Marci and Steve Go Back to Europe

The ANSWER to the WTF puzzle #6 There were many similar but incorrect answers to this puzzler. Let's recap - What is this, and HOW is it used? In The Czech Republic, there are 3 famous 'spa' towns....Karlovy Vary, Marianske Lazne, and   Frantiskovy Lazne....plus many more. People have been visiting these towns for hundreds of years, to 'take the waters'...basically bath and use the mineral springs ( hot and cold) that are available underground in these places. Marci and I spent a few days in Marianske Lazne.....in addition to the baths in several places, there are places in town where the waters have been 'tapped', and there are drinking stations so you can try all the different types of the waters.....different chemicals, or minerals, or temperatures, etc. The secret item is a specially designed drinking vessel. Here is a billboard for a fancy one you could buy: Here is a special place, near the park where there are lots of different spots to try the waters...

Borders How can it be that just by crossing one or two arbitrary or imaginary lines on a map, everything changes in the blink of an eye. Just a quick flight from Prague, CR to Lucca, Italy and the colors change from cool to warm with houses of dun colored plaster and green shutters. The language changes from the guttural sounds of consonants to the warm passion of vowels, hair from light to dark, skin tones from alabaster to olive, the food from meat and dumplings to pasta and gelato and voila, you are back in the warmth of the Mediterranean life and culture. The magic of travel to transport you, the magic of technology to do it quickly. There is something so much more familiar about being here. The grazie and prego come rolling off the tongue easily, the menus of penne and ravioli need no translation, the afternoon aperitifs of CampariSoda  are pre-made in small bottles and sneakers are everywhere. It is easy and wonderful to feel a bit of home this far away after being gone so l...

As today ( Tuesday the 13th) is a travel day, as was yesterday, Marci will allow me to write today's blog. First, a little housekeeping. A few days ago, I asked the readership to help me figure out what these damn wooden huts were that I kept seeing in the fields of Hungary, Czech Rep., Poland, Austria and Slovakia. Here again is a picture: Well, I received many replies, and most were indicating that this was some some kind of hunting blind. I had had that though myself originally, but rejected it because why are they in the farm fields and not in the woods? And how can there be that many? I must have seen over a hundred in the last 2 weeks. I also got a thoughtful (hopeful?) opinion from France that these are for bird watching. I finally got a definitive answer via crowdsourcing - My good friend in Santa Fe, who is from the Czech Republic, forwarded my query to her brother, who still lives in the CR....here is his actual e-mail to me: ............ She told me if I could explain to...

Kazmierz, finding a bit of Balance Leaving Auschwitz, driving, decompressing and discussing, we stopped for what was our second best ever gas station meal. The first was in Pecos, NM with friends for burritos, sitting on a bench almost next to the pumps. This time, in the Polish countryside, was a lovely flowered deck around the corner from the pumps ( still attached to the gas station) and alongside a garden where a watermelon and mint cocktail and a duck breast salad and beer helped lighten the atmosphere.  We headed back into Krakow to the old Jewish quarter, where after years of dilapidation, a revival has occurred. Although there are not many Jews, the synagogues are being preserved, the cemeteries opened and the cafes alive with Klezmer music, a true melding of Polish and Jewish culture.  Walking through the New Cemetery, with many graves and headstones from the 15th Century, slanting rays of late afternoon sun stretching across the unique metal scrolls resting atop the ...

I can still vividly remember the summer of '68, sleep away camp at a girls Jewish camp. It was a tradition one night every summer to bring all the campers into the dining hall turned cinema and show the film Let My People Go. It was a horrific visual display of concentration camp victims, dead and alive.  I can remember years later sitting through the devastating hours of the film Shoah, released in two parts, for a total of seven hours. Later, Shindler's  List, depressing and tragic, but with hope and a hero.  Never did I think I would go and see first hand the place where so much of this cruel and torturous extermination took place but you cannot be in Krakow and not make the trip.  There are only two good things about Nazis.  1) They kept incredibly detailed, meticulous records that allow us to today know and piece together the truth. 2) They lost the war and the survivors, few that there were, were liberated. During the  three and a half hour tour, the ...

Outside the Golden Triangle I would venture to say that most Americans who do a Central Euro vacation see Prague, Vienna and Budapest, but not Krakow. But since we are lucky enough to be traveling, and since it got high recs from some friends, we added it to our itinerary. Now how to describe yet another CentralEuro city without repetition.  Krakow seems smaller and a bit more medieval and less baroque in its old town architecture centered on a huge square with the old cloth market smack in the middle of the square, now full of souvenir stands, and a Basilica with a 11 x 16 meter ( 36 x 52 feet ) wooden carved altar and a very unique carved bas relief of Jesus being circumcised. The street food is uniquely Polish and although we were mostly, but not fully, recovered from our bout of, what we ascertained was definitely food poisoning, we could not help but try the Ocsypki, little rectangles of delicious, salty fried cheese (we had no idea what we were getting when we handed over our...