An unexpected turn

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I last wrote from Edinburgh, not really sure what I was in for over the next month. Asia was coming to visit, and we had time to spend at the Edinburgh Festival, tickets to another festival in Bristol, and a flight from there to Croatia shortly after. The plan was to spend some more time touring Eastern Europe before starting back at work in Zurich in September.

All began well, and we had a few really fun days in Edinburgh with only a little pre-departure organising to do. We easily fitted that around the myriad of shows and street performances on offer for the fest. It’s a pretty impressive programme, and must be one of the biggest in the world. As a flat we managed to cover Edinburgh’s major cultural bases - a UK/Australian comedian, The Black Seeds from NZ, and Asia’s homegrown Polish dinner night.

Our onward plans took quite an unexpected turn however, when Asia received some very sad news and had to immediately book tickets to fly back home. We carefully packed my (rapidly expanding) worldly possessions to fit Ryan Air’s miniscule baggage allowance limit, and I headed back with her to lend what support I could… which was pretty minimal truth be told.. I couldn’t even go to the shops for a carton of milk without coming back with something totally useless. I quickly volunteered myself for “The Couch for Moral Supporters Only”, and tried not to make too much mess. I think it was appreciated anyway, and I was honoured to be able to lend a hand in any capacity. It was certainly an enlightening experience seeing how such personal and fundamental issues are dealt with in such a foreign culture, and it certainly provided me a new way to look at things we see as important in our own.

In many ways Asia and I were fortunate to have already planned such a long break, and after a fairly intense couple of weeks we took another couple for ourselves. This became a stop-start trip from Wroclaw to Prague through a few smaller Polish and Czech towns. From Zywiec in the foothills of the Tatra mountains, then on to the border town of Ciezyn, a night in Ostrava, and a couple in Olomouc, then on to Prague.

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Photos

A great view of Poland
Just outside of Wroclaw

An Aussie performs tricks with glasses and bits of wood on the Royal Mile
really, people’ll watch anything :)

Asia and me on Sobotka hill
Just outside of Wroclaw