Summary #1 - Eastern Europe, Germany, & Austria Wrap-up

Our first 6 weeks of travel have been quite a whirlwind. Here are the numbers:

- 5 Countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Germany, Austria)
- 7 major cities (Frankfurt, Berlin, Prague, Krakow, Vienna, Budapest, Munich)
- 8 Towns (Auscheffenburg, Wurtzburg, Potsdam, Kutna Hora, Aushwitz, Wieliczka, Chiemsee, Tegernsee)
- 4 Currencies
- 4 Languages
- 0 Thefts, pickpockets, or stolen organs
- 2 and a half mild-ish cases of food poisoning

Observations, Opinions, and Gross Generalizations, so far:

- The further east you go, the more challenging the language gets (6 consonants in a row!)
- The deeper you go into post-communist countries, the bigger the gap from “capitalistic customer service”, the surlier the security guards, and the more minutes they close before “closing time” – even if you want to spend money there (winner: Budapest, consistently closed 20-25 min before closing time).
- Public transportation is surprisingly on-time and gets even easier the more cities/systems you try. In general.
- Favorite beers – Czech Republic
- Favorite new cuisine – CurryWurst (Berlin)
- Best stews/goulash – toss-up between Budapest & Krakow
- Best subways – Vienna (Berlin is a close second)
- Oldest subway – Budapest - the historic yellow line is the 3rd oldest in the world, very clean and pretty (1. New York, 2. London)
- Ugliest subway – also Budapest – the blue line doesn’t get the love that the UNESCO yellow line gets... so it looks like the NYC subways circa 1982, pre-clean-up (graffiti, peeling metal, missing bolts)
- Most Globally/recently historic – Berlin
- Most legends – Krakow (they have a dragon in their legends!)
- Most music halls & opera houses - Vienna

A couple fun memories left out of the blog posts:

PRAGUE: We accidentally erased all of our Prague pictures in the transfer from camera-to-computer. Luckily, this happened on our last morning in Prague, and our train wasn't until night-time... So, we spent the last day in Prague re-tracing our steps from the previous 5 days. So any pictures that we have or posted were actually taken in one day, when we saw everything for the second or third time. The only pictures that we weren't able to re-produce were the night-time ones, and the interior of the opera house (we got $5 opera tickets and saw Aida - it was awesome). Anyway, here we are in front of the St. Charles bridge with a view of the castle across the river.

KRAKOW: The city's history really does start with a legend of a dragon. This is a statue of the dragon (a little hard to distinguish from the trees in this picture) - It breathes fire every 5 minutes or so.

Well, that about wraps it up. We are currently in italy for 6 weeks (blogs coming soon). We are going to Turkey for 10 days in November, and then we are off to Australia & New Zealand for almost 3 months. Then the European adventure continues in mid-February, still working on the specifics.

Lots of Love to all of our family & friends.