The earliest rousing of the trip, breakfast at the hotel, then on to
the train to Berlin. Set to be a 12 hour trip, I have no problem
finding the train and getting my bike on. Then I find I have an entire
"room" to myself--5 seats, a window and small table, and right next to
my bike.
Poland is flat... miles and miles of forests and fields, with an
occasional village or large town. Again things seem worn out and worn
down. Lots of graffiti and plenty of rusting old machinery along with
high-rise apartment buildings that look like they may have never seen
better days.

One common sight around any populated area is a tract of small private garden plots. Every family in Poland was given the right to have one of these under communist rule--they were also told what to grow and what to build on the plot. Pleasant place to spend an afternoon.
When I arrived in Berlin I discovered that it was full... Conventions in town and the hotels full up.. Finally, after cycling down some side streets, I found an apartment that could be rented by the night, and I took it. By far the most costly investment of the trip, but any port in a storm...
I did not have any time in Berlin, because I needed to take the train out the next day, but I was certainly impressed by the bustle and modernity of the city. My apartment was only 500 yards from where the Berlin wall had been--a bit of history that I am glad is over!

TUESDAY, September 12
The first non-cycling day of the trip--but a day of travel planning. I
decided not to return to Zurich by cycling there via the route I had originally set to use to get to Poland. Instead I decided I should (and wanted to!) get to Albania and be there when Nancy arrived. This meant finding the best way to get from Krakow to Zurich, where I had stashed some things I was taking to Albania, and then from Zurich to Albania. This would be somewhat complex in itself, but I also had to find transport means that would accommodate my bike as well as my person... In the end the best I could figure out was to take a train to Berlin then from Berlin to Zurich--not the shortest route but seemingly the best one.
So I will have a day in Berlin then on to Zurich and to Albania.
Oh, yes, we did have some time to look around Krakow, mostly the center square--enough looking around to know it is a city I would like to visit again...

MONDAY, September 11
Today we looked north and saw what we had to deal with--the High Tatras Mountains. This range seperates Slovakia and Poland, and it is foreboding. When we told people in Poprad where we were heading, they shook their heads in dismay and wonder, but we had no choice. I had planned on going over the mountains at one of the lower passes, and that was our route, but it was still quite a task. The pass itself did not compare in height with those over the Cascades, but it was long--and, again, beautiful. Ask most cyclists and they will say that climbs are OK because they have a defined end and a reward for the effort. Cyclists will also quickly compare climbs with wind--which has no end and no reward...
In any case we headed out of town and up and over the pass. The climb was long and hard, but the day was gorgeous and the scenery spectacular. And once over the pass we did have a long roll all the way to Poland!
The border crossing into Poland was like most of the others--nothing. Show your passport and be waved in. The country you are leaving and country you are entering each have their staff, of course, but they often share the same building. As a citizen of an EU country Brian's passport did not get the scrutiny mine did--but then he did not get a single stamp while I got two!
Our goal in Poland was about 30 miles past the border, and we reached it easily. We had planned on staying the night in the village we were aiming towards, but there was nothing attractive there, so we put our bikes in a bus (busses take bikes as well as most trains do) and went to Krakow, the largest city in southern Poland and the place Brian was scheduled to fly out from. We arrived after sunset and cycled to the first hotel we found, where we settled in for the night--our journey completed...

SUNDAY, September 10
Into a new country--Slovakia. And a lesson on the meaning of hills. Long hills...But with them there were the beautiful countryside and the great vistas. More than any country up to now, the stark contrasts between the beauty of the countryside, and even the small villages, and the decaying apartments, abandoned factories, and other depressing villages was startling. Once again, the complete failure of communism was on display in vivid, and sad, images. At one point I was sad as I cycled past an apartment complex at the outskirts of a town--dirt road, dirty creek, and what seemed like hundreds of children dressed in dirty clothes out playing in the mud...
But then I smiled broadly to see whole villages, children, teenagers, and grandparents together, in the fields harvesting potatoes.

Our cycling took us nearly through the entire country, as we were going south to north at one of the narrowest points in the country. We stopped just short of Poland, in a town named Poprad. The main center of the town was lined with small shops and cafes, obviously suited for tourists. When we asked a vendor who spoke English where to stay, he pointed us to AquaCity, something we knew nothing about--but enjoyed greatly! Turns out that there are thermal springs in Poprad, and around and over those springs has been built a very modern and very nice aqua complex. It has the largest indoor swimming pool I have ever seen, and saunas, spas, an ice room (filled with ice shavings to simulate an Artcic plunge), and outdoor warm and hot thermal pools. School children come to it by the hundreds, and it has become a destination site for Russians, Poles and even Israelis (the latter because of a Jewish village nearby--one wonders what that village has seen in the last 75 years...) In any case we thoroughly enjoyed the luxury! And the price as well...
A word on prices--low! Switzerland was incredibly expensive, Austria very expensive, but the former eastern bloc countries, although there was plenty of variation depending on service level, much more affordable...

SATURDAY, September 9
Still in Hungary, today we encountered some serious climbs en-route to
Aggtelek, a town on the border with Slovakia, and site of a UNESCO recognized cave complex. Some of the hills seemed to go on through forests forever, but at least when we got to the top we knew we had a good coast ahead of us and the scenes unfolding were usually spectacular.
We arrived at our destination fairly early in the afternoon, settled into the run-down hotel nearby, and signed up for the cave tour. The tour was interesting, and the caves amazing--but it would have been somewhat helpful if we would have been able to hear a bit of commentary in English, not just in Hungarian (which is a very strange language to us, with little or no resemblance to English--Nancy could say more about the language and its origins...) The season for this part of the country is pretty well over, but since it was a weekend there were a number of people around, and while the stalls selling coca-cola, sandwiches and souvenirs were pretty slow, they did get a little business.

FRIDAY, September 8
Today began in a small tourist town, and ended in
another, this one in the mountains, Szilvadvarad. Both are up out of the plains a bit, and obviously have been centers for holiday makers for some time. They are set up for for people to come to and relax. Not much to do according to US standards, but the trees and walking paths provide a welcome change from the heat and crowds of other places.
A comment on coffee...Starbucks cards are not honored in Zurich, let's
start there. Then, morning coffee is like ours and always offered--but
only in the morning. After breakfast coffee is readily accessible, but
only espresso. Some places will add some extra water if you order
"long coffee", but not often. And Nescafe instant is usually actually
behind whatever form the coffee is delivered to you in...

THURSDAY, September 7
A comment on the food. As we have stayed in small hotels and pensions
breakfast has always been included. It has also generally been
similar--a buffet of cereals, yogurt, meats, cheeses, some vegetable
or fruit, bread, boiled eggs, coffee and tea. Great for cyclists! We
do not stop for a lunch, but usually after 25-30 miles pause for a
coffee, some juice and water, and perhaps ice-cream or something
(there has not been much in the way of good pastry). Dinner is always
the most interesting meal. Menus are generally available in English,
but the words only convey so much. Seldom have we been disappointed,
but often surprised. The volume, shape, and content have varied so
much that we have started ordering a second course only after
finishing the previous one. We try local specialties and
suggestions--with good luck. I have always said that one of the
benefits of cycling is the freedom to eat all you want, and this trip
is no exception...
Today's travel was more plains, fields, patches of forest and lots of
fields. We stopped in a small tourist town, Matafured, on the apron of the hills
bordering the plains and separating Hungary from our next destination,
Slovakia.

WEDNESDAY, September 6
Today our journey went through the Plains. Mile upon mile of flat
lands with corn and sunflower fields. The impressions of the land and
people continued the same as yesterday--dreary and poor. As the day ended
we settled into the largest town in the area, where we did find an
open hotel after discovering that the main hotel, the one advertised
for miles, was closed. Dinner in a street-side cafe with a great "caesar salad" concluded the day.

TUESDAY September 5
After a short ferry ride across the lake, we embarked on our journey
into the plains of Hungary, an area I had very much wanted to
experience. We worked our way through small towns and past fields of
corn and sunflowers. The general impression I got was that Hungary
had not gone as far down the road of development as Slovenia--the
roads were rougher, the towns more dreary, and the machinery in the
fields less modern. For the first time we saw horse-drawn wagons in
use in the fields and on the roads.
The night was spent in a hotel near the banks of the Dunac (Danube),
from which the Great Plains stretched to the east as far
as the eye could see.

MONDAY September 4
Today was our longest day--85 miles. It began in a gently rolling area
that passel through forest lands then continued to the shore of Lake
Balaton, the largest lake in Europe. There is a bike path along the
lake and we followed it for much of the way. However it did not go the
whole way and sometimes was misleading, which was a problem--especially when we followed its directions and ended up going directly away from the lake we were supposed to be cycling alongside of. We ended the day at Tihany, a village on a peninsula that juts out into the lake,
where we stayed at a hotel that looked and acted like the season was
over. Several hotels (perhaps most) in Hungary are holdovers from the old days--and the old days were not good days, nor were the buildings build for their aesthetic and service values... When the Bible talks about God creating the universe in such a way that it was "pleasing to the eye", it certainly validated a concern for the way things look, not just how they work...i.e. art and beauty.