We drove from Brno to Krakow and spent 3 days in Krakow. What surprised me about Krakow is how big it is! I always imagined it as a small city, for some reason, but it is pretty large. Outside of the Old Town, it looks like most other ex-communist cities in Europe. Communist style block apartments that are fairly unkept are around the outskirts. People peeing along the road (I think this is just a reflection of lack of public toilets in Europe in general). Crazy drivers that love to tailgate. Supposedly Krakow has a very active nightlife and we saw a ton of teenagers with their travel backpacks, probably heading to their hostels to get inebriated. But we are now almost in our 30s, one beer with dinner and we leave it at that (even though TK for some reason took to a cheap and basic Polish beer named Perla, and had 1.5 glasses one evening! Shocking!)
[Read more…] about Krakow and Auschwitz
Prague and Brno
We left Munich and drove to Prague, Czech Republic (approximately 4 hour drive). We had planned to spend 1.5 days in Prague and 1 day in Brno and then drive to Krakow, Poland. We did, however, take a little side trip to Weltenburg Abbey on the Danube river. This is thought to be the oldest monastery in Bavaria founded around 600 and has one of the oldest monastery based breweries in the world, established in 1050. The courtyard houses a nice little beer garden, but we were there way too early to be drinking. The Abbey sits right near the Danube Gorge and I wish we had the time to take the ferry through the gorge (but now we have a reason to go back), because it looks beautiful. This was the closest to the origin of Danube I’ve been (it originates in Donaueschingen, Germany not too far off). It is exciting to think that we will get to see and/or cross Danube downstream a few more times on this trip.
Munich and Bavaria, with a little Salzburg sprinkled in
We have arrived to Tatra Mountains in Slovakia and I finally have time to reflect on the last couple of weeks, while sipping tea and enjoying this view from the balcony:
While I am sure I will learn many lessons on this trip, lesson one I learned is: Yes, I do love to travel, but, really, I love to travel into nature. I feel that the moment I stepped out of the hustle and bustle of cities and tourists, my mind and soul relaxed. When I do think about it, majority of the trips I took in my life involved nature in some way. Most of my trips and vacations were to National Parks. Even the trips to the Caribbean rarely involved laying on the beach, but typically involved rappelling waterfalls, horseback riding into the countryside, and rafting down rivers. While I do want to see all the big cities, I think we will spend less time in them, and more time in nature. TK just hates the heat, and the temperature up here at the Tatras has been just perfect (brief afternoon rains also do the trick of cooling everything down).
[Read more…] about Munich and Bavaria, with a little Salzburg sprinkled in