Slovakia and Poland

After our whirlwind visit to Vienna, Slovakia gave us a slower paced few days. All over Eastern Europe there is work being done on buildings and streets, making up for years of crumbling neglect. This was quite evident in the small capital city of Bratslavia. It has a charming old center which was apparantly ignored for about 40 years, and is now getting fixed up. We headed into the center of the country to an old mining town. We went into a tea house that felt like something out of my childhood in the 70s in California. There were pillows all over the floor to sit on and 70s music playing. There were several hundred choices of tea to choose from, and we certainly chose disgusting ones. Chase's tasted like hot grass soup and Marshall's was a disgusting milk and chocolate tea concoction. But sitting there was one of the most funny times we've had on the trip. The next day we went to a marvalous thermal bath with water about 105 degrees inside a cave. After about 20 minutes in there you go sit in chairs in another dark cave with music playing. It was highly relaxing! The Spisske castle is the largest in Europe. We hiked about a mile up a hill to get to it (then found as we rounded the other side there was a parking lot just by it). There were wonderful views and cute little animals called spermophiles in the courtyard. They look kind of like prairie dogs only smaller and were scurrying around collecting grass which they would take down into their burrows.
Our next country was Poland. We spent three days in Krackow. We toured salt mines where for hundreds of years miners carved beautiful statues of stone, saw the Jewish ghetto from the 1940's and Schindler's factory nearby. We toured the communist planned community next to a steelwork and ate at a milk bar. These restaurants were set up in the communist era, heavily subsidised for workers to eat. They are still heavily subsidised so for a few dollars you get a meal of stuffed cabbage, mashed potatoes, beet soup and a drink. There were a bunch of older Polish people and local laborers eating, everything is chrome and formica and was a real time warp experience. The main square is huge and beautiful, and we enjoyed evenings strolling the square, watching street performers, and buying corn and cotton candy from vendors. Yesterday we spent the day at Aushawitz. As Marshall wrote in his journal "it disturbed me." The boys only came for a couple of hours, it was all they could take. Marshall stayed outside of most of the buildings, and usually closed his eyes when he did go in. A couple of hours was all Chase could take as well. So I took them back to the hotel where they read and did some school work, while I went back to look around. It was an interesting, though obviously not enjoyable day.
Today we drove to the Czech Republic, because Mark is flying in tommorrow to spend some time with us. The only problem is this is the busiest travel weekend of the year in Europe--May Day---and everything in Prague is booked. Mark was coming to see Prague, but I think we'll be seeing some smaller towns which I hope won't be as full up.
Mijke and the boys.

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