Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 15 - Anniversary in Paris and Back to Calgary

July 19, 2015 was our 6th wedding anniversary and we had planned to spend this Sunday relaxing in Paris. We woke up without an alarm and walked to a corner cafe to get some breakfast. We shared an omelette and had a chocolate croissant and a plain croissant with a latte. The quality wasn't as good as the cafes where we had breakfast on our last year's trip when we had stayed at the more residential neighborhood of the 8th arrondissement. We saw another cafe across the road and went there to get fresh orange juice, croissant and a latte. This was really good and much more like what we have come to expect from Parisian cafes.

We walked back to our hotel to relax and leisurely started getting ready for a reservation that I made for lunch at a decent mid-tier restaurant. I had not booked in advance so it was going to be difficult to get a booking at a top notch restaurant but I had still emailed the number 1 restaurant of Paris which is called Epicure. It's a 3 star Michelin restaurant. If you remember, the fine dining meal we had last year in Barcelona, that was 1 star Michelin. Epicure is the best of the best - usually you require to book months in advance. Well, we got lucky! As we were getting ready, I got an email back from them saying that they can accommodate us for lunch. Perhaps mentioning that it was our anniversary did the trick. The catch was that the only availability was for 1:30 pm and by the time I confirmed the booking on the phone, it was already 12:30 pm. My other predicament was solved by the restaurant. Wearing formal jackets in the restaurant is mandatory but the person helping me make the reservation said that the restaurant will be able to provide me one for the lunch. It was a race against time but we made it for this once in a lifetime chance of dining at the best restaurant in the city best known for its fine dining restaurants.

Starting from the moment we arrived at the restaurant to the two and half hours later when we left, this meal was like a dream. Every little detail was perfect. We were seated at a table that was next to a window that looked into the manicured garden of the hotel in which this restaurant is located. The decor was classy, bright and modern. All servers were dressed formally and there was a whole army of them. We opted for the seasonal menu which was a 4 course meal - appetizer, main entree, cheese course and dessert. These main 4 were punctuated by several palette cleansers and other mini courses. I'll add more details about this lunch later.

After having the best meal of our lives to make our anniversary unforgettable, we headed back to the hotel to relax and freshen up. We lazed around for a while before heading out for our last evening in Europe. We took the subway to the Saint Germain Church. Right next to the Church is an area called the Golden Triangle because it has three elegant Parisian cafes - Les Deux Magots, Cafe de la Flore and Brassiere Lipp. We sat at Les Deux Magots and sipped on our coffee and hot chocolate while engaging in people watching with a backdrop of the Saint Germain Church. After leaving the cafe, we entered the church. We hadn't realized that it was time for Sunday mass. We stood inside for a couple of minutes for our first experience of Sunday mass. Priests were giving sermons in French followed by interjections from the choir and the organ. The choir's singing with the organ playing in the imposing interior of the church seemed to bring the building to life.

Then we took the subway to our next stop. We exited at one end of the Parc de Champ Mars which is the park next to Eiffel Tower. We passed by Napoleon's Tomb and walked inside the park. We had made reservation for 10:45 pm for dinner at a restaurant called La Fontaine de Mars. We had to schedule it very late to space it out from our extremely elaborate lunch. We strolled around the park taking lots of pictures with the Eiffel Tower in the background. Then when we got tired of walking, we took a break at a cafe to have orange juice. After that, we were back in the park and this time walked all the way to the Eiffel Tower. On our last trip, we hadn't gotten this close. We stood right under the tower and were able to truly appreciate the grandeur of the giant structure. Then we walked back for the park at 10 pm to enjoy the hourly show of dancing lights put on by the Eiffel Tower after sunset.

We then slowly made our way to the restaurant. I ordered the fish and Samia ordered the steak. The food was really good and the service was also efficient and attentive but of course it paled in comparison to our lunch earlier in the day. After a very long time, we decided to order two desserts and they turned out to be huge portioned servings. We had a vanilla pastry and creme brûlée. Both were tasteful but we couldn't finish either.

After dinner, we took a taxi back to our hotel. We packed our suitcases and went to bed around 1:30 am. We woke up at 6:30 am and took the Roissy Express Bus to the airport. The bus stop was a couple of minutes walk away from our hotel. We boarded the bus at 7:05 am and were at the airport before 8 am. After dropping off our bags, we had breakfast at Starbucks. The flight from Paris to Toronto was on time and took off at 11 am. We didn't sleep too much on this 8 hour flight but entertained ourselves using the entertainment system between the two meal breaks. After landing in Toronto, we breezed through immigration and customs, thanks to our NEXUS cards and then had lunch at a restaurant at the airport. The food was passable but the service was quite slow. We had time till our next flight so it worked out. Our next flight from Toronto to Calgary was delayed by an hour because the incoming aircraft from Istanbul was late. We slept most of the 4 hours on this flight and landed in Calgary at 7:25 pm on Monday, July 20. Sarim was at the airport to pick us up. We went with him to Samia's parents place where we had dinner and then Sarim dropped us at our apartment. We took showers and unpacked a little bit. It's back to the daily routine tomorrow. Till the next time, take care and goodbye!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 14 - Paris

Paris is our relaxing leg of the trip since we covered most of the major touristic landmarks during our visit last year. We slept without any alarm and woke up around 9:30 am. We had in-room coffee and relaxed in the room till about noon and then decided to head out for some food when we couldn't bear the hunger anymore.

We walked through Place Vendome towards Angelina which is a famous bakery/cafe. We had their brunch and one lunch entree. It was a typical Parisian brunch comprising omelette with hash brown potato, fresh orange juice, croissant and a couple of pastries. We also had a codfish entree which was delicious. We finished off with 4 mini macaroons - coffee, lemon, chocolate and raspberry. Laduree definitely has fresher and more tasteful macaroons. We also tried the signature Angelina pastry which wasn't too appealing to our tastes and we were fairly full by this time as well so we only had a couple of bites.

Then we walked back to our hotel and freshened up before heading out again to Galleries Lafayette, a shopping mall with mostly high end shopping stores but the main highlight being the fancy and ornate dome in the center of the building. We window shopped and checked different stores. On one of the floors, we spotted Pierre Herme, the main competitor of Laduree when it comes to Parisian macaroons. We had to try them, if only to find out which ones are better so we got 4 mini macaroons - rose, mint, chocolate/passion fruit and banana yogurt. They didn't have classic flavors like coffee and chocolate but their macaroons are a touch better than even Laduree's macaroons! The rose and mint were the best flavors and the quality of macaroons was excellent. Then we window shopped some more before heading back to our hotel.

We relaxed at the hotel and I fell asleep so we ended up missing the walking tour of the Montmartre district of Paris that we had decided to do. Samia found a smart workaround and found online step by step instructions for a walking tour. We took the subway to Montmartre and from there on, Samia was my walking tour guide. I followed her while she followed the instructions she had found online. We walked through the winding, hilly and narrow cobblestone streets of Montmartre and saw all the major highlights. We saw a vineyard, various squares with lots of trees and a few statues but the two major attractions of the district are Sacre Coeur and Moulin Rouge. Sacre Coeur is an imposing white church with huge domes and looks somewhat like the Taj Mahal. Since its on top of a hill, you can also see a panoramic view of the city of Paris. We went inside and were surprised to see that the church is even bigger than it looks from the outside. It's central dome is extremely high and the giant murals of Jesus, the twelve disciples, God, the Holy Spirit and other biblical scenes on the dome hosting the main altar are very impressive. Then we walked through a lively market square and some more winding streets and green squares to arrive at the second major attraction of Montmartre, the Moulin Rouge. It used to be a cabaret club in the red light district. Tourists always get a picture outside Moulin Rouge because of its iconic windmill and the global fame received by the club because of a famous movie being made about it with the same name as the club.

Then we took the subway to Flottes restaurant which was close to Jardin des Tuileries. For appetizer, Samia had the French onion soup and I had shrimp tempura. For our main entree, I had the beef steak and Samia ordered the cheeseburger. The food was good but not as good as yesterday's dinner. We had gotten a nice table adjacent to the patio though so it was better in terms of experiencing the typical dinner at a French restaurant - tiny tables with barely enough space for plates anf hardly any room to walk between them and lots of people talking to background music while taking pauses to eat. We were almost at the end of our entree course when all of a sudden a hailstorm started which turned into a rainstorm. People who were seated right at the patio had to be moved inside. We didn't need to move since we were a couple of feet inside, under the roof. We weren't planning on having any dessert but we had to wait for the rain to stop so we decided to share one scoop of coffee ice cream. We had ordered coffee with walnut but the server accidentally brought coffee with pine nuts (what we call chalgoozas in Urdu). It was interesting and I didn't mind it but Samia didn't like it too much. By the time we were done, the rain had lessened but since our hotel was still a good ten minutes walk away, we took a taxi to our hotel and then went to bed after a very laid back and relaxing day. Till the next update, take care and goodbye!

A correction to day 13 - the column that we saw on the side of Jardin des Tuileries is actually Place de la Concorde, not Place Vendome. The square Place de la Concorde has a pillar-like Egyptian obelisk from Luxor that is 3300 years old but is much smaller than the towering memorial pillar of Napoleon in Place Vendome. Extremely high end shopping stores selling diamonds, luxury bags and watches are located in Place Vendome and it is also home to the Ritz Hotel Paris.

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 13 - Budapest to Culinary Paris

We woke up in Budapest at 6:30 am after the wake up call. We got ready and headed down for a quick breakfast and then left for the airport at 7:15 in a taxi. We reached the airport a few minutes before 8 am, well in time for our 10:10 am flight. After checking-in our bags and passing through security, we window shopped for a little while and then found a comfortable sofa and camped there till our boarding time. Samia read her book on kindle and I started writing the previous two days' updates. The flight took off on time. Air France's staff and service was very good and the plane was not that old. I continued writing the updates through the almost 2.5 hours of the flight and Samia read her book. We also had coffee and a cookie during the flight.

We landed in Paris at about 12:30 pm and then collected our suitcases. We had decided against taking a taxi and we were going to take the train to the city center. That was a bad idea. After buying tickets to the train, it took us almost 45 minutes to get to the right platform because we went to the platform adjacent to the correct one by mistake. Due to a combination of the slowness of the elevator and not enough space for our suitcases the first few times it stopped, the elevator ride down took 20 minutes. Similarly, the elevator ride up took another 20 minutes. Finally we got to the correct platform and boarded the train. It was already almost 2 pm by this time. We had to change trains at a major station Chatelet but by the time we got there, we were so tired because of lack of sleep and the physical exertion of lugging our suitcases that we decided to exit the station and take the taxi for the remaining route. This was another mistake. When we exited the station by taking a few escalators and an elevator, it turned out that this station was in a pedestrian-only street where some construction was also going on. After unsuccessfully trying to find a taxi, we went back down to take a train. We got to the station nearest our hotel after 3 pm and then walked a few minutes to our hotel. We were really exhausted by this time.

Our hotel is called Hotel Scribe and it is the birth place of motion pictures. On December 28, 1895, the Lumière brothers demonstrated their new invention, the cinematograph here and that day motion pictures were born. The location of the hotel is very central. It's a few minutes walk from most attractions in the 1st arrondissement - The Louvre Museum, Musee d'Orsay, Opera Garnier, Jardin des Tuileries, Place Vendome - and a few subway stations away from all the other major attractions of Paris - the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Saint Chapelle church and Arc de Triomphe. River Seine and Champs Élysées are also about ten minutes walk away. The hotel staff was extremely helpful and the service was probably the best we've seen at any hotel. For the next few hours, we rested in our room after taking showers to freshen up.

We consulted our hotel concierge and picked a French cuisine restaurant five minutes walk from our hotel for dinner. It was called Chez Monsieur. Luckily, we were able to get a table. It was probably the healthiest fine dining meal we've ever had in our lives. The on-the-house bread and butter was paired with fresh baby radishes which was a delightful combination. Our appetizer was super-thinly-cut slices of watermelon and melon with balsamic vinegar, pesto, basil leaves and peppers. As Samia described it, this appetizer was a flavor explosion of deliciousness. Our main entree was fresh caught fish which was done just right - delicate enough to not make it chewy and well done enough that it didn't feel undercooked. Sprinkling a bit of lemon on it and having it with a side of stir-fried vegetables was again the perfect combination of tastes. Our dessert was strawberries, kiwi and cantaloupe in black currant juice with plum sorbet topped with freshly ground mint leaves. It was the perfect mosaic of fruity flavors and capped the delicious meal very nicely. After paying the bill, we also got an on-the-house dessert of madeleines (mini cakes) with apricot chutney. The French sure do know how to prepare a perfect meal. The server was very friendly, efficient and funny and the whole experience reminded us of how much we love Paris. The few minutes walk on the way to the restaurant had already reaffirmed that love when we saw beautiful buildings, smartly dressed people, scores of corner cafes and restaurants creating a vibrant and lively atmosphere. The French obsession with flavorful food and emphasis on enjoying the little things in life perfectly matches our definition of a good time so it's no wonder that it's our favorite city in the world.

After dinner, we started walking back to our hotel but one of Samia's sandal's sole separated from the shoe. She waited at a cafe while I quickly went back to the hotel to get her a replacement pair. Then we continued walking towards Jardin des Tuileries to go on to Champs Élysées so we could walk on it and go towards Arc de Triomphe. I wanted us to check if the famous Angelina bakery was open and despite Samia telling me that all bakeries and patisseries in Paris close shop early, I insisted that we check it out. I had miscalculated how far the walk would be and it turned out to be quite a long detour and the bakery was closed. Since we had almost reached the start of the park Jardin des Tuileries, we decided to trace our way back by walking through the park. It's in the middle of the city with The Louvre on one side of the park, Musee d'Orsay on another side and Place Vendome on the third side where Champs Élysées begins. We walked from The Louvre to Place Vendome through the park, with Musee d'Orsay on our left. The park has green spaces but oddly enough, the walkways are plain gravel surfaces which meant that it was dusty and not too comfortable to walk on them. After taking a break at a picturesque fountain, we finally exited the park and reached Place Vendome. It is a square with the Vendome column in the middle which was originally erected in 1699 by Napolean to commemorate victory in a battle.

Then we walked on Champs Élysées towards Arc de Triomphe. The pedestrian walkways were occupied by bleachers-style benches for public for celebration of France's National Day (Bastille Day) a few days back on July 14. The day is celebrated to mark the anniversary of the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. We had to walk very carefully to ensure that we didn't overbalance on to the road since we were walking fairly close to the edge. After walking about half the boulevard, the benches were gone and we could walk on the regular pedestrian path. Soon the commercial part of Champs Élysées started. We were quite tired after walking through the gravel surfaces of the park since we hadn't worn appropriately comfortable shoes as it wasn't in the plan to walk through the park. We were about to take a break at Starbucks when I spotted a nice looking restaurant across the road so we decided to check it out. Turned out that the world's most famous macaroons place Laduree was adjacent to that restaurant. Of course, we went there instead of the restaurant. We ordered hot chocolate which was essentially melted chocolate and got 4 mini macaroons - coffee, lemon, chocolate and pistachio - and a chocolate pastry. The macaroons were perfect - not too hard, not too soft, not too warm, not too cold with delicately tantalizing flavors - and definitely a touch better than Jean Philippe's macaroons of Las Vegas or Thierry's macaroons of Vancouver. After capping off the day with pure chocolaty goodness, we decided to call it a night and took the subway back to our hotel. Till the next update, goodbye from Paris!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 12 - Modern Budapest

We woke up relatively late at 9:45 am since we were very tired after a lot of walking the previous day. We went down for breakfast and then came back up and got ready for our first stop of the day, a guided tour of the Hungarian Parliament. We left our hotel around 11:35 am and took a taxi to the Parliament. We got there in time for our tour that was to start at noon.

The Hungarian Parliament building was completed in 1902. It's the largest building in Hungary with a height of 96 meters and a symmetrical design. The number 96 features prominently in Hungarian history. The earliest Hungarian chiefs created the nation state in 896. Then in 1896, a large scale millennial celebration was held. Saint Stephan's church that we saw yesterday also has a height of 96 meters. The parliament building was built in response to a sense of growing Hungarian nationalism so the palatial Gothic building looks more like a cathedral than a seat of government. The building once required more electricity than the the rest of the city combined to power its 692 rooms. The gold and marble interior houses the Holy Crown of Hungary and the accompanying Crown Jewels on the symmetric center of the building, guarded 24/7 by 2 guards. We also saw the assembly hall where the Speaker, President and members of parliament sit when Parliament is in session. It has an exquisite red and gold interior decor and the seats of members are state of the art with the ability of electronic voting and delivering speeches. We also found out about how the building was kept heated or cooled before electricity was invented, using a system of pipes to deliver steam or ice-cooled air. The main entrance to the building is only used for special occasions and has 96 stairs to let special state guests or newly elected members of Parliament to enter.

After a tour of the Hungarian Parliament, we walked a couple of blocks away to the Freedom Square. This is the site of an old prison but has been converted into a memorial square to mark the celebration of Hungarian people at the occasion of the fall of the Soviet regime. We sat there in the shade of trees to take a break and shield ourselves from the blazing sun. Then we walked to the Four Seasons hotel which is built in the old Gresham Palace. It's location is very central, right behind the Chain Bridge. Like our hotel, Gresham Palace was the headquarters of the London Insurance Company before being converted into a five star luxury hotel. It's gates and windows are exquisite and must have been equally grand back in the day.

Then we walked to Vasi Street which is a pedestrian-only street with lots of shops, businesses and restaurants playing live music. We were hungry so had a quick lunch at McDonald's and then headed back to our hotel. We took the subway this time instead of walking in the heat. The subway system is old and so are the trains but their efficiency is remarkable. At each stop, the train opens its doors for less than 10 seconds and then it's on its way. We were back at our hotel within 15 minutes. We rested for a couple of hours in our room.

We headed out again around 7 pm and took the subway to the opposite end of Andrassi Boulevard to Heroes Square. It honors the heroes of Hungarian history starting from 896. The construction of the monument started in 1896 but completed in 1900. In front of the monument is a large stone cenotaph surrounded by an iron chain and is meant to honor the heroes who gave their live for the struggle of freedom and independence of the country. The back of the monument consists of two matched colonnades, each with seven statues representing great figures of Hungarian history.

Then we took the subway to the Danube river side and got off at the last stop at around 8:30 pm. We had purchased tickets for a 10 pm cruise so we decided to have dinner. We chose a bistro that had outside seating with fans spraying water to act as air conditioning. The sun had started going down so aided by the water spraying fans, it was possible to sit outside. I had the veal soup which was like goulash and Samia had a goat cheese ravioli. We also had lemonades.

Then we started walking to the meeting point for the cruise. After seeing a big group of people on our way who had the same tickets as us, we got confused and thought that they were at the right meeting point but then we decided to just go to the address printed on the tickets. Turned out that both were correct since the group we met was waiting just closer to the Chain Bridge and the river. We walked with the group to the pier and boarded the humongous cruise ship. We had seats on the upper deck which was open air and the perfect choice for a pleasant summer night. The cruise was 90 minutes long and a very peaceful affair. We saw all the prominent landmarks of Budapest glowing in the night sky - Buda Castle and Fisherman's Bastion on the Buda side of Danube and the Hungarian Parliament on the Pest side. The cruise passed 6 bridges, the most elegant and brightly lit of which was the Chain Bridge, followed by the Elizabeth Bridge and another bridge with green Baroque style decor. The other three were regular bridges. The cruise ended around 11:45 pm. We had another tiring day with 17 kilometers of walking so we decided to take a taxi back to our hotel. The company was affiliated with the cruise service so it was fairly priced. We got back to our hotel around midnight and then hung out in our hotel lobby for a little while since the WiFi signal does not reach our room. Then we went to our room around 12:30 am and packed our suitcases. We requested for a wake up call for 6:30 am and a taxi to the airport for 7:15 am to catch our flight for the final city of this trip, Paris. Till the next update from Paris, take care!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 11 - Communist Hungary and Royal Buda

We woke up at 8 am and went down to the New York Cafe to have breakfast. Then we got ready and left the hotel around 10:30 am. We bought tickets to the hop-on hop-off sightseeing tourist bus but after waiting for 15 minutes at the stop outside our hotel and seeing that all the buses were full and that some people had been waiting for over an hour, we returned our tickets and decided to walk. In retrospect, it turned out to be a good decision because we spent half the day in a museum and half the day walking in the hilly castle district of Buda, both of which required walking.

Budapest is actually two towns - Buda and Pest (pronounced Pesht) - separated by the mighty Danube river. Buda is hilly and historic with castles and royal buildings whereas Pest is flat and more modern and commercial. Our hotel, the main train station and the airport are all in Pest. The underground subway network, the first in Europe, is also in Pest. We walked from our hotel to the House of Terror, a museum that opened at the turn of this century as a memorial for the victims of Nazi German occupation and Communist Soviet occupation of Hungary and its capital, Budapest. We walked on the tree-lined Andrassi Boulevard which was built after seeking inspiration from the similar tree-lined avenue of Paris, the Champs Élysées (pronounced Shaun-za Leezay). The wide road is a few kilometers long and runs from Heroes Square to Chain Bridge in Pest, punctuated by two main plazas/squares, one square called Oktagon and a roundabout. The boulevard is lined with nice restaurants with patio seating and shopping stores. The House of Terror was a couple of blocks away from Oktagon.

The House of Terror is a building that was used by both the Nazi German regime and then Communist Soviet regime to illegally detain and torture people. The tour of this appropriately named building is a much more human take on the oppressive side of communism than what we saw in Prague at the Museum of Communism. It touches upon the Nazi German oppression as well but the extent of those atrocities can only be fully experienced by visiting a concentration camp or a Jewish ghetto. Both regimes had built an underground prison where they illegally detained, tortured and executed political prisoners and any dissenting civilians. There is a Soviet tank in the middle of the building. The exhibits were on two floors and featured hair raising actual video footage of Nazi and Soviet eras. The most moving are the interviews of real survivors of both regimes. We saw countless people describe what they went through, in thorough detail. From Soviet Gulag prisoners to abandoned housewives to political prisoners to ordinary civilians, the tales of horror are heart breaking. But the most excruciating video footage is that made by Nazis in which they had filmed piles upon piles of bodies of mostly Jewish victims in the Auschwitz concentration camp, skeletons being taken out of incinerators and the worst of all, bodies being thrown in mass graves using construction cranes! Having seen the actual camp at Auschwitz and the artifacts of victims there, this video footage gives the industrialized mass murdering a very vivid form, one that will be hard to forget. We also saw footage showing destruction of Budapest during the Second World War and the propagandist regime of Rakosi, the student of Stalin who headed the so-called sovereign government of Hungary but was a puppet whose strings were pulled by his Soviet masters. We also saw speeches and fake news tooting the prosperity of Hungary that were played inside voting booths in rigged elections. After exploring the main exhibition on the first two floors, we took the elevator down to the basement. The elevator is designed to go down at a very slow speed and during the ride down, a prison guard narrates a highly detailed scene of an execution in the basement - no special last requests were entertained and last letters to their loved ones were also torn apart. We then saw the cells of detainees and different types of inhumane punishment chambers where detainees were subjected to torture like standing all night with light in their eyes or crouching down all day with no room to stand up. The House of Terror portrays the cruelty of the two totalitarian regimes exceptionally well. We got so engrossed in learning about the experiences of victims that we didn't realize that we spent more than 4 hours there. The House of Terror's main audience is Hungarian people and for a change, we saw more locals than tourists at a museum. The last thing that we saw before leaving the building was pictures of victimizers or oppressors. The most chilling aspect of the whole experience is that most of them are still alive and living with the rest of the community at large and have never stood trial or been brought to justice. We left wondering how the Hungarian people handle that tricky situation - cannot be easy.

Then we walked on Andrassi Boulevard and a few blocks away saw the Opera building. It's an impressive building with Greco-Roman architecture on the outside. We continued walking and after checking the menus of a couple of restaurants, we decided to have lunch at a traditional Hungarian cuisine restaurant. It was a very hot day so the shade of the trees while sitting on the restaurant patio was a welcome respite. We wanted to have a refreshing light meal so ordered salads. The goat cheese salad and the salmon salad were both very good and surprisingly, the serving of cheese/salmon was quite gracious. We had homemade lemonades with the salads and then shared a slice of a traditional Hungarian cake which was somewhat of a cross between a three-milk Mexican cake and a baked cinnamon bread roll. We had coffee after dessert and then continued walking on the boulevard, towards the Danube river and the Chain Bridge. During our walk, we saw the Saint Stephan's church with its Baroque dome and passed by Elizabeth Square where people were dipping their feet in a public pool. We also shared a scoop of ice cream while walking on the boulevard. When the boulevard ended, we were on the riverside boundary of Pest. We then crossed the famous Chain Bridge which is a wrought iron and stone suspension bridge that has pedestrian sidewalks on both sides and car lanes in the middle. It was opened in 1849 as the first permanent bridge on the Danube in Hungary. The bridge incurred heavy damage in the Second World War where the middle half was destroyed by bombing. It was then reconstructed and reopened in 1949. There are statues of two lions on each side of the bridge.

After crossing the bridge, we were in Buda at the base of the hill that has the castle district. We took the one-car funicular train up the hill while admiring the bird's eye view of Pest. The main landmark in Pest's skyline is the Hungarian Parliament. After reaching the top of the hill next to the Buda Castle, we took postcard pictures showing the Chain Bridge, Danube river and the Parliament. Then we started exploring Buda Castle. When you see Buda's skyline from the Pest side, two main landmarks are prominent. One is the Buda Castle and the other is the Fisherman's Bastion which we saw a little later. We walked through Buda Castle's cobblestone external courtyard which has a giant statue in the middle. They've created a walkway that runs next to the boundary of the castle walls so we followed that and explored breathtaking views of the Danube on one side and the stone building of the Buda Castle on the other side. We stopped at a couple of towers to take pictures. There was a live orchestra playing at the base of the hill so walking along the wall with that background music and a pleasant breeze was a refreshing experience. The castle is not used anymore and houses an art gallery but we didn't go inside.

Then we started walking through the castle district towards the Fisherman's Bastion. It's a very peaceful and quiet area. The most remarkable thing about Budapest is that most buildings were damaged or destroyed in the Second World War so everything that we saw was repaired or reconstructed. But they've done an excellent job of recreating that old world feel and it's hard to tell that some of these buildings are only a few decades and not centuries old. We reached the Saint Matthias Church which looked very similar to Vienna's Saint Stephan's Cathedral with its colored roof and gothic facade. Then we were at Fisherman's Bastion which is a purely decorative structure comprising parapets and towers. It's seven towers represent the seven Magyar chiefs. The main highlight of these medieval looking white towers are the ornate white marble "windows" through which you can see Pest and the Parliament building. We sat there for a few minutes taking in the view and then walked a little farther to the old town/city hall which has been preserved in its damaged condition. Then we made our way back to a street a few blocks away where we had spotted some restaurants. We picked an Italian pizzeria and had a white sauce pizza and traditional chicken breast stuffed with cheese. By this time, the sun had gone down so we went back to the Fisherman's Bastion to take in the night view of Danube and the lit up Parliament building.

Then we walked back to the funicular station and rode it down the hill. Then we crossed Chain Bridge and explored the lively Danube Promenade street right next to the river. There were street performers and restaurants with live music. We saw many street performers in Prague, Vienna and Budapest but restaurants with live music seems to be a Budapest thing only and the music is quite good too. By this time, we had walked almost 20 kilometers and despite regular breaks throughout the day, our feet needed rest. We stopped at a Thai massage parlor and had a quick 30 minute massage which was very much needed to be able to walk back. After the massage, we walked back to our hotel and went to bed after a hot and tiring day. Till the next update, take care and goodbye!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 10 - Bratislava to Budapest

We had requested the hotel reception for a wake up call at 6:30 am so we were up within 10 minutes of the call. We got ready and since we hadn't really unpacked much last night so checked-out around 8:30 am and stored our suitcases with the concierge desk. Then we had the complimentary hotel breakfast which was really good. There was an EY event going on at the hotel so Samia got to see a lot of her fellow international coworkers. After breakfast, we walked along the Danube river which was next to our hotel. We left our hotel around 9:30 am for a bus tour of the old town area of Bratislava. We reached the main square by taxi. It's a fairly small area and the main square is the smallest we have seen so far in all the cities on this trip.

Our bus tour started from the main square and we saw different old buildings, some in their original form and some having been reconstructed but not because of damage during any wars but due to natural deterioration or fires. Some buildings used to be small palaces of nobility, some used to be churches and some used to be government buildings. There were also three interesting statues that we saw during the tour. One was of a Napoleonic soldier standing behind a bench in the main square with his arms folded and resting on the bench. He supposedly listens to the conversations of people who sit at the bench. Another statue is a man under the ground whose head and arms are the only things you can see protruding above ground from a manhole. The statue had a couple of cars run him over so now they've placed a "man at work" street sign next to it. The third statue was silver and is that of a poor boy who used to live in the city. We also saw the location of the old Jewish synagogue which had to be demolished to make room for a highway. There is a memorial for the Jewish victims of holocaust next to its old location, just next to the highway flyover. We also saw the remnants of the old fortification wall that was taken down on Maria Theresa's orders. Historically, Slovakia has been a part of various empires and countries - the Holy Roman Empire, the Austrian empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Czechoslovakia - and only became an independent country on January 1, 1993, along with the Czech Republic. We also saw Saint Matthew's church which is the most important church of the city. Our tour also took us through a street where the city's executioner's house used to be and through a street where goldsmiths and other "smiths" used to live. Our tour looped back to the main square where it ended around 10:30 am.

It was a challenge to get a taxi back to our hotel since we didn't want to overpay and declined the first few that were giving estimates of 10 to 15 euros for a ride for which we paid less than 4 euros while getting here a couple of hours ago! After about 15 minutes, we flagged down a taxi that quoted 6 euros for the ride and although this was still more than what it was worth, we decided to go with it since we didn't want to miss our train. We picked up our suitcases from the hotel and took a taxi to the main train station. Both times the hotel called a taxi company, we had good experiences with honest drivers. This driver had an interesting personality too. He had lived in Vancouver, Canada for 25 years, gotten his degree there, worked as a manager at some electronics company but had now moved back to Slovakia to take care of his 80 year old mother. We had a good time chatting with him and he warned us that we might face a language barrier in our next city, Budapest. So far, we haven't really encountered much of a language barrier on the trip except at maybe Vienna on a select few places. Most people understand enough English that talking slow enough, using simple words and hand gestures gets you by very easily. It also helps that we have done prior research about all the cities so we have a good initial idea about most things.

We bought tickets for the 11:53 am train to Budapest. We listened to Rick Steves guide interview about Budapest during the train ride. Samia was also able to sleep for a bit but I couldn't sleep so wrote part of this update. The train ride was 2 hours and 45 minutes long and we reached Budapest a little after 2:30 pm. We wanted to take a taxi for a ride of a little over one kilometer but the three taxi drivers we asked all wanted 20 euros so we stood our ground and asked them if we can get a receipt. Then all of a sudden they forget their English and started shying away. The weather was nice so we just decided to walk to our hotel.

Our hotel in Budapest is actually a recommended attraction on most travel guides. It used to be the famous New York Palace Hotel which has now been renamed to Boscolo Budapest Autograph Collection. The hotel was established in the building that was built in 1894 as the local headquarter of the New York Life Insurance Company. The famous New York Cafe at the hotel used to be the center for Hungarian literature and poetry. After freshening up, we went out to have lunch. We had the chicken and beef platter at a Turkish restaurant. Then we came back to our hotel and then planned the next two days with the help of our hotel concierge.

Then we went out again to explore the area around the hotel. After coming back, we changed and went to the spa of our hotel. We first sat for 15 minutes in a coal heated room with temperature of 80-90 degrees. Ten minutes were enough for me so I came out after that. Samia came out after a couple of minutes too. We then sat for a few minutes in the steam shower that was around 45-50 degrees in temperature and was heated by steam. Then we relaxed in the spa for a few minutes and came back up to our room. We showered and got ready for dinner. We had dinner at our hotel's New York Cafe. After coming here we realized why it's called the most beautiful cafe in the world. It's more like a palace. The splendid decor looks even more surreal due to the live piano being played. I had a burger and Samia had pasta. We then shared ice cream for dessert. Samia also had peppermint tea. Now we're back in our room and off to bed. Till the next update, take care!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 9 - Royal Vienna

On our last day in Vienna, we woke up at 8:30 am and had in-room coffee. We packed our suitcases, got ready, checked-out and stored our suitcases with our hotel and left for sightseeing at about 10:30 am. We were running a little behind our planned schedule so we decided to skip breakfast at Demel and instead decided that we'll go there for lunch if we were back on schedule.

We bought a couple of sandwiches at the U-bahn metro train next to our hotel and boarded the train to Schonbrunn Palace station. It was a short ride of about 10 minutes during which we quickly finished our breakfast. After getting off the train, we walked for about 10 minutes to reach the Schonbrunn Palace, the summer residence of the Hapsburg family. We toured 40 rooms of the palace. We saw rooms decorated by and used during Maria Theresa's rule and also rooms used by another famous Hapsburg King, Franz Joseph. We also saw rooms used by other members of the Hapsburg family. We saw the rooms where the king received his guests, the great hall for balls and parties, the dining room and rooms where state guests stayed. The great hall was the most impressive and was a smaller version of the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in France on the outskirts of Paris. After touring the rooms and admiring their wall and ceiling decorations, we walked to the vast gardens of the palace. We walked the length of the gardens till we reached a huge fountain of mythical creatures. It was a great photo op and we went behind the fountain to get a complete view of the gardens and the palace. Maria Theresa and Franz Joseph were both very popular monarchs well liked by their people. They worked a lot to promote arts, culture and equality. That ethos can still be seen in the government of Austria and specially in the city government of Vienna. I'll quote two small examples. Renting bicycles to ride within the city is free for the first hour. Then during the month of July and August, the city government hosts free concerts outside the city hall and has more than 20 stalls with free food, for 60 days straight. No wonder Vienna always ranks amongst the top 10 cities to live in, along with cities of Canada and Australia.

After leaving the palace, we took the U-bahn metro train back to Museums Quartier and then walked to Demel, the most famous shop for cakes and pastries in Vienna. We had salmon and mozzarella cheese finger sandwiches followed by a spinach torte, all of which were exquisite in taste, especially the spinach torte. Then we had their Sacher Torte and carrot cake. Their Sacher Torte is definitely better than the original one at Cafe Sacher. It was more moist and less bitter. We finished off with delicious lattes and then walked to our next stop of the day, the Hofburg Palace.

We toured three sections of the Hofburg Palace - the silver collection, the Sisi museum and the Imperial Apartments. The silver collection was an exhibition of porcelain and silver dinner sets that were used by the Hapsburg family. It was interesting to find out the history of each set and the occasion for which it was commissioned. The most interesting fact was that during wars, they got the silver dinner sets melted to create coins to fund the war but always commissioned a replacement set after the war. That's definitely something that has a lesson in it for the women of subcontinent, with respect to their jewelry.

Then we toured the Sisi museum which chronicles the life of Empress Elizabeth who was the wife of Franz Joseph and was affectionately known as Sisi. A few myths about her personality have pervaded popular culture but the museum sets the record straight by debunking most of those myths. For instance, there is a myth that Sisi rarely ate and was almost always dieting. It turns out that she didn't do that. In fact, she loved eating pastries but to maintain herself, she exercised. We saw the exercise equipment in her room in the Imperial Apartments. Sisi had a tough start to her adult life. Married at 15, had her first child at 16, had her second child at 17, lost her first child at 18 - she saw more emotional ups and downs in those 4 years than any teenager can handle. To top it all off, she was the Empress of the Hapsburgs' kingdom and had a certain social role to play in political dinners and parties. She couldn't handle all that and became an introvert and reclusive by moving away from the limelight. She suffered another setback in life when her son committed suicide when he was in his early 30s. Obviously, she became depressed and pretty much remained in mourning till her death a few years later. Her most significant political contribution was championing the Hungarian cause. In fact, she played a crucial role in convincing her husband to recognize Hungary and thus it became the Astro-Hungarian Empire. The last section that we saw were the rooms of the Imperial Apartments. They were very similar to the rooms in the Schonbrunn Palace. The most interesting thing that we saw was the exercise equipment in Sisi's room.

After this tour of the Hofburg Palace, we decided that we could also squeeze in the Ring Strasse tram tour that we were unable to complete yesterday. We shared a quick cheeseburger from a stand at the tram stop and then boarded the tram for a trip on the circular ring road around the city of Vienna where the walls of the city used to be located. During the one hour tour, our Rick Steves audio guide pointed out the Opera (opposite our hotel), a line of 5 star hotels, the huge city park with a gilded statue of the "Waltz King" Johann Strauss Junior, an old post office building, the Austrian intelligence department's building and an observatory for King Franz Joseph called Urania. Then the audio guide asked us to get off at a station and change trams. This was the Danube river site where we had dined yesterday. Since we had explored this area yesterday, we quickly caught the next tram to finish the tour. In the second part of the tour, we saw the City Hall, the Austrian Parliament, Vienna's Stock Exchange, University of Vienna, Natural History Museum in the Museums Quartier complex and finally a statue of German poet Schiller in the Academy of Fine Arts.

This statue was adjacent to our hotel and we could see the Academy of Fine Arts building from our room. We got off the tram here and walked to the Lebanese place where we had tried the Schnitzel. This time we ordered their mezzeh platter with different varieties of hummus with meat and also ordered what they had termed biryani. Compared to the Pakistani biryani, it was very different but still very tasteful. After dinner, we hurried to our hotel since we wanted to try and catch the train to Bratislava that left in half an hour at 8:21 pm, instead of waiting for the next one which would've come at 9:21 pm. We picked up our suitcases and took a taxi to the train station. We were there at 8:05 pm and had enough time to purchase the ticket and get on the train. Due to some confusion on my part, I thought the train ride was supposed to be 2 hours but we reached Bratislava in just 70 minutes. Perhaps because this was the hourly regional express whereas I might've confused it with the time taken by the regular non-express train.

Bratislava seems less developed so far. It is the first train station which did not have any elevators, escalators or ramps so I had to carry our two suitcases (weighing 25 and 30 kg) first a flight of stairs down and then a flight of stairs up! Then we took a cab to our hotel.

A note on cab drivers on this trip so far. Apart from the ones in Vienna, every single one of them ripped us off by overcharging. Some of them don't even bother to turn the meter on. The guy today was the most crooked of them all. I caught him manually adding small increments to the metered fare. I was really angry but in all such situations, as tourists, we are vulnerable and not really in a position to argue or do much about it so I just stared at him and kept my eye on the meter from there on, in case he repeated that. He sensed that I was on to his fraudulent scheme so he didn't mess with the meter again. We are getting better though and always ask them up front to give us an estimate. That way, they can't rip us off by too much. For reference, this guy gave us an estimate of 15 euros but since he was messing with the meter, it was showing 20.10. He knew that I suspected something so he told me that was fare was 20. In my mind, I said "no tip for you, buddy" and took all the change back.

We checked-in at our hotel which is really nice. We are staying in Bratislava just tonight. We'll check out tomorrow morning, probably take a quick bus tour of the city and then set off for Budapest before noon.

Some final words about Vienna. It's like the Paris of the Eastern half of Europe. Similarly, Prague is like the Rome of the Eastern half of Europe. Both of these are cities that we wouldn't mind visiting again. Time to get some sleep now. Till the next update from Budapest, take care!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 8 - Viennese Sunday

We woke up at 8:30 am and had coffee in our room. We decided to spend our Sunday like Viennese do, in a laid back style. After getting ready, we left our hotel at 11:30 am and headed to a cafe next to the Opera. It's an authentic local cafe and we were the only tourists there. The locals were sipping on their coffee, having pastries and reading newspapers. We shared a latte and had pancakes which were actually like crepes. The quality of lattes in Vienna has been the best on this trip so far.

We resumed our walking tour of the historic city area. For centuries, Vienna was the capital of a vast empire ruled by the Hapsburg family and the empire included Prague, Vienna and Budapest, all cities that are part of our current trip. In 1273, the noble family of Hapsburg claimed Charlemagne's title of Holy Roman Emperor and ruled a vast empire for the next six centuries.

We stopped at the Kaisergruft church where various famous members of the Hapsburg family are buried including Maria Theresa, the beloved ruler who ruled for 40 years, reformed the government, banned torture, funded schools and also found time to mother 16 children which she then married to different royal families in Europe to create and strengthen alliances. Maria Antoinette of "let them eat cake" fame was her youngest child. We spotted a Lebanese restaurant whose chicken schnitzel looked very appetizing so we sat there and tried it along with hummus while listening to the history of Hapsburgs on our Rick Steves audio guide. After that we continued walking on Karntner Strasse, passing the statue of Lady Providence (surrounded by figures symbolizing the rivers that flow into the Danube river) and making our way to the center of the historic city, the Saint Stephen's Cathedral. When Austria was a kingdom ruled by the Hapsburgs, the old city used to be enclosed inside a circular wall with Saint Stephen's Cathedral at its center. The circular wall has now been replaced by a ring road called the Ringstrasse.

Saint Stephen's Cathedral is very impressive with its south tower rising to a height of 450 feet with its colorful roof and its gothic and Romanesque outer facades. It's an imposing structure that has been central to Viennese history. After it was built in 1300, it was much too big for the small town but it's grandeur brought prestige to the town and put it on the map. That convinced the Hapsburgs to move the capital of their empire from Prague to Vienna. Vienna was invaded by Ottoman Turks in 1529 and the crusading invasions continued till 1683 when the Turks were driven away. That ushered in Vienna's rise as a great European city attracting talent from the entire German-speaking world. Composers like Mozart, scientists like Doppler (of Doppler effect fame) and the father of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud were all products of the intellectual culture of Vienna that focuses on living a good life and having stimulating conversations in cafes, even to this day. We went inside the church and appreciated the intricate statues of some 70 saints on gothic columns. There is also a chapel inside where Mozart had his wedding and had two of his children baptized there. We saw a magnificent pulpit, a huge pipe organ, the high altar and the painted altarpiece next to it. Thanks to the Viennese people's proactive measures in preserving the integral elements of this church during the Second World War, the church did not incur too much lasting damage. After visiting the church, we sat in the square next to it, called Stephen Platz and enjoyed ice cream from a nearby shop.

We resumed our walking tour and walked on the Graben, one of the world's first pedestrian-only streets. To this day, it has throngs of people, buildings with impressive architecture, lots of cafes and a lively atmosphere - the quintessential Europe. We detoured to a side street to see some famous local eateries. Both at cafes and restaurants, the regulars usually sit there so often and for so long that they get their telephone calls there too! Back on the Graben, we saw the Plague statue which was built by a king to thank God after Vienna was saved from Bubonic Plague only after 70,000 people had died. Then we continued walking to Kohlmarkt which is a street lined with the most unaffordable high end shopping stores but also includes the best chocolate store in town, the Demel. Their cakes are said to be the best in town and their Sacher Torte cake is supposed to be better than Sacher Cafe's version. We plan to go there tomorrow for breakfast.

We finally arrived at the Hofburg Palace, the winter residence of the Hapsburgs and a complex of several buildings including the famous Spanish Riding School (whose horses perform choreographed dance shows), the Imperial Apartments, the Imperial Treasury and 4 museums collectively called the Museum Quartier. We will come back to the Hofburg Palace tomorrow to go inside some of these buildings after we are done visiting the summer palace Schonbrunn which is outside the city limits.

We then came back to our hotel and took a nap for a couple of hours. After waking up, we got a dinner recommendation from our hotel concierge and set out again for the tram tour of the Ring Strasse. Unfortunately, a couple of stops into the tour, the ring road was cordoned off by the police so we couldn't continued the tram tour. Instead, we decided to walk the next couple of stops to the Danube river where the recommended restaurant was located. The restaurant's location was picture perfect and we got a table right next to the glass wall of the restaurant, overlooking the river and its cruise ships. The food was impeccable. We had beef steaks with mushrooms and a molten lava cake for dessert. I also had their latte which was the best coffee I've had on the entire trip so far. We walked back to our hotel and realized that we've walked more than 100 km in the last 8 days. Time to go to bed now since it's going to be a busy sightseeing day tomorrow, as opposed to the Viennese Sunday we spent today. Till the next update, take care and goodbye!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 7 - Musical Vienna

After sleeping at around 1 am, we woke up at 6 am. We got ready and had breakfast at our hotel and took a cab at 7:50 am from our hotel to the Prague train station. Our train was for 8:42 am but we didn't want to take a chance and reached the station a little early. The train was on time and set off for Vienna at exactly 8:42 am. It was a 4 hour train ride so we caught up on sleep and also listened to Rick Steves' audio guide about Prague to get more background information about all the places that we had seen there in the last 3 days. Prague turned out to be an absolutely amazing city and it will be hard to top that experience. There are still three more cities to go so let's see. We love traveling within Europe by trains. Not only are the trains very comfortable and reliable but they enhance the travel experience and in our view, are a better option than taking flights.

We reached Vienna at 12:55 pm and first withdrew some cash in Euros. During our last trip to Europe, all the countries that we had visited were in the Eurozone so we were only dealing with one currency, the Euro. However, in our current trip, most countries are not in the Eurozone so we have to plan our currency management and remain on top of mental conversions. Poland uses the Polish Zloty and Czech Republic uses the Czech Koruna. Austria is the first country in the current trip that uses the Euro. 

We took a cab to our hotel and checked-in. After freshening up, we booked tickets for a live performance of the Vienna Mozart Orchestra at the famous and historical Vienna State Opera for tonight. Our hotel's location is again excellent, like our hotel in Prague, and we are opposite the Vienna State Opera and within walking distance of almost all tourist attractions that we want to cover in the next few days.

After booking tickets for the orchestra performance, we walked to a mall about a kilometer away since I had to buy headphones. I forgot mine in Calgary and I needed them for the next thing on our list - doing a walking tour of Vienna using Rick Steves' audio guide. On our way to the mall, we stopped to share a quick egg sandwich since we were really hungry. After buying the headphones at a huge electronics store, we walked back and on our way, stopped again to share a chocolate croissant.

Then we started our walking tour in front of the Vienna State Opera. It was built in 1869 in a grand building where classical musicians like Mozart and Beethoven have performed. Vienna is a city famous for music and the Vienna State Opera is very much the center of the city. 

We then walked to the back of the Opera where the famous Sacher hotel and Sacher cafe are located. Franz Sacher created his famous Sacher Torte cake which is essentially two layers of dark chocolate cake with apricot jam between the two layers and topped with whipped cream. Vienna's cafe culture is one of the characteristics of the city and its probably the only city in the world where big coffee chains like Starbucks haven't been able to spread too much since the locals prefer going to their local corner cafes. They say about Vienna that people's living room is in the corner cafe since people love hanging out there and enjoying a good coffee and pastries/cakes to go with it.

Then we saw the Albertina Platz. It's a triangular cobblestone plaza with monuments built as memorial for the almost 70,000 Viennese Jews who died in Nazi concentration camps. The plaza is next to the Albertina Museum which is part of the Hofburg Palace Complex and is a long white neoclassical building which houses art. It's modern entrance is topped by a sleek titanium canopy that resembles a diving board.

We passed by a couple of another famous cafes including the Mozart Cafe and then made our way on the Karntner Strasse which is a pedestrian-only street with shopping stores on both sides, much like the 5th Avenue of New York City. Most shops are now owned by modern brands but one shop has been there since 1823 that has been selling crystal for almost over 190 years now. 

We were running short of time so we decided to pause our walking tour, to be resumed tomorrow. We had a late lunch/early dinner at an Italian restaurant recommended by our hotel concierge. We tried an appetizer platter of seafood which was really good but the main entrees - penne pasta with olive oil and garlic and ravioli with cheese and garlic - were really worth the recommendation. After the meal, we realized we still had about 20 minutes before we needed to get to the Opera so we made a quick stop for dessert at Cafe Sacher. We tried their Sacher Torte cake, of course but also tried a coffee caramel cake. We also shared a latte to keep us awake during the orchestra performance. I'm not a fan of dark chocolate cakes so I liked their coffee caramel cake better. 

Then we crossed the street and made our way inside the Vienna State Opera. The Opera's interior is very grand. The lobby has carpeted stairs and ornate marble walls and high ceilings. The theater itself has five wraparound balconies, gold and red decor, and a bracelet-like chandelier. The show was a sequence of excerpts from famous symphonies of Mozart. Some of them featured just the orchestra, some included a female Opera singer, some included a male Opera singer, some included both and some included a choir of singers dressed in black. The orchestra consisted of primarily violinists but also had trumpeters, flute players and a drummer. The unique thing about the orchestra was that they were all wearing 18th century style wigs to give it a more authentic feel. The orchestra was amazing but the best performances were the ones that also featured the male singer and the choir. The female singer voice was unable to hit the high pitched notes but to be fair to her, female opera singers have a harder role to perform since the male opera singer's voice just needs to be deep and loud but the female singer also needs to create those shrilly high pitched sounds that don't come naturally to humans. Overall, it was an experience of a lifetime to see talented musicians performing the most famous works of a master in the hall where the master had performed himself. The conductor/director engaged the audience towards the end and made them clap according to his instructions. He was surprisingly very successful at that and it was a good demonstration of the skills he possesses. The show ended with an excerpt from Mozart's symphony 40 which I'm sure everyone has heard in their lifetime, even if they don't realize it. After this exhilarating experience, we walked back to our hotel and are going to bed now. Take care and goodbye!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 6 - Jewish Prague and Royal Route

Our last day in Prague was a busy one and started when we woke up at 9 am. After having breakfast at our hotel and getting ready, we set out for a comprehensive tour of the Jewish quarter Josefov which is a 2 minute walk from our hotel.

We bought the Jewish Museum ticket which covered 7 different sites in the Jewish quarter, all within walking distance of each other. The first one was the Maisal Synagogue which has been converted into a museum now. It chronicles the history of Jews in the Bohemia region and the discrimination that they had to face throughout the rule of different regimes for hundreds of years. Christian rulers forbade the Jews from working in any other trade so money lending was left as the only viable option since Christians weren't allowed to do that because of religious reasons. Jews became really good at it after generations in the trade but still had to pay additional and special taxes. However, this systematic discrimination pales in comparison to the extermination philosophy of the Nazi regime during the holocaust. The synagogue exhibits various artifacts as old as 700 years old that were used by the Jews of Prague.

Our next stop was the Pinkas Synagogue. This synagogue now serves as a memorial to the 80,000 Jews of Prague who were murdered by the Nazis during the holocaust. The walls of both floors of the synagogue have the names of all 80,000 of the innocent victims written on them along with the date of birth and date of death. One wall has the names of all the Nazi concentration camps written on it. A soundtrack plays in the background where the singers say the names of the victims. The synagogue tries to humanize the magnitude of this atrocity and gives visitors a true appreciation of the sheer number of people killed. In this context, imagining that over 6 million Jews were murdered during the holocaust is just astounding. The global population of Jews was reduced from 17 million to 11 million in one of the worst crimes in human history. On the first floor of the Pinkas Synagogue is a heart breaking exhibition of drawings made by children who were exterminated at the Terezin concentration camp on the outskirts of Prague. The children were taught how to draw at the camp by one woman and their depictions of the daily life at the camp, transport in and out of the camp, dreams of getting out and visiting Palestine one day, the life before getting to the camp and just drawings of the world around us are a cruel reminder that the Nazis didn't even spare innocent children in their genocide.

The next stop was the Old Jewish Cemetery next to the Pinkas Synagogue. We saw this from the outside during our walking tour a couple of days back but this time we got a chance to walk around the graves. There are about 10 or 11 layers of buried people here with the number of buried closing in on almost a 100,000. Since the Jews of Prague were confined to living in the Josefov quarter for hundreds of years, they didn't have enough space to bury their dead so they buried them on top of each other. The cemetery is yet another evidence of the haunting injustice bore by the Jewish community over the centuries.

The next stop was the Klausen Synagogue. It chronicles Jewish customs and religious rituals including the Jewish calendar, the Saturday Sabbath, the daily prayers and their timings, holidays such as the Yom Kippur, Hanukkah and Passover and religious clothing.

Our next stop was the Ceremonial Hall which chronicles Jewish customs and rituals related to sickness and death. Then we took a break to have lunch at a restaurant that was a few blocks away and had been recommended by our walking tour guide on our first day in Prague. We tried the beef steak in creamy sauce and the chicken steak and both of them were really flavorful. We tried the honey cake for dessert and it turned out to be good too. The restaurant looked like a tavern and is on the old ground floor level before the city was raised so essentially we sat in an establishment with 700 years old floor and walls!

We resumed our tour at the Old-New synagogue. We had seen it as part of our walking tour on the first day too. It's the one whose windows are now at eye level after the city ground level was increased to prevent from flooding. It's the oldest synagogue of Prague out of all the ones that we saw. It's an active synagogue and the Jewish community of Prague still uses it as a center of worship. The synagogue was completed in 1270 and you feel that weight of history when you enter the premises.

Our last stop was the Spanish synagogue which has a monument honoring Franz Kafka outside it. It's quite ironic, given Kafka's disdain for religion for most of his life. The synagogue is extremely ornate and elaborate inside and uses the Moorish style of decoration.

We walked back to our hotel and freshened up. After a little while, we ventured out again and this time we didn't have a touristy checklist to go through but instead wanted to enjoy the medieval romantic atmosphere of this unique city. We had coffee at the cubist cafe in the House of Black Madonna. This house features the cubist architecture style which emphasized symmetry of form using only functional elements. The house is on the Royal Route which was the path taken by Czech monarchs upon coronation. The path starts from the powder gate which was the main gate to the old town, passes through the old town square and a cobblestone street all the way to the river, crosses the Charles Bridge to enter the Lesser Town (Mala Strana) and ends at the Prague Castle. We walked part of the Royal Route from the House of Madonna to the Charles Bridge (where we saw several street musicians performing) and then onwards to Mala Strana and then the Castle Town. We didn't go all the way to the Castle since we had seen it in the previous day's walking tour so we turned back when it started getting too hilly. Charles Bridge is the symbol of Prague and it's not an ordinary bridge. It has 30 statues lining it on both sides and is a stone bridge with cobblestone walking path and is the length of 7 football fields. It's flanked on both ends by medieval gates. For 400 years, this was the only bridge that connected the old town with the new/lesser town and its importance as a cultural and historical icon still remains the same.

By the time we got back to our hotel, our feet were hurting because of all the walking in the past week so we decided to get a massage. We got a one hour Thai couples massage which seemed like it will be effective but we will only know after waking up after a night's sleep. We walked to the Italian restaurant where we had planned to have dinner but their kitchen had closed by the time we reached there a little after 11 pm. There weren't many options for dinner available at that time so we had a very late dinner at KFC and had chicken zinger sandwiches. After coming back to our hotel, we packed our suitcases for checking out next morning to catch our train to Vienna. Till the next update, take care and goodbye!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 5 - Communist Prague and Prague Castle

After sleeping at 3 am last night, we woke up at 9 am and went down for hotel breakfast. We got the same things as the last couple of days - omelette, croissant, cereal and fruits. We came back up to our room, got ready and left around 11:20 am for another day of exploring Prague.

Our first stop of the day was the Museum of Communism. It's a small museum which started by giving a quick introduction to Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin and their socialist philosophies. Lenin's philosophy was a take on Marx with a focus on industrial production. The museum chronicles the story of Czechoslovakia and its communist history. Czechoslovakia was founded in 1918 towards the end of the First World War after the collapse of the Austrian empire ruled by the Hapsburg family. The Czechs and Slovaks were in different stages of economic development and had distinct cultural identities but working together helped them make quicker economic strides so they tried to make the union work. The first republic remained a democracy till 1938 when Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia brought to light the differences between the Czech and Slovak people - Slovakia broke away and declared independence whereas the region of what is Czech Republic today was annexed to Germany. The government of Czechoslovakia kept operating in exile and during the Second World War, they asked the Soviet Red Army to help liberate Czechoslovakia from Nazi rule. Czechoslovakia was back on the world map in 1945 but this new political landscape was dominated by socialist parties in the country. In 1948, the communists took over the country under the cover of superficial legality. Thus began the communist era of Czechoslovakia which lasted from 1948 to 1989.

The ideological divide between supporters of democracy and supporters of socialism/communism still exists to this day in the Czech Republic and it was no different back then in Czechoslovakia. The Soviet Union had great influence over Czechoslovakia, so much so that they made super expensive memorials for Stalin and were in effect a satellite state of the Soviet Union. However, by 1960s, Czechoslovakia had completely stagnated economically and there were food shortages in the country. In response, Czechoslovakia started de-Stalinization and started introducing more elements of the free market economy.

When Czechoslovakia seemed closer to democratizing their brand of socialism in the so-called Prague Spring of 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia fearing that their control would be weakened. A student Jan Palach set himself on fire in the Wenceslas Square in January 1969 to protest the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia which shocked everyone in the world. But it didn't achieve any substantial change. Thus began the era of what was called "Normalization" or in other words, the purging of any reformist elements from the communist government of Czechoslovakia that continued through the 1970s and 1980s and kept the population quiet. Then in 1989, there were several anti-establishment demonstrations starting with the anniversary of Jan Palach's death and each one increased the momentum of change. Finally, Czechoslovakia became free of the communist party's control in November 1989. On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully separated into Czech Republic and Slovakia.

After the Museum of Communism, we walked to the Municipal House building and had lunch there. We had the beef goulash which was great and tiramisu which was okay. It had become quite windy and there was rain in the air so we stopped at our hotel to pick up cardigans and then walked to the meeting point for our walking tour of the Prague Castle and Mala Strana (Lesser Prague).

We started next to a bridge that has the statue of the man who painted the astrological part of the astronomical clock of the old town square. We crossed the bridge to the Mala Strana area and found out that the name comes from the fact that the elevation of the area is lower than the Prague Castle area which is on a hill. Mala Strana has scores of castles that were built by nobility and are now mostly used as embassies and government buildings. We took a tram up the hill and started our tour of the castle. We stopped at a view point that gives a majestic side view of the castle and then went inside the castle complex by crossing the bridge over the moat. The moat used to be a natural river which was then diverted because the lazy kings wanted the moat area to be populated with deer so that they could go hunting there. Then we walked onward to the second courtyard which is now surrounded by the President's office and a famous ballroom that is morbidly expensive to rent but still features for a few seconds in Mission Impossible 4. The second courtyard also has a well of water that had a cage over it to protect it from tampering by enemies. Then we walked to the first courtyard which is smaller and is the place where heads of states are greeted with a guard of honor. Our guide then pointed out different fancy palaces in the castle complex. Since we were on top of a hill, it had a decent view of the skyline of Prague, the city of a thousand spires (and orange rooftops) and it look magical. He also pointed out the replica Eiffel Tower on top of the Petrin hill and the rocket ship like TV tower that was built by the communist regime. It reminded us of Berlin where the only great building built by the communist regime was also a TV tower. The Prague Castle is the most elaborate complex of medieval palaces and buildings in the entire world and its like you're walking in a different era. Walt Disney's inspiration for medieval castles is also Prague.

Even in this impressive Castle town, the most impressive building was yet to come. That's the St Vitus Cathedral. The building is huge with an outer facade that's fitting for the main church of a castle, with gargoyles and statues and a big round window that was built using thousands of glass pieces. We went inside and the church is equally impressive inside, very spacious with ornate stain glass windows. Then we went to the back of the church and that's even more imposing and grand. There is a gold panel, giant murals, an even bigger window and tall spires. The building is primarily Gothic but in a strange quirk, the top part of the building is baroque! That happened after a lightening strike destroyed the top of the church building and they just decided to rebuild it in a different style, for no good reason. The Wenceslas chapel to the side of the St Vitus Cathedral is where the Crown Jewels of Czech Republic are stored. Then we saw the Royal Palace building followed by St George's Cathedral. Then we went to see the Golden Lane that has tiny houses in different colors and were home to the sharp shooters of the castle. Franz Kafka also lived in one of these houses for six months. Our last stop was a toy museum with a nude statue of a boy outside. Our guide parted ways at a great view point of the skyline of Prague. We took a few pictures and walked around and then took the stairs down the hill. Then we walked back to our hotel and freshened up for dinner.

We had dinner at a fancy Thai restaurant. We ordered the wok fried beef, pad Thai noodles and red curry. The food was really good but we must say that the best Thai food we have had so far is in Calgary! After dinner, we did some souvenir shopping and then came back to our hotel and are going to call it a night. Till the next update, ciao!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 4 - Old Town Prague

We had a comfortable train ride while it made its way from Kraków to Prague overnight. We slept at around midnight and woke up at 6 am when the conductor knocked on our cabin door to let us know that we will be reaching Prague in about half an hour. We took a taxi and reached our hotel at around 8:30 am. Check-in wasn't available that early so we stored our suitcases with the concierge desk and had breakfast.

After breakfast, we left for a walking tour of Prague. There are 5 major attractions of Prague: the old town, the Jewish quarter, Wenceslas Square, Prague Castle and lesser Prague (Mala Strana). The first 3 of them are to the East of the Vltava river and they were the focus of this walking tour. The last 2 will be covered in another walking tour tomorrow. 

Our hotel is one street behind the old town square so the location is excellent. The walking tour started at 10 am in the old town square. Our tour guide was a Dutch guy who is a psychologist by profession but is waiting to be certified in Czech language so he has been working as a tour guide for the last 4 years. The most striking features about Prague are its atmosphere and its architecture so to fully experience the city, you need to take it slow and that's what our guide did. In the square, there is an old church by the name of the Church of Our Lady before Tyn which has Gothic architecture. An interesting quirk about the church is that both its towers differ in width which is only noticeable upon close inspection, probably a design mistake which was too late to correct. In the opposite corner of the square is Saint Nicolas' church which is currently under renovation. In the middle of the square is a statue of Jan Hus who was burnt at the stake for questioning the corruption in the Catholic Church. Most buildings of Prague have been well preserved over the centuries which gives it a very medieval feel. Buildings in the square are no different except the old city hall. It was burnt down when Prague's residents were trying to save the city from a Nazi invasion. They eventually reached a truce with the Nazis since the Nazis wanted to leave Prague before the Soviets invaded it. The old city hall was so ugly that they decided not to rebuild if and instead just planted some trees there. Then our guide showed us how to read time on the famous astronomical clock of Prague's main square. The clock not only tells time but also shows additional astronomical information such as the moon's phases. It also show recommended names for each of the 365 days of the year and for a long time, many people followed the recommendations. Our guide gave us a hilarious demo of the hourly clock show which gave us a fair warning that the show would be disappointing.

Then we walked to Powder Tower which is a Gothic gate/tower dating back to the 11th century and separates the old town from the new town. After crossing under the gate, we saw the majestic Municipal House building with an outer facade that has the Art Nouveau architecture style. Then we walked to Wenceslas Square and saw the National Museum building at the end of the square. Then we walked to a cafe where we took a break. Samia and I shared a latte. 

We started walking towards the river but first stopped a few steps from our hotel. That was the house where the famous philosopher Franz Kafka was born. Kafka is an interesting personality and owing to his general outlook towards life and existence, he was disappointed in his writings and never got them published. He put all of them in a box and sent them to a friend asking him to burn them. His friend didn't do that and instead got them published. Otherwise the world would've never known about Kafka. 

Then we walked to the Jewish quarter and saw a couple of synagogues. The interesting thing about one of them is that its windows are now at eye level after the entire city was raised a few feet to safeguard against flooding from the river, causing the synagogue to go a few feet underground. We also saw the cemetery of the Jewish quarter. Since the Jews were forced to live in a small area for almost 600 years, they buried their dead in one cemetery and over time, that resulted in a vertical stacking of gravestones. It served as an inspiration to Berlin's memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe with its varying heights of gravestone columns with some of them tilting to one side.

Then we walked towards the Vltava river and our guide showed us a great spot to see the major attractions on the other side of the river - the Prague Castle, Charles Bridge and a government building where Czech Republic's president resides. Our guide told us a couple of jokes about the presidents of Czech Republic - the last one stole a pen while he was on national television and the current one showed up red-eyed and drunk to a press conference that was also on live national television. He also told us a funny story about a man shooting the president with rubber bullets and not getting arrested but instead giving an interview on TV. In short, it's an interesting political landscape. Another fact, there is still a Communist party that has large mass scale support and received 20% votes in the last election. We ended the tour by finding out about a remnant of communism that we might experience in Prague - poor service at restaurants. Our guide was really good and also gave us tips about the local currency's purchasing power, where to get the best rate when exchanging money and also restaurant recommendations.

We took one of his recommendations for lunch and had the traditional beef goulash which was amazing. It is almost like the Pakistani nihari, minus the strong flavor and aroma. After lunch, we came back to our hotel. We were able to finally check-in and get a room. We took showers and were extremely exhausted after walking over 50 km since the start of the trip and not having slept in a proper bed last night so we took a nap for a couple of hours. At least the weather has been good in Prague so far and hasn't been as hot as it was in Poland where we were finishing 5-6 bottles of water per person per day.

We went for dinner to a restaurant just off the square. It was an Italian place with very authentic thin crust personal size pizzas with fresh ingredients. We got a mushroom pizza and an eggplant pizza and then had tiramisu for dessert. It had gotten chilly so we quickly grabbed our cardigan/hoodie from the hotel and strolled to Charles Bridge. It was very majestic, specially the Prague Castle in the background. We walked over the bridge and on to the other side and walked around a little before heading back to our hotel. I wasn't able to finish yesterday's update so I wrote that and now after finishing this one, we're going to bed now. Till the next update, take care!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 3 - Kraków

Today was our last day in Poland. We woke up at 6:45 pm, got ready and had breakfast at our hotel and then left at 9:15 am for our day of sightseeing Kraków. If the largest city and the current capital of Poland, Warsaw, is the economic hub of country, then Kraków is its cultural and academic hub. Kraków dates back to the 8th century and for most years of its existence, it served as the capital of the region of Poland.

Our first stop of the day was Wawel Royal Castle and Wawel Cathedral, both situated on the Wawel hill, 5 minutes walk from our hotel and situated on the banks of the Vistula river. The castle is a huge medieval complex of buildings with high towers and hugs gardens. We walked through the cathedral which also houses crypts of some kings from Polish history including Kazimierz the great. He was a very forward thinking and progressive King who reformed the criminal and civil law, reformed the Polish army, built many buildings including Wawel Castle, founded the University of Kraków (now known as Jagiellonian University) and also doubled the size of Poland during his reign. Kraków has a district named Kazimierz which eventually became the district where Jews primarily lived. The medieval towers and gardens are impressive but perhaps the most interesting thing about the Wawel Castle is the statue of the dragon that's located at the base of the hill. The legend goes that the Wawel dragon used to live on this hill before the city was founded. The statue not only looks like a black dragon rearing to fly away into the sky but also breathes fire from time to time. Then we walked along the Vistula river to get back to our hotel where we took a quick break to freshen up. Then we got a map and directions to the old town square.

Our walking tour started in front of Saint Mary's Basilica located in the oldest medieval town square of Europe, the Rynek Glowny. The tour was about the Jewish history of Kraków. Our first stop was the Jewish district of Kazimierz which was about a 15 minutes walk from the old town square. It used to be a separate city that neighbored Kraków but later became a district of Kraków as the city expanded. After a fire in the late 15th century burnt down a large part of Kraków, the Jewish inhabitants of Kraków were moved to Kazimierz. The fortress synagogue called Old Synagogue was also built around this time. After a quick stop at the Old Synagogue, we walked a little farther ahead to the New Synagogue (officially the Remuh Synagogue that was built by a banker for his Rabi son). Then we saw a street that features in a scene in the famous Hollywood movie "Schindler's List". We also saw another building and a set of stairs that were also used in the movie. We stopped by another synagogue that was built was someone who allegedly found a treasure hidden under a tree in his backyard after he had a dream about it. To thank God, he built the synagogue. Then we took a quick break at a circular row of stalls that used to be a kosher slaughterhouse but now sells Zapiekanki, a pseudo-pizza or open sandwich on top of a baguette. We regret not having tried it since it looked delicious. 

The Jewish population of Kazimierz at its peak used to be about 68,000. After the holocaust, the population that survived the Second World War was about 18,000 but most of them started emigrating from Kazimierz and now the Jewish population here is less than a thousand. After it started becoming a ghost town, the government started moving ex-convicts to the area so it became a no-go zone because of the high incidence of crime. In the 1980s, students started moving here because of cheap rent which resulted in the gradual revival of the area as a hip and young nightlife district of Kraków.

Then we crossed the bridge over the Vistula river to the area which used to have the Jewish ghetto. This ghetto was the area where the Nazi regime relocated the Jews of Kraków before they were transported to concentration camps. Our guide told us the story of a pharmacist who had a pharmacy in the ghetto and who saved hundreds of Jews by letting them escape the ghetto through a secret exit in his pharmacy. He maintained good working relations with the Nazi party by bribing their officials. Our guide mentioned his story to highlight the point that Oscar Schindler is not the only Polish person who saved Jews during the holocaust but there were others as well. In fact, the government of Israel has recognized about 6400 Polish people for saving lives of Jews during the holocaust. We also saw a memorial park with many empty chairs to signify those who could never come back here. The area has nice buildings now so it's hard to imagine that it ever was a ghetto and the memorial park is the only visual hint. Then we walked to Schindler's factory which was what enabled Oscar Schindler to save the lives of 1098 Jews by putting their names on the so called Schindler's list and giving it to Nazi party officials and telling them that these are all people that he will need to relocate as he is opening a new factory. That way, he saved the lives of those 1098 Jews who would've otherwise perished in Nazi concentration camps. Our guide did tell us about the ways in which the Hollywood movie simplifies the story, the most important of which was the fact that the list was actually compiled by someone else and not by Oscar Schindler. 

After the tour, we took a taxi back to the old town square and had lunch at a traditional Polish cuisine restaurant that had a very nice garden in the back with lots of shade. Having walked in the scorching heat of July for the third straight day, we really appreciated the shade. We tried pierogis (stuffed dumplings) with cabbage and mushrooms and a goat cheese salad. We also had a traditional Polish apple pie. We've had the dumplings in North America (called pirogies there) but the Polish version was way better.

Lunch and a break from the sun had energized us and we were ready for our next walking tour of the old town area. It also started from the same point, in front of Saint Mary's Basilica. Our guide told us that this was the oldest medieval gothic church of Europe that hasn't required reconstruction. The church has two spires, both different in height and appearance. The taller one is for the city's fire department that was used to keep a look out on the city in medieval times to spot fires and the slightly shorter one is for the church bell. In keeping with tradition, to this day, a trumpeter plays his trumpet in the city spire of this church on all 4 sides and you can see him through the windows. We waved at him and he waved back. Then we walked outside the main square area after passing through a perfectly preserved medieval gate tower to the remnants of the fortification system or the Barbican. The Barbican was a building based on a simple concept - a walled structure with misaligned gates so that when the enemy had broken down the outer gate, they needed to change the direction of the battering ram and this gave the defenders the time to shoot them down. Then we saw the museum that houses Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting "Lady with an Ermine" but the museum is closed for renovation. Then we walked back to the old town square. We stopped in front of the old cloth hall building which is a long building with about 70 souvenir stalls inside, essentially a smaller version of the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. Our guide told us that in medieval times, there used to be many more buildings like this but only the cloth hall survived after all the others were taken down gradually when economic decline hit the rich city of Kraków after the capital was moved to Warsaw and the country went through a series of partitions. Then we walked to another building just outside the old town square, the old building of what used to be called the University of Kraków. We found out that Copernicus was first a student and then a teacher there. We also saw the university clock's hourly show. Then we saw the window of late Pope John Paul the second's old residence that he used to open to address people whenever he came back to Kraków after becoming Pope. It now bears a picture of him smiling down at the city. Then the walking tour was headed to Wawel Castle and Cathedral but since we had already seen it in the morning, we headed back to the old town square. We walked around for a little bit and then had an early dinner before our overnight train. We tried a different variation of the pierogis, this time with a potato filling. We also had eggplant salad and then I had coffee and Samia had mint tea. Then we did some souvenir shopping in the cloth hall and walked back to our hotel. We freshened up, collected our bags and took a taxi to the train station.

Kraków is a hidden gem and has exceeded our expectations. We wished we had more time in the city so that we could have enjoyed some additional experiences from another time, for instance the horse carriage ride across the old town or a cruise on the Vistula river or maybe even a tour of the Royal rooms inside the Wawel castle.

We reached the train station at about 9:15 pm. We had a little difficulty in ensuring that we were at the right platform since it didn't say that anywhere on the ticket or the giant information screens. The overnight train departed on time at 10 pm and after a short but wonderful stay of Poland, we were on our way to our next city, Prague. Till the next update, take care and goodbye!

Eastern Europe Diaries - Day 2 - Auschwitz and Wieliczka

We woke up at 7:15 am and got ready for a day of exploring Auschwitz and the Wieliczka Salt Mines, both of which are outside the city of Kraków. We went down to have the hotel continental breakfast and were done by 9 am. Our driver for today picked us up at 9:15 am sharp, as previously arranged. We drove about 75 minutes to Auschwitz which is about 70 km west of Kraków.

Auschwitz is notorious in history as being the deadliest concentration and extermination camp set up by the German Nazi regime - over 1.1 million people are estimated to have been systematically murdered at this site of which 90% were Jews. Essentially, of the 6 million Jews that were murdered during Holocaust, 1 in 6 was killed at Auschwitz. The original camp Auschwitz-I was set up on the outskirts of Kraków, initially as only a concentration camp where Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, Polish dissidents, gypsies and anyone else not deemed fit to live in the eyes of the Nazi regime were imprisoned and made to work. Then the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration/extermination camp (about 20 times bigger than the original camp) was set up a couple of kilometers away from the original concentration camp. The first part of our tour was a guided tour of the original Auschwitz-I concentration camp spanning almost 2 hours. The second part was a walk through what remains of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

The tour started after we passed through the notorious gates that have the German inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei" on them which means "Work sets (you) free". The lies of the German Nazis started right at the gates. We walked through barracks of prisoners that showcased the atrocious and inhumane living conditions. Real pictures of innocent civilians showing different parts of life at the camp paint a heart wrenching picture of this mass murdering criminal site. Most people who arrived at the concentration camp, mostly Jews, were rounded up from all over Europe and sent to these camps by train. If they arrived to Auschwitz-I, they were "sorted" by a doctor into healthy and fit to work versus weak/sick and unable to work. Most women, children, elderly and disabled people got sorted in the unable to work category. The healthy were given tasks to carry out at the camps whereas the weak/sick were sent to gas chambers. About 75% people got categorized as not fit to work. If they were Jews and arrived at Auschwitz-Berkinau, they weren't even sorted and most of them were sent directly to gas chambers. Getting sorted into the healthy category did not spare you either. These workers died within a few months as well after suffering from exhaustion and starvation.

To make sure that the people about to be murdered did not panic, they were told that they were going for a shower for disinfection and de-lousing before being given accommodations. They left behind their luggage (one suitcase per person with their name and address written on it) that they had brought with them from their home countries. All cherished memories of a life reduced to a suitcase and then taken away. People were asked to take off their clothes outside and go inside for the shower and about 700 people were pushed in one shower. Poisonous gas cans were thrown into these gas chambers from holes in the roof and the innocent people inside died in a few minutes. Despite concrete walls, screams and moans of the victims could be heard outside. After that, sonderkommandos wearing gas masks dragged out the dead bodies and cut off hair, removed artificial limbs, glasses and any dental work where precious metal had been used. The bodies were then burnt in crematorium and the ashes thrown in rivers or used for fertilization. Hearing about the heartless and systematic killing method is overwhelming enough but seeing piles upon piles upon piles of shoes, glasses, women's hair, artificial limbs, hairbrushes and children's clothes can move anyone to tears. These were people who hadn't done anything wrong but had their lives taken away because of the Nazi belief that they were a superior race and should not let the so-called inferior races survive. The Nazis then proceeded to use the women's hair to weave carpets! The holocaust is definitely one of the lowest points in human history and should never be forgotten so that appropriate measures can be taken to ensure that no human regime is capable of repeating such horrors again.

After witnessing the ugly history of holocaust, we drove on to our next stop, the Wieliczka Salt Mines. After having walked in the hot scorching sun, we were exhausted and fell asleep in the air conditioned car. Just before the Salt Mines tour, we stopped to have lunch at a restaurant picked by our tour driver. The restaurant was in a hotel and the entire facility seemed like it was built last week. Everything was brand new and the food was amazing. We ordered a 4-cheese pizza and penne pasta. We got half the pizza packed for dinner and finished off with some delicious tiramisu and latte.

The Wieliczka Salt Mines have been the coolest experience of our trip so far, both literally and figuratively. The tour started after our group descended about 50 flight of stairs (380 steps to be exact) to reach about 135 meters below the ground. That was the first level of the salt mine. We saw a total of three levels, each one beneath the previous one. We followed what is called the tourist route which is a meagre 2 kilometers when compared with the total length of routes in this salt mine - 300 km! At its deepest point, the mine is over 300 meters deep. Everything inside the mine is made of salt and all structures are primarily wooden since wood resists the corrosive effect of salt better than any metal. There are scores of intricate statues, all made from salt. There is a giant statue dedicated to the Polish scientist Copernicus, there are statues commemorating the two brothers who built most of the statues, there is a statue of Pope John Paul the second and then there are 3 surviving chapels! There were a total of 30 chapels but only 3 have been excavated. Then there are statues depicting miners at work - burning methane, working the pulleys to move cylindrical blocks of salt up and down the mine or tending to a horse - there are also statues of dwarfs. Every statue is made of salt. Even all the floors are made of salt. There was also a very majestic looking lake, filled not with water but with a completely saturated salt solution (called brine). One of the chapels is probably the size of a football stadium and we were surprised to find out that it holds active Sunday mass every week and because of its excellent acoustics, it even hosts musical concerts! The air inside the mine is so fresh with just the right amount of humidity that people with respiratory ailments come here to spend time and usually get better very quickly. After this unique experience, thankfully we didn't have to climb back those 60 flights of stairs (we went down another 10 or so during the tour) and instead took an elevator back up to the ground. We exited the mine a few blocks away from the original entry point and walked through the scenic green gardens back to the main building.

Then our tour driver dropped us off in Kraków, at the main post office. We collected our tickets for tomorrow's overnight train from Kraków to Prague and then took a cab back to our hotel. We had ordered these tickets online about a month back but they had to be picked up in person. After reaching our hotel, we relaxed for a bit and planned our day of sightseeing Kraków tomorrow. Then we had the leftover pizza. Samia has already fallen asleep and I'm going to do the same now since we have a very packed day tomorrow! Till the next update, take care and goodbye!