euroSlurve

We’ve finally reached Prague, the last city on this little excursion of ours. We arrived on an overnight train from Krakow, where we spent the day with Scott and Gail Pursley and Vinny and Mary Anne Dahmen (from our church). We all traveled to the Krakow train station together on Tuesday night, but took different trains. Theirs went to Budapest. Ours came to Prague. I don’t think they liked traveling with us.

For only the second time on this trip, it’s just Jamie and I. Somehow, we managed to meet up with family and friends in almost every city throughout the past five weeks. Now it’s just the two of us, a couple bags of dirty laundry, a near empty wallet and the beautiful city of Prague. Fortunately, Prague is cheap. Like surprisingly cheap. I wasn’t expecting this at all. A half liter of beer in this city costs around $1.20 US. (In Copenhagen, it was around $9.00 US.) Lion Bars are like 50 cents. I should stock up.

Needless to say, we’re loving Prague. I’ve always heard great things about this city (and the Czech Republic as a whole) and it’s certainly living up to the hype. Like Krakow, it came through the World Wars fairly unscathed. So there are bridges and buildings from the 14th century. We walked over a bridge the yesterday that was built in 1357. And it’s still standing and being used.

The language here is nearly impossible to figure out. I don’t even know how to say “thank you.” In Poland, it was something that sounded like “Dave Coulier” so I would just say that really quickly. It’s nothing like “Dave Coulier” here in the Czech Republic. So I’ll probably just keep quiet and nod my head a lot.

There are lots of English speakers here. Mostly tourists from Britain. Those people are everywhere — and understandably. That beer I paid $1.50 for is only $0.75 for them. The British pound is kicking the crap out of every other currency right now. It’s a good thing I’m not British … because my travel obsession and that exchange rate would be a problem. You’d never see me. I’d be all over the globe. But of course, if that were true you wouldn’t see me anyway, because I’d be British and I wouldn’t know you silly Americans. I know, I’m confused too. Moving on…

There are also lots of pickpockets here. Apparently it’s a huge problem in this city. People in Poland warned us. The guy in the lobby of our flat warned us. There are signs everywhere, especially on the trams. You feel like you need to walk around with your wallet in your hand in your pocket, flinching whenever someone comes near you. It’s a little unnerving, but hey.

So this is our final day here in Europe. We’re planning on exploring more of Prague and seeing how many 50 cent Lion Bars we can eat in one day without getting sick.

Tomorrow we fly from Prague to Zurich and then from Zurich to Newark. I’m hoping it’s still warm at home. I keep hearing people talk about 80 degree weather. Is this true? I’m looking forward to a little Indian Summer action before the winter starts. OK, we’ll seeya on the other side of the pond. Dave Coulier for reading my random thoughts from the road.

It’s been interesting hearing different perspectives on World War II as we travel through Europe. In England, they spoke of the Blitz. In Denmark, it was all about occupation and resistance. In Austria, they talked about being forced to play along with the Nazis. In Germany it was shame, embarrassment and rebuilding.

The Polish people I’ve met have some of the most intense stories. One of them, Marek (a church planter in Gryfow) talked about how his father was sent to Siberia to work in a labor camp. Another guy talked about how his family fled to Yugoslavia and couldn’t return home until the late 1940s. The area we just came from (Gryfow) is in the southwest corner of Poland. Between WWI and WWII it was actually annexed to Germany. The Germans expanded their territory and most Poles fled. They didn’t return until the war ended. Then the borders were redrawn and it became Poland again. Crazy stuff.

We heard of ton of these stories yesterday at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp here in Poland. The tour was pretty intense and it’s still hard to comprehend the stuff we saw.

OK, enough history lessons. Let’s lighten it up a bit. We arrived in Krakow last night after a long, five hour journey from Gryfow. We packed eight people in a small van and journeyed across this fair land. At one point (at Auschwitz) it actually started snowing. Just a few flurries, but it was real snow. Anyway, we had dinner (pierogis and beer) at a cafe in Krakow last night with about 10 other Americans who were here for the conference in Gryfow. We stood out a little, but it was a good time.

The old town square here in Krakow is one of the most beautiful I’ve seen in Europe. It was untouched during the war and is absolutely beautiful. We’re going to explore a bit more in a couple hours so I’ll post some photos on Flickr. I’m now using Jamie’s MacBook since it appears that my hard drive has failed. I’m really, really, really, really, really hoping that isn’t the case (since all of my photos are on that hard drive) and that I can fix it when I get home. Scott, Josh and I have already laid hands on it. So hopefully it’ll be ok.

We’ll be spending the day in Krakow today and then Jamie and I will board on overnight train to Prague.  So we’ll talk to you later from the Czech Republic.

We’ve had some pretty good times over the past month, but I have to say, an easy highlight of the trip was walking through a suburban Polish supermarket with Scott Pursley (our pastor), a guy from Cleveland and a couple from Brazil. The Brazilians didn’t speak English and none of us spoke Polish. And Scott was there with a funny hat on. It was awesome. We stood out, but oddly, nobody stared at us.

We had just come from a church youth group meeting, where Josh, Jamie, Scott and I spoke to a group of about 30 kids. We each shared a bit about what God has been doing in our lives. It was translated into Polish for the kids, even though a handful of them spoke broken English. They smiled and nodded at us, so hopefully there wasn’t much lost in translation.

OK, we need to go eat some breakfast and then go to a Polish church meeting. More later.

I knew it was going to be a good day when I heard “The Final Countdown” by Europe playing in the cabin next door to us on the train from Vienna. I kid you not. Someone was actually listening to that song for pleasure. In 2007. I love this continent. I wanted to stick around to hear if they played Wham or REO Speedwagon, but the train was pulling into the Dresden Hbf and it was time to move on.

Today was a great day. Well, it started out great and ended great. The stuff in the middle was interesting and a bit trying. Traveling into Poland without a car is apparently more challenging that we originally thought. We took a comfortable overnight train to Germany late last night (Thursday) after eating dinner with Anette in Vienna. (She was staying another day in Austria and then flying back home to Denmark on Friday.) We pulled into Dresden, Germany at 6:30 am, ate a quick breakfast and took a quick look around the city. Dresden was firebombed by US and British planes during WWII and then built up by the Soviets in the 1950s and 60s. Many buildings from the Soviet era have since been demolished and rebuilt in the old German, classic style. It’s quite a beautiful city. We walked past Frauenkirche, a church that was demolished during the war and rebuilt again on the 1990s (mostly with money from the US and UK). It was apparently a beautiful city before the war and is still being developed. It would be interesting to see Dresden in 20 years.

OK, back to our trip to Poland. We (Jamie, Josh and I) received faulty intelligence from the Germans and ended up traveling on a handful of Soviet era trains and buses through small Polish towns that probably don’t see a lot of tourists. The Polish people were extremely helpful and pleasant. Their English was really choppy, but hey, their English was much better than my Polish. So they win. But yeah, there was a lot of gesturing and pointing and panicking at times. Especially as we waited for a bus at a rustic station in a small border town called Zgorzelec. We were (sort of) relieved when a 30-year-old bus rolled up and the driver nodded when I tried to pronounce the name of our destination. After winding through country roads for about 30 minutes, the bus (which was packed with Poles — people were sitting on the steps at the front of the bus) pulled up to yet another rustic train station, where we boarded a train bound for Gryfow. This was our third train of the day.

The next challenge was getting off at the right station, since the Polish version of a “station” is a bit different from ours. Often the train would stop in the middle of a field in front of small brick shelters that were, well, rustic. (I know, I’m being nice here.) By the grace of God, we got off at Gryfow and found Scott Pursley (our pastor) waiting on the side of the tracks with Eddy, a fellow from the local church. I can’t tell you the relief I felt. I contemplated jumping into Scott’s arms but that probably would have been awkward.

Anyway, we’re here in Gryfow at an amazing ministry center that has a couple dozen rooms. There are rolling hills and horses and Polish people all over the place. It’s great. This country really is beautiful and the people are amazing. I’ll have to check in again tomorrow and talk more about the conference, but now it’s time for bed. Laters.

Greetings from chilly Vienna, where it’s been around 55 degrees and sunny. We arrived in this fair city early Sunday afternoon after a quick two hour flight from Copenhagen. Josh is here too. He flew in from balmy Istanbul after a two week sailing adventure down there in the Black Sea.

The four of us have settled into our flat, which is much larger and nicer than we had expected. It’s in a regular residential building and is stocked with two bedrooms, a full kitchen, dishwasher, washer, satellite TV, sausage making machine, internet, etc. It’s rather comfy — so comfy that it’s 11:30 am and we’re still sitting around relaxing.

We’ve spent the past two days exploring some of the big sites like St. Stephen’s Cathedral, the Rathaus, Habsburg palaces. We also explored numerous narrow alleys and eaten schnitzel and bratwurst and other delicious processed meats. The other night I had pork, veal and turkey piled high on my plate, along with pickles, coleslaw, carrots and pomme frites. Outstanding. Simply outstanding.

For lunch yesterday the four of us (Jamie and I, Josh, Anette) braved a bratwurst stand and ate on a bench alongside the Danube. Jamie and I shared a huge hot dog/bratwurst thing that had cheese inside it. It was like Jimmy Buff’s, but Austrian.

They also love their coffee here. A lot. So much that ordering is complicated. We’ve tried to get regular coffee a couple times and have failed. Everything seems to be some sort of variation of a creamy cappuccino. You can also get a warm drink at a cafe on almost every block.

OK, it’s almost noon so we shoud get going. More later …