krakow day 2

So we decied to go to Auschwitz today - the weather is good, and Pete is feeling better. We leave in an hour. Which gave me time to go explore the city a bit.... and I bought SHOES!!! Shooes is Europe are cheaper and better than USA shoes, especially since I am a size 40 1/2. It is very hard to find proper fitting shoes in teh USA for us girls with larger feet - the better to kick you with my dear. I got a cute pair of flat brown booties and a cute pair of heeled brown booties - both for perfect winter wear. I did plan for this - the only shoes I currently ahve with me are a pair of Keen sandals, and teh weather is becoming wintery here - so i actually needed the boots...

Krakow day one

Poor pete is sick. So I booked a second class train tix to Krakow form Warsaw so we could get him to bed and not have to jump from plateform to plateform .. he could just relax in the train. Fast and direct. I had reserved beds at the local hostel the night before, on the recommendation of the staff at the Oki Doki. We are staying at mama's hostel, and it is cute and right in the heart of old Town. The place is very cozy and friendly, relaxed and clean. And there is free vodka tasting tonighjt - bonus! No weirdo killers and no electrical wires hanging form the walls.

Pete took a nap and I went out and enjoyed the town. It is a very university town, also filled with 20 something clergy - tons of Catholic monks and nuns in full gear in their 20's wearing sandals and rocking out to guitarts on the streets. Today it appeared to be a music festival for young clergy members. It made the whole town seem like a dreamy safe nook away form the real world. there were more catholic clergy partying in the streets than there is in the whole protestant USA.

tomorrow we will most likely just hang in the town, then take a tour of Auschwits/Birkenau the next day.

Walking Warsaw

Today we walked Warsaw. we first had breakfast with 3 Canadians. One was a teacher who was returning to north american after years of teaching in china, and touring russia; the other 2 were a married couple who were on a three week holiday. we then walked to the warsaw ghetto - where the famous uprising took place in 1944.

we started off on Pope John Paul II street, and headed to the Pawiak prison 1835 - 1944. This prison was originally built for common criminals in 1830's, however it was taken over by the gestapo in the 1930's, and became infamous. 10% of Warsaw's population was imprisoned here. noted for americans, they used interrogation devises such as waterboarding and dogs. what we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat. some of the waterboards were preserved, such as rubber tubing... asso to be noted was an elm tree, now encompased with bronze. in 1944 the nazi's bombed warsaw and the elm survived and is now a monument to those who died in the prison.

we then walked the warsaw ghetto. those who have seen roman polanski's film "the pianist" will be familiar with the recreation of these streets. of coarse the buildings were all razed by bombs, so now the ghetto is marked by stone tablets. we passed many hebrew tour groups on the path. a new historical museum is in the process of being built in this area.

we ended the day walking tthe old town, were we stopped for lunch on teh street Madam Curie was born. I are pig knuckle and wodka, pete had duck mmmmmmm.

we watched break dancers in the main square, and passed the dedication to copurnacus. we finished the day going to an old car show, with citrions from the 1930- present.

tomorrow we leave for krakow!!!

mmmm Food

Last night, after we settled into the clean, no Taxi Driver Robert Dinero guys, we went out for some real Polish food. We went to a cute place called Zapiecek, which specialized in perogies. We got a plate of meat perogies, a plate of cabbage and mushroom ones, fried chicken livers with apples and onions, beetroot soup, and I had a Detroit breakfast = a shot of Jim beam and a beer. The waitresses were wearing cute red checkered maid outfits with blue corsets - i think it was supposed to look country old timey. the reseraunt was all woodwork, like a cabin (but set in the middle of a big city...). the dinner helped shack off the memory of the scary Hostel Tamka that we ecaped.

Scary Hostel in Warsaw....

So today is our first day in Warsaw. It ended well, but started kind of rocky. We got to the central train station after an easy ride from Poznan. our car was full, but we were entertained by a father and his 2 year old daughter, who was super cute and talkative, and watched Kung Ku Panda in Polski.

We got to the central train station and called and made a reservation at a hostel that we got a nice brochure on, that was not in the guide book. we got there and the outdoors should have warned us.... you had a gated window and spray painted outside. we got buzzed in and the reception looked fine, nice 20 year old girl at the front desk. she had told us on the phone that she was very booked but could squeeze us in. she squeezed us into the basement. we got to our 10 bed dorm, and it smelled of piss. so we opened the window to air it out - the window opened up to the dumpsers...

we started to unpack and pete noticed there was shit on his sheets. so i went up to go=et us a different room. so we got out of the basement and to the second floor. the last room of the second floor, room 12, was ours. in there was a 40 year old creepy guy in an army jacket with a grease pony tail. i plugged my phone into the jack - the jack was hanging off the wall in wires. there were no curtains. the girl at the front desk explained that the prior resident ripped the curtains off the window in anger because they did not like the accomodations.

so again we started to unpack. at that pont the creepy guy engaged us in conversation. i atempted to say we spoke english, but did so in slovak. he then proceeded to rip me a new one since i apparently should have not attempted a foreign language and should have spoken only english. at this point i told pete that we needed to discuss food in the hallway....

so food - pete was to guard our belonging from the creepy guy while i go score a new bed for the night. so i went out into the street and tried to score beds at the hostel we passed on the way called the Hostel Lemon. it was on teh 4th floor of a sushi resteraunt. i wiated and waited, but no one answered the reception. so i then found anoterh one a block away that was in our guide book called the Oki Doky. the price was 3x that of the scary hostel, but well worth it. free internet, a bar with happy hour lots of students, loud happy brit pop, and roommates from canada, who have even scarier stories than ours - he was in a hostel in krakow where the scary guy was drinking a 5th of vodka and pulled out a knife.

right now they are blasting Queen at this hostel - another one bites the dust. this is a good hostel!!!

De-Evalution

DEVO

So the boys were in a Prague bar. DEVO came on and the bar cleared out in seconds.... the boys kept bitching about how much they hate DEVO, but continued drinking and listening.... I have tix to see DEVO in SFO when I get back form this trip - I can't wait!!! Love DEVO!!!!

Poznan thoughts...

so Peter is listening to Polish hip -hop = Wyll, album Normalna ( i think....)(hard to tell.....) We visiteed the gas company to find our father's birht records - we of coarse were in the wrong department.... but it was an adventure. We saw a very beautiful cathedral,a nd another one which was on cathedral island which was form the 9th century, and was the founding city of Poland. Also it was visted by pope JP2 in 1983.... we ate street keilbasa and peirogi... we went to a farmers market... we went to a mcDonalds with leather chairs... we drank micro-brew....