McCain’s VP Pick Could De-Fang Biden - America’s Election HQ

McCain’s VP Pick Could De-Fang Biden - America’s Election HQ

I AM STUNNED that McCain picked a woman!!!

John McCain is playing to win.

Google Calendar CalDAV support - Calendar Help Center

Google Calendar CalDAV support - Calendar Help Center

This is a good page, and if you use iCal and Google, you can use this to tie it all together.

We Expats need stuff like this.

Staying in Berlin, near Checkpoint Charlie

The last stop on our trip was Berlin. I was excited to go, as I'd not
managed to get to Berlin when it was still part of West Germany, and
was amoungst the biggest European capitals that I'd not seen.

We had planned a few days to be here, and stayed really near
Checkpoint Charlie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkpoint_Charlie
We used the bus and metro to get to our hotel (too early again to
check in) and wandered about. We were pretty tired from our crack of
dawn flight, so we fueled up at Starbucks (surprise surprise, they are
all over in Berlin) and then saw Checkpoint Charlie (which is an
intersection now).

More importantly, we went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum, which was
fascinating. If you are in town, definitely go. All kinds of great
stuff about the war, the Soviets and a time gone by.

We were staying along one of the main streets (fredrickstrasse) and
were up and down that thing several times. In case you are wondering
the U6 line of the metro has a stop (Kostrasse) that is right at
Checkpoint Charlie.

We walked around, and did our best to not get lost. Berlin is a big
mix of concepts (since the allies bombed the bejeezes out of it in the
war), over 90% of the buildings are 60 years old or less. It seems a
fairly cosmopolitan city, and also, and uniquely perhaps, it has no
city center, and redundant services, busses and trams.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin

Course, the were a city split in half for 40 years, so it makes sense
that they had their own airport(s) and everything else. This means
there is no epicenter of the city, there are like 6 of them. Well, we
found about three of them and liked what we saw.

I got some good German food, although it seems like I think of German
food being Bavarian food, and as any German will tell you, they are
not the same thing. Anywho, I also partook of some of the Berliner
Pilsener, which is quite good, and cheap.

The weather wasn't great for us, but at least it didn't totally rain
on us (oh wait, it did, but only once) and we caught all the main
sites. We did a day trip to Potsdam that I'll also write about, and
that was pretty neat.

Berlin was so big that it's probably worth another visit. Even taking
the tourist bus around and hearing about all the buildings doesn't
give you a true lay of the land. I wonder what it is like being
German, and what sense of national identity you have these days. We
Americans never lose any wars (do we?) and so I'm not sure about that
feeling of if you were the kickee in the last big battle.

The Olympics started when we were in Berlin, so we enjoyed hearing
them in German, and Spanish. Go Team USA.

There is a good Jewish memorial, sculpture, city block right near the
Brandenburg Gate. It is a large number of concrete blocks on an
undulating floor/ground. The blocks are all different heights, and
with the variation of the ground, you can walk amoungst them and have
them tower over you, but they still seem of moderate height from the
street.

I think having that is the least the Germans can do.

We are fairly travel weary, but we still have to/ get to go back to
Madrid. We have a bunch of pictures, and I'm sure I'll write up a
wrapup.

Thanks for reading!

Vienna - land of Mozart

We can now add boats to our mode of transportation during our trip:
planes, trains, buses, cars, boats. Since Vienna and Bratislava are
separated by the Danube at a fairly small distance up the river, we
were able to take a ferry from Bratislava to Vienna. We arrived in
little over an our. It was quite enjoyable to a flight or another
lengthy train ride. Our arrival into Vienna was therefore somewhat
interesting. We didn't arrive at the typical city center train
station or airport, but instead were just sort of plopped into the
middle of the city somewhere. Thankfully, we had done some planning
and knew where we were to be dropped off and from there how to get to
our hotel. Vienna, along with many other European cities, has a
fairly good metro system, so we were able to fairly easily get to our
hotel.

After we checked-in and regrouped a little, we headed out to see what
there was to be seen. Vienna is really quite beautiful. Tons of old
majestic buildings that are museums, theaters of some sort, churches,
and old royal residences. We were able to try apple strudel and other
very yummy pastries. Dinner was good (once again, yet another
European city that seems to recognize vegetarians as humans and not
aliens) and Andy was able to sample some of the local beer. During
the next day, we spent a large part of it visiting the museum/old
palace of the Hapsburg Royal Family (one of the few Royal Family's/
Empires I remember from History class). It's so hard to imagine a
life back then as either royalty or as the relatively poor working
class. The money and opulence that goes into establishments at that
time in history is unbelievable. A huge section of the museum is
dedicated just to their table services of silver, gold-plated silver
and porcelain. We learned some about the Royal Family - this is the
family that Marie Antoinette was born into. Most of the focus was on
the most recent generation that lost power with the start of WW I. I
think you could just as easily teach European history from a lineage
point of view and cover just about everything from that angle.

Vienna was a charming city that clearly has much pride in its cultural
heritage and significance. I wish we had a little more time there,
but a couple of days was a good amount to get a general idea.

Sunset in Malmo, from the Hilton. Twisting Tower also viewable

Love that Sunset mode on my Olympus 720SW

Nicci's new car

Surprise, it's green!!!!!!!

Pork Knuckle, baked in Beer, with fried potatoes, sauerkraut and horseradish

Best meal. Nuff said.

I like beer bubbles

And the rest of the stuff in this glass too.

Homer Simpson and Krusty the Klown?

This picture in a park in Warsaw, Poland, near that giganto building I
like, reminded me of an episode of The Simpsons that I saw on the bus
going to Las Matas (camp) that we watched in Spanish (several times)
Krusty could ride a bike through this, and later he also did it with
Homer on his back.

Ta-Da!!

Pretty picture in Warsaw, Poland

The Poles are proud of this building. I think it is super cool, and
looks a bit like the university of moscow building.

http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~gorinsky/anna/2005-08-04_MGU.jpg

Bellingham Chamber Chorale, Bellingham Washington, USA

Props to Timothy Fitzpatrick and all the folks up in B-ham.

Having spent some quality time in Bellingham, it was amazing to see
this poster in Warsaw, Poland.

Smoking Kills

They are not getting the message 'round here (The Himalayans version,
not the Counting Crows version). Maybe entire pack should just say
DEATH.

Michael McDonald where are you?

Oh, you've gone to Denmark. Good luck with that.

Spald, this one is for you.

Seriously, tons of acts that barely made a blip on the music radar of the states are over here and rocking it hardcore.

Nicci's Face

I provided a bit of art direction on this shot. Mostly it's "Nicci,
give me the "Why is this famous?" face"

And there you have it.

Apple iPhone 3G ad in Danelandia (Copenhagen, Denmark)

The iPhone 3G came out the Friday before this trip, and I've tried to
photo each country I've seen Apple pimping it in.
(is that the symbol for børon in the copy??) (Lorem Ipsum it ain't)

Got your Tickets to the Gun Show?? (my arms)

Sadly, this picture is not totally self explanatory, but at least I
got this. I saw this guy get out of his car, and read his shirt then.
He went away and I managed to see him coming back and fire off this
shot.

I think his shirt is hilarious, and frankly, I think I got him
outgunned.

Mad props, Malmø dude, mad props.

Malmo, Sweden - Twisting Tower - new picture

This is one of my favorite shots of Nicci in Sweden.
This is in Malmo, with the Twisting Tower in the back ground. We are
standing in the North Sea (I think)

Oh, and in case you are wondering, beaches in Sweden are clothing
optional (bikes too)

Bratislava

Well, I wasn't sure what to expect from this town. I just told
myself, it can't be that bad - it's just across this Danube from
Vienna and Vienna has been a world class city for centuries. The main
train station was looking a little piqued, so i was still a little
worried after we arrived. However, once we hopped on our tram and got
to the old town center area, I was happily relieved. Bratislava was
very cool and had it's own little charm. We were even dropped off
right across from a bagel shop. The old town was fairly large and
picturesque, as most European capital cities are. It was once again
not difficult being vegetarian there either.

We were not in Bratislava too long, but we were able to find a local
concert performance in one of the churches. I think its proximity to
Vienna motivates the city to have some music culture of its own. It
was a lovely concert of pipe organ and violin music. This is one
thing I wish was more readily available in the States. Just local
cheap or free classical music concerts in parks or downtowns or
churches.

Our knowledge of the history of Slovakia is fairly limited. We
weren't able to go on any tours there and just wondered through
churches and up to the old fortress castle and read what we could.
They are on their own currency currently, but are moving towards the
Euro fairly soon. I will say, that all of this traveling has
certainly motivated me to read up more on the history of these
countries. I remember very little of the European history I did
actually cover in school. I don't stand a chance for history that I
never even learned about.

Cracow, Poland. A great city

So,

After Warsaw, we took a train to Cracow, (or Krakov, or Krakow). The
train was a bit odd, as it took a fair amount of time to go not so
far, we had to change trains, as well as we had a long wait in a
trainyard (not at a platform).

We arrived at our transfer point (Breklov, Czech Republic) 15 minutes
late. (a bit irked about that). However, the connecting train coming
from whereever, was 35 minutes late, so wait 20 minutes we did, and on
the way to Cracow we were.

Like many European cities, the train station is right in the middle of
town. This was true in Crakov as well. They have a tram system (which
we decifered) and took down to the Jewish area, where our hotel was.
The ticket system is a bit on the honor system, and if you don't have
the coins, you are stuck (the driver doesn't sell tickets). The way
they do the honor system is at timest hey have a guy walking through
checking the time stamps on the tickets. We saw the tickets checked
once. We rode for free at least 3 times, as the machine was broken, we
got there before we could pay, or we just decided to stick it to the
man, and take the risk.

Crakow has a very nice center city, big church, big plaza with lots of
restaurants and booths, and more. Sort of your typical European city.
It is very nice, and we had some rain, but on the whole great.

We were in Crakov for like 3 full days, and did a couple of tours.
Before the tours, we did walk up to the castle on the river, and get
some good food in town. The first tour we did was to Auschwitz. I
wasn't super keen on going, as I've done Dachau twice (outside of
München), but Nicci surprised me and wanted to go. We got a big smack
of Nazi and Soviet history in Warsaw, and it continued in Cracov.

Much was been written about Nazi concentration camps (or more
correctly, Nazi death camps). I'll write a post just on it. We took
many pictures.

We also took a trip to a famous Salt Mine (which my father should be
glad about). This mine was in production for 750 years, and was pretty
incredible. I'll probably post just about that too.

One coinkidink (coh, ink, eey, dink) was that in the Crakow cathedral
tower (the taller of the two) there is a trumpter/bugler every hour on
the our, for the last several hundred years. The reason for this, was
back in the day, the Tarters attacked Cracov, and the lookout up there
saw it and played the alarm. In doing so, he took an arrow in the
throat. He saved the town, but lost his life. They have their own
version of "Never Forget" and this is it.

We left on another crack of dawn train, and headed to Bratislava.

Working at the Salt Mine

Cracow's been around for a while.

Salt was super valuable a long time ago, and even before the spice
trade (remember that?). Food tasted bad back in the day, water was
dirty, and people were stinky.

Salt is sal in Spanish. Sal can become salorio for a person who works
with salt, or is a miner of salt (not an exact translation) Lots of
Poles worked in this mine, which was found by drilling into a salty
pool on the surface. Suddenly, Polish food was the best in the world
(not really). But, the king in the area took full advantage of this,
and made tons of money, and influence by doling out this salt to
miners and controlling the sale of salt.

The 2 kilo stipend that he allowed the miners to take from the mine
(in addition to his wage) was called his salorio also. From this we
get the word Salary.

Cool, eh?

We went a couple of hundred meters into the earth, through a huge
ballroom (see the pictures) and tons of passages.

No slaves worked this mine. No prisoners worked this mine. Miners here
were happy and rich. The Poles are proud of this, rightfully.

Amazingly, I got an email from Patrick McDonough of Braintree, MA
telling about how he also has hit this mine (back in 2006). You are
right Pat, it was super cool.

It was 14 degrees down there. Nice and cool and we were sad to get
back up to the surface and the hot weather up there.

Oh, and a side comment. There are wasps in Central Europe, and they
are all over the food everywhere. They don't look like the cute little
honey bees. They look like yellow jackets or wasps. They are annoying,
and I wish they would buzz off.

Nazi Death Camps - Never Forget

Tours like this are so overwhelming that they almost don't make an
impression.

Nazi's killed lots of people? Sure they did.

They split families up, and sent most of the people off the trains
straight to the Death Showers, and the ovens'? Yeah, I knew that.

They applied German Engineering to the problems of how to kill as many
sick or weak, or Jewish, or gay, or Jehovah's witnesses, or gypsies
(or Roma, or Gitanos), or Soviets, or prisoners of war in the least
amount of time, at the cheapest cost? Sure they did, and they were
very efficient.

They mashed 80-100 people in cattle cars for 3-4 days to ship them all
the away across the continent, in order to steal anything they have
left, strip them naked, shave them bald and then asphyxiate and burn
them? Yep and yep.

They lured some of the murdered on board after selling them their
tickets and promising that they were just being relocated to farms and
other towns in the east? Sure, a bunch of times.

They quickly outgrew their first location (a Polish army camp), and
built another one a few k away, to hold 10x the people. Yep, they did.
Don't forget the third one they built, or the expansion program they
had at the second one.

Being German, they kept incredibly detailed records of people
admitted, took pictures and personal details, and then worked their
prisoners to death. Yep. Thanks for that, now we the victorious have
infinite records to use to remember what you did.

That they only entered people who made the first cut (intended), which
would be the strong, and just obliterated anyone else. Right. If you
went left from the train, you were insta-dead, and all your stuff
would be sent back to the Volk in Germany.

Experiments on men, women and children? Course, they are Nazi's.

Research into twins, so that they could alter German women to give
birth to more twins, which would be good for Germany.

Research into castration and barrenness, so that you could spay and
neuter those that might be infecting those that deserved to live.

Open pit burning of corpses, when your ovens just weren't big enough,
the supply was too high, or one of your oven's was in the shop. Yes

Shaving of heads for the express purpose of turning it into clothe
that could be used in garments or as stuffing or ticking for pillows.
Yes. These products were highly sought after for their high quality.

Express built warehouses to hold all the loot, much of which was
melted down (like their previous owners) and sent to help the Reich.
Yes, and once the allies (in this case, the Soviets) showed up, there
were bags of hair 80 kilo's each stacked to the ceiling, with a total
weight of about a ton. Never mind all the shoes, luggage, pairs of
glasses, cups and glasses, dolls, prosthetic legs, crutches, prayer
shawls, gold teeth and belts.

See what I mean? Hardly even makes a dent.

Warsaw

We flew into Warsaw fairly late. Our flight was an evening flight,
but was delayed still in Copenhagen. When we finally arrived, we were
tired and everything was dark. We (bravely) took the night bus (as
Andy has already blogged about) from the airport to the main train
station. From there, we had no choice but to finally take a cab. Our
first cab of the trip. It was past midnight and we didn't know what
direction the hotel was in or how far away it was, so mainly for
safety and sanity, we caught our cab. We arrived at our hotel,
checked in and crashed.

When we awoke and were finally able to get out into the city, we
discovered we were in a great location. It was very close to the
completely reconstructed old town area. Most of Warsaw was in ruins
by the end of WWII. The city was painstakingly rebuilt it as it had
been before the war. It was very beautiful. We wondered around most
of the day and just enjoyed being there.

The next day, we went to the Warsaw Uprising museum. It was so
fascinating. I would say, after the Jewish people, the Polish people
are the next in line to have been so totally abused and destroyed. I
learned quite a lot that morning. The most important thing I learned
is that at the beginning of the War, Poland was occupied by both the
Nazi's and the Soviet Union. I didn't realize that they were doubly
occupied. There was so much information and pictures and history that
are hard to summarize in any capacity, so I will not even try here.

Other things we learned while we were in Warsaw was that Chopin is
Polish (well- at least half - his other half is French, but he was
born and raised in Poland). Warsaw has a lot of music, history and
culture there. Perhaps it is not the draw that Vienna is for most
musicians, but they have quite a lot of musicians around and
performing all the time there. We were fortunate to catch a free
concert one of the evenings were were there. It was lovely and it was
outside and the weather was perfect.

Our final full day in Warsaw, we spend at one of the large parks
walking around and sitting and relaxing. In this parks, they have
peacocks, which Andy and I found to be very humorous and beautifully
colored. So, as you go through the pictures, be on the lookout for
the peacocks. Unfortunately, we were not able to see (and therefore
to capture) any peacocks with their tail feathers spread. This left
us to realize that we have both forgotten what makes them spread their
feathers. Our final guess was mating. We also didn't know if they
could fly or what their mode of self-defense is. Any ideas?

Leave a comment if you know why peacocks flair their feathers.

We are glad we changed our itinerary

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jw36yOYsqqie1rEQfTV5IBNG5CGQ

Thanks M n M. We could have been on this train, 50/50 chance.

xoxox,
A n N

See our Video's on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/madreed8

Click the link and pass it around!

See our travel map

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=102116426992898385011.0004537d7d8f9397cd9e9&z=4

we are near here. on the right side of the picture

Great weather in Poland.