The big trek across Europe

My parents and I with Juan. Juan es famoso.
I have broken my trip up into separate posts. It's really quite a lot of information, thoughts, and memories. It was great to see my parents. I started the trip by seeing Zurich, Switzerland for the day, and then met up with my parents in Prague. Zurich is nice, but I think it would be better if accompanied with skiing in the Alps. But it made for a nice day of shopping, coffee, and photography.
After the big trek, my parents came to Madrid. Unfortunately we didn't have a lot of time. But, they did have some good food, met Shannon, saw flamenco, and had a caña in my favorite bar, "Juan's." This bar is like Cheers. It's downstairs in the building where my office is, so more often than not, I go down after work. Juan, the best camarero ever, says, "Hola Beth...que te pongo? Clara? Draft light?" Then he brings amazing tapas that we never pay for. I honestly think it was my parents' favorite part of Madrid. I can't blame them.
After, they went to London and Paris. How cute is this? In Paris, my dad re-proposed to mom at a restaurant and presented her with a huge new diamond ring. My mom cried of course, but who wouldn't?
They're back in the states now, and they went to pick up the dog from Athens today. She was staying with my brother for the last three weeks. My mom told me yesterday that today will me nothing but kisses on her nose. It was an amazing trip, and I have more photos on my Flickr page of course.

Prague, hype for a reason

St. Vitus Cathedral across the Vltava River
Prague is gorgeous. I wish I had had a week to see everything. It is one of the most touristy places in Europe right now, but for good reason. Everything there is old, and beautiful, and breathtaking, and I could go on and on.
We started the day by walking across the Charles Bridge and Vltava River. The bridge is covered with over 30 statues and a load of tourists.
We slowly made our way over to the castle stairs. My dad was obsessed with the "enemies." He kept saying things like, "And if your enemies made it this far, they'd look at that wall and just say, 'Ehhh, screw it'." But we did make it to the castle, just in time for the Changing of the Guard ceremony. They do a really nice job, complete with a band and everything.
After this, it was finally time to see the cathedral. It's simply amazing. Every inch of it is covered in stone detail, stained glass, green patterned roof tiles, and flying buttresses off to the side. I decided to walk up to the top of the bell tower, but my parents skipped it. It was almost 300 tiny stairs winding up a circular staircase barely wide enough for the two directions of traffic going through there. But the view made it worth it. You can see the river crossed by numerous bridges, and churches and monuments all in the distance.
Later, I walked around the New Town and Jewish Quarter. There is an old Jewish cemetery that is said to be 12 layers deep and filled with 100,000 graves. But it is contained in an area barely big enough for a block of flats. The tombstones are practically on top of each other.
I managed to find a cafe and had slivovice (plum brandy), as suggested by Roger. Amazingly I still have my taste buds and my sight. Good Lord, that is straight paint thinner in a shot glass.
My feet were killing me at the end of the day, but I was still on them after dinner trying to track down a Jazz cafe. I found one called Reduta Jazz Club. They played some awesome and curiously authentic Jazz, but it was weird to hear these guys break out into Czech in between songs. And of course occasionally, pronounce the lyrics perfectly until they had to sing "where." "Vayr I like to go..."
Oh Prague, I would go back in a heartbeat. I still feel like I barely saw the city, though. I can see why so many of my friends were happy to spend a couple of months there.

Poland, The Motherland

Inside the Wawel Hill Cathedral
On Sunday, we drove from Prague to Krakow. I had never heard my father speak a word of Polish, but for some reason in Poland he is fluent. He's been holding back on us for 50 years. In typical nerd fashion, he said "Polish by birth but first time on Polish soil!" Then proceeded to say our names Kalinski and Kalinska. Ah dad, you always provide free entertainment.
Krakow is a really nice town. It has a huge square in the old part of town, which is actually the biggest in all of Europe. We got together with my cousins, Bogusha and her daughter Kasha. They showed us around the town and took us to my grandmother's old house. Bogusha is so cute. Va-duh, vaa-duuh. That means water; she was teaching me a little.
We had a traditional lunch in this little restaurant where the Wawel Hill bell ringers hang out. Apparently it's a difficult organization to get into, and they only ring the bells at Wawel on certain special days. For example, when the pope died.
Speaking of Wawel, Kasha showed us around the beautiful and wowing Wawel Hill. There is a cathedral and fortress combo built on top of a hill overlooking the Vistula River. If your enemies wanted in, they had to deal with 50 feet of brick wall. But at the top, there is a cool cathedral with copper and gold cupolas.

My very extended Polish family
That night, after I walked around the whole city all day, we went out for dinner with Bogusha and her family. She had two vodka oranges and persuaded me to have piwo and vodka (beer and vodka). Strange combo, but better than expected. She wants me to come visit her for a week sometime. That would be interesting:
Me: Where is the bathroom?
Bogusha: (non-understood Polish)
Me: What?
Bogusha: (repeated non-understood Polish)
Me: Oh, ok, I guess I'll find it myself.
Haha, it could be fun.


The electrified barbed wire surrounding the camp
On our way back through Poland, we stopped at Auschwitz. It was a really heavy day. I totally recommend going to one of the concentration camps, just to pay respect to the people who suffered there. The atrocities committed there were vile and disgusting. One thing that struck me was the sheer size of the place. Auschwitz itself is fairly small, but Birkenau, or Auschwitz 2, is so enormous that we couldn't even see half of it. Even from the observation tower, it's impossible to see the entire camp.
After visiting Auschwitz, I feel the need to somehow be involved in preventing further genocide. It's ridiculous how the world counts on the UN to stop genocide, but the UN is completely useless. "Oh, you won't give us permission to enter your dictatorship regime to stop the mass murder of innocent individuals? Okay, I guess you've got us there." Something has to be done. However, if the US did anything, people would criticize the government for "meddling in affairs that have nothing to do with the US." What's the solution?

Ukraine is weak...

The sign written in Cyrillic at the Ukraine Border

This was the line my parents and I repeated all week, in reference to the Seinfeld episode when Kramer and Newman are playing Risk on the subway. Ukraine is a very different place, even more different than I expected.
We tried to enter Ukraine on Tuesday. We waited in a long line, then had our passports scrutinized, followed by a search of car and a run of the license plates and VIN. As we were celebrating entering Ukraine so quickly, we realized that we had only just left Poland. Now we had to go through the same ordeal at the Ukraine border checkpoint. After about 20 minutes, my dad came back to the car and told us that we had been denied because of a paperwork error in our rental car registration. So, we turned around and re-entered Poland. It was extremely disappointing because my father was bringing gifts for people in Terembovla and I was hoping to meet up with a friend of my mate Jeff, who lived in Ternopil' for a couple of years.
We ended up going to a small village named Jaroslaw (pronounced Yur-uh-swuv). A little too light on cafes, as in ZERO, but the market in the morning made the trip. My dad was beaming when he ordered Krakowska, speaking in Polish in a real Polish market.
My dad called the rental car company, and we discovered that there was no error. The woman at the border didn't know what she was dealing with. Apparently there aren't a lot of Americans entering Ukraine in a Czech rental car. This was great news, because it meant we could try entering again. So, on we went. This time, no problem. The woman at the desk was so nice and helpful.
However, getting into Ukraine is only half the battle. Once we were in Ukraine, we had to drive through Ukraine. This is a country with harsh winters, no interstates, and certainly no organization like the Georgia DOT. The road was completely covered in potholes. 120 miles took 4 hours of driving, swerving the entire way.
We had a quick drive through L'viv and at last we made it to Ternopil' Wednesday night. Things there are incredibly cheap and eerily Soviet. I felt like I was in Russia, which, I know it's not the same, but it was all connected for a long time. A full dinner for two people costs $7. It's quite different to Madrid prices. And we stayed in this huge 12-story hotel called the Halychyna, which used to be a conference center for the Soviets. All very surreal.
The next day I walked around Ternopil' like a normal tourist. People were staring at me, because tourists do not go to this town. And for once, I didn't hear a word of English while I was exploring the city. It was cool, but intimidating at the same time. However, it's amazing how much you can do not speaking or reading the language. Meanwhile, my parents were in a small village called Terembovla. This is where my grandpa grew up, and my dad wanted to visit and possibly find his old house. They didn't find the house, but they visited a farm and had an amazing lunch, followed by a full history lesson on the area.
Later on, I met up with Sergiy, Jeff's friend. We had a lot of wodka. You always say "bud-mah!" right before you drink. And then of course "Doooo-bruuuuh" which is like "really good." We had a traditional Ukrainian dinner, and then we went to a Russian billiard hall. Russian billiards are similar to American billiards, except the holes are smaller and the balls are bigger. It makes it much more difficult. Some of Sergiy's friends from work came and busted into our game, and one of them, using his three words of English, kept saying "TERNOPIL'...TOURIST...AMERICA!"
Overall, an interesting experience, but definitely not a piece of cake. I recommend it though. It's nice to visit and explore places that most other people simply disregard.

Los padres están viniendo

My parents are coming. They actually leave tomorrow and get to Prague sometime Friday afternoon. I'm flying there to meet them that night. Then we are spending a few days sightseeing in Prague, followed by a couple days in Krakow, and then on to Ternopil', Ukraine. My grandfather is from a small village that used to be in Poland, but now with the border change it's in Ukraine. After all of that, we will fly to Madrid together so I can show my padres where I live and stuff. I'm really looking forward to it. Espero con ganas. I'm trying to work on my Spanish as much as possible.
Unfortunately my bro can't make it. He has that pesky thing known as school, and I guess it's kind of important that he...goes...I guess. Too bad, I will just have to laugh at my parents alone. It's a favorite past time of ours. Por ejemplo, I said to my parents on the phone a week ago, "So dad, I guess you're already packed and mom hasn't even thought about it yet." They just started laughing because it was absolutely true. My dad had already done a "test pack" two weeks before and my mom was like, "Well, I have until Thursday." So predictable, I love it. I guess I need to start packing today. I won't really have the time tomorrow. So, I will put photos up in a couple weeks. Until then I'll be sipping a crisp Pilsner Urquell and plum brandy (slivivitzieh????), taking a stroll by Wawel Hill, and hopefully hanging out with some Ukrainian buddies of my friend Jeff. And of course squirreling away more European loot.