Alright so this trip was fairly eventful as most are and to keep this post from becoming a 20 page paper we are going to just give bits of stories if you want to know the whole story you can ask or just wait until I get back and you can get a live version of the story in less than a month.
For starters when you are crossing country lines you should have your passport on you. If not you get asked in polish to follow the officer with the gun off the bus as he shakes his head and calls over more guards. It is much easier than trying to talk your way out of getting arrested in English to officers that don't understand a word you are saying. So outcome of the story is that I am back in Brno so what do you think happened...
Next, The city of Pszczyna (no i can not say that word). This is the city where you can order pizza and then try to pay but you can not pay with cards or your cash...
The Castle of Pszczyna is a great place for a Time Journey with a German guide that does not want to bore us with lots of historical names but has no problem telling us every word the no named person said why they were alive and every room they walked into.
The following stop was a visit to Oswiecim to see the former concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I don't think I can really put much of this experience into this post but it was a very cold dark gut-wrenching evening. If you have ever read or heard any of the stories about this place you can only begin to imagine it.
We ended the day in Krakow at our hostel that gave us tight little ID cards that make us look like we are secret agents. I once again shared a room with Andy, Laura, and Richard. We had a balcony so Laura and Andy went to see the view. The next thing I knew Laura is on the floor by the door and there was a loud squeal. Turns out we have pigeons sitting on the rail on the balcony and they were talking to Laura and Andy. The rest of the weekend consisted of flying objects being chucked out the door in the pigeons general direction.
Speaking of pigeons, in the Market Square people just feed pigeons and they get covered head to toe by these disgusting skyrats. Marco, from Venice, Italy, was standing with the group as we were watching all the pigeons. He then decided to run through a huge group of the pigeons to see them all fly away and such. That plan back fired. So Marco takes off running into these pigeons and these things are not afraid of a thing. Long story short, Marco emerges off the ground from under a pile of pigeons. Yes there is a video of it, I will try and get my hands on it.
The castle is up on the top of a rock above the river. At the base of the rock there is a cave that legend has it a dragon once lived in. To try and get rid of the dragon and save the city a person put a ship outside the cave. Ok so that makes sense kind of...Put a huge ship outside the cave to block the dragon in, sure why not? Then our guide (Wojtek from Poland) continues to tell the legend of how the dragon came out and ate the ship. Ok stop..What? Ate the ship? That has to be a massive dragon to eat an entire ship. Wojtek is confused, yeah he ate the ship, you know bah bah. Oh ok now that makes a difference, its a sheep that he ate, no ship whatsoever. So long to short...Dragon got so thirsty from eating it that it drank so much water it exploded.
A cool part about the City of Krakow is that there used to be another river that circled the city. Since the city is always cloudy and rainy the people thought there was too much water, and they filled in the river. Every where the river went is now a park and greenway/walking path. It is such a great idea to have a city encirled by a park that way more people can enjoy it with ease.
Ok and the drinking experiences in Poland. Beer is always cheapest so 3 of us each got a different polish beer to taste. One tasted like good old "beast" and the other two were just even worse than that. So we had to find out what polish drink since there is no way we were drinking the beer. Turns out they put syrup in there beer and then drink it either hot or cold. So I had a normal beer and added Raspberry syrup to it. I know it sounds very strange, I was sacred but it was like a Shirley Temple Black (her name when she was an adult so we liked that better than an adult Shirley temple). They also drink vodka with grass in it, cannot tell you how that one was, sorry just could not do it. They also have a polish drink that is Apple Juice with Vodka, not a bad idea either.
Now back to the beer or Piwa as they call it. Five of us went out one night to a Pub that served Rura Piwa. This is a 3.3 liter clear pipe of beer, it has its own tap. So i guess its like having your own tap at your table. It is a very interesting idea. It saved the waiters from having to carry a ton of pitchers all the time since these pipes held over 3 liters. Sorry i have no pictures of it because I did not bring my camera that night, the one night, skoda!
ok so it is still way to long, i just can't cut enough out. About 3 weeks left, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.
