Polska

Leaving Lithuania after 24 hours was not too heartbreaking.  We saw some images of the countryside which may have made a few days longer worthwhile but really, been there done that.  The whole city of Vilnius was thankfully not as creepy as the area surrounding our hostel.  In fact, we met another traveler, one who loves Vilnius and he said that's the worst hostel there.  Anyways, just like Tallinn and Riga, we saw another Old Town and more churches.  To put the icing on the cake, although we were sitting in the square preciously where the free walking tour was suppose to start, we missed the tour and had to give our own tour of Vilnius.

So we took a ten pm bus to Warsaw, Poland and arrived at 7am.  Trying to find the hostel or even the city center from where we were dropped off was incredibly confusing.  In our search, we came across another traveler, Berky from Hong Kong.  Berkey ended up getting a room at our hostel and we hung out in Warsaw and again in Krakow.  We took a public bus in our search for the hostel and before it left, some guy asked if we saw a backpack that he may have left.  We all searched our things and said no.  Then somehow, before we got to our hostel, Berkey realized her backpack was gone.  I know she had it when the guy asked but it was just so odd and I felt so bad that she lost her computer and some of her photos.  This kind of thing would make me very mad, mostly for sentimental reasons loosing memories, but she handled it really well.

90% of Warsaw was destroyed during WWII.  The Poles knew this would be their fate and made extraordinaire draft to replicate the old city in its rebuilding

His holiness Pope John Paul II was from Warsaw and his image is everywhere

We were told that there isn't much to see of do in Warsaw, so we planned to only spend one night there.  The common saying is that "Warsaw is like Disneyland" since 90%(!!!) of it was blown up in WWII.  Our CitySpy map has some useful Polish phrases such as "how new is the old town" (60 years). It really was beautifully rebuilt. Best of all, Warsaw, and all of Poland, was cheaaaaap.  We ate delicious kebabs (kebaps as they say) for $2 and perogies of all different flavors for the same price.  The three of us wandered around after dinner and we saw a whole lot of people sitting on a hillside.  We sat down too and an hour later a watershow played on the fountain.  This was not your ordinary watershow.  The water spayed up like a curtain and images depicting Polish history and tradition were show.  It was very cool. We went back to the hostel and slept since no one sleep on an overnight bus anyways.




The next day we took a supposedly three hour train to Krakow.  It took four hours. Lonely Planet says Poland has the worst trains in all of Europe but I am set to say it has the worst transportation.  Every ride we took was miserable.  The ride to Auschwitz concentration/death camp (we were told the difference between the two- gas chambers) was so hot and disgusting that I was sure it was part of the "Auschwitz experience".  People told us we were strange for wanting to go to Auschwitz.  Its actually a main tourist attraction and  definitely a sad experience but a poignant one.

I have to mention that we also stayed with this awesome "friend" in Krakow.  His name is Michael, he's Polish and amazing.  Amazing factor #1 he's incredibly nice. Factor 2- he fed us.  We already ate more perogies but he offered us pastries, kielbasa and his grandmother's homemade bread.  OH and Polish vodka shots.  Polish vodka comes with a long piece of grass in the bottle and kind of taste like grass but its so good, especially in comparison to the Russian vodka we brought with us.  Michael's amazing factor #3, he is hitchhiking from Poland to AFRICA.  Crazy.  He also plans to go to Tomatina in Spain, which I will be at, and I hope we can reunite there.

Pro-poverty propaganda?