So here it is….10 months later. It’s been mostly finished, except for photos, since June. It’s a long one; I’ve had lots of time to add and edit lol.

I’ve started and re-started this post so many times. Maybe I felt like if I finished that the adventure is over, maybe getting back to real life has been busier than we expected, maybe I just wasn’t feeling a writing vibe….maybe all three. Mark and I were looking through trip photos and reminiscing about last summer (2018) when we were feeling the excitement of preparing for the journey and I decided that I had to just sit down and do this. As much we loved sharing our experience with those who were interested, this blog started out being a trip record for us, and in keeping with that I need to get it done while it’s still fresh.

Springtime in Vienna

Our flight from Bali to Vienna had us laying over in Bangkok for a few hours. Both flights had great entertainment, which meant we got less sleep than we intended. We landed in Vienna at 8AM as weary travellers having to push through the day to try to adjust our bodies to the time difference….the things you do for a cheap flight!!

Arriving to a 30 degree change in temperature was quite a shock. We dug through our bags for warmer clothes and freshened up in the arrivals area of the airport before gathering our stuff and heading for the train platform to take us to the city centre. One thing I realized I missed about Europe was the organized, timely, easy to use public transportation!! The four of us travelled the 20km to Wien Mitte (a main station near the city centre and a hub for the city trains and subways) for less than 20 Euros total.

The night before we left for Vienna I woke up in the middle of the night with the question “What the hell are we going to do with our stuff when we arrive in the city centre?” Our AirBnB apartment wasn’t available until around 4PM and we couldn’t lug our packs around Vienna all day….well we could have, but it would have been a pain. Plus, we had a huge wood wall hanging from Bali (the kids called it the giant pizza). I did a little research and found some lockers just across from the station where we stored our stuff for the day. They even had one big enough for the giant pizza!!

After stashing our stuff we hit up a grocery store to grab food for the day….one thing we didn’t miss was the food prices in Europe, yikes!! On the back end of a 10 month trip funds tend to be a little tighter.

The sun was shining so we wandered through Stadtpark and made our way to the Opera House. We toured the inside, taking in the beautiful architecture and hearing about the history of the building and the current show offerings. It was easy to imagine the upper crust patrons of a century ago donning their best outfits and jewellery for a night at the opera.

Mark had looked into getting tickets to see a show, but they were way out of our price range. During the tour we found out about “same day standing room” tickets for 5 Euros each!! We took advantage of the tip and saw a ballet the next night. It was the only ballet any of us had ever seen so we didn’t have much to compare it to, but we all thought it was amazing. The skill and artistry, sets and costumes were breathtaking. Our view was great!!

We couldn’t spend time in a city with so much history without taking a walking tour. We met our guide in a square behind the Opera House and began our tour of the city. We saw St. Stephen Cathedral, the Spanish Riding School, the National Library, the historic centre of Vienna, but most importantly we stopped for strudel and coffee along the way!!

After our tour we picked up our stuff from the lockers and headed for our apartment a few train stops away. It was small, but bigger than a hotel room and we had a kitchen to make meals. The building was older with a lot of character which was neat, and as a bonus, very close to public transit and a grocery store.

The next day was filled with Schonbrunn Palace, Freud (the museum, not the man), Flak Towers, parks and bakeries. Unfortunately, this was also the day that Molly left her camera on a park bench…..with all 5000+ trip photos on her SD card. It was a sad day, but we still have hope that a good Samaritan will turn it in to the central Lost & Found in Vienna where we registered it. (Update: No luck getting the camera back. I’m hoping someday there will be some sort of Facebook campaign where someone tries to find the owner….)

Our last day in Vienna we spent at the Natural History Museum. We packed up our stuff from the apartment, loaded ourselves onto public transit and and made our way to the Museum Quarter in the city centre. It wasn’t a long journey, but even 15 minutes on public transit with our backpacks and giant souvenirs felt like an eternity.

We stored our stuff in the school lockup area of the museum and spent the day looking at dinosaur bones, tracing the journey and evolution of humans, turning ourselves into neanderthals, and searching for the 30,000 year old, tiny Venus of Willendorf carving.

After our lunch of sandwiches we packed at the apartment (we were already starting to miss our cheap street side meals) we set out for the airport to pick up our car rental to begin our road trip through Eastern Europe. There was a little panic because Mark’s license had expired a week earlier (on his birthday) and the rental was in his name. Luck was on our side and the clerk didn’t notice!!

Slovakia

The plan was to drive to a small town in Slovakia (Velky Slavkov) at the base of the High Tatras mountains (on the Slovakia/Poland border) where we had rented a small apartment for a few days. We found the town without any issues but the apartment was a different story. Eventually our directions got us where we needed to be and we flopped into our beds to rest up for the next day.

Our bodies were still adjusting to the lack of heat and it was a bit of a shock when we woke up to wet snow falling!! The bottom of our backpacks held the long discarded cold weather clothes, so we dug them out and set out to find Spis Castle. We drove along through rolling hills and farmland until we rounded a curve and saw the giant castle complex looming on a hill above a small village.

A steep path lead us to the castle and we spent a few hours exploring the ground and rooms. At this point we were throughly chilled, so we stopped at some thermal springs to warm up on the way back to our village. The water was glorious, coming from 1700-2500m below the ground and ranging from 28-36 degrees. Some of the pools were brown and smelling of sulfur as the mineral content is left unchanged. It was shoulder season so the pools weren’t busy and we were able to relax as long as wanted.

On the recommendation of our host we decided to try some traditional Slovakian food for dinner. Up into the mountain was the little village of Stary Smokovec at the base of a local ski hill. The Koliba Kamzik served up some hearty soup, goulashes and meat…..so much meat. We left soooo full.

We came to these mountains to do some hiking and we decided we were going whether the weather decided to cooperate or not. The next day we went back to Stary Smokovec and took the funicular to 1,272 m to Hrebienok (a popular starting point for hiking trips). At the top it was chilly but not snowing (yet). Half way through the walk the wet snow started, but we were warmed up from the hike and dressed well, so no suffering happened. Back at the bottom we warmed up with some hot chocolate and coffee and browsed the shop for a souvenir. We decided on a pijacka poharik, a leather covered shot glass with a string so you can wear it around your neck……not something we’ll use, but it’s pretty unique to Slovakia.

Poland

After our morning hike we drove around/through the High Tatras mountains to Krakow. Our apartment was right on the town square and we only paid $45/night!! It was amazing to be able to just walk down the stairs and out into the historic square.

There were no cars allowed in the square so the girls and I grabbed as much as we could carry and brought it to the apartment while Mark circled the block. I went back and Mark and I parked about a kilometre away, loaded the rest of our stuff on our backs and returned to the apartment to join the girls. They had already picked which beds were theirs and were people watching out the large windows that overlooked the courtyard below.

One of the main reasons we chose to eastern Europe was because of the girls interest in history, specifically WW2 history. Molly and Grace both love historical fiction and had devoured many books dealing with the Holocaust at this point. But, although we came to Krakow primarily to get to Auschwitz/Birkenau, we ended up loving the city (maybe one of our favourite European cities). Krakow is special because so many original buildings remain as it wasn’t bombed during WW2.

Visiting Auschwitz on your own is possible, but it is so vast and there is so much to see that without a guide it would be hard to get a sense of the experience and the context. Plus, it’s necessary to book in advance and we hadn’t planned too far ahead. We wanted the girls to get as much out of it as possible so we booked with a small group tour right from Krakow (Auschwitz/Birkenau is about an hour drive west of Krakow). We paid about $200 for the day which included pick up from our apartment, an introductory video on the ride there, entrance tickets with a guide, transportation from the Auschwitz site to the Birkenau site and delivery back to our apartment. We were with four other people who we enjoyed getting to know and were fascinated to hear about our adventure from the girls.

The tour itself is not a “fun” activity, obviously. It is a grim, horrific, difficult experience. Even knowing the history doesn’t really prepare you for the reality of it when you are there. Our girls handled it with maturity and intelligence. Although it was challenging, it’s an important place to visit to understand more about our history as humans.

Walking tours…..Krakow is the king of walking tours. There were more free tours here with so many different themes it was hard to choose. We decided to go with “Walkative” tours and we lucked out. Our guide Big Tom was the best tour guide we had on our whole trip. We did the “Krakow WW2” walk and loved it and him so much that we stayed an extra day to be able to do the Holocaust walk with him. Big Tom wasn’t just there to give us information, he was a storyteller, a REALLY good storyteller. He was a guide who researched every detail he could find and then took individual people’s experiences and wove them into the history. Our WW2 walk took us through the history of the German occupation and the Polish resistance. We heard stories of the resistance fighters plans and campaigns to derail the Germans. Big Tom was very good at conveying the message that the soldiers on both sides were often just regular people who didn’t want to be doing what they were doing, but had to in order to survive.

Our Holocaust tour followed the stories of the Jewish people from the time Krakow was taken over by the Nazis to the end of the war. From the centre of the city we walked across the bridge to the location of the Jewish Ghetto. We followed the story of a young boy and his family from their middle class home to the ghetto to the concentration camps. We saw the square where Jews were sorted and sent to work or death, we saw original buildings and sewers where the Jewish people hid to survive. We saw the home that Oskar Schindler lived in while in Krakow (it was taken from a Jewish family) and ended at his factory (the entire plot of Schindler’s List takes place in and around Krakow and Auschwitz). Being there, walking the same streets and following individual histories of real people was more powerful than being at the concentration camps. The beauty of Krakow came at a high price.

After our two walking tours we had gotten to know Big Tom quite well and he was happy to tell us about some things to see that not everyone might know about. He also gave us some great food recommendations. Mark researched and found Jagiellonian University, the oldest university in Poland and one of the oldest in Europe and the biggest hit….the Krakow Pinball Museum!! It was hidden in a courtyard cellar and turned out to be an old school pinball arcade with about 80 games, most of which were pinball machines, plus a scattering of other old school arcade games.

Krakow to Prague and places in between!

Needless to say Krakow was a pleasant surprise but we had more to see and do, so we had to move on. Our last stop in Poland before our planting ourselves in Prague was the Osówka complex. The complex was a Nazi project that was intended to become and underground city that could support over 20,000 people. It was a part of Project Riese.

There were no English tours of the complex that day so we tagged along with a couple on a Polish tour with headsets that gave us the basics about the complex in English. I won’t explain the whole tour, but this guy gives a good account of what’s inside and what the theories are about what the Nazi’s were trying to do.

After leaving the underground complex we stocked up on groceries (Poland is by far the cheapest European country we travelled in) before crossing into the the Czech Republic. After being pulled over in what we think was a R.I.D.E.-type checkpoint and being told to “present documents” we found our way to the cutest chalet beside a river bursting with spring runoff (I don’t think I’ve ever slept so well!!).

We didn’t take the most direct route to Prague. There was one more stop to make at the Kaplica Czaszek……The Chapel of Skulls. It’s exactly what it sounds like, a chapel decorated with the bones of over 3000 people. There are bones of another 21,000 people under the church. We could only take photos of the outside so the ones you see below are from the internet.

Prague

With enough bone viewing to last a lifetime we got back on the road and headed to Prague. The goal was to arrive before it got dark because our apartment was on the town square and I knew there were no cars allowed there, so we’d have to drop off and then find parking. Well, the best laid plans….it was dark when we arrived, but by this time the kids had the “grab and go” down to a science. Mark stayed in the car double-parked a block over and we loaded up and made a drop at the apartment. The kids stayed behind to get settled and Mark and I found parking a few blocks away, grabbed the remaining packs and walked back. The girls had already made themselves at home and were having a snack when we returned.

There is a reason that Prague is among the most visited European cities; it is beautiful, with grand buildings, cobblestone streets, good food and lots to see and do. The apartment we stayed in was a bit of a splurge (just over $100/night) compared to what we paid in Krakow, but Prague is a much more expensive city and we wanted the same experience of being able to walk everywhere, so the extra money to stay right in the historic centre was worth it…..and we needed a place where we could make our own meals….including sandwiches.

We woke up to cloudy skies and drizzle our first morning. It was Saturday morning and we knew there was a regular weekend market on the banks of the river. We had been missing wandering through Asian market, the rain did not deter us. On went the jackets and we headed for the market. The food and atmosphere did not disappoint, although the prices were a bit of a shock compared to Southeast Asia.

We wandered the streets back to our apartment taking in the beautiful buildings, interesting people and interesting shops.

We arrived back to the apartment just in time to avoid a full on downpour and thunderstorm. We watched from our window as people scattered to take cover from the rain. That was the last of the bad weather for the rest of our time in Prague.

What would a European city be without a walking tour. Our first tour was of the Old Town and Jewish Quarter. We started at the Powder Tower, which marks the beginning of the famous Royal Road of Prague. We explored the narrow lanes of the historical Old Town, seeing gothic, renaissance and baroque houses. We also saw the famous show of  the Astronomical Clock in the Old Town Square (our apartment was on the square, 50m from the clock, so we saw it daily). We learned about the troubled history behind Prague’s Jewish Quarter and saw the Old-New Synagogue, the oldest active synagogue in the world. We were entertained by the legend of mighty Golem and Rabi Lowi and saw the old Jewish Cemetery. Our tour ended at the Charles Bridge.

We did a second tour another day of Charles Bridge up to Prague Castle. We saw Charles Bridge, Kampa Island (a small piece of land that is disconnected from the mainland by an offshoot of the river) which is known as Prague’s Venice, Lennon’s Wall (a wall covered in John Lennon and Beatles lyrics graffiti) Saint Nicholas Church, Prague Castle (the largest coherent castle complex in the world, with an area of almost 70,000 m² – a UNESCO World Heritage site) and Saint Vitus Cathedral.

Prague was a city that was easy to lose yourself in. There was so much to see, do and eat within walking distance of our apartment and Atlas Obscura led us to a few extra places we may not have discovered on our own. I think if you asked the girls their favourite find would have been the Paternoster Lift at Prague City Hall. It’s an elevator that doesn’t stop or slow down. You can see in the video below why it provided such amusement….we went back more than once lol.

The biggest highlight of Prague came on Mother’s Day. No, it wasn’t a trip to a day spa or a nice dinner out. Mark was able to get tickets to a professional soccer game. Slavia Praha FC is the second best in the Czech Republic and they were in a playoff game against Plzen FC. The home team won in an exciting match. The stadium roared with constant cheering from the crowd, especially when the home team scored on a penalty. The ride home on the street car after the game was especially entertaining with several intoxicated fans leading cheers and singing both in the car and on the street.

Each day we tried to fit more and more in. I think we all felt a sense of the adventure coming to an end. We left Prague and headed back to Vienna for our final night. In our apartment we ate the last of our food, Mark built the last sandwiches for the next day we and made our backpacks airplane ready. Although we were excited to see our family, we shed tears as we packed realizing that we would never be able to replicate this. The time we spent, the people we met and the memories we made will forever be a part of us. This trip helped us grow as travellers, as people and as citizens of our planet and we will be forever thankful for the opportunity.