I have finished my glass of white German wine and beat Maryanne at Rummy (2 out of 3) and it is not even 11 pm. We are now in Berlin and this was our second day in this big city. Maryanne suggested that I should blog in the present and go back to Krakow later, if time permits. We had a great time in Krakow, but I agree with Maryanne, Berlin is the subject. First, we are out of Eastern Europe. As we enjoyed ourselves in Eastern Europe, we divided the price to determine Canadian $$ - and life was reasonable or cheap! Here we multiply the price by 1.3 and it is definitely more costly in Western Europe. For example - using the toilet. In Karkow cost 33 cents and in Berlin it is !.30 ... read more

Saw the Dark Knight Rises Saturday night. The movie had Czech subtitles which are easy to ignore. Tried the "Bacon & Cheese" popcorn. It was pretty good, too. Sunday morning we went to St Clement Anglican Church. One reader was originally from Toronto. There were a number of English speaking countries represented that day. The Rev. Ricky Yates was an Englishman who could have been the twin of the Calgary Field Naturalists president. (I can’t understand him either). Anyway, they are following the same lectionary that we are at home so the sermon made sense and followed on with the same theme. It was a good service. The church has an amazing organ and it was fun singing new songs. After service, Maryanne and I finally made it to her Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. It was ... read more

We have arrived in Dublin! We are back to a (mostly) English speaking country. Our stay in the Netherlands was nice. It can get hard traveling around non-stop for or a month. It was nice to be able to have a home base in a quiet part of the country and rest, relax and recuperate. We did spend last night in Amsterdam, a must see city if you are into sex and weed. We are into neither and while we did have a quick look through the Red Light District, we spent our time at the Anne Frank Museum. It was a really well done museum of the Warehouses that Anne’s Father owned and the secret annex that her family lived in for two years before being discovered by the Nazi’s and taken to concentration camps. ... read more

Well we are in Köln. It has been an adventure here. It all started at the train station in Salzburg when we went to get our reservations. I asked about reservations to Köln but I obviously pronounced it wrong since the guy just stared at us so after saying it again and still getting a blank look I mentioned the English pronounciation and he finally understood where we wanted to go but he corrected us and said (an a very snotty tone) in Germany it is pronounced Köln. Our train from Salzburg was nice, long but nice. We were in a six person compartment. We had the window and aisle seat (with no one in the middle). Across from us by the window was a German lady and the other two seats were a nice retired ... read more

I am really tired. First of all it wasn’t a particularly restful night. I really miss my pillows at home, It is really hard to take four pillows with you when you travel though. Here we have only one, not overly great pillow and there is no headrest to prop it against. I think the fact that had really nice beds in our Vienna apartment made the transition even harder. We also got up early this morning so that we could be ready for our Sound of Music Tour!! We got picked up from the hostel at 9:00am. We went to many of the sights that were used in the movie. It really made me want to see the movie again. Our tour guide told us a little bit about Salzburg, the filming of the movie ... read more