Some vacation pictures.

[Boo_Radley]

A few pictures from my last trip.

In Poland, I visited

Krakow:



Warsaw:



and took day trips to

Auschwitz:


and an old salt mine at

Wieliczka:


That was fairly interesting.

In the Czech Republic, I went to

The middle ages town of Czesky Krumlov:



And of course to Prague:



I also went to Vienna:



And Budapest:



Where I also visited

Statue Park:



I think Krakow was my favorite city. If I'd had people to go party with, then Budapest probably would have been. Czesky Krumlov was really spiffy, but there wasn't a lot of action, like in Prague.

Vienna was pleasant, if that's what you're into. It's really a nice place, but not exactly exciting, and Warsaw seemed pretty cool, but I didn't spend enough time there to really know. It's supposed to be a pretty rough place, but it looked like fun to me. I think it gets a bum rap in the travel guides.

A lot of these places, especially in Poland and Hungary, are a curios mix of hope and sadness. The economies are rebuilding, but the poverty is still unbelievable. To put it in the words of a cabbie in Budapest, "They say the economy is wonderful. They say the economy is flying! But I don't see it."

There's a lot of construction, old dilapidated buildings being cleared and rebuilt, and a lot of tourism, mostly Germans, I think.

The USD/Euro are very strong there. You can enjoy very fine dining in very swank restaurants, have an unbelievable meal, and walk out with a ten or twenty dollar bill. And the people seem to love tourists from the EU and US, because we love to spend money :)

Definitely worth a trip. The airfare was high, it was over $700, which really hurt. After that, I got a Rail Europe East pass to cover all rail travel for about $200 total. I stayed in hostels, boarding houses, and cheap hotels, and the cost of food is negligible. All of the cities I went to had great public transportation, and I only needed to use a cab in Budapest (and that was only because I was in too big of a hurry to walk).

I was a little worried about going to that part of the world, not sure of what I would find, but I think I even enjoyed it more than a similar trip I took last year through Western Europe.

Plus, there were some great photo opportunities. That's become my hobby over the last two years.