Bern

Monday is generally a bad to museum-hop in Europe: most galleries and museums are closed, and plenty of other places have reduced hours. Lasse, Tanja and I decided to visit one of the few open spots: the house Einstein stayed at while developing relativity theory (listed on one map only as "Einsteinhaus"). I could just imagine him staring at this one clock on the wall, imagining it slowing down as it sped by. The lady who gives out the tickets was great &mash; she admitted to not understanding his math and science, but loving his humanistic philosophy. I think she might have had a crush on him too.

I forget the context, but they had a great Schopenhauer quote I hadn't seen before: "We can do what we want, but can't will what we will." A wonderful one-liner for discussing determinism.

From Einstein's house we walked down the street and over a bridge to the botanical gardens, which had far too many plants trees and mosses to even begin exploring. In the distance there was some sort of Swiss folk band playing, with plenty of accordion and funny German melodies. We imagined they were wearing leiderhosen.

Lasse and Tanja were on their way back to Denmark, and had to leave that afternoon for Luzern, so I walked with them to the train station and said goodbye.

For lunch I grabbed the cheapest meal I could find, an 8CHF kebab that turned out to be pretty decent. To make up for the day before in Lyon I got some blackberries from the market. With the whole day ahead, I was still trying to think of something to do. The night before, at the hostel, someone told me that the rose gardens to the East weren't worth the hike, which meant there was probably a great view from the top they missed.

About halfway up I was about to agree with the guy from the hostel, but it turned out to be pretty decent. There's a Japanese restaurant at the top for some reason, and I smaller rose gardens near the exit of the path up the hill. I have a feeling the guy at the hostel just saw this small garden. If you go further you get to the main area, where at least 50 varieties of roses are arranged in concentric rectangles.

I smelled most of them — I had no idea how much variety there was in rose aromas. A lot of questions came to mind: do flowers smell like they look, just as lions growl and birds chirp, sounding like they act? And would it be how they look to us, or to the bees in ultraviolet? Maybe only we can smell flowers "correctly" and only bees can see them "correctly"?

I took notes on a few as well:

• "Nella Martinetti" was my favorite, with a hint of citrus, berry, and reminders of the forest and beach simnultaneously
• "Papa meilland" smells like lysol
• "Charlie chaplin" has a hint of chai or earl grey
• "Magicienne 78" was the most citrusy

On the way back from the rose garden I happened upon the bear pits, which are just depressing. Two Bernese bears wandering aimlessly about a concrete hole in the ground with a few trees and rocks is not my idea of a humane tourist attraction.

Walking back to the hostel it started seriously raining. Back in my room I met two Northern Irish guys playing cards, Jim (the talkative one) and his friend (whose name I can't remember, the quiet one). The rest of the evening was spent eating Toblerone, meeting dorm mates and playing cards. At the height of it we had everyone involved: myself, the two Northern Irish guys, two Londoners named Alasdair (Al) and Matt, two Australian girls, two English girls named Toni and Becky, a Swiss'Indian named Thisan, his omniglot Swiss friend Marvin, and two slightly punk girls I'm pretty sure were from another dorm. Some games we played:

• Egyptian Ratscrew Taught to me by my sister Kiera and her boyfriend Baron, involves super fast pattern matching and deck slapping.
• Jack-change-it A "get rid of your cards" game where you must match the suit or number of the card, complicated by special cards.
• Murder in the Dark Not really a card game, but dealt using cards. Using who was killed as hints, everyone has to figure out who the two murderers are and send them to prison by a vote. Involves lots of counter accusations. I was dealt as murderer and managed to have my co-murderer Toni sent to jail, kill the doctor, and win the game. Best when you have an Irish guy as the storyteller &mdash. "Last night, a dark and sto-ormy night, t'ere was a mu-urder..."
• Cheat Also called "BS", you put cards of a kind on the table face down, moving up or down from the last card, while telling everyone they are. If you lie and someone calls you on it, you take the deck. If you're telling the truth, they take it.
• Spoons A fast game where you keep four cards in hand and pass the deck around the table card by card. First to collect four of a kind grabs a "spoon" (random object in the center of the table). There is always one less spoon than there are players, so there are no winners, just one loser.

There was also plenty of discussion earlier in the evening about politics and discrimination. Thisan is incredibly emotional and argumentative, which was compounded by his poor understanding of English, resulting in lots of cursing in German and some in Tamil. Realizing he didn't want to argue, just accuse, I listened for about an hour to his problems with America — domestic and international, with plenty of additions from other dorm mates. When he finished I told him that not all of America agrees with the government's decisions, most Americans aren't racist and some are actively trying to undo lasting effects of discrimination (whether this is a good idea is another discussion), and that you shouldn't say anything about America if you haven't been there and the first place you want to visit is Las Vegas. Though I didn't say the last part quite like that.

Thisan seemed to have made enemies of most of the people by the end of the night, if not for arguing with them just for being loud, but he gave me his number and said to call if I was ever back in Switzerland.

In the end, the Londoners drank quite a bit, Thisan started losing his voice, and a good time was had by all. It never did stop raining though.

Bern

I woke up expecting to buy some berries from the market and hop on a train to Bern via Geneva, but I met a Danish couple named Lasse and Tanja in the subway. I'd seen them at the hostel, and it turned out they were going to Bern as well so we decided to go together.

Most of our initial conversation was standard fareç where we've been, where we're going, what we've been studying, and language. I learned to pronounce some Danish vowels, which took a lot of concentration. There was even a short episode of frantically trying to find food in Geneva before our next train left.

You can tell you're in Switzerland when everything outside gets beautiful.. Villages on hills overlooking lakes, mountains looming on the horizon, fluffy clouds in the sky, etc. Bern is more of that, but a lot more beuildings and a river instead of a lake.

There's a lot of construction going on in central Bern right now, so we had to double check our path to the hostel, but we made it all the way down a long hill and booked three spots in a 20 bed room. Evening was just beginning, so we walked from the hostel to the south side of the river (it sort of envelopes the city, bending around the east side), and over to the "main" street.

The prices, all in CHF — Swiss francs — were initially disorienting (by the way, if a hundredth of a euro is a eurocent, is a hundredth of a franc a frankencent? are two of them frankincense?). But instead of being really expensive, we slowly realized everything was just fairly expensive. We settled on drinks at Starbucks and sandwiches at a nice bar/cafe down the street. Lasse and Tanja are the only people my age I've met who admit to feeling childish for not liking coffee. I felt the same way, and then my sister Kiera instroduced me to breves and lattes with fair amounts of sugar, cinnamon, and everything else. Now I don't mind esperesso-based drinks, but I still don't like coffee. Anyway — I had some tea.

The conversation quickly turned more serious, and we started talking about stereotypes and cultural difficulties. I found out a bunch about the practically socialist system in Denmark that does everything it can to distribute wealth evenly and not provide any motivation for high acheivers. I told them about what feels to me like the cultural homogenity and isolation of the United States. It was great.

We walked almost directly back to the hostel and went to bed — rest after lots of travel and intense conversation.

Lyon

I woke up this morning with some ideas but, as usual, little set in stone. Breakfast and the view from the hostel kept my attention for a bit, and eventually I walked down the hill and over the Saône to Place Bellecour, billed as "Europe's largest completely clear public square". Basically this means that Lyon has the biggest public square filled only with sand. I kept walking, over the Rhône to what looks like a recently built riverbank area. There were two bowls for skaters, lots of stairs, shallow running water alongside the river, etc. Just North of the bridge I crossed was one of Lyon's two farmers markets. I'm thinking I'll get lunch there tomorrow, bananas are about two euros a kilo.

Today I got lunch near the main metro entrance on the East side of the Rhône. There were three kebab shops next to each other, all with the same prices, so I just picked the one with a guy that looked happy. I didn't know you could have "kebabs" without the "shish", but it's a lot like a gyro.

From the kebab shop I took the metro to the other market, which was a bit smaller and starting to close. The Lumière museum was just across the street, which is what I really wanted to see. The Lumière brothers were the guys who basically invented cinematography in the form we know now. The museum was dedicated to their ideas and accomplishments, and had plenty of replicas, models and artifacts. Plus it was located in their super cool Art Nouveau home. I'm not really a cinematographer, but it felt like a pilgrimage anyway considering the leap they made in time-based media and experimental art.

From the Lumière Museum I went to the big park in the Northern part of Lyon, which has a huge lake with little islands you can get to via underground passageways. I heard some singing coming from the edge of the park and happened upon a African lady in very African clothes who gave me tracts in French. I could see the Musée d'Art Contemporain from here, which I'd heard about earlier, so I headed in that direction. The first floor had an exhibit called "Freak Show", with lots of strange objects commissioned from a number of artists: 10 feet tall rain boots, a brush with hair coming out instead of bristles, an acoustic guitar with a square body, a chair that looked like it was just about to tip over, etc. My favorite was the two cubes in the corner that were attached to opposite walls but suspended in mid air next to each other, presumably magnetically attracted. I wasn't sure it was worth five euros, but the second floor, an Erwin Wurm exhibition, redeemed it for me. His video work isn't so great (unless it's in the context of an installation, like the fat house), and pieces like "Thinking About Philosophers" are more fun to think about than view; his photography, "one minute sculptures" and "interactive sculptures" were my favorite. Of the "interactive sculptures", one instructs you to sit on the ground with your legs forward and think about Spinoza. Another asks you to hold a Pepsi can between your chest and chin. I like that his work is really simple and silly but still asks "bigger questions" about the boundaries of different media.

From the museum I took the bus, subway, and tram to the top of the main mountain in the older part of Lyon. It was starting to rain hard so I just got a quick look of the cathedral and the amazing view before rushing back down the hill and up on the other tram to the hostel.

At the hostel I waited for the rain to let up so I could get dinner. As I was walking out, a girl stopped me because she noticed my RPI shirt. We both happened to know the same person at RPI, so we talked for a bit and she showed me a great place that did a sandwich, drink and dessert for five euros. I also got a crepe from a guy making them on the street, which I'd wanted to do for a while.

Back at the hostel we sat around a table with some of her friends, but she was mostly ignoring the other conversations and just talking to me. She was coming from a small town, and going to community college because she wanted to stay with her family. No one believed that she'd be able to travel Europe for a month — much less by herself. It was a little rough at first, but now she's scared to go back. She feels like she's changed so much, and if she goes back people will put her in an old box.

Paris

There isn't much to say about the high-speed train from Brussels to Paris other than "it's really fast". That and I met two business and agriculture students from Uzbekistan named Nuri and Share (I'm probably transliterating their names wrong).

Paris is another place like New York City or London that hosts a variety of different cultures and languages and makes me wonder: what makes a city a city? If the definition of a city has anything to do with the characteristics of the people who live there, these melting pot places make me think there will come a day when communication and travel will be so ubiquitous we stop thinking about "cities" and group people and space in other terms.

The cheapest hostel I could find that was still close to a metro stop was a block and a half from the Louvre. In a strange mirroring of fates, I met two more Aussies named Josh and Alex, and a Southern Californian named Austin who had just been in Southeast Asia.

With my backpack off my shoulders, I went for a walk. Past Le Louvre, over Le Seine, to Le Cafe a few blocks away. I don't remember the name of the Cafe, I think it said "Flores" on one of its menus. There are so many cafes in Paris, I stopped at this one because I was tired of walking and it was on a nice busy corner. I saw something called a "Caesar salad" that was most certainly not Caesar (there was steak in it, but more essentially, there were no anchovies in the dressing and a poached egg sat in the center). That said, it was excellent. Though I'm no connoisseur, I had a Bordeaux with it that was one of the best wines I've ever had. Though that may have just been my tongue, which last tasted food in Delft.

I got to bed early, which is good because the next day was tremendous. I woke up at 7:45 to go to the Louvre with the three other guys from my dorm, and the line was less than 20 minutes. Of course we went to the Mona Lisa first, when only 20 people were surrounding it. We saw a lot of other amazing art, but the Mona Lisa stuck with me. Or rather, the crowd around it stuck with me. I think it's really interesting how art is "ordained" by aficionados and the general public. There were plenty of other really impressive pieces in the museum, but everyone gathered around the few famous ones: the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Victory of Samothrace, etc. When the other guys left I went back to see the Mona Lisa again. There were maybe 80 people around it, so I waited and found my way to front and center. It was mad and wonderful. An art mosh pit.

I walked to the Notre Dame cathedral and grabbed a panini on the way there. There's a great garden just to the east of the Cathedral, where I took a nap for a while before heading back to the dorm.

I was planning on just writing for the rest of the day, but back at the hostel I met Pierre. He just got a job as a teacher in Paris and was looking for an apartment. He was just about to go to the Museum d'Orsay to meet some friends and see the exhibit "Cezanne to Picasso", so I went with him. We went the other way first and stopped at a cafe. "What beer do the French drink?" I asked. "The real French drink Belgian beer. But don't let them know." he said, with a very thick French accent. So we had a Belgian beer, "Leff". We talked about language and culture differences and played the game "spot the tourist". Outside the museum the game got easier: the tourists were the ones who stopped to look at the street artist's work. The museum was wonderful; I like Gauguin and Cezanne, but also a group vaguely related group called "Nabis" I didn't know about. After the exhibition Pierre and his friends went for drinks and I stayed to wander the museum some more. My favorites were the three or four rooms dedicated to Art Nouveau furniture and art, and the entire top floor just for Impressionists and Post-Impressionists.

At this point the sun would set in the next half hour, so I walked to the Eiffel tower, which seemed about a mile away. The lines were ridiculous of course, so I just walked around appreciating the strange structure.

Pierre had recommended I see Montmarte, which I knew from the movie "Amelie", with the scene where she follows the arrows up the mountain. I rushed over on subway and practically ran to the top. I reminded myself "it's not the hand", and ran back to the subway to catch it before they stopped running at midnight. Montmarte is a really sketchy area at night when you're further down the mountain side, but it's wonderful at the top.

The next day was dedicated mainly for traveling from Paris to Lyon. And having a fresh baked croissant in Paris. I was hoping to reserve a high speed train, but they were all taken. So I left Paris at 4:00 in the afternoon and arrived in Lyon 9:00. I knew where the hostel was, so I just had to follow the map. This wasn't so easy, the streets have to underlying structure and, as in Amsterdam and Delft, the rain was following me. After walking half a kilometer south and a a hundred meters uphill, I found the hostel and soaked in the view from the hostel's balcony. I met some people, a mechanical engineer from New Zealand and a teacher from Philadelphia, and we talked about where we'd been and where we were going. A good ending to a long day.

London

Getting off the plane, I felt like I was just in another American airport. That perception was fixed as I turned a corner into a narrow hallway and tried to pass a chap driving a cart on the right. He smiled knowingly and pointed to my left.

The next thing that lets you know you're in London is the CCTV cameras. You begin to understand why both punk and 1984 were born in London.

London's Circle Line Train

I sat next to a business professor on the plane. He was taking his students through London to get an idea of how things work over here. I followed them through immigration and found my own way to the train station. After accidentally getting on the wrong train to London and getting that figured out, I figured out the oyster cards, the underground, and caught a train towards Notting Hill. I was looking for Wake up! London, a hostel I saw in the Europe on a Shoestring guide, but it seemed to be under renovation. My next choice, Leinster Inn, was only a few blocks away.

Leinster Inn was borderline sketchy but pretty great. It looked like a lot of people were staying longer than a few days, and the rooms smelled like something foreign, but it worked out alright. I think there were 10 people on 5 bunk beds in my room.

I grabbed a late lunch, took a nap, and dropped my backpack before returning to central London to walk West down the Thames; starting at the London Eye and walking towards Parliament.

I returned to Leinster Inn for some rest, and met two people. One before I went to sleep: Carlos, an architecture student from Barcelona who came to work on his English; and one as I was falling asleep: Giem, who dropped his jacket on me. It turned out the next day Giem was pretty nice, even if I couldn't understand most of what he said because of his accent. I also met Malcolm, an Australian finishing a few months of travel; he told me how wonderful Porto was.

Leinster Inn at Midnight

The next day I decided I'd visit some galleries. To prep, I got breakfast at Natural Cafe, which is one of the kindest and tastiest organic cafes I've been to. The manager saw me looking at the menu outside and gave me a free drink coupon; I got a free mocha and he told me to keep the receipt for next time.

I went first to Trafalgar square and the National Gallery. It's strange how any large open space surrounded by buildings and containing sculpture will draw a crowd. The National Gallery was exquisite. I was most drawn to the Dutch painters they had in the permanent collection, but it's hard to forget Van Gogh and Rembrandt. The Degas were great, but not my favorites from him.

Next I took the underground to near St. Pauls, which I walked by, and over the Millennium bridge to Tate Modern. It was closing early for some reason, so I missed maybe a sixth of it, but eighty percent of what I did see was incredible. My favorites were Giamcometti and Rothko. Giacometti I've never seen in person before, and it's very different when you stand closely to one of his elongated figures and can only focus on the head, while the rest becomes abstract. Rothko was wonderful because there was a centralized dimly lit room dedicated to his large scale work (the "pause" paintings, as I remember them, the stillness/meditative ones with two large holes or stripes).

I walked West from Tate Modern and mingled with the various groups of tourists and listened to conversations: some highschool students, some Americans, a group of friends. Eventually I got to an area called "morelondon", quite the hip and stylized after-work hangout it seemed. There's a Marks and Spencers there, the first I saw — I'm amazed by the idea of a store where every product has the same branding. I got some mixed berries, hummus, and pita bread (or "pitta" over here) and walked over to "The Scoop" (an open air free music venue) where I had a tasty dinner and listened to some popish music.

I walked by the London Eye the day before because I new there was an installation nearby, "Wind to Light", but I should have walked East instead of West. I went back and walked the other direction, eventually finding it and being very inspired. It's interesting how a lot of the installation has fallen apart; I'd be curious to see what it would look like if it actively made use of that process. It also made me think more about how it is a sort of "physical transcoding", with no software in between, and what exactly software is. Software requires abstraction of some form, but to what extent before it is necessarily software?

That evening I finally managed to contact Basia's daughter, Klara, and found my way to their home (all the way to the Ealing Broadway station). I had a wonderful sleep and awoke to Klara's breakfast the next day. After breakfast I worked out the train and ferry from London to Amsterdam for the next day, and took off to the Science Center. I stayed longer than I expected, admiring their history of the steam engine, before grabbing some food from a street vendor and eating on the steps of the fountain outside Buckingham palace.

Another time-honoured English tradition, I returned to Basia's to watch "Big Brother" with Klara and two of her friends. Stefan came downstairs and we ended up talking philosophy until Basia got home from the opera, at which point we, of course, went outside and talked opera. Except I mostly listened: as Basia's friend pointed out, the US does not have an Opera tradition.

I wasn't sure about how I felt about London when I first arrived, it's a bit like New York City's younger brother, but how can you not love people who use phrases like "with the faeries" (not all there) and have headlines like "Yanks take Mickey out of Becks and Posh"?

Toruń: Copernicus, the Teutonic Knights, to Gdynia

We had a quick breakfast at the Helios hotel this morning (the entire place is covered in "art" from Copernicus' journals). I ran across something terrible on a piece of bread, some meat covered in a colorless gell reminiscent of tamarind. I was not in the mood. The rest was tasty, though. From breakfast, we went outside to the face the overcast weather. It wasn't overcast very long, because it started raining within a minute of our departure. This wouldn't have been so bad if we left on the bus, but this was our first walking tour. Needless to say, I was absolutely drenched after two plus hours in the rain. Most people were okay, grandpa rode in a rickshaw with an umbrella.

Our guide for Toruń was very stern. He started us off with a memorial to Copernicus. In Toruń, there's almost as many Copernicus reminders as John Paul II references, which says something. From there we walked a block or two to an old "triangle": a church, university, and prison right next to each other. Apparently there used to be jokes about people going from one to the other, in circles, over their lifetime. I don't know which institution that bodes the worst for...

Another block or two and we stumbled across the old city walls from 1300. Some substantial portions still remain. Apparently the layout of the city itself hasn't changed since that time (you can still use city plans from 1300 to walk around). On our way around the city walls, our guide pointed out a leaning building — it doesn't lean like in Pisa, it's stable: it started falling while it was being built, and they corrected for the tilt with the rest of the construction. These are exactly the metaphors you don't want to see: "so long as you account for your major errors, you can stand the test of time". We stopped by Copernicus' home next; there's supposed to be a little museum inside, but that will have to wait for another day. We also saw the university he studied at — a little four story, 6-window wide building on one of the streets running perpendicular to the Wisła.

Once we had enough of Copernicus, we walked over to the former castle of the Teutonic Knights. It's completely in ruins now, with no plans for reconstruction (no original plans or paintings exist, so it can't be reconstructed). Then over to the marketplace for a little break. There's a fountain with sculpture of a boy playing fiddle and some frogs around him, it's a reminder of a story where he saves the city from frogs by luring outside the city with his music. I love those sort of stories... they can't be completely made up, I always wonder which elements are true.

After some free time we walked over to the gingerbread bakery (besides producing Copernicus, Toruń makes good gingerbread — astronomy and pastries, the two essentials). I learned how to make gingerbread, today: hot honey, cinnamon, cloves, anise, nutmeg, two types of flour, ground and mixed well, in the closet 12 weeks, kneaded, oiled, placed in a mold, baked for 10-15 minutes... and you're set. I'm sure I'm forgetting something essential... anyway, it was really good gingerbread in the end.

It was time for lunch, so we headed over to a local restaurant. Some of these restaurants have been around forever, I didn't check this one... the best part of the meal was the bullion. I finally had some Żywiec— it's a bit bitter, with a hint of fruitiness. Nice with the meal, but nothing too special. I'm no beer aficionado, so that's all I can say — I'm sure those aren't even the "right" words.

From lunch we left to Gdynia. Many hours later, we arrived — one of grandpa's friends, Mr. Iwanowski, arranged two rooms for us on the 11th floor, overlooking the sea. The smell of the air getting of the bus made me smile so big — there's nothing like a cool night by the ocean, especially after being inland for months. I went for a long walk (how could I not?), down to the end of the pier. Gdynia may tie with Zakopane for feeling like "home", and I haven't even really seen this place yet.

Highlights: making gingerbread, the smell of the ocean, Wyborowa at dinner.

Kraków: The Wawel and Wieliczka

We began the day with a bus tour through Kraków. In Warsaw, Kuba told me it's one of the bigger tourist attractions, while a Polish friend in New York tells me "it's just a bunch of old bricks", so I wasn't sure what to expect. It felt a bit like Warsaw, but older — the streets were more narrow, the architecture more traditional.

After driving around a bit, we went to the Wawel, Royal castle in Kraków (which was the capital of Poland until 1596, when King Sigismud III moved it to Warsaw). Supposedly, this castle was built on top of a dragon's lair. The legend goes that, early in Kraków's history, this dragon would regularly torment the countryside, killing farmers and eating young girls (which he especially liked). To appease the dragon, young girls were sacrificed at the mouth of the cave every so often. Eventually, there weren't any more girls left except one — the king's daughter, so the king decided to give his daughter as a wife to whomever might slay the dragon. Of course, many tried and failed, until one poor apprentice had a bright idea: he stuffed a lamb with sulfur... the dragon ate it, and could not satisfy his thirst — drinking half the Wisła! Promptly exploding, the dragon was defeated, and the apprentice was married to the king's daughter.

The castle itself is like a small town, there is "Sigismund's chapel", the main residence, and plenty of other little shops and homes within the walls. The main residence, which is now a museum of sorts, is incredible — there are so many paintings, tapestries, sculptures, pieces of furniture... everything. The final room we visited was the largest, with patterned marble floors, leather walls, chandeliers, candelabras by some thrones at one end, tapestries on the walls, engraved ceilings. The acoustics were to die for. If I was a poor peasant a few centuries ago, I might have aspired towards a more affluent position simply to attend the dances and concerts held there.

The cathedral holds the tombs of many members of the Jagiellon family, Polish royalty. One particularly interesting tomb was that of Jadwiga, a saint and monarch who was known for her charity (she donated her dresses, jewelry and various other items to help restore the Academy in Kraków, she founded hospitals etc.) She was very young when she died, maybe 25 years old, and was said to have had blue eyes and blonde hair — a beauty frozen in time above her coffin.

From the Wawel we headed to the market square to see St. Mary's Basilica, a 1,000 year old cathedral. Every hour a trumpeter plays the hejnał from the top of the basilica, stopping mid-note about 30 seconds into the tune. This is based on a children's story by J.P. Kelly where he tells of a trumpeter being shot through the throat by invading Tatars in 1241 — a story with no historic support, but it's a wonderful tradition.

The market square in Kraków is one of the most lively in all of Poland. I counted at least 6 street musicians (and a few groups of them), crowds of people, smartly dressed students, the long "cloth hall" in the center, filled with merchants with local goods and items imported from the mountains nearby, as well as a plethora of restaurants. For lunch I went with Jane to a Georgian restaurant. She's great, every day (sometimes twice) we'll have the same conversation:

Jane: So, is this your first time to Poland?
Me: Yes.
Jane: Do you like it so far?
Me: Yeah, there's so much beauty and tradition here — and a different kind than what I'm used to in America.
Jane: I love it here. This is my tenth visit.
Me: Wow.
Jane: When I tell my friends I'm going to Poland, they always ask me "What are you going there for?" But I just look at them and laugh.

Anyway, I don't think she realized it was a Georgian restaurant, and was just assuming that every ethnic-looking restaurant must be Polish. I have a soft spot for their alphabet and figured I'd take a break from all the Polish food for a moment. It wasn't bad at all; I'm no food expert but from my meal and the others I saw nearby, I'd say it's distinctly Eastern European, but reminiscent of popular Greek cuisine.

After meandering around the square for a while, we left for the Wieliczka salt mines. A few hundred feet below the surface, they have thousands of kilometers of man-made caves, many of them filled with salt-sculptures, salt-chandeliers, salt-everything. It's one of the quietest places I've ever been. It would be amazing to hear someone record an album in the largest room, St. Kinga's Chapel. They should really invite Sigur Rós, Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed You! Black Emperor on down.

Tomorrow we leave for Zakopane, in the mountains of Southern Poland.

Poor translation of the day (from the sign outside our dinner restaurant):

• "You are hungry and thirsty, our business is to find remedy."

Warsaw: The Uprising

Amazing breakfast this morning (with the exception of that one egg I broke open, expecting it to be boiled). They serve a very calm earl grey, apple pancakes, and a variety of other treats. After breakfast we caught a cab for a ride to The Warsaw Rising Museum. There's this problem in Warsaw with "Mafia Taxis" — if you don't see a city-issued number on it, they will charge up to five times the normal rate. But the taxis outside the hotel are safe — the one we took had a very kind driver, his father fought in the Uprising like Grandpa, so they got along very well.

The museum was almost too much. The entire place has a heartbeat, literally, you can hear it as you walk around — wherever you are inside, the spirit of the city is alive. A kind girl named Yola, who had a subtle but infectious enthusiasm, showed me around. She spoke quickly, always saying "What's more..."; as a placeholder, an exclamation, a rhetorical question... there are more uses to the phrase than I realized. There's too much in the museum to describe here, you really have to see it for yourself, but a few things made huge impressions on me... There's this one wall in the center of the museum that spans all three stories, with names inscribed of people who fought in the war. If you put your ear up to the wall you can hear recordings from the uprising. It goes like this: yelling, gunfire, yelling, gunfire, and then it cuts to one of the most beautiful chants I've ever heard, perfectly balanced, slow and resolute, but joyful. It felt like a couple millennia of tradition made immediate. I asked Yola, and she said it sounds like a hymn she knew from church. I was reminded of an article I read recently that made me frustrated — Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life", was writing about selecting music for contemporary worship services:

Speed up the tempo. Many worship services sound more like a funeral than a festival. The Bible says, "Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs." (Psalm 100:2) John Bisango, pastor emeritus of the 22,000-member First Baptist Church of Houston, Texas, says, "Funeral dirge anthems and stiff-collared song leaders will kill a church faster than anything else in the world!"

"Funeral dirge anthems"? Nothing provides solace like tradition, and nothing comforts in a time of war like memory. Reread Psalms. The Nazis knew this, it's why they completely destroyed the universities and replaced street signs that referred to Polish stories and beloved heroes. These are the things that made 30,000 Poles rise, only 10% of them armed, against 20,000 fully armed Nazis, taking down 500 on the first day, holding out for 63 days, and eventually killing somewhere between 10,000-17,000 Nazis.

From the museum we went over to the intersection where the entrance to the sewer that Grandpa crawled through is located. More than five thousand people were evacuated from Warsaw through these sewers — "It's hard to imagine, but it was covered in ruins at the time. They make wonderful protection."

We rested for a while back at the hotel and then met up with the rest of the tour group. There are 18 of us total, so far we are two of the three guys, and I'm the youngest. The median age is probably about 60 years. One of them, Danuta, is visiting from Australia; she's a bit saucy. Another, Jane, seems slightly senile. For example, Grandpa tries to grab a chair for Danuta to sit in:

Danuta: "Why are you helping?"
Grandpa: "Because this is a man's job!"
Danuta: "Oh my — if we left those jobs for the men, where would we be? Left for dead!"
Random Interjection: "Especially if your husband dies."
Jane: "Ah, that happened to me once."

Pleasant surprises: Steak tatar for lunch; Grandpa's story about the first Polish McDonalds: "The communists wanted to serve Vodka, but we wouldn't allow for it."; the 240 to 120 volt transformer exploding, followed by the realization we didn't need it.

Poor translations of the day (from the Asian-Polish fusion menu at hotel restaurant):

• St. James playing tomato with the devil
• Lotta marinated burning on a stake, stuffed passers-by watching