Goodbye, Murphy

I had every intention of returning to writing now that we were moving back to Europe.  I even posted a "stay tuned" post to get people ready for it.  Then, we moved here, and with a 2 and 3 year old, any down time I had was spent catching my breath, not writing.  Things are progressing, though.  We move in to our house tomorrow, our first of two cars arrived yesterday, and we're slowly getting close to normalcy again.

That said, I also didn't expect my first post to be a "Goodbye" to the first dog I ever owned.  Technically, he was Shanna's first.  She got him as a puppy in Texas in 2004 right after she graduated college.  I met them three years later, and I still remember the first time  I met Murphy.  I had gone over to Shanna's house to pick her up to go out, and she was out walking Murphy.  He ran right up to me and put his paws up on my legs, wagging his little nub.   I saw him often enough that, after a while, he would sit by Shanna's front door window looking outside, and would start jumping as soon as he saw my black truck pull up.   Over the past 11 years, he's been there for some major milestones in my life.  I tied the engagement ring to his collar when I asked Shanna to marry me.  The first year we lived in Germany, before I worked, he and our other dog, Milo, went every where with me.  Europe is more accepting of dogs in public places than the U.S., so they were my constant companions.  That dog also knew how to relax...he didn't care who was watching or how undignified he looked.

A few years later, in 2014, he was there to greet Ben when we brought him home from the hospital.  He quickly figured out that Ben was a great source of food.  I can't count the amount of times I'd leave the room while Ben was eating, and within seconds, I'd hear him laughing and giggling as he dropped food and watched Murphy eat it.  Ben's first crawls and steps were immediately followed by chasing after Murphy.

In April of 2015, when we moved back to the U.S., Murphy and Ben were inseparable, even in the bathroom.

In August 2015, when William came along, there were now two sources of food for him to wait under the table for, and two sources of hugs, laughs, and pets.

Over the years, that dog has made me mad more times than I can count.  If you did something he didn't like, he made sure to let you know by leaving a nice "surprise" near your bed.  And if I slipped up even once, and left a bag or container on the ground that had some sort of food in it, that little nose would sniff it out, and be in to it within seconds.  Even after all that, though, I wouldn't trade my time with him for anything.

For the past four weeks, Murphy had gradually lost control of his lower half.  The doctors gave us various shots and medicine to try, but all came with the caveat that we start to prepare ourselves because they might not work.  It turned out he had something called a "kissing spine", where the cartilage in his spine was non-existent, causing his vertebrae to "kiss".  That, plus the onset of arthritis, caused a deadly combination that pinched the nerve that connected his brain to his lower half.  By the time the end came this morning, he had no feeling or control of his lower body.  You could see the misery in his eyes, and we knew it was his time.

I kept the boys occupied outside this morning so Shanna could hold him and spend the last few hours with him.  When our appointment time arrived, we put him in his favorite blanket and drove to the vet.  They were very good with him, taking an impression of his paw print for Shanna to keep, and giving us time to say our goodbyes.  I don't think the boys really understood, but we'll see how they are over the next few days.  The entire process was quick and painless.  He just went to sleep.

I'm glad we have so many videos and pictures of him with the boys.  While they probably won't remember him years from now, we'll always be able to show them pictures of Murphy.

Rest in Peace, Murphy Dog.

Stay tuned!

And...we’re back!   On Monday, Feb 19th, we fly back to Europe, this time to Belgium.  Shanna accepted a job in Zutendaal, Belgium, so we’re going to start this adventure all over again. The house is packed, the cars are on their way, and in 3 days the six of us (including the dogs) will be on a plane, heading to a new chapter in our lives.

I’ll post more in depth about the flight over and first impressions next week, but for now, I wanted to let everyone know who follows that the blog is coming back with new posts about our adventures.

See you soon!

Auf Wiedersehen, Deutschland!

Who knew five years could fly by so fast?  It feels like just yesterday that Shanna told me she was offered a job in Germany.  We'd been married for three months at that point.  We talked about it, and decided that we were still young and didn't have kids yet, so if we were going to do this, now was the time.  In April 2010, we packed everything up and flew 9 hours to our new life in Europe.  During the past five years our life has changed dramatically.  We visited 28 different countries spanning Europe and Northern Africa.  We had one child, Benjamin, and now have another on the way in August.  We made some great friends, and had experiences we'll remember for the rest of our lives.  I never imagined myself sipping a beer on Red Square in Moscow, or walking next to the Great Pyramids in Cairo.  Now that we're back in the US, it's hard not to think that the biggest adventure of our life is over, and now there is just "everything else".  But I know that's not true, this is just the start of our next adventure as we raise Ben and his younger sibling.   There will also be other opportunities to live overseas again, but that's not anything we're thinking about for a few years to come.

Like everything else over the past five years, the trip home was an adventure in and of itself.  Because we were flying with the dogs, we couldn't fly out of Stuttgart.  The EU has a rule that you can only fly with animals out of airports that have on site Veterinarians.  Stuttgart did five years ago, but did not anymore.  That meant renting a car for a one way trip to Frankfurt.  The day of the flight home, we loaded up the SUV with four fullsize suite cases, one carry on suitcase, several carry on bags, a stroller, a car seat, two dogs, us, Ben and the dog kennels.  It took some creative packing, but we got everything in there.  The initial trip was smooth.  At 5am, the Autobahn was empty, so we flew up there.  We dropped the car off, and then the fun started.  We had to figure out how to take all of the previously mentioned things from the rental parking lot to the check out counter.  We managed, but it involved Shanna pushing the stroller and one suitcase cart, while I pushed two suitcase carts and held the leashes of Murphy and Milo.

It was difficult, but we managed to make it to the check out counter for animals.  First thing was to choose our seats.  Because we had dogs with us, we were not allowed to pick our seats before hand.  It was kind of a joke, when we first booked the flights, we were told that the low Government fare meant seat picking was not available to us until we checked in, but we could check in 24 hours early and pick our seats then.  At the 24 hour mark, I logged in, and was told I couldn't pick our seats because doing so required checking in, which we couldn't do online because we had dogs.  Thankfully when we got to check in, there were 3 seats next to each other still available.

After assembling the dog crates, we were just about done with check in when the police came running through.  Apparently some moron had left a bag unattended, so they closed the entire section we were in.   After 30-45 minutes of watching them carefully x-ray the bag, open it, inspect it, and finally declare it safe, we were allowed back to the counter.  At this point we were cutting it close for getting to our plane.  Thankfully the agent called the gate to let them know what was going on.  But we still had to hustle all the way there.  We had planned on changing and feeding Ben before boarding so he'd be calm, but that was now out of the question.  We were the last ones at the gate, and  barely made it on the plane.  Next up was a 10 hour flight to Atlanta.  This was the part I was nervous about, because I had no idea how Ben would do for 10 hours.  Thankfully he did pretty well.  He slept a large portion of it, played for other parts, and only really got fussy within the last hour.  But he was basically just voicing how we all felt.

We finally touched down in Atlanta 10 hours later.  Once Ben was out of the plane in his stroller, he was an angel.  He waved and smiled at people, and just looked around the whole time.  We waited in the passport control line for about 45 minutes, but Ben would smile and wave to people in line.  It was hot, and people were frustrated, but they immediately relaxed and smiled when Ben would wave to them.

After passport control, we flew through baggage pickup thanks to an airport employee who helped us every step of the way, including getting the dogs.  He dropped us off at the shuttle we needed to take, and we were incredibly thankful for him.  You'd think the adventure would be over, but you'd be wrong.

When we got to the hotel, we were in the middle of check in when the fire alarm went off.  We had to evacuate the building and wait for the all clear.  Thankfully it was a false alarm.  I was worried how Ben would do trying to sleep that night with the 6 hour time zone difference, but amazingly, he did great.  The next morning we should have been able to hit the road early, but of course, we hit another snag.  We had left one of the attachments for Ben's stroller at the airport.  We flew Lufthansa here, and it was now locked up in their office.  Since Lufthansa only flies from Atlanta to Europe, and those flights are only in the late afternoon, we had to wait until 12 for them to come in to get it.

We finally did, and the rest of the 3 hour drive to Huntsville was uneventful.

We've been back in the US for three weeks now.  It wasn't as hard to get adjusted as I thought it would be, but that's probably because we haven't stopped moving since we landed.  We've purchased a new car (we only shipped one back), started new jobs, celebrated Ben's first birthday, and have looked at more houses than I can count.  We think we've found the one, and will be putting an offer in this week on it.  I started at NASA this past week, and I think I'm really going to enjoy it.  A surreal moment came half way through the week when I logged in to do some work on a router at the NASA AMES Research Center at Moffett Field, in California.  We lived on that base 20 years ago, and 30 years ago.

Once we have a house purchased, and baby #2 arrives, we'll start the next big adventure in our life.  This blog started off as a way for friends and family to keep track of how we were doing in Germany, and slowly evolved into a travel blog.  While our travels are not over, the five year adventure in Germany is, so this will be the last post of this blog.  If we start doing a lot of US travel, I might start another blog.

That said, it's been a lot of fun writing this, and I hope you all have enjoyed reading it.

Tschüss!

Barcelona

For President's Day, we knew we had one last trip to take before we moved back to the US.  Unfortunately, I got the cities mixed up that Shanna had and had not been to in Spain.  I thought she'd been to Madrid, but not Barcelona.  Turns out, it was the opposite.  But I had already booked our trip to Barcelona before I found out my mistake.  One other thing to note about this trip, while it's always neat to see a new city (and for me, a new country), this particular trip was mostly just exhausting.  Ben had always been a great traveler, but due to a few mistakes we made, he was not a happy camper this time.  We forgot his sleep sack, which is basically a blanket that he wears over his pajamas.  It stays on him all night so he can't kick it off, and it keeps him warm.  We also had his crib in the hotel placed right under a window.  The hotel was so hot we had to open the window, but this allowed cold air to flow in and down on to him.  The end result was he kept waking up through out the night, and during the day, we were exhausted.  So this blog post won't be as long as previous ones.

That said, though, we did see some neat things.  The first day there we opted to just go with a hop on/hop off bus.  Before that started running for the day, though, we visited a building designed by the famous architect from Barcelona, Antoni Gaudí.  His works are known for not having any straight lines and intricate colors.  This building looked like it was inspired by a Mardi Gras mask.

Notice in the picture that Ben is asleep.  While most of the pictures of him during our travels has him asleep like that, almost all the ones in Barcelona were like that due to him being up all night.  After we toured the building, we headed to the pick up for the hop on/hop off.  I never really liked those because the audio quality wasn't great, and it's just a dry presentation.  But we were so tired, there's no way we could have done an extensive walk like we usually do.  At least Ben enjoyed seeing the city from the upper deck.

We stopped and walked through a beautiful church along the tour.

For lunch, we stopped in a hole in the wall seafood place and had some of the best Paella I'd ever had.  Even Ben loved it, devouring it faster than we could put it in front of him.

The rest of the day was spent just walking around city center, shopping and touring.

The next day we took a taxi to a unique place on top of one of the mountains around Barcelona.  It was a huge church, and outside of it was an old amusement park.  What we didn't realize was they were closed on Mondays, and didn't find that out until we get up there.  But the church was beautiful, as was the view of the city.

At this point we were getting hungry, so we headed back to the city center to the big market place.  They had all kinds of fresh seafood, meats, cheeses, etc...  We found a little sit down restaurant to eat at, and had some delicious seafood.  I had to get a picture of the Jamon in the market.  I've never liked ham, but discovered I love Italian prosciutto when we moved to Germany.  In the past year, I've learned that it doesn't come close to aged Spanish Jamon.  It's not cheap, but the flavor is incredible.  They were selling entire legs in the market that you sliced yourself for the low low price of 125 Euro per leg.  Although, considering the cost of it when packaged, that's a pretty good price.  

That afternoon we took the hop on/hop off bus to some of the more remote locations, including the stadium where the local football team, FC Barcelona, plays.

Despite being exhausted, we did enjoy the trip.  The weather was beautiful and the food was delicious.  

To see pictures, click any image above or here.

Estonia

We're back in the US now, but we went on two more trips before moving back here.  With all the craziness that came from having all the Grandparents in town for Christmas, plus planning and executing an international move with a 1 year old, this is the first chance I've had to sit down and do some writing.  Ben is in Texas for the week with Shanna's parents, so I actually have an entire afternoon to sit down and write.

Back in November, Shanna and I were looking at somewhere to go for Thanksgiving, and thought we'd check out Estonia.  Their Christmas market started earlier than most of the ones around Europe, and the capitol city of Tallinn was one we'd wanted to visit.  I found a hotel right off the main market square that was built in the 1300s.  It was beautiful, but had one major drawback...no elevator.  With a stroller and a baby, it was no fun going up and down 5 stories to our room.  But, the room was nice, so I can't really complain.

That first night we fed Ben his Thanksgiving dinner, which consisted of Turkey, mashed potatoes, and corn, plus apple yogurt for dessert.  All baby food versions, of course.

Next, Shanna and I found a restaurant that was common in Estonia.  It was Medieval themed, but not like the gimmicky Medieval Times in the US.  They had no electricity in the areas where customers were, everything was candle lit.  They served ales brewed from recipes around the 1400s, and if a type of food hadn't been discovered in Estonia by the 1400s, it wasn't on the menu.  Shanna asked if she could have potatoes with her Elk Steak, but was told they hadn't made it to Estonia yet.  I had a delicious plate of Bear meat with their spiced ale.

Ben was getting tired after dinner, so we headed back to the hotel and called it a night.   One thing to note about that evening was it snowed.  So Ben saw his first snowfall in Estonia.

The next morning we had arranged for a tour guide to meet us.  She had just graduated college and was back in Tallinn giving tours while she was job hunting.  She walked us through the city, and had an amazing breadth of knowledge about it.  One of the most amazing things about the country is how digitally connected it is.  They are the first country in the world to have a card people carry around that they use for everything.  It has their medical records stored on it, they use it to authenticate to a website to vote online, it's their passport, drivers license...it even lets them store credit on it for using city provided services, such as public transportation.  97 percent of the country has a broadband connection to their house and/or phone.  I had noticed how much free wifi was available through out the city, as well as how fast it was.  Estonia is also spear heading an effort to allow people to become digital citizens of the country in the hopes of encouraging new business to come.  You wouldn't have to pay the taxes a normal citizen does, only business related ones, and you wouldn't have to reside in the country.  It's an interesting concept.  

She also talked about how the recent annexation of Crimea by Russia had the older generation extremely scared that Russia was coming after them next.  Until the early 90s, Estonia, along with it's neighbor countries of Latvia and Lithuania, were part of the Soviet Union.  The younger generation isn't worried about a return to those days (our tour guide was born the year Estonia regained it's independence), but the older generation is wary.  

Over all, it was a fascinating tour, not just because of the history of the city, but because of all the things we learned about the country from our guide.  One of the things she took us by that was neat was a Russian Orthodox church.  It looked a lot like the ones we saw through out Moscow and St. Petersburg when we were there a few years ago.

Once the tour was over, we headed over to the Christmas market.  It was pretty small, no where near the size of the ones in Germany.  But it was quaint, and they had some delicious food and drink to enjoy.  They also had different things than you usually see at a market.  They had ladies there selling hand woven hats, scarves, etc...  

Because of Ben's bed time, our days ended pretty early, and this one was no different.

The next day we had planned on taking a ferry to Helsinki, the capitol of Finland.  After talking with the tourism office, though, we just couldn't make it work.  We would have had to be at the dock by 7am, and it takes a few hours to cross the Gulf of Finland.  I don't remember all the details of why we didn't go, but the main reason was it required us to leave Estonia at 7am and we wouldn't get back until 10pm.  That was just too much with Ben.  

Instead we spent the day walking around the city and visiting areas we missed on day 1.  One of the neat museums we visited was centered around the Nazi and Soviet occupations.

That evening the Christmas market had dancers on stage, and Ben was mesmerized.  To this day, he still loves music and watching people dance.  He'll sit there and wiggle himself to the music.

The next morning we packed up, and caught a taxi to the airport.  We really enjoyed Estonia.  Some of our favorite trips have been to the smaller Eastern European countries that we didn't know much about, but found people who were friendly and loved telling us all about their country and their history.  And, across the board, their English was perfect.  

Estonia might not be at the top of your list of places to visit, but if you ever have a chance, do it.  It's a beautiful country with a fascinating history.

To see the pictures, click any picture above or here.

Krakow

One of my goals when we moved here almost 5 years ago was to visit all the countries that my family immigrated to the US from.  So far we'd been to 3 out of the 4 (Ireland, Scotland & Italy).  The only one left was Poland.  It came down to Warsaw and Krakow.  Both looked like fun cities to visit, but we settled on Krakow because I also wanted to visit Auschwitz, which was about an hour drive from Krakow.

With that settled, we booked our trip and flew out last weekend.  When we landed, we got our bags, met the driver, and headed to the hotel.  Before the trip, Shanna picked up thing for the stroller to pack Ben in to for when it's cold, and it's a good thing she did, because it was freezing when we landed.

The hotel was nice, and our room had a small balcony over looking a garden in the back. After we got everything settled in the room, we headed down to the Old Town area.  Along the way to Old Town we passed Walwel Castle, and in front of it, they had a large pole that pointed out various cities around the world, and how far away they were.  They had Rochester on there, at 7,400km away.  I thought that was neat since New York is where my Grandmother's family moved to from Poland.

Across from the castle was a small church, and in front of it was a giant cross that said "1940 KATYN 1990".  I had to look up Katyn when we got back to our hotel later that afternoon.  This was a memorial dedicated to the 22,000 Poles that were executed by the Soviets in what was later called the Katyn massacre.

The old town area was beautiful.  They had a large square, and lots of shops all around it.  There was a large church in the square, and every hour there is a man who goes to the top of the church spire, and plays a bugle.  Hundreds of years ago a guard would play the bugle to signal the opening & closing of the city gates, as well as a warning when invaders were approaching.  In 1241, a guard played the bugle to warn of a Mongol invasion army approaching.  In the middle of playing, he was shot with an arrow and killed.  They commemerate his sacrifice in Krakow today by having a person play the bugle every hour (I don't know if it goes through the night or not) and abruptly end the note to signify when the bugler was shot and killed.

The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the old part of the city.  During one point when we were sitting at a cafe on the square, Shanna was going through a bunch of pamphlets she got from the hotel.  One advertised a traditional Polish dinner with Polish folk dancing.  It sounded like fun, so we headed over to the restaurant and made reservations for that night.  My grandmother taught my Mom some Polish cooking, so when we were younger we used to have Kielbasa and Pierogis...I couldn't wait to try some here.

That evening we walked back to the restaurant.  At this point fog had rolled in, so it was actually a pretty night to walk around with everything lit up through the fog.  We got the restaurant and took our seat.  Ben had slept on the walk over, but right as everything was getting ready to start, he woke up.  He had a lot of fun that night, and could not take his eyes off the dancers.  When they would take breaks, he would go back to playing with this toys at the table.  As soon as they came back out, he was back to staring at them.  The food was delicious.  I had a soup that I'd never heard of, but figured I'd try anyway.  It was called Zurek soup, and it was incredible.  There seem to be multiple recipes for it, but the one I had was a white broth poured over potatoes with bacon pieces and chopped boiled eggs in it.  The appetizer was the Pierogis I'd been looking forward to, and Kielbasa was used in the main course.  The last dance of the night involved all the patrons (about 15 of us) with the Polish dancers.  This particular dance had everyone holding hands and dancing in a circle.  One person would pick another, then the two of them would get down on their knees facing each other while we all danced around them, and they would kiss each other on each cheek.  The person who was picked then got up, picked someone else from the crowd, and repeated.  One lady picked Ben while Shanna was holding him, so Shanna got down on her knees, and the lady kissed Ben once on each cheek while he laughed.  After the dance, they came out and took some pictures with him.

The next morning a guide I'd arranged met us in the lobby, and we started off on the tour.  The hotel was on a street that divided the Old Town area from the Jewish Quarter.  Our guide first started with the Jewish Quarter.  Originally the Jewish section had been in the center square area of old town during the middle ages, but the king at the time wanted a strict divide between Jews and Christians, so he had them moved outside the Old Town area to where we were walking now.  The first stop was an old Jewish cemetery.  During World War II, the Nazis used it as a place to dump trash.  After the war the local residents cleaned it up, and restored it.  We walked along to the area where Spielberg filmed the "Ghetto" area for Schindler's List.  That wasn't the actual ghetto area, but it still looks today like it did 70 years ago, in terms of the building architecture.  From there we headed to a Synagogue.  Shanna & I thought about it, and we realized that in our travels we've been inside Churches, Cathedrals, even Mosques...but we've never been inside a Synagogue before.  So it was a first for both of us.

At that point we were done with the Jewish Quarter, and it was time to head to the Old Town area.  We started with the original entrance through the old city gates.  We couldn't walk through because they were working on restoring it, but we could see it form the outside.

We walked through out the old town area as our guide told us about the history of the city.  We ended the tour at a little off the beaten path restaurant.  We weren't that hungry, but we had to share a snack of Pierogis!   The rest of the afternoon was spent walking around the various shops.  There was a display set up in the center of the old town area that said "Krakow", so we took pictures with Ben in front.

There was also a few other letters, so we took one in front of the large N.

The next part of this post is disturbing because I'll be describing the things we saw at Auschwitz.  If you don't want to read it, click here to skip past it. 

The next day we took a group tour to Auschwitz.  They had two small vans, but because we had the stroller and Ben's car seat, they gave us a van all to ourselves.  Everyone else had to cram in to the other one.  So that was nice.  What I didn't realize was how large Auschwitz was.  So large that it was built in stages.  The original part of the camp is called Auschwitz I.  Later Auschwitz II was built, and finally the area that most people would probably recognize pictures of was built, Auschwitz Birkenau.  The tour we were on took us through Auschwitz I and Auschwitz Birkenau.

Once we arrived, our guide took us in.  The first thing you see is the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign, which means "Work will make you free".

After having seen so many pictures of concentration camps when they were filled during World War II, it was eerie walking through the most famous one now.  We've been to Dachau while here, but most of that camp was destroyed at the end of the war, and only partially re-constructed for visitors.  Auschwitz is entirely originally.  What you saw as you walked through was what each prisoner there saw.  Auschwitz I was originally a Polish military base, so all the buildings that housed the prisoners were former military barracks.  Each building today is a mini-museum dedicated to a specific thing.  For example, one building was dedicated to all the things that were taken from the people when they arrived at camp.  To sell the lie that they would eventually be set free, the Germans had each person write their name, birth date, and any other info that would help them identify their suitcase.  They have a room with a glass wall, and behind the wall are hundreds of suitcases stacked.  You can read the names and birthdays of each person.  Would made that it particularly sad were the suitcases with birthdays listed in the late 1930s/early 1940s because you knew those were young children.

Another building had a small monument built by the Soviets who liberated the camp.  It has "1940-1945" written on it, and a glass bowl on top that contains ashes of human remains the soldiers found outside the crematorium. 

The next building we walked in to I considered not writing about, because as haunting as all of this was, this particular room was probably the worst one we went in to.  We were given a warning before hand, and Shanna didn't even want to go in.  Inside this room, behind a glass wall, was well over a ton of human hair.  When people arrived at the camp, the first thing they did was shave all their hair off.  The hair was then bundled up into bags, and sent off to factories in Germany where it was used to make carpets, rugs, and things of that nature.  When the Soviets liberated the camp, the Germans had attempted to destroy parts of it to hide their crimes, but several tonnes of hair were still left.  This was probably the single most disturbing thing we saw.  The rest of it required your imagination to picture what happened, but this was something you could see with your own eyes.  This wasn't a replica or re-creation, this well over a ton of hair of actual victims of the camp.

When we left the barrack area, we next headed underground to rooms that they put captured Soviet POWs in, and tested the gas that would later be used in gas chambers.  They tested on POW after POW until they got the mixture of the gas just right to kill as fast as possible.  Our guide told us the first few tests took the soldiers days to die.  From there we headed to the actual gas chamber.  You walked through, and when you walked out the back part of it, it put you into the crematorium.

Outside of the chamber was where the building that the Gestapo were housed in used to be located.  The building is gone now, and instead there is just a plank with a single rope hanging there.  Rudolph Hoess was the first commander of the camp, and in 1947 he was captured and tried by a Polish Tribunal.  He was convicted, and hung right on this spot.

After this part of the tour was over, they drove us to the Auschwitz Birkenau part of the camp.  That's right, they drove us.  That gives you an idea of how large this camp was.  This part of the camp I've seen many times in pictures, so I recognized it immediately.  As we pulled up, we saw the infamous tracks leading into the camp.

Our guide took us in, and the first thing you noticed was how large this camp was.  One of the most common pictures from camps in WWII shows people standing at the barbed wire fences looking out.  As you walked in, you saw a fence on either side of you that stretched almost as far as the eye could see.  I couldn't help but think of those pictures when I saw the fences.  On the tracks inside the camp they had one train car sitting there.  It was one of the original cars used to transport people to the camp.

For the next 30 minutes we walked around camp as our guide talked about daily life, as well as stories of people that were there that are known due to journals recovered and interviews with survivors after the war.

When it was all done, we were ready to head back to the hotel.  It had been a heavy day, and we were looking forward to getting back to Krakow and unwinding.  After getting back, I pulled up the address of Schindler's Factory.  Shanna didn't realize it was so close to us, and she really wanted to see it.  Along the way we walked over an interesting bridge that was all lit up with pink light.

We eventually reached it.  It wasn't much to look at from the outside, but you could see there was a museum inside.  Had we planned our time a little better we could have toured it, but instead we just had to settle for being there and seeing it from the outside.

One neat thing they did have on the outside, though, was pictures of all the people who worked in the factory that Schindler saved from camps.

We ended the night at a bar I'd found out about online that served a large selection of local Polish craft beers.  Not only was the beer delicious, it was ridiculously cheap.  I ordered a half liter stout for myself, and a half liter pale ale for Shanna.  Total cost was 18 Polish Zloty.  I did a quick count in my head, and realized that came out to a little over $5.  That kind of beer in most of Europe would easily set you back twice that.  Because it was brewed locally, it tasted amazingly fresh.

We finally called it a night, and the next morning headed out.  It took longer to get home than expected due to heavy fog at the airport, but we eventually did.

We really enjoyed Poland.  The people were friendly, the food was delicious, and the history was sobering.  It was an amazing experience, and one I'm really glad we got to do before we moved back.

To see pictures, click here or any picture above.

The next post should be up sometime this week.  Tomorrow we're taking an overnight trip to Rothenburg, Germany.  It's a small medieval town that we've heard is neat to visit, so we're taking advantage of the long weekend.  After that, the next post will be in early December after we get back from Tallinn, Estonia.  We're going over Thanksgiving break when they start their big Christmas market.

Florence

This post has been a long time coming.  We went to Florence, Italy, at the end of August, but this is the first time I've had to sit down and actually write about it.  It's amazing how your free time disappears when you have a kid.  But Shanna has him occupied upstairs, I'm sipping a beer, and ready to write.  One funny thing I noticed while sorting through the pictures was how much Ben has grown in just 2 months.  I can't believe how small and young he looks now compared to the end of August.

Shanna has wanted to go to Florence for awhile, so after our successful trip with Ben to Greece in July, we booked our trip to Florence.  The flight there was a quick direct shot, and before we knew it, the driver from the hotel had us at the front door.  It was a quaint little hotel right in the heart of old town.  We were just a few blocks from the giant Cathedral.  After getting settled in, we pulled up a map and found the restaurant a friend of ours from DC recommended.  It was a good choice, the food was amazing and I got to try some local Florentine beer.  We walked around after dinner as the sun set to walk off the heavy Italian food, and made our way around the Cathedral.  It was huge, and absolutely beautiful.

After the sun started to set, we headed back to the hotel to call it a night.

The next morning we got up and headed to the museum that had the famous statue of David by Michelangelo.  It's one of those things that was never on my "I have to see this" list, but now that we were here, I was looking forward to it.  The receptionist at the front desk recommended getting there right as it opened at 8am.  She said that by 9 or so the line would be as far as you could see.  But if you got there at 8, there wouldn't be anyone there.  She was absolutely right, when we walked up there was maybe 10 people in line.  By the time we walked out 45 minutes later, the line stretched forever.

When we walked in, there were several works from Michelangelo, but they had big signs directing you to the piece that everyone was there to see.  One thing that I didn't expect was how large the statue was.  I always thought it was life size at most, but this statue was HUGE.

After the museum, the next stop was the Hard Rock cafe.  That was the meeting point for the Italian cooking class we signed up for.  We'd done a similar class when we were in Morocco and really enjoyed it.  Since we both love Italian food, this was something we both wanted to do.  They took us down to the local market to pick out all the fresh food we were going to cook with.  Then, they took us to their cooking school that was inside a building that was built in the 1500s.  There was something kind of neat about learning to cook Italian food in a 500 year old Italian building.

The group that was there for the class all had one thing in common...mothers and their daughters.  It was really weird, there were at least 4 or 5 Moms there with their daughters.  Other than Shanna & I, there was only one other couple.   But everyone was really nice.  We had a mix of people from Ireland, Seattle, New Jersey, and Switzerland.  Our chef was great.  I was a little disappointed in the class in that I thought it would be like Morocco where we were actually doing the cooking.  We helped here & there, but primarily the chef cooked and showed us how.  But I can't complain about an endless supply of wine while watching a chef cook you an Italian meal.  The meal was an amazing Pasta Ragú (he made the pasta from scratch) and dessert was Tiramisu.

It might not look like a large portion, but it was heavy and VERY filling.   When it was done, we left the building and started walking around.  For those that know me, you know I can't stand "reality" TV, but Shanna loves it.  One of the shows she liked was Jersey Shore, and in one of the seasons, they spent the summer in Florence.  So before we left, I looked up some of the addresses, including the house they stayed at.  Because we had to take a picture in front, we picked Ben up a cheesy Italia hoodie, and I took a picture of Shanna & him in front of the apartment.

Yes...he's doing a fist pump.  From there, we balanced it out by visiting a church that had some of the greatest minds in Italian history buried there.  Michelangelo, Danti, Machiavelli, and Galileo.  I was in awe standing above the burial place of Galileo and Michelangelo.

After that, we did something we wouldn't normally do while in Italy...we found a pizzeria.  But not just any pizzeria....Vesuvios!   If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're lucky...it means you don't watch Jersey Shore.   That's where they worked during the summer on the show.  They had their stuff hanging all over the walls.  The pizza was actually pretty good.

The next day we planned an all day excursion to various cities around Florence.  Our first stop was a small medieval town built in 1214 called Monteriggioni.  It was a small town, but neat to walk around.  If you've ever played the Assassin's Creed games, this town was used in one of them.  As a result, there was a store there entirely dedicated to selling their merchandise.

From there we headed to Siena.  The area itself was first inhabited around 900BC, but was eventually built up as a Roman city.  The cathedral there was built in the 1100s, and was amazing.

After the tour of the city, we had some free time so Shanna & I found a small deli and got an assorted plate of olives, cheeses, meats and salad.  Of course, we washed it down with a bottle of house wine.  It was a simple meal, but one of the best we had all weekend.

Next up was San Gimignano.  It's another medieval town in the Tuscany region on the outskirts of Siena.  One of the things it's known for are it's large tower buildings in the city.  At one time there was close to a 100, but over the years, only 14 have survived.  That's still significant, though, since in most other cities in the area, none have survived wars and urban renewal projects.  While strolling around the area we found a cheese shop that sold a dry cheese mixed with Chianti wine.  It was delicious, so we bought a small block.  We also found some clothes for Ben.  The one thing you noticed as you approached the ancient entrance was the beautiful Italian landscape.

Our last stop of the day was at a vineyard in Chianti.  I'm not a huge wine drinker, but Chianti wine is by far my favorite kind.  This vineyard not only made wine, but they also made their own olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  They let us sample 8 different kinds of wine, along with a 30 year aged Balsalmic Vinegar, and olive oil infused with Truffles.  I bought a bottle of the Truffle Olive Oil, but couldn't justify the price of the Balsamic Vinegar...but it was amazing.  I came close.  We ended up leaving with a few bottles of wine and the olive oil.

The next day we strolled around the town, killing time until we had to leave for the airport.  We crossed a bridge in the area that had a long string of shops on either side.  It's been a market place since the Renaissance period.

This trip was a lot of fun.  We've been to Italy several times, and I always love going because the people are friendly, the food is delicious, and even the cheapest house wine tastes fantastic.


One of my goals when we moved here was to visit all the countries my family immigrated from over 100 years ago.  So far, I'd hit 3 out of the 4 with Italy, Ireland and Scotland.  The only one left was Poland.  I also really wanted to visit Auschwitz before we left.  With that in mind, our next trip was to Krakow, Poland.  That'll be the next post!

For pictures, click here or any picture above.