Ajloun castle, built by one of Saladin's Generals, has a commanding view of the neighbouring areas out towards the West Bank of the Jordan river and North towards Syria and the Golan and East towards Jerash. The castle was never captured by any marauding crusader armies. It was an important signaling post for transmitting messages from Aqaba to Damascus. We traveled to the north with our friend D.. and her daughter E. In fact, we did most of the trip with them as our itineraries were pretty similar. D.. is another newbie at the College in Doha and a colleague of N..'s.... read more

Malbork is E..'s home town, and she still has family there. Her cousin and husband drove us from Gdansk and another cousin organized a wonderful celebration dinner for us and our friend G..'s family. We have fond memories of that dinner, but we got news that E..'s dad was not doing well in hospital in White Rock. So right after dinner, we went online and got tickets to fly home to Vancouver, cutting short our planned visit to the southern parts of Poland and Prague. We had some good luck making connections and also really good service from the Air Canada checking agent in Ottawa. When he became aware of our situation and our need to get to Vancouver, he ended up personally walking us through security to the gate check in agent. We took a ... read more

Gdansk is a very beautiful city with a storied history. Being on the Baltic, this was often where the latter day Vikings and Swedes invaded Poland. As for current affairs, it's got lots of those too. For example, this is where the first shots of the 2nd European war of the 20th century were fired by the German Battleship Schleswig Holstein and also where the Cold War ended, when the solidarity trade union of the Gdansk shipyards started their campaign against the Warsaw Pact government of Poland. Ok ... the beginning of the end of the Cold War. I guess the Cold War ended the day the Berlin Wall came down eh? E..'s family is from this area, and her dad specializes in collecting stamps, notes and coins related to Gdansk, Danzig and Pomerania. The whole ... read more

Kiel is an old ship building city that was bombed repeatedly in WWII as a consequence. The Kiel canal is a short cut from the North Sea to the Baltic. It is now used by some cruise ships as a convenient port of call.... read more

After the day trip to Legoland, we returned from Copenhagen to Kiel by train. Once again the train went on board the ferry while crossing onto Puttgarden, and it's still an amazing thing to see a train on board a ferry. The weather the last few weeks has been mostly rainy, with an occasional hint of a sunny day. Maybe Denmark is known for its inclement weather, but from Paris onwards,we've been encountering more cloudy and rainy days than sunny hot days. But, according to the forecast, that's about to change. From Sunday onwards, it's likely to be sunny in Northern Germany and Poland is quite hot right now. The overcast days are good travel days, but not good beach days. ... read more