Prague, Cesky Krumlov

We took the overnight bus from Krakow to Prague.

We enjoyed Prague but it was a very big modern European city. From Prague, we headed south to Cesky Krumlov, a beautiful medevial 18th century city that was built into a winding bend in the river. We enjoyed it very much. Ethan went next door with an empty mug and came back with a huge draft beer for less than $1. I cooked in a great kitchen. We relaxed.

Now we are in the train station in Prague heading to Dresden Germany. We are hiring/renting a car that will take us to Berlin and then down to Frankfurt. We are both excited for the flexibility of the car and Ethan gets to drive on the autobahn!!!

More to come, our time at this cafe is up.
Sara and Ethan

Final Thoughts from Krakow

After a week in Krakow and a great time, we leave you a final picture of Krakow, courtesy of Sarah, a friend we met at the Pink Flamingo Hostel. Actually, we want to shout out to all the really cool new people that we met at the Pink Flamingo. I know that many of you have access to this website and we want to say that the world is small and I am sure paths will cross again.

Pictures and Comments...

We have updated the pictures on the www.fiataa.snapfish (or link from the right of the page) through Krakow and you are welcome to see all of them.

IF YOU ARE READING THIS...we would enjoy hearing that you are and what you think. It is
easy to post a comment to any post, just click on the comment box and type type type.

We leave for Prague this afternoon and you are sure to hear more about that lovely city. Krakow is definately a must see for any traveler and on our come-back-to list. We loved it here.

Krakow, Poland

We spent two days in Frankfurt and didn't really do much. Everything was expensive, even soda and beer. Dinner off the street of bratwurst was nice, but everything else blew our budget. I did do a full hour interview from the call center across from Frankfurt Main train station and we watched American sitcoms dubbed in German on the tv in our room. Our only English options were a rotating MTV and BBC channel or CNN.

We took our RyanAir flight to Krakow, leaving at 6AM on a two hour bus ride to Frankfurt Haun. It really is everything they say in the magazines about being a bare bones airline company where the flight attendants hawk drinks food and even scratch lottery tickets! But it was cheaper than a bus or a train and way worth the fact that we booked a $0.01 flight (we paid 4.50Euro for each of our bags and 20 for our taxes).

The streets of Krakow through a Lomo camera lens.

Krakow is awesome!!!! We love it here and the vibe of the city was so great from the first impression. Although the first hostel we picked was a loser, we moved to a great place called the Pink Flamigo and are much happier here.

The city square is full of street performers and the buidlings are amazing and really old. The restaurants are everywhere, the prices are good, and there is soooo much to see. The old Jewish quarter has become a hip area for artists and clubs and nice restaurants. There are sooooo many clubs here with lots of music of all types.

The gate of the synagogue in the old Jewish quarter.

Today we went to Auschwitz. It was very emotional as we expected. But even more so as I spent some time finding where all my great grandparents are from and learning that my fathers grandfather was from a small city in Poland. It hits home to know that I personally could have cousins that were shipped to Auschwitz. Gives me chills.

"Through work lies freedom" in german. The gates to Auschwitz.

The south gate into Birkenau.

The tracks that led so many people to the camps.

Visiting Auschwitz, a death camp where 1.5 million people were excecuted (1.2 million Jews) is an experience that really cant be explained. So many people come to see this site and the tours are done matter-of-factly. Unlike, the excessive shock valued 'Killing Fields' of Cambodia that very few people new about, most people that visit Auschwitz know the history. I was prepared for so much detail and tears and crying, but this tour was not created to shock and awe, more to educate and inform. The most shocking things I experienced were the room full of hair which was left instead of being shipped off for use in fabric manufacturing. The death wall was also a touching monument with the flowers and rocks and candlers all placed in front of it. We visited on a gloomy grey day and really got an earie view of the city. The massive size of the camp and the living quarters and the barbed wire as well as the interogation rooms was unexplainable. The tracks leading into the area gave me the creeps. I am so happy to have experienced this tour and feel more connected with my roots. With this tour, I felt inclined to research my

After Auschwitz and back in Krakow, one would never believe that a city that draws people to visit a death camp could be so full of life. It is refreshing and nice to know that the once Jewish Ghetto has become a hip cool section of this great city. There are more than 18 University level institutions in this city, one which is the oldest in central Europe dating from 1364. Schindlers List was filmed here and actually happened here. Did you know the bagel originates from Poland and was brought to New York by Polish Jews in the 1850s?

Wow...one could party every night of the week here in Krakow. Who wooda thunk? Seriously, I am conditioning myself to stay up later and sleep later because that is the way that this city works. Most of hte clubs are underground making it seem like a sleepy town on the surface, but once you pick a destination and head underground, it is crazy wild and you could never go to all the clubs here. There are soooo many.

We went to the salt mines today. The Wieliczka Salt Mine, nowadays practically on the southeast outskirts of Krakow, has been worked for 900 years. It used to be one of the world's biggest and most profitable industrial establishments when common salt was commercially a medieval equivalent of today's oil. Always a magnet, since the mid-18th century Krakow's Wieliczka salt mine has become increasingly a tourist attraction. We walked underground at the depths of 120m in the oldest part of the salt mine and saw its subterranean museum. I actually licked a wall and a salt statue. This is the most amazing chapel with hand carved reliefs on the walls and everything is made from salt. The miners were starting to gather for a special service for the men trapped in the coal mine and those that died the day before in another part of Poland.

The chapel (made of all salt).

Thoughts on Turkey, traveling, and preparing to readjust.

Turkey was chill. Istanbul was ok on the way back through but because we couldnt change our flight to Frankfurt, we didn't get the extra day we wanted which means we didn't get to do a few of the sites that we had saved for our trip back through. We will jus thav eto go back. Man , we say that often. The food in Istanbul wasnt as good as it was in the rural areas, everything seemed more expensive. We did buy shoes! Both of us got a nice pair of leather shows to come back to the US in, yeh! But currently, we are both getting used to those shoes and fighting blisters from the massive amounts of walking.

We loved Olympos and Goreme. If you go to Olympos, dont stay anywhere besides Saban house. That is http://www.sabanpansion.com/ with the funky Turkish "s" if you are typing it. We also wish we had more time in Goreme and next time, we want to head east.

Its funny, as we go through this rtw trip, we keep making mention to where we will go on the next trip. What we want to add, take out, and how we will modify the next travels.

Now, we get ready for Eastern Europe and then back to the good ole US of A. Its getting to the end and now a new beginning. School acceptance and rejections are the next big thing and then we can start the next step.

We want to thank everyone that has continued to read this blog and if you are planning a round the world trip, we would be glad to help with the knowledge from the countries we have been. Who knows, maybe you will be helping us with our next trip.

Cappadocia.

We stayed in Goreme at a clean neat hostel. The only issue was the super rambuncious 5 year old reaking havok and tempertantrums all over the hostel. The dog was our tour guide to the Open Air Museum which was fun. Everyone in town said hello to Spotty the Dog and we felt priveleged to have such a popular tour guide. When we thought we took a wrong turn and pulled out the map, Spotty made sure we knew he was right and gave us this look like 'you doubt me?, silly tourist!'

The uniqueness of the region was formed by the eruption of Mt. Erciyes (ancient Mt. Argaeus) and Mt. Hasan some 60 million years ago, which spread a thick layer of ash over the area. This hardened into a soft porous stone called tufa. During the following centuries, erosion from rain and wind created valleys in the soft rock that left behind higher sections of crazy interesting formations called “fairy chimneys”.

A view of the valley.


The Cappadocia area was ruled by a series of small, independent states, under priest-kings as early as the 6th century B.C. Herodotus mentions it as the region between Phrygia and Cilicia in the 5th century B.C. Xenophon mentions people living underground in his book Anabasis although the earliest residents are unknown. In 17 A.D. Tiberius made the region a Roman Province. It became a sanctuary for Christians who hid in the existing underground cities and made their own mark by carving several thousand churches and monasteries. When the Arabs started their raids in the 7th and 8th centuries, they again went underground and continued carving elaborate cities.

Me peaking my head around the corner in the underground city. These tunnels went down 8 floors and breathing was difficult at the bottom.

Another part of the Cappadocia region, where they filmed the sand people in Star Wars, near a monastary built out of rock.

A cool looking chimney at the end of the day at the sunset time.

The opening doors of the camel (not truck) stop used in the old days of the Sikh trading route. Also, that is the Turkish flag at the door.

It was a great tour, a wonderful chill city, I only wish we had more time to enjoy the area. We would have tasted some of their wines and maybe done a little more exploring.

Ah, heaven found in Turkey (Olympos)

After a freak snow storm and some really cold weather, we were really on the fence whether we shouold go south south to the mediteranean and visit Olympos. We had heard it was cool but we didnt really want to stay in a treehouse in the middle of winter, but in the end we went there anyway and boy were we happy. The town had very few visitors, but we stayed at a bungalow place that rocked. Meral, see picture below:

is a super star host. I wanted to cook Turkish food and we cooked every night. Our bungalow was in an orange grove and the oranges were in full bloom. The average Turk drinks more than 8 cups of tea a day and was out to fit in with them. Ethan on the other hand wanted to match the tea with oranges and consumed more oranges than was thought humanly possible.

We met a really cool guy (Udof) who lives in Berlin and gave us great info and we promised to meet him for coffee when we get there. The second evening Ethan and Udof went ot see the Chimera fire Flames that never extinguish. They have been that way for centuries and pirates were known to use them to find the cove. Ethan blew one out and it mysteriously relit itself as was expected. I stayed and cooked with Meral.

Chimera Flames!

The last night Meral treated us to Raki (Polish anise flavored liquer) and we would up spending an extra night there. We had amazing fish for dinner. The food there was the best we had in all of Turkey. I also went mushroom hunting on the mountain with Meral. Ethan swam in the Mediteranean Sea! Yup, it was cold but he did it. We also hiked around the area and saw the ruins too. It was our favorite time thus far in Turkey.

Just a short walk from our bungalow.

King of the Mountain!

Pamukkale and Hieropolis





In Pamukkale, most visitors go for the calcium pools, like the picture:


They were very interesting, but not beautiful like the pictures of them in the brochure guide. Instead of crystal clear water and people lounging around in bikinis, we found murky water being diverted to form new pools because the older ones were eroded. We took our shoes off and got our feet wet in the steamy water. It was an interesting natural phenomenon that had been over visited and they are trying now to preserve it a bit to keep the tourists coming. But the real beauty of the area is Hieropolis.

We spent the day behind them exploring the ancient city of Hieropolis pretending we were
archaeologists.

Sara leaning against an ancient pillar.

Ethan pretending to reassemble the ruins.

The town was like a ghost town and we had an alright dinner at our pension. The touts were strong to get us into one pension over the other and the bus was actually stopped short of town because a man that gave us a flyer in the previous city had called a woman to tell her we were on that bus. We got angry and wouldnt even look at that pension. One night we had excellent Turkish pizza.

Gallipoli and Selcuk.

We have spent the last few hours loading pictures to snapfish and are overinternetted so we dont have much time to blog but we will share a few pictures if you want more. But please visit snapfish for the full reports of all the pictures from Turkey.

Ephusus in Selcuk.

Ethan on the ancient throne (latrine) and Sara hugging the Turkey LP.

The theatre of Ephusus.

Istanbul, Turkey

So, we arrıved ın Turkey to cold wet weather. Mmmm, not so fun for us ısland people! We are stayıng ın a fun socıal hostel wıth lots of drınkıng last nıght. We ate lamb shısh and the local beer ıs good. We also met a current PCV from Moldovıa (sp?) and we talked a lot of Peace Corps lat nıght, makıng us home sıck. We are really startıng to mıss and wonder about our famılıes and frıends ın Samoa, so ıf by chance you are readıng thıs from Samoa...we mıss ıt there and you and everythıng about ıt. If you are leavıng soon, enjoy ıt because you too wıll mıss ıt once you leave. If you make ıt out to eıther of our vıllages, send our love and best wıshes and when we have tell them we wıll call when we have the means too (ie:$).

Anyway, we are enjoyıng the ancıent cıty. We lıstened to Muslım prayer at the mosque behınd the hostel last nıght and then agaın at 5AM. It woke us up, but I thınk we are both so used to prayer from Samoa that ıt was almost soothıng rather than shockıng. Tomorrow maybe we wont even wake up.

The streets are all cobblestone and the buıldıngs are all old, very old. Today, we saw the Sultan's Topkapi Castle and learned all about harem and how the sultans were not just royal prınces, but the rulers of the country. We got to see the old baths and harem hangouts and bedrooms and we also got to see the precıous stone collectıon. We saw a 86 karat diamond! I mean talk about heavy...who would wear such a thıng?

The Grand Bazaar was well, grand but pricey. we enjoyed walking around it but that was enough. No shopping until we get back to Istanbul.

Just outside the Grand Bazaar.

We took this walking back down to our hostel. Unfortunately we ran out of time and didnt get to go in but we here it is amazing and we'll just have to go back another time to Turkey to visit it and of course to buy a carpet.

The Blue Mosque. The Mosque of Sultan Ahmet I.

Spıce market which we never made it to, either...

AyaSofia was amazing. It was originally built in the first century as as a Greek Christian Church but during the Ottoman Empire, it was converted into a Mosque and the amazing mosaics were simply covered over. There is years of restoration to be done, but as of now you can see the amazing use of the building both as a mosque and before that as a church.

The inside of AyaSofia.