Our trip was quite fun and relaxing, but it didn't come without snags. Lost luggage, lost traveler's checks, getting thrown off the train in Slovakia, and missing a train connection were all fun, little things that happened to us while overseas. Also, we changed our itinerary on the fly to exclude Budapest, Hungary and include Berlin, Germany for reasons which will be expounded upon later.
The tour took us by bus to two neighboring fishing villages. Both were quite charming and we saw the prerequisite dikes and windmills along the way. Unfortunately, it rained the entire day and because of the luggage snafu, Charisse was without a coat and I was wearing my good clothes all day long. Not having slept much on the airplanes, we were both very tired when we returned to the hotel. Charisse opted for a hot bath while I jumped straight into bed. We slept from 6:30 p.m. until about 11:00 a.m. the next morning. It's interesting to note that everyone we mentioned our last name to recognized that it was Dutch.
Today's tour was a bus tour around the city which had stops at a diamond-cutting facility and Anne Frank's house. Afterwards, the tour concluded with an hour-long cruise along Amsterdam's many canals. From there we went to the red light district which, in Amsterdam, is a tourist attraction because prostitution is legal. Drugs are also legal there and I was approached more than once by someone who said they could get me cocaine or ecstacy or anything else I might want.
The red light district is a trip because there is a prostitute behind every window, each wearing her slinkiest lingerie and giving come-hither looks to all the men. We also took the opportunity to pop into a store calling itself Red Light Souvenirs and found the most sexually-explicit videos and devices that anyone has ever heard of. Just to let you get an idea of the variety of videos they had, there was a section devoted to bestiality. Further on down the street there were clubs and theaters where men would stand outside to drum up business. At one we could have paid 50 guilders (about $35) to watch a live sex show involving one heterosexual couple and one homosexual couple. For $75 guilders (about $50) we could join in a live orgy consisting of "20 or so people aged 18-25, 40% of whom were couples". Needless to say, we just kept right on walking.
That night Charisse suggested adding Berlin to our itinerary because she knew how much I wanted to go to the zoo there, one of the largest, if not THE largest, in the world. With that as our destination, we hopped aboard a Eurorail train that evening and slept on the 8+ hour ride.
Penguins, as you may know, are my absolute favorite and I wasn't going to leave without seeing them. So I took off by myself and about 45 minutes later was able to locate them. There was a small pen containing black-footed penguins (the same kind as in Utah's Hogle Zoo). I took a couple of pictures and started to return to Charisse via a different route. It just so happens that there were other penguins to be found along this route, exactly the kind of bonus I had been looking for. I stumbled upon a glass-enclosed pen that housed both King penguins (like Penny, my little, plastic penguin companion) and Rockhopper penguins (which sported distinctive orange crests above their eyes). There was also a small island which housed another group of black-footed penguins.
From Berlin we journey by train, in the late afternoon, to Dresden. Of course, arriving Sunday evening meant that little was open, but it was still a nice stop. From there we hopped back on the train, bound for Budapest. Why we didn't reach our original destination is a story unto itself.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, spoke English at the station. We had also arrived there a couple hours before their currency exchange offices would open. Because of the hassles, we decided on the spot to nix Budapest and head back into the Czech Republic, Prague to be exact. Charisse was tired of being somewhere where she couldn't be understood. So we hopped aboard a train to Prague and arrived there that afternoon instead of the following morning, as originally intended.
My friend Todd's restaurant was easy to find, not being far from Wenceslaus square in the heart of Prague. The first person I saw when I entered "Jama the Hollow" was Will, who lived in the house behind ours when we were growing up. He and Todd are partners in the restaurant. It is a hip, American-themed bar/restaurant which is extremely popular with locals and tourists alike.
We met up with Todd that evening after leaving our luggage at Jama and shopping around the main square. Todd doesn't have a car, so we relied on the super-cheap metro and tram lines to get around. He had made up a futon bed for us to sleep on, and that's the only place we stayed while in Praga.
We arrived at the entrance to the bridge just before a concert was about to begin in a nearby church. Todd toddled off home while we decided to take in the concert. It was inside a very ornate 16th-century Catholic church and consisted of a violin, bass, flute, and harpsichord. The music was a baroque selection of Handel, Bach, and others. A soprano singer joined the musicians for about half of the selections and she was pitch-perfect. We wanted to close our eyes and drift off as we listened to the music, but there was so much to see in the domed church. Large murals graced every wall as well as tapestries and sculptures, some of which were suspended high up. We both decided it was a very moving experience and one that we would not have missed for the world.
In the evening we went on a 2 & 1/2 hour dinner cruise down the river that runs through Prague (for the life of me, I can't remember the name of it). There were about 12 tables in the enclosed lower deck at which to each and dinner was served buffet style. After dinner, we went up to the open top deck to drink hot chocolate and take in the sights. With few exceptions, the weather we experience in Prague was very agreeable. The cruise also featured musical entertainment in the form of an accordion player and a singer/comedian dressed in military-style garb. They were quite amusing. One sight we got to see on the cruise was a bunch of skinny-dippers in all of the glory who were bathing on one bank of the river.
We finally made up our minds to visit Auschwitz the next day and made it to the train station just minutes before the train left at 9:30 p.m. Just before we left, I glanced through our information on Poland and discovered that that was the one country on our itinerary that required us to obtain visas. We didn't have enough time to do that, so we hopped on the train anyway and hoped for the best.
At the Polish border a uniformed man came through the train asking if the people in each compartment were British or American. Before we could say anything, the people in the compartment with us answered "Polsky", meaning that they were Polish. The man chatted with them for a bit and then went on his way. It was then we noticed that a couple dozen people had been herded off the train and wouldn't return for about half an hour. Hmmm...
We were now in Krakow without any idea of how to complete our journey to Auschwitz. I spied a bus station nearby, but it turned out to just be for city buses. We were approached by several men who each had their own taxis and who claimed that their fares would be much cheaper than hopping on a tour bus. Throwing caution to the wind, we picked one of them and off we went. Our driver's name was Luciano, and he said he had been driving a taxi for over 30 years. He spoke understandable English and was very helpful. First he took us to the local American Express office so that we could obtain some local currency. Then I told him our concern that we had somehow made it into the country without anyone noticing we didn't have a visa. We spoke with a friend of his who worked for passport control in the police station and discovered that visas were no longer required. Our information had been out of date.
So then we took off for Auschwitz very, very, very, very fast. It's just a two lane road and Luciano has no qualms about passing people while going around turns. I told Charisse that if we survived, we would laugh about it some day. The drive took about an hour. Luciano walked us in the visitor area, told us where to find the restrooms and how much they would cost, picked us out an English-language walking tour pamphlet, led us to the main gate of the camp and told us to take our time and he would be waiting when we were done. The buildings of the concentration camp itself had been turned into a series of museum exhibits. Inside some were the booty the Nazis had taken from the Jews, including a room full of human hair that hadn't been sold for clothing as had the rest. The final building was an actual crematorium.
We hopped back in the taxi and were driven a few miles down the road to Birkinau, aka Auschwitz II. Birkinau is over 375 acres and dwarfed the first camp we went to. Many of the buildings had been burned down by Nazis covering their tracks, but a few remained. We were quite tired of walking by then, so we spent only an hour or so at this camp.
Luciano then drove us back to Krakow. Because she was sleeping, Charisse missed Luciano's best maneuver. The two-lane road was actually divided by a center line and even though a car was coming the other way, he determined there was room for all three cars and passed the car in front of us anyway. We made it back it Krakow and paid Luciano 1,000,000 Zlotys (about $50) and tipped him half a million. Tour buses charged that price for a single person and didn't come with commentary about where Hitler had lived, where "Schindler's List" was filmed, etc.
It was about 5:00 by the time we returned to Krakow and it was a beautiful day. Our train didn't leave until 10:00 that night so we had some time to kill. We ate a seven-course meal in a fancy outdoor restaurant for about $10 apiece and went shopping at an outdoor bazaar. For $8 we got a 45 minute carriage ride around Old Market Square and the nearby area. Charisse decided then and there that she like Krakow most of all the places we visited on our trip.