europe: vienna

greetings from munich. well actually i'm writing this on the train from salzburg, but by the time i send it i'll be in munich. unfortunately, they don't have internet on trains yet, but that's probably next.

it's been a few days since i wrote, and lots and lots has happened since then. lizzie and i spent two days in krakow, poland (i've been trying and trying to pronounce it correctly, but i can't get it) this last thursday and friday (i won't tell you how long it just took me to figure out what days those were). on thursday we walked all over the city and saw wawel castle, st. mary's basilica, and the old town square (which reminded us a lot of st. marcs square in venice). it's a beautiful city.

then on friday we visited an anything-but-beautiful place -auschwitz-birkenhau. this was the largest concentration camp run by the nazis during ww2 and is about an hour and a half from krakow. birkenhau was the main camp where thousands of polish, hungarian, austrian, german, czech, etc. jews were sent to be dealt with. it was quite a sobering experience -seeing the barracks, work places, gas chambers and crematoriums where literally millions of lives were destroyed. one really interesting thing (that i hadn't seen at dachau) was a section of the museum telling the stories of local polish families who were dedicated to helping camp victims in any way they could. one older couple even adopted a 5 year old boy whom they were able to rescue from the camp. i was reminded that there are light and hope even in the darkest of places.

on friday night we took a night train (our first this trip!) to vienna (wien, as they say). two girls who were also backpacking were so nice as to wake us up in the middle of the night to tell us we needed to switch trains, and we found ourselves in the lovely, very cold city of vienna at 6:15 saturday morning. we spent the day seeing the sights (trying to stay warm AND see the city by riding trams all over and later sitting in starbucks as long as our shared latte would let us). vienna is gorgeous and i felt the need to be a bit more posh in order to fit in, but that's ok.

late saturday afternoon we took the train to graz where my grandma has friends who were so wonderful as to have us over. the koidl family home was everything two wanderers could have dreamed of -great company, delicious food (we had schnitzel twice!!), a warm bed, etc. etc. etc. we went to church with the family on sunday (the english translation service was most excellent and they sang "i'm trading my sorrows" in english! lizzie and i have both decided we want to learn german and worship songs seem to be a great way to start) that afternoon, elizabeth (mrs. koidl) gave us a tour of graz. a beautiful city that has a seems to have found the balance between traditional and modern. we played games with the family that night (a highlight for lizzie and me) and and stayed up too late drinking tea. it was a wonderful time.

we were up early this morning (monday), and georg (mr. koidl) took us to the station where we got the train back to vienna. today was not nearly so cold, so we had a much better time galavanting around the city. we went to the belvedere palace, karlschiche (st. charles church) and schonburnn palace (where we were very excited to see the labyrinth, but found it's closed nov. - march! one of the downfalls of traveling during the low season). we were very impressed with the palace grounds and decided we need to watch pride and prejudice again asap.

we had planned on catching a train straight to munich from vienna, but after several little frustrating events added up into missing our train, we ended up catching a different train to salzburg and getting on a train to munich from there. having eurrail passes is nicer than ever when things don't go as planned -which they often don't -you just make some adjustments and wallah! all is good again.

i'm constantly reminded of God's hand holding us every step of the way...people who've never met us before treating us like family, train times working out in spite of spoiled plans, warm train cars to sleep in, etc. etc. thank you so much for your prayers -it's so wonderful to know we're loved even far away. coming next -munich. maybe i'll figure out why it sounds like munchkin in german (munchen) and if there's any correlation to the popular term of endearment. =) danka shu und al vede zaine!