stolen the previous year in Prague, was being kept for her by a friend there. We didn't have any contact details for this friend, but thought we'd have a better chance of tracking him down if we were in the same country. We didn't manage to find him, but we did find a phone number, and leave a message on an answering machine. In retrospect we probably could have done that without going there. We arrived late at night, and the truck dropped us at a tram stop, which was handy. Even at nearly midnight, we managed to get to a campsite by public transport, and didn't get too lost, even with only the sketchy lonely planet map to help. As both of us had been to Prague before, and didn't particularly feel the need to see much, we only spent one day ambling about town and trying to find contact details for Kate's acquaintance, then left late that afternoon. Kate had hitched out of prague the year before (travelling extremely lightly after having everything stolen) and so we went to the same place of the highway she had, only to find it was now all being reconstructed and was impossible to get to. We found a way down to it eventually, and stood at a place that seemed safe enough to stop, and failed to get a lift. We found a few others also trying unsucessfully to get lifts, and decided to walk a bit to find a better spot. After what felt like hours, we tried a petrol station we could see not too far off. We eventually were offered a lift about 5 or 10k down the road, which we accepted gratefully. As we were driving, we noticed lots of hitchers on the highway, and one group seemed to have a white car parked next to them. We were dropped outside another petrol station, and stood on the road to try our luck. We hadn't been there even 10 minutes when a white car came and parked next to us, too. It said "Policie" on it. They told us off for standing on a freeway, which was apparently illegal. We explained we were sorry, but didn't have any other way to leave, and we were trying to leave as fast as we could. They fined us about $30 each (or something) and told us to go to any Czech police station to pay it. And to stop standing on the road. We retreated to the petrol station, figuring we'd just ask someone for a ride there. Turned out to be the least well patronised petrol station in all of europe. We were there about 2 hours, I think, during which time there were about 2 cars. It was getting dark, and I was off scouting tent spots for the night, and admiring the sunset, when a couple came to use the petrol station's car vaccuum. As they were nearly finished I went to beg them for a lift, explaining that we were stranded here, and need to be anywhere else but here. They were nice enough to take us about 30km down the road, to a big road side restaurant. We were only there 5 minutes before we accosted a young guy walking back to his nice car with german plates, and asked for a lift. He was going to Vienna, more or less, and, although we were aiming for Bratislava, we knew they were only an hour or so apart, so it was good enough! And that's how we finally managed to leave the Czech Republic.

a brief visit - Wroclaw, Poland
3 Stars This place was Average visited Aug 27, 2005
We decided at the last minute to head for Prague next, instead of down into Slovakia as originally planned, and Nicola offered us a lift as far as Wroclaw. Wroclaw consists of an enormous, colourful, historical square, (with buildings in the middle, making it more of a ring than a square) and then a modern city built around it. You only have to go about 2 minutes walk from the square to find dull concrete modern buildings. Modern or communist, of course. We only spent a couple of hours here, and then got a lift to one of the highways out of town, having decided to get back to hitching. We stood for hours and hours before finally getting a lift by asking for short distances in a petrol station. A lovely young couple who spoke some english took us right to the Czech border, as they were going to visit relatives nearby (on the Polish side) anyway. We spent most of the last of our zloty on dinner in a road side restaurant, walked through the border, then failed to get a lift, or find anywhere suitable for anyone to stop for us. So we kept walking. It was about a kilometre before there was a good place, and although it was dark by then, we hadn't been there more than a minute when someone stopped for us. A truck driven by a polish man who spoke some german (they all speak some german) took us all the way to Prague. June 2007 EDIT: I have just found this post about the same day that I must have written and lost. So here it is again in different words! Wroclaw As we had suddenly decided to take a flying visit to prague (Kate's long lost bag was supposed to be in the care of a friend there, but we couldn't contact him, but hoped to be able to when we got there), when nicola offered us a lift as far as Wroclaw, we accepted gratefully. It was a pretty town, but funny because you only had to take about 2 steps off the enormous, beautiful, historical main square to find the familiar grey concrete box style of communist architechture. We only stayed a few hours, then nicola drove us to a service station half way out of town, and we spent the next several hours trying to get a lift. Poland is not easy for 2 hitchhikers! We finally begged a ride from a lovely couple who were driving to see one of their parents just near the Czech border, and offered to drive us right to the border point, which was great. There we stopped for a final polish meal before walking through the czech point (sorry, couldn't resist) and discovering there was nothing on the other side. At least, not for a long way. No where even for cars to stop. Or to walk safely. After a kilometre or so (by which time it was completely dark) we found a stopping bay, and were there approximately 30 seconds before a polish truck driver picked us up and drove us right to Prague.

Nicola's place again - Biala, Poland
4 Stars This place was Great visited Aug 26, 2005
While at Nicola's place, we also got the opportunity to sample more polish cuisine, which, like most eastern-european food I've sampled so far, I found fantastic. It's been too long for me to remember the polish names for things now, but the hearty, thick soup served in a hollowed out loaf of bread was definitely a favourite!

Auschwitz & Birkenau - Oswiecim, Poland
4 Stars This place was Great visited Aug 25, 2005
A Day Trip I was sort of in two minds about seeing Auscshwitz. On the one hand, I couldn't have missed it, but on the other, it is part of the sort of gruesome, disaster tourism I'm not particularly in favour of. Still, I'm glad I went. It was a beautiful sunny day, with a bright blue sky, which seemed all wrong once we were there. With that and the green grass that is all over the site, it was all way too cheery for the serious nature of the place. While Auschwitz was interesting, with most of the brick cell blocks turned into museums of different aspects of life in the camp, or related things, it was the sister camp, Birkenau, which is a couple of kilometres away that was most thought-provoking. Birkenau was established after auschwitz to accomodate the huge numbers of prisoners that were being brought in towards the end of the war. It is a huge area of shoddy wooden barracks, most of which look more like barns than anything else. It is cut in half by the railway tracks and platforms that were used for unloading and sorting the prisoners. On either side of the end of the tracks are the remains of two of the enormous, purpose built gas chambers. Although we got here quite late in the afternoon, we spent nearly two hours wandering around. Definitely the 'highlight' - if you can call it that - of the day.

Nicola's place - Biala, Poland
3 Stars This place was Average visited Aug 24, 2005
It was great to see Nicola again, and, as usual, she had a full schedule planned to keep us running around the whole time we were there. The twin towns of Bielsko-Biala both had their highlights, although I have to admit I can't remember which was which! One had an old town square with eccentric architecture, while the other had the kitchest pebble-crete fountain I have ever seen.

Sean's place - Gliwice-Sosnowiec, Poland
3 Stars This place was Average visited Aug 23, 2005
Sean's place was a welcome pit stop. We decided to take a train from Krakow to Gliwice - it wasn't expensive, and hitching in Poland had proved difficult (police are strict about trucks taking more than 1 passenger). Sean met us at the station for the short walk to his flat. We spent two days in his one-room flat, doing little but soaking up internet time. It was wonderful! We managed a half hour walk around the highlights of Gliwice - which is pretty, but quiet, it seems - and went to a few of Sean's favourite eateries. One was a creperie with delicious savoury crepes. Another was a cafeteria type place, where we had an incredibly cheap take-away meal of 'pigeons', giant polish ravioli and traditional tricolor salad (red and white cabbage and carrot). I should probably mention that pigeons are cabbage leaves stuffed with rice and meat, and are very tasty!

Restaurants and walking tours - Krakau, Poland
4 Stars This place was Great visited Aug 22, 2005
Krakow was lovely. The hostel was seriously downmarket, true, but the location was good, more or less accross the road from the old jewish area (Kazimerz) and about a 15 minute walk (or 3 stops on the tram) from the centre of the old city. We hadn't realised this. After reconciling ourselves to at least one night in the tip of a hostel, we decided to treat ourselves to a restaurant meal, and decided to see if the guide book recommended one nearby. There appeared to be one practically across the street, listed as a "jewish style" restaurant, and, incredibly, it appeared to be one we could almost afford. We set out to find it, crossing the drab, ill-lit tram-lined street, we turned a corner down a dark alley, and emerged from the end into an amazing cobbled square, lined with bustling restaurants and beautifully lit by warm yellow street lanterns.The restaurant (Alef's) was winding down for the night (as was the rest of the square - it seems 10pm is a little late to eat out in Poland!) but the waiter kindly agreed to serve us, and we promised to order something that was quick to cook! The restaurant was decorated in a way I want to describe as "homey" complete with giant crocheted doily tablecloths, and dried flowers (or were they plastic? I can't remember now!). There was even a picture of Prince Charles on the wall - along with others I assume were celebrities I didn't recognise - all obviously taken in the restaurant. It was also full of cats. Very homey. While in Krakow we decided to take a walking tour - I did a couple in Berlin and found them really interesting, so seeing the famous jewish quarter of Krakow with someone who actually knew what to look at seemed like a great idea. As it turned out, we were the only people on the tour, so we had our own private tour guide, who showed us around for three or four hours. Krakow was one of the few places in europe that welcomed jews through most of its history, and had an enormous community before the second world war. They had been more or less given their own town (Kazimierz) just outside the city walls, which is, of course, only a ten minute walk from the centre of the old town today. It was once big enough to rival Krakow itself. The tour also took us to Schindler's factory, which hasn't yet been turned into a major museum and tourist attraction, but probably will be soon. We saw what was possibly his office (although our guide said it wasmore likely his secretary's office, but that's close enough). The Jewish Quarter tour was so interesting that we decided to take another walking tour the next day - this time of Nova Huta, the created Soviet suburb on the edge of town. We had the same guide, and again there was only the two of us on the tour, and we got the impression that Lukas (in polish it's pronounces Wukas) was getting a bit sick of us. The tour was nearly an hour shorter than advertised (perhaps we walk faster?) and there were only a couple of sights on it, some of which are interesting. including the completely hand made church paintakingly built during the communist period without any nails and with rocks carried in in buckets by the parishioners. We also spent at least half an hour in a cafe, for no particular reason we could work out. It was a cafe that communist party members used to frequent, apparently. It was all interesting enough, but not exactly what the brochure advertised!

A pretty city, a horrible hostel - Krakau, Poland
4 Stars This place was Great visited Aug 21, 2005
Rides: 1 train Before leaving Warsaw, we rang a hostel or two and found one that was reasonably prices, offered free internet and laundry, and free transport from the train station. Perfect! we thought. The Hostel Cadillac is a student dorm during the year. Poor sudents. In every sense of the word, I think. We were on the top floor which it felt like climbing a small mountain. I never did find a toilet in the place that had a properly attached seat. The showers were communal, which is quite common in hostels, it seems, but they were also unisex. There were plenty of washing machines, but finding the one that worked in the whole hostel was the challenge (they haven't heard of "out of order" signs). The first night i rang another hostel to arrange to move the next day, but by the ext morning we decided that having our own room (no one was ever put in the spare bed in our room) and not having to pack up again and lug our stuff across town made staying worth while.

The kindness of strangers and crazy bus drivers. - Warsaw, Poland
2 Stars This place was Poor visited Aug 18, 2005
Our friend the Lithuanian truck driver dropped us off the next morning about 60km from Warsaw, with some story about not being allowed to go closer because he wasn't a local truck. This was fine, except he once again dumped us in an inconvenient spot - probably annoyed that we had refused to share his bed for the night, and had spent the morning reading instead of entertaining him with conversation! We seemed to be in a small village, and the locals looked at us a little strangely when we got our signs out on the side of their road. We hadn't been there long when a woman came up to us and started chattering in Polish. From the few words I understood (I'm so glad "autobus" is an international word) I gathered there was a direct bus to Warsaw that left from a stop about 1km down the road, and it would cost us 5 zloty (AU$2) or so. We thanked her for the information (I hope) and she continued on her way, or so we thought. 5 mins later we were still on the side of the road, thumbs out discussing if the bus thing was a possibility, considering we had no local currency and the thought of walking a kilometre with our bags and not sure where we were going wasn't overly appealing. The woman returned, and managed somehow to explain to us (only in polish again, gods know how we understood anything) that she had arranged a friend to drive us first to an ATM for money, and then to the bus stop! And the friend turned out to be a travelling chocolate salesman, and after making sure he was leaving us at the right bus stop, he left us with a huge handful of coffee-toffee chocolates! We arrived in Warsaw around 11 or so, exhausted, in desperate need of showers, and without a clue where the bus had left us, although the driver told us in no uncertain tones (no idea what he said, but we got the message) that we had to get out of the bus - I suppose it must have been the end of the line. We miraculously found a bus to take us to the centre of town - a bus with a driver intent on scrambling his passengers. Even the locals were hanging on for dear life as we screeched on two wheels around corners, and he slammed on the breaks for each stop before roaring off again. The poor lady sitting behind me very nearly ended up with both me and my pack in her lap more than once! Not surprisingly under those conditions, I didn't manage to get the map out in time to see the best stop we should get off at for the most convenient hostel in town, and we ended up going one stop too far, but that was ok. Warsaw is not Poland's most beautiful city. We decided to go there for 2 reasons. Firstly, it was a convenient place to stop in between Vilnius and the south of Poland where we are going to visit sean. Secondly, Kate's student visa for Turkey had been sent there, so our main mission was to find the embassy and pick that up. We did also get to do some sight seeing. Warsaw was flattened during WWII, but in the last 15 years or so they have meticulously rebuilt the old town from scratch, so that is looks identical to its prewar state. It's all a bit odd. After a wander around the "old" town, with frequent rest stops, we realised that the thing we most wanted to do was find a supermarket for dinner ingredients, and collapse in the hostel. So we did. The supermarket was in the shadow of the Soviet built "Palace of Science and Culture" which just happens to be Poland's tallest building. With the visa mission successful (despite a slight difficulty in trying to find a currency exchange place when we discovered that the only acceptable currency to pay for said visa was american dollars...) we felt quite happy that we had seen the little that Warsaw had to offer, and caught a train to Krakow Yes! A Train! Shock! Horror! But we've decided to skip the hitching until out of Poland where it's just too hard with 2 people. And the trains are pretty cheap, so we'll survive!