Schindler's List

This is the coldest, wettest July 3rd I have ever been a part of. Like a gray March day in Denver. We are thanking our lucky stars because we are on railroad tracks, not bicycle wheels. Just looking out the big window in our train cabin makes one want to shiver.

Fortunately, yesterday's weather was decent enough for us to take our tour of the Nazi's former concentration camp at Auschwitz. The scope of the whole thing makes it really impossible to get any idea of how it could have happened or what it was like for the one and a half million people killed in this and various other camps. This complex was the biggest; Hitler's pride and joy, where as the result of diabolical planning, a system was devised to effectively work the prisoners to death. When someone was deemed too weak or frail to help out the war effort, they would be killed by lethal injections, Cyclon B gas, incinerated, or maybe shot. Even after death, the Germans figured out a way to use them; ashes to fertilize farms or to firm up muddy roads, hair to make carpet, and on and on.

Seemed a little strange to get back to the cheery real world of Kracow only minutes away, but that's what we did, with Laura making a shopping trip to the mall while I sipped beer in an old town Irish pub. Any preconceptions we might have had about Polish people being dour or old fashioned have been dashed. Upbeat, modern, progressive, young, party town would be more like it. As we left this morning at 6am for the train station, folks were still carousing in the streets after pulling an all nighter.

There has been some question about the most famous Pole ever after learning that Karol Jozef Wojtyla lived just down the street from our hotel when he was a mere mortal and student. After he was elected Pope in 1978, he served the second longest term in history, over 26 years. More remarkable yet, he was the first non-Italian Pope since Adrian (Dutch) in 1522.

Reluctantly we leave Poland, which we have liked better than any other country so far, and are taking a train back to Vienna, where we will spend the day before climbing aboard a night train to Venice. By the evening of the 4th we should be in Levanto, Italy, next to a beach.

We miss seeing everyone back home, along with the summer weather. Most of all the two H's. Skype has worked once or twice and we will keep trying that. Happy 4th to all. Don't think we will see any fireworks this year.