Geraldine's Barge - The Reliance

The Butt & Oyster Pub

Anchors Away

Hangin' at the Cottage in Chelmondiston

John n' Geraldine n' Shel

Jammin' in Ipswich

There's a House in There Somewhere

Yup..That's Big Ben

Trafalgar Square

Looking for a Gig

Hey Cinderella - Your coach awaits

Beautiful Basia my Cousin

My Polish Family (and that's not all of them)

Cheese Anyone?

Krakow House Band

Jolly Olde, Fish n' Chips n' Almost Home

In 4 days we will touch down in Vancouver. Mixed feelings now; happy that we will see home and loved ones, sad that the adventure is winding down, fear of trying to fit back in and how odd it will all seem, a bit at loose ends but it's one day at a time and we will be more than bloody happy to put down the backpacks. We're a bit round shouldered and tattered around the edges but we've got good sturdy legs now! Apart from that, it's definitely time considering Ivan's broke his tuner, his hearing aids are on the fritz, I've got mostly long grey hair, my shoes are thrashed and we look a little more than suspect dragging our tatty old bags around fashionable London these days.

Leaving Poland was bittersweet. One of my newfound cousins had promised us a lift to Krakow - approximately 4 hours from the family village and sprung it on us at the last minute that he had work obligations and that he would have to drive us to the nearest train station at FOUR IN THE MORNING! Egads, up we got - a bit slow on the uptake and away we go roaring down the road to try and make the 6 AM train which we did, although just barely. The train was hot and stuffy and we were dog tired when we got into Krakow and humped around looking for a taxi driver who wasn't going to fleece us. A 30 minute ride to the airport where chaos was the order of the day. A gzillion people crowded into a tiny terminal and waiting for our flight to show up on the board made for an agonizing wait but 2 1\2 hours in the air and we were landing in Gatwick.

Another train to another train and then wandering around the streets looking for our cheapie hotel. A bit grotty but boy, were we happy to get there! We spent 3 days in London spending the all-mighty £ (pound) - geez, I thought Australia was expensive but £1.00 is TWO Canadian dollars. Buckingham Palace, Kensington Palace, Hyde Park, Big Ben, The Tower of London, Picadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square - we saw them all (albeit briefly) on the BIG BUS Tour where you hop on and off a double decker to see the sights. Not all it's cracked up to be with all the traffic and annoying route changes and waiting. London is pretty cool though and we took an awesome ride on the EYE - the world's biggest ferris wheel with pods that carry you high above the skyline. Just trudging around the streets of Soho and all the ye olde places you've always heard about was good fun.

A couple of days later we hopped the tube (which is truly a great transport system) and another train - starting to get the drift of England travel? - and headed to Ipswich in Suffolk County to meet up with our friend John Mundy who we met in Thailand and kindly invited us to come stay with him. He drove us to his village of Chelmondiston where we have been for the past week bunking down in his altogether charming and hospitable home. It's like staying in an English postcard. Tiny cottages, narrow roads, misty harbours and perfect pubs. We've chowed down on yummy fish n' chips every chance we get and go round the pub for a pint and the local lowdown, and Ivan's jammed in a couple of rollicking pubs, and John has taken us to seaside villages for little side tours. We've met his friend Geraldine who invited us over to her huge converted barge called The Reliance, where she lives down the harbour right next to the Butt n' Oyster pub. I have barge envy! Lots of people here convert tugs and barges to houseboats and have the best views in town. It's really been delightful and restful and we can't thank John enough for opening his lovely home to us.

This, I guess, is getting close to my last blog (though check in again as there's always the fateful last leg where everything seems to go wrong)! I shall miss doing this diary and I hope that I've given at least one or two snow-bound friends a glimpse of our amazing journey during the long, long winter. Hey, what's up with the Yukon weather??!! Oh yeah, just can't wait for that. And work, ya, that's going to be a treat.

While we are entirely grateful and ever-indebted to all the wonderful people who have invited us in, away from the grotty hostels and low brow hotels, to their home and hearth, we will surely be most happy when we finally have a place to call home again. I invite each every one of our hosts to please come and stay with us in the Yukon when we are settled. Our door is always open and we'd love to have the opportunity to share our special corner of the world with you. I mean that now, y'all come! Well, maybe not all at once but definitely come.

So, tomorrow it's a bus and a train and another train to another train back to our hotel where we have only one night booked and have been bumped due to high season and will have to find another hotel again. It seems through all the ratty, crappy, uncivilized places that we've been, we've always managed accommodation and transportation easier than we have here in civilization. Either we can't get a hotel, we can't book a flight or we can't find a place to crash for our first night back in YVR and it's just really bizarre, but intrepid travellers that we are, we will manage. If in the next weeks you see a couple of zoned out, stoop shouldered, round-heeled souls wandering around Whitehorse with glazed eyes and dazed looks on their faces, say hello - it means we're home!

STORK!

Polish Village Life

My Family in Poland - just off the train.

Ivan in Dresden

Streets of Prague

Changing of Guards - Prague Castle

No, We Have NOT Fallen off the End of the Earth!

Sooo...if anyone out there is following this sojourn..we have not fallen off the flat end in Europe. We have been hindered and kindered and travel kerfuffled by internet difficulties. So..HELLO out there. Strangely intriguing is that internet access as well as news from home and surrounds is easier in far flung countries than in Europe.

Ok. Prague. Wow (again). There cannot be a more picturesque city with more Baroque architecture than is possible to see in the short timespan we had there. I fell in love again with the world in Prague but in the oldest sense possible, that of awe and wonder. It's the oldest city in Europe and the history we experienced was amazing which is more than I can say for the weather. Rain, cold, rain, cold, and ..ya, rain. As for food, well, we had the best hamburger we had for ages in a little rock n' roll bar there. I know, how gauche, but you have to realize that we have been eating ethnic food for a good long time now. I will not go on and on about Europe as I have about other countries as everything here is so church, church, city square, civilized. It's not the same as exploring the netherworld. As much as I love this civilizedness, I miss the grimy, unexpected at every turn, incredible journey, so far.

Dresden was a couple more days of bad weather but again, an amazing place. Our hostel was very funky and the old town was a wonderland of history. . the best part of it though was sitting down to huge hot sausages with mustard and bread and beer. Yes, I know, I am talking about food a lot but why not, for food here is almost everything....well, ok, everything if you must know.

To Poland..this is the hard part to put into words. We took a train out of Dresden to the border where we have to catch another train to Wroclaw (pronouced Vratswavf which is only the beginning of trying to communicate here)! Anyways, we jump on early in the morning so no food. The trains in Germany are efficient, comfortable and have nice food options on them but it all changes in no time as we board an old Polish train. No food, not modern, and all of a sudden (within 15 minutes of departing) we stop, and as time goes on we realize that we are not going anywhere for a good, long while. The nice young woman in the compartment next to us explains that she is embarassed of her country, Poland, but that this happens a lot. Apparently they are fixing the tracks. This is not all bad as it gives us an hour in which we jog into the little town, change money, buy kielbasa( there is no getting away from it here), cheese, crackers and chocolate and jog back to the train in plenty of time.

I don't know what to expect when we get to Wroclaw, all I know is that for all of the time I have been on this earth and spent time with my Polish grandmother, I have heard stories of life in Poland. I am an orphan (though late in life), and have no brothers nor sisters. I have relatives on my father's side but on my mother's side in Canada, they are very few and far between. So this meeting is auspicious.

We are 1.5 hours late into the station and I feel awful because I know my cousin is coming to get me. When we get off the train...there is Jadwiga and Maria, my mother's cousins come to meet me. Wow. And then Ivan says to me "look Shel, there's your family coming", I look around and see a man and a boy and think they are for me but further up the track I see 6 others coming down the platform with big smiles on their faces and determined love in their eyes. I smile and hold on to people I don't know as the knot in my throat nearly chokes me. I am home. I am loved. I am special. I am loved by people I know only by my heritage and the good and kind and loving thoughts my grandmother has imparted to me. It's almost too much but it's a good too much. Jadwiga, mom's cousin, and her family (2 big strapping guys, Rafal and Pchamak) live in another village and as we head along the road home we are gabbling away at eachother, them in Polish, me in English and it's difficult but ok. Rafal speaks very good english so he has been doing a lot of translating - poor guy, it's a never ending job. Maria's family lives in another town; she has 3 boys and one girl, Tomak, Bartek, Machek and Basia - who by the way is stunningly beautiful and wonderfully lovely.

The next day we head to the house that Rafal has been building for the past 4 years on the land where his grandfather's house was (his grandpa was my grandma's brother). We spend 3 days there with Jadwiga literally cooking from the minute she gets up till her head hits the pillow. I have never seen so much food in my life! We like to joke that we are being force-fed here and know what it must feel like to be a hog readied for slaughter. Polish have an expression that "The guest is like God", and we are treated so wonderfully here, I have never had such hospitality. Wladislav is Jadwiga's husband and he is genial and kind and constantly pouring someone a drink. Ivan and I took many walks through the village and marvelled at the old country way of life here, as though time stood still. This village and the others where the family live was occupied by the Germans in the war and the war still features prominently in all of their lives.

I have learned a lot about what happened to my extended family through this period and it's very tragic. Jadwiga's father was forced by the Germans to work in a German munitions plant through the war as slave labour. My grandmother always wondered what happened to her parents as she never knew. The family did not want to tell her as it would cause too much pain but they told me that her parents starved to death when the Germans drove everyone from the village as they were too old to walk and her brother was killed by the Ukrainians. So many stories here, only one of millions. I am overwhelmed by this and other things I find out. For instance, I have a distant cousin here who is a Polish movie star and a not so distant cousin who is a world champion skeet shooter. Another day a lady rides her bicycle into the yard and I look into the eyes of my mother! Francesca is another 2nd cousin, my mom passed in '98 and it's very disarming this meeting. She squeezes me as if I were going to lift off if she didn't hold me down. We then visit her mother, the 94 year old sister of my grandfather, who is the only one left. I am shocked and amazed when I sit next to her and gaze into the same face and eyes as my grandpa, the tears come falling and I am again on some strange journey. More people come, more cousins and husbands and brothers of cousins and on it goes. Holy Lord, but I do have a family!

Rafal takes us to Auschwitz- Birkenau one day and there are no words for this. You can feel the sorrow in this place. It's still raw. 1.5 million jews met their death in this hell. In the barracks is a room that runs the length and there are tons and tons of hair which the Germans would cut and sell for cloth making - cloth that would be made into German uniforms! Another room holds 86,000 pairs of shoes taken from the victims. Another room holds thousands of pairs of baby and children's shoes only. Your throat constricts and it's so big that you can't even cry. The living conditions in this camp were so grim that many did not even make it to a death sentence for they perished from starvation, overwork, disease, heatstroke, hypothermia and on and on... Trains arrived day and night from all points in Europe. Jews were shipped from Italy, Greece, France, even as far away as Norway for extermination. The Final Solution.

There were so many people killed here that they had a system whereby they would gas approx. 1,500 people at a time, a platform would then raise the bodies to the ovens and the bodies would be disposed of by cremation. There were also burning sites on the grounds as the ovens could not hold all the bodies. In the last 2 months that the camp was operating, 200, 000 jews were killed. Unbelievable. It is draining and leaves you reeling as you walk out the gates and back to a free Poland. How they have suffered.

We visit the town where John Paul II, the last pope was born and it's like visiting a movie star town. His picture is plastered everywhere and the house where he was born has a line up around the block. Only in Poland eh? From there we visit a mountain town called Zakopane, it's like going to Banff! I am so amazed by the diversity, the beauty, the spirit of the people here. I think Poland is my biggest surprise on this trip. I am impressed, and moreso because it's the land of my ancestors.

We are in Krakow now and have been for the past 4 days on our own. What a magnificent place. Krakow was not destroyed in the war as the Germans were in residence here and the Russians came to liberate before the Germans had a chance to destroy it, which was not the case in Warsaw, where nearly everything was bombed to hell. We love this city. I will write a whole blog on it later but for now we must get ready to head back to the village tomorrow, spend some time with the family again (oh no, more food)!!!! and then we are off to London, the last leg of our trip before we head home.

Schweinebraten - YA!!

Dirk, Gisela and Matthias...The Lufthansa Gang

Me n' Matthias eatin' Schweinebraten

Beautiful Bavaria

Dachau Crematorium

Entrance to Dachau

Castle in Salzburg

City of Salzburg

City of Salzburg

We've had a lot of um...RAIN

Marienplatz - Downtown Munich

Leonardo DaVinci Painting

Munchen.. or Munich to You

Well, despite the weather, or perhaps because of it (lots of grey skies and rain), we've had a pretty restful time here while enjoying the sights and the ambience of this city. Munich is pretty laid back with some amazing things to do and see. We visited the Pinakothek Museum (which I had never heard of) and were blown away by the art collection there. Ruebens, Van Dyck, Leonardo DaVinci, Botticelli, it's impossible to name the plethora of old masters here. It's a very impressive collection.. it took us 4 hours to make our way through this gallery and we still could not drink it all in. Many of the works here were acquired after the second world war but some of the works were plunder from occupied countries, it's fascinating. Still on the museum track, we visited the Deutsches Museum which is a technical museum with a collection of everything you can imagine from aircraft, space travel, ceramics, food technology (mostly beer making, go figure), clocks, astronomy, bridge building etc. - this museum covers an area of 55,000 square metres! Ok, so we didn't see everything but what we did see was very impressive.

The center of Munich is called Marienplatz and it's hip, contemporary shopping, beer gardens and markets set amidst cathedrals and towering architecture. This is old Europe at it's best. The cathedrals are magnificent and it's vibe is warm and inviting. Everyone loves to sit outside and smoke cigarettes (I have never seen such a huge smoking culture), quaffing beers and people watching, it's all very European darling.

One day we took a trip to Salzburg, Austria and visited the Mozart Museum and walked the charming streets and climbed to the fort in the middle of the old town where you can see for hundreds of miles, the alps standing proudly in the background. Breathtaking. The cathedrals in Salzburg are numerous and awe inspiring. It's so cool to jump the train and be in another country in 2 hours considering all the miles and miles we travelled through huge countries like Australia and India.

Another day we took the train to visit the Dauchau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, a very sobering and heart wrenching experience. Entering the gates the first thing you see is the inscription: "Arbeit macht frei" which translates to "Work Makes You Free" Etched across the roof of the main administration building are the words, "There is one road to freedom. Its milestones are: obedience, diligence, honesty, order, cleanliness, temperance, truthfulness, sacrifice and love of one's country." The guards within the camp were oblivious to the irony of these inscriptions as they worked the interns to death, literally.

This camp was highly important in the rise of the Reich in that it was the first camp opened and the model for all the others. It was opened in 1933 and during its 12-year history, Dachau had 206,206 registered arrivals and there were 31,951 certified deaths. The actual figures are unknown as records cannot be trusted for accuracy. Dachau was designed house 5,000 prisoners, but after 1942 the number of prisoners was never less than 12,000. Each block was meant to accommodate 180 men; in a report from April 26, 1945, the least crowded block contained 842 inmates. Most of the others had well over a thousand; the most crowded was Block 30, which contained 1800 people, primarily the very sick and invalids.

The bodies of those prisoners who died were brought to the crematorium to be disposed of. The area where the bodies were meant to be stored was usually full, and corpses were often stacked on the street. Because the prevailing wind was from the west, the camp was usually filled with the smell of burning corpses. In addition to the crematorium, Dachau did have a set of gas chambers. However, for reasons that have never yet been understood, these were never used in this particular camp.

Most horrific was the exhibition on medical experimentation on the prisoners which included submersing prisoners in freezing cold water to test for hypothermia, injection of air to create embolisms so they could study the effect of high altitude on pilots, malarial injections to find a cure but which weakened and sickened the subjects resulting in the deaths of many hundreds of prisoners, and other unimaginable atrocities. The agony is palpable at this place.

This memorial is done very tastefully, respectfully and with full disclosure. It is a brave and noble monument to the many thousands of victims who passed through these gates of hell. At the back of the barracks adjacent to the crematorium are chapels and monuments erected by the Jews, Catholics, Protestants and other denominations to honour those of their faith who endured the unspeakable through the years of 1933-1945. We were deeply touched and moved by this visit.

Staying with our friend Matthias has been good for us as it gives us a chance to rest and have some normalcy again. We cook our own meals, get lots of sleep and move at a leisurely pace. Last night was the highlight of our Munich experience as Matthias has a work colleague with connections to the Olympic park. Through great generosity we were given tickets to see the EAGLES! It was a sold out concert and it was an amazing show. They played all the old stuff from Desperado, Hotel California, Take it Easy and more and some new stuff from their upcoming album. The Olympic stadium rocked. This is a band that sounds exactly on stage as they do on their albums. As you walk through the Olympic Park you see huge mounds - green grassy hills dotted with trees which are actually the rubble from the bombing of WWII. It's hard to believe that so much destruction lies beneath these peaceful mounds and it seems a fitting tribute to the suffering of the past.

In two days we head to Prague and Dresden and then on to Poland where I finally will meet my relatives.

The Blues

Wowzer What a Day

Santorini Sunshine

Mykonos Island

Apple Tea and Furry Friends

Ruins at Ephesus

Ivan's Turkey Birthday

Now, Turn to the Left Please

Look Straight at the Camera Please

Cappadocia Caves

Ok, so how do I get down from here??

The Aya Sofia Church at Night

The Blue Mosque at Night

A Whirling Dervish - No Kidding!

Istanbul Delight

Turkey, Greek Isles and on to Munich

Turkey.. might as well be heaven after India. We stayed in an area called Sultanahmet, cobblestone streets, pensions, kitty-kats running around everywhere pausing only for a stroke and a purr, souvenir shops, jewellry stores and carpet sellers EVERYWHERE. Our room in the Noble Hotel is a little haven with a wee courtyard and a nice wall heater that we made good use of. After coming from 40+ heat everyday, Istanbul is cool - some days even cold but the people's warmth more than made up for the climate. Everyone we talked to was kind and sweet and by the day's end our teeth were floating from all the apple tea we consumed. All the shop owners and just folks along the street would offer demitasse of tangy apple tea in which we were more than happy to indulge.

I must say, for the girls reading this, Turkey has the best looking men! Charming and dashing, all meticulously GQ dressed with smoldering dark eyes and they certainly aren't shy with their charm. Funny thing is, when we were in India the women were captivatingly beautiful with almond eyes and ruby lips and dressed exotically in saris and gold - lovely. But the men were a bit on the meager side, thin and a bit worn looking, I didn't find them much attractive. India was Ivan's treat whereas Turkey was a smorgesbord of dashing dudes. Ivan says he can't wait to see the Turkish women as there are none working in the shops or cafes, they all stay home and the men do the business so, we head to the mosque area and there they are, all clad in garish head scarves, no make up - very plain looking ladies. It seems that while the ladies produce some very handsome boys, the girls are a bit left behind in the race. However, once we headed into the chic area of Istanbul, we did see some lovely ladies.

The blue mosque, The Topkapi Palace, The Grand Bazaar, The Bosphorous and all things amazing are within arms reach of our accommodation. The Four Seasons hotel is in this area built on the foundations of what was once the notorious prison of "Midnight Express" fame. It is now one of the highest voted hotels in the world. We took a tour of the Bosphorous by boat one day, the Bosphoruos being the only body of water that has Asia on one side and Europe on the other, as we floated by the Sultan's palaces and stunning homes along both the Asian and European shores. I don't think I have ever been more charmed by a city and it's peoples in all my travels. If anyone wants to know where to spend their summer holiday, I say Turkey, unequivocably. From Istanbul we took a bus to Cappadocia where the villages are carved into caves and the rock formations tower into mushroom shapes and camels and as far as your imagination will take you. This is Star Wars stuff, everything looks otherworldly. We stayed in a a cave hotel and Ivan had his birthday in a cozy little dining room overlooking a rock fortress riddled with caves. From here we headed out on an overnight bus to Pamukkale and the sight of ancient ruins. Have I ever alluded to the fact that I hate buses? I believe I have and the sentiment has yet to change. I loathe them. The seats are never comfortable, there is always music playing that I am prone to dislike, and it makes for a sore back and a grumpy demeanor but sometimes there are no other choices. And so we ride the loathesome bus. Pamukkale is a series of calcium pools cascading down the mountainside but they were not full of water so we only saw empty basins of calcium formation. Oh well.

On to Ephesus, the amazing ruins of an ancient city replete with an enormous coliseum. Onto the stage walked two little Japanese tourists who began singing in harmony the hymn, How Great Thou Art, the hair on my arms stood up and tears came to my eyes. It was a definite moment. From Ephesus we travelled to Selcuk where we enjoyed a lovely evening and in the morning hopped a ferry to Samos Island in Greece.

We spent one night in Samos which was nice but the real treat was heading into Mykonos the next day. The glistening all white and blue houses set against the hills floating in the jewel-like sea was dazzling. 2 nights in Mykonos and on to Santorini which was the most impressive of all. There is a volcano off the island that last erupted in the 50's and reformed the coastline of the island. Lean your head back and look to the sky and there cliff-top sits the village of Fira. It seems to float in the air it sits so high above the sea. Getting off the ferry we meet our driver who drives up and up and up to the top of the island. Once above you can look in either direction and see the ocean on both sides. It's hard to tell where the blue, blue sky ends and the blue, blue water begins. We eat fresh red tomatos and green cucumbers and black olives topped by thick slabs of crumbly feta cheese topped by golden olive oil - the heavenly Greek salad. I can't get enough. Red wine, gooey pizzas, sticky ice-creams. Oh, it is heaven.

After 2 days in Santorini, VERY EXPENSIVE, we catch a direct charter flight to Munich and here we are staying with our handsome, lovely host, Matthias, who works for Lufthansa and so was waiting for us when we got off our flight. It was so nice to see a familiar face coming off the plane. We are in Bavaria where beer is considered a food! We go directly to the beer garden and quaff some steins with Matthias and his colleagues and then take the train to his home. Funny here, as we get on the train, one of the guys we met handed me a beer. Drinking on the transit system is not frowned on at all as it's a food. Go figure, Germans DO love their beer. Ivan is reunited with his guitars here and is a happy boy. We are off to explore the city tomorrow. Auf Wiedersehen!

Burning Ghat on the Ganges

Streets of Varanasi