these weeks in the odyssey
8.9.99 -- 8.23.99
zurich, berlin, zaorze, warsaw, krakow, prague, strobl, zurich

Hidden Dangers of Europe

When we first left on this here European Odyssey some five months ago, I had some misgivings. You see, I really look like exactly what I am -- an American, from baseball cap-clad head to Timberland-shod toe. I mean, check me out in that picture over there at right in Prague -- what with the standard issue Eddie Bauer khaki shorts, the polo shirt, and the white sneakers, I've practically got beautiful, for spacious skies oozing from my pores. I mean, I'm sweating amber waves of grain. I've even got a fruited plain spilling out over my belt. And while I'm not really sure what a "purple mountain's majesty" might be, I've probably got that covered, too.

So, understandably, I had some concerns. Europeans definitely have a reputation for unprovoked attacks on Americans (well, somewhere, they probably do, anyway). And with the title track from Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A." album accompanying my every movement (what, you don't have your own theme music following you around?), I thought I would perpetually find myself in imminent danger from packs of wilding European youths. Sheesh -- I could be mugged, beaten, or even forced to wear my jeans up over my navel, like a German. I could be mocked, teased, or stripped of my modest swim trunks and made to wear a package-hugging Speedo. I might even find myself forcibly subjected to extended, painful doses of techno music. Don't kid yourself, man -- Europe is a wonderful place, but it is definitely not without its dangers...not the least of which is catching a glimpse of me in a Speedo.

Solar eclipses only heighten the run-of-the-mill danger we face each and every day here in Europe. Now, this is only from memory, but I don't seem to recall people back in the States reacting that strangely to eclipses. Oh sure, the guy waving the "Repent Before It's Too Late" sign might be yelling a little bit louder, the survivalists in their compounds in Eastern Washington and Idaho might lay in a couple week's worth of extra water and go on Full Nutball Alert, and Larry King might actually appear on TV without one shoulder impossibly humped up above his grossly misshapen head (what the heck is up with that, anyway?), but other than that, it's business as usual in America. 7-11 is definitely still open.

Perhaps it's just that America starts out from an infinitely weirder place than Europe, leaving us little room to get any weirder, but by comparison, the Europeans seemed to really go all out for the eclipse. Well, not so much the Swiss -- though one lady did briefly peek her head out her window to check it out, everybody else seemed to still be tuckered out from last week's Street Parade -- but the rest of Europe appeared to be in a full-on freak frenzy. In England especially, druids appeared to be everywhere, darkening the aisles in the local health food stores, rubbing elbows with the Wiccans, Naturalists, and really anybody else who had a flowing bathrobe they could get into and cavort about in the fields while the sun momentarily disappeared from the sky. Since neither Kristanne nor I packed a bathrobe, we were left to check the whole thing out from a parking lot across the street from our apartment. We only had a 90% eclipse here in Zurich, but things still got nicely dusky for a few minutes. Unfortunately for you eclipse lovers back home, though, we had cloudy weather, so that shot at left was the best we could do for you. No druids, either.

Now, let me tell you, after a good solar eclipse, there's nothing like a nice trip to the butcher shop to sorta cap things off. We find that it really gives you a sense of closure for the whole blessed event. You're going to have to trust me on this one. Plus, here we are rolling into our final few days here in Zurich before pulling up stakes for Scotland, and we realized that we still haven't shown you the actual butcher shop from which we rent our comfortable little apartment! What astonishing gall we've exhibited! Please accept that picture at right with our humblest apologies. That's Paul the Butcher getting ready to serve Kristanne up what I'm almost certain they call "poulet gaschnickelsazeiten" here in Zurich. Loosely translated to English, I'm pretty sure that means "chicken that has been gaschnickeled." No charge for that translation, by the way. Just doing my part to keep y'all up-to-date and informed, culturally speaking.

Now, many of you have expressed sentiments to me and Kristanne such as, "Gee, this Office Odyssey must be a nonstop maelstrom of unbridled romance for you two!" This is correct. It certainly is, though I must caution you that "maelstrom" is perhaps not the best particular choice of words. What you're looking for is really something more like "tuna fish salad of unbridled romance." "Maelstrom" just doesn't quite connote the essential fishy goodness that informs our passionate arc across the European continent. I must admit, however, that Kristanne has not yet signed off on the whole "essential fishy goodness" description of our relationship. That may get nixed in the final edit, so enjoy it while you can.

Slightly surreal vocabulary choices aside, the essential point remains -- European travel is nothing but bonaroo for romantic life. Still, you've got to make the hard choices. You've got to shove aside complacency and embrace life in a full-body bearhug. However, don't bodyslam life. Also, don't keep life in the detached garage. Keep it snuggled up all cozy and warm against your everlovin' bosom, and then, whenever the opportunity presents itself, take it on out and share it with those around you. Teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. That's what I'm doing over there in that picture at left, serenading Kristanne like the dickens, putting the "man" back into "romance." I mean, you've got to. Otherwise, it's just "roce," and that's not even a word.

Romance is great, but sometimes you need the opposite. Sometimes, you need to pit yourself against the elements, test your mettle, find out what you're made of. Sometimes, you want steely gray skies, oppressive Stalinist architecture, and languages that you will never, ever, understand. Yep -- sometimes you want Eastern Europe.

Well, really, to be correct, you want what used to be Eastern Europe -- Poland, the Czech Republic, your basic former Warsaw Pact country. Since the fall of communism some ten years ago, much of what used to be "Eastern Europe" is now pretty much called "Central Europe." Geographically speaking, this makes much more sense. Poland, the Czech Republic, the former East Germany -- these countries are definitely in Central Europe. The change in nomenclature also neatly underscores the more fundamental changes that are going on in these countries -- the fall of Soviet-style communism, followed by the influx of capitalism, the gradual transition to market economies, and the utter absence of that former Eastern Bloc staple, the mammoth queue at the state-run liquor store.

We wanted to see for ourselves. Our old pals, Jacek and Loydie, were going to be hanging out in their family's country place northeast of Warsaw, so we decided to pack up our troubles in our old kit bag and head on off to Poland. I mean, everybody has to go to Poland sometime, right?

Displaying my usual acute sense of geography, I figured Poland must be right around the corner from Switzerland. Certainly no more than a hop, skip, and a middling-sized jump. Just to confirm what I already knew, I thought I'd take a gander at the map of Europe, see what we had in front of us. It was there that I confronted...the beast. Poland is big. Very big. It's also not particularly close to Switzerland, separated from it by Germany and/or the Czech Republic, depending on your route. Maintaining our resolve, we decided to expand our original two-day jaunt to Poland into a tall-walking, week-long journey to the savage heart of what used to be communism.

If you want what used to be communism, Berlin is as good a place to start as any. Where else are you going to get such stark contrasts between capitalism and communism, east and west, one side of the wall versus the other? Nowhere. So, we fired up our super mini-economy car and pointed it north to Berlin and points beyond.

Reasoning that ten years is plenty of time to develop an infrastructure, we figured the roads to Berlin through the former East Germany would be just great by now. We were wrong. I drove our first four hour shift, taking us from Zurich up though Western Germany and into Nurnberg. The whole "no speed limit" thing on the autobahn was really great. Our tiny little economy car was cranking along between 140-150 km/h (about 84-90 mph) the whole time, doing its best to avoid being pushed from the road by the air blasts generated by the BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes blasting past us like we were standing still. People in Germany drive faaaast.

People in the former Eastern Germany probably would, too, if they only could. Kristanne took over the driving duties from me at Nurnberg, and as we passed into what used to be Eastern Germany, the roads took a decided turn for the worse. Not only were they narrower and more potholed, they were also under a constant assault of road construction. Cars were lined up for miles, hour long delays punctuated by the rare 100 yard blast of total freedom before you had to slam on your brakes again and rejoin the death march. Making us especially despondent were the road signs you'd see periodically announcing, "Road Construction Ahead -- Next Four Countries." Sucking was evident.

Seven hours later, we limped into Berlin, utterly exhausted from doing battle with the epic traffic. Tired as we were, Berlin still pumped us up. Neither of us had been here since the Wall came down and it was really rather exhilarating to see some of what was going on. Construction cranes festooned the skyline -- the whole city seemed to vibrate with a palpable energy. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time to savor it since we needed to be up at the crack of dawn the next day to continue our assault on Poland. So, after mustering our last bits of energy to suck down a couple beers, we headed off to bed, visions of traffic jams dancing in our head.

Arising at the obscenely early hour of 6:30 AM, we rallied out of our hotel for a brief sightseeing tour, grabbing that snap of the Kaiser Wilhelm church you see up there at the right. It's not really a church anymore, though. Though heavily damaged during the Allied bombing campaign of WWII, the Germans decided to leave it standing as a sort of shrapnel-pocked memorial. We paused for reflection and then jumped back in the car to check out the Brandenburg Gate and whatever else we might see. Almost immediately, we were completely lost. As we drove through what used to be East Berlin, a strange otherworld of desolate streets, construction dust, and oddly juxtaposed bits of advertising on clearly socialist structures, we wondered aloud what the heck that giant picture of the U.S. soldier was doing in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable road. Brain surgeons that we are, we eventually realized that we were actually driving through Checkpoint Charlie, the famous American-controlled passageway between east and west. Being lost has its benefits sometimes, you know?

Eventually, Kristanne the Able Navigator found us a route out of the madness and we were back on our way to Poland. Yes, that Poland. The one people make all the jokes about. Let me be the first to tell you, though -- Poland is no joking matter. It's serious. I know -- I did a study abroad program there some ten years ago, spending some time up close and personal with communist living. While my classmates were going to Florence, to Salamanca, to Oxford, I headed off to Poland, proving once and for all that I am not exactly the freshest beer in the sixpack.

Passing through the border check, we were just a mite apprehensive about our coming drive to Warsaw and beyond. Jacek had warned us not to stop for anybody waving at us, cautioning us that we would be dragged from our cars and beaten. He also told us not to take trains, not to take candy from strangers, and to brush our teeth after every meal. Also, wait a half hour after eating before swimming. Jacek's dire warnings echoing in our heads, we crossed into Poland, singing our new version of that old chestnut, "If You're Going To San Francisco." Our version went something like, "If you're going to War-saw, Poland...be sure not to wear anything that will attract attention. Violent people, in War-saw, Poland...they'll beat you up and they'll steal your clothes." Okay, so maybe Rodgers and Hammerstein don't exactly have much to worry about. Still, you get the picture.

Our first clue that a new day was dawning in Poland came immediately after we crossed the border...one of those giant, modern gas station plazas that litter the American landscape. And no lines either! Our second clue came when we saw the big sign erected by the Polish Tourism Board reading, "Poland -- Not As Crappy As You Think!" "Cool slogan," we thought as we drove on, noticing now the third clue to Poland's new world order...prostitutes. Here we were, miles from any city, driving down a single-lane highway with forest on both sides, when what should inexplicably appear but -- yep, you guessed it -- prostitutes. It was positively surreal, these half-naked women appearing on the side of the road in the Polish countryside, no visible means of their transportation to be seen. Where did they come from? How did they get here? Enquiring minds wanted to know.

Well, really we didn't want to know too much. In addition to being surreal, it was also completely sad, bringing us down every time we saw one. So, we stopped our prostitute count at 41, reasoning that we probably didn't want to know the actual tally.

On to Zaorze! Based on our experiences in East Germany, we figured the roads in Poland would be just as bad, if not worse. Happily, we were wrong. Though the roads were small in places, the Poles have completely mastered the art of driving on the shoulder to let a two-lane highway accommodate three cars, enabling easy passing. The Poles were excellent drivers, courteous and fast. To our pleasant surprise, we rolled into the town of Rozan well before we had originally anticipated. Rozan was the nearest town appearing on a map to the tiny country hamlet of Zaorze, where Jacek's family's country places were, so we stopped there to give him a call and let him know we were ready for the pickup.

Twenty minutes and a neat drive down a sandy road with horse-drawn carts and cows later, we found ourselves rolling up to Majewski Acres, greeted by Majewskis of all stripes. That's the main cabin you see there in that picture at left, featuring the whole crew out in front.

Zaorze is sort of out of time as we know it, a small farming community some 100 kilometers northeast of Warsaw. The countryside is quite nice there, miles of flowing, flat grasslands and scrub pine forests with the odd river snaking through here and there. "Pastoral" and "rustic" are two words that come to mind. "Zyzzyva" and "defenestrate" are two others, but they're pretty much irrelevant, so you should just ignore them. In addition to the main cabin, there was also another new cabin that Jacek's parents had build for he and his sister and their families. A great place to come and spend time with your whole family, though you might want to get permission from the Majewskis first.

Zaorze also has an interesting history. It was in this area of the country that the Poles made one of their biggest stands against the Germans back in 1939. They formed an "unbreakable line" of soldiers, entrenching themselves for miles around the area. That's one of those trenches they dug pictured there at right; the area around the cabin is full of them. By all account, the Poles were fighting a slightly different war than the Germans. Polish history is full of tales of brave, honorable Polish soldiers mounting doomed sallies against German tanks on horseback. As you might have heard, or even guessed, the unbreakable line was broken.

Besides the history, what else is there to do in Zaorze? Plenty. For example, you could do exactly what Jacek's father, Andrzej, is doing there at left. A certain amount of napping under trees is required for any trip to Zaorze, though you're welcome to substitute the hammock for the tree, if you prefer. Of course, in addition to sleeping, there's also eating. In addition to your standard breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you've also got your mid-morning snack, your mid-afternoon snack, and, if you're still hungry, your midnight snack. There are other options in between those, too, though we must caution you that all of them involve kielbasa.

There's also the river! You can grab a bunch of beer, some bread, and some of the omnipresent kielbasa, and head on down to the river for a nice fire. Then, you can learn how to sing Polish songs and find out if "Friends in Low Places" translates well for an international audience (it does).

We did all of this, thoroughly soaking up the flavor of the Polish countryside before heading back to Warsaw for a night with Jacek and Loydie. Ever the pleasant host, Jacek and Loydie took us through Warsaw's old town, treating us to a firsthand glimpse of what's happened in the last ten years. The first thing that hit me was the advertisements...everywhere. Those stalwarts of Western-style capitalism, McDonald's, Burger King, and KFC were also out in full force, trumpeting their usual message of fast, fatty foods to a new audience. We demurred, heading instead to an old restaurant in a cellar off the newly-gleaming square in the old town. There, we ate some slow, fatty foods, indulging ourselves in pierogi, bigos, and bread with lard. Mmmm...lard.

Too soon, we were on the road again, heading south for Krakow, the town where I did my study abroad some ten years ago. How would it be different, I wondered? What could have changed? Krakow was a beautiful town ten years ago, blessedly spared from most of the ravages that Warsaw suffered during the war. Most of the old town was still intact when I was there -- the picturesque square, the covered market, Wawel Castle -- what would it be like now?

Well, to start with, there was a McDonald's now occupying the space where my favorite cafe' used to be. That's it at right, the Golden Arches replacing the elegant tea room I remembered from lo those many years ago. That surprise aside, Krakow was gorgeous. When I was there ten years ago, it was abundantly clear how wonderful the city could be if given half a chance. This was especially true of the Rynek Glowny, the square at the heart of the old city, surrounded by beautiful churches, imposing monuments (to poets, no less!), and attractively cobblestoned lanes. Happily, it was also now surrounded by open-air cafes (something you never would have seen ten years ago), smiling people dressed in bright colors, and, wonder of wonders, tourists. We sat in a squareside cafe and took a nice cappucino in with the surroundings, plotting our next move.

Our next move was sort of made for us when the check came. The same cappucinos that would have cost us $14 in a squareside cafe in Florence only set us back about $3 in Krakow. A light bulb came on in Kristanne's head and an alarm went off in mine. Uh oh. Here comes Miss Money Money.

"Shopping time!" she cried, whipping her ATM card from her wallet with a flourish. "Gimme some zloty, baby -- I got things to buy!" Much too late to stop her, I decided merely to weather the oncoming storm by hanging back a few paces, the better to avoid the blizzard of charge-card receipts that would soon be descending on my weary noggin.

Several hours later, our shopping bags were bursting with what Kristanne assured me were complete and total bargains. "I mean, really, Sid," she said, "where else are you going to buy a matching set of kachina dolls that double as saltshakers and egg cups? We need these!"

I did manage to interrupt the consumer frenzy long enough to take that picture you see there at left. That's me in front of the Jagiellonian University building where I took my classes ten years ago. It looked pretty much exactly the same back then, too, though the neighboring Credit Suisse bank is a recent addition. Ironically, that bank went in exactly where all the money-changers used to congregate when I was here, illegally exchanging zloty for hard Western currency (marks, dollars, whatever) at black market rates. The times, they are a-changing.

Now, at this point, the ordinary traveler would call it a day, retire to a nice hotel in Krakow and enjoy a restful evening. As has been made abundantly clear in these pages, time and time again, we are no ordinary travelers. No, we're much dumber than that. You see, we had vague plans of ending up in Prague that night. Yes, after driving from Warsaw and touring Krakow. Just to give ourselves a little challenge, we decided if we couldn't shoehorn in a little visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the notorious Nazi concentration camp near Krakow.

There's really not much I can say about Auschwitz-Birkenau -- or, really, any concentration camp -- without feeling like I really have no right to be talking about it. Suffice it to say that anyone who doubts the reality of the Holocaust, or even feels that the numbers are inflated needs to see something like Birkenau. The vastness of the crime makes you shudder. The picture below is of Birkenau, the largest of the four camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Though most of the barracks have fallen, you can see where they were by following the fields of chimneys. For each stack, there was a barrack, stretching off into the fields.

We couldn't take too much of Birkenau, so we headed off quickly for the Czech Republic, eager to see if we couldn't get to Prague before we slept. Crossing the border into the Czech Republic was a snap -- five minutes and we were in. That, however, was to be the last easy thing about the Czech Republic. Two kilometers into the country, the highway ended. I don't mean that the highway turned into a two lane road, or that there was road construction, or anything like that. I mean the highway just flat out ended at a big hump of soil bulldozed up in front of the forest. There was one exit just before this happened where you could turn right or turn left at the end of the exit ramp. Most countries think this would be a good place for a road sign, indicating which way you might want to go. This being the Czech Republic, however, home of the Poet President, Vaclav Havel, this exit was apparently some sort of existential riddle for unsuspecting tourists. Which way will you go? Does it really matter? What does it mean "to go?" A mild disarray stole across the Extreme Telecommuting experience. We were unprepared for this, spoiled as we were by Poland's excellent road signs. Plus, there were no prostitutes on the side of the road to ask for directions. What the heck was going on? Good existentialists that we are, we took a guess, got it wrong, and then backtracked for fifteen minutes to try the other direction, which turned out to be the other way. It was also the right way.

Thus was surmounted the First of the Czech Riddles. However, there were other tests before us if we wished to gain access to the fair city of Prague. For example, did you know that the Czech Republic is plagued by an epidemic of nighttime highway walkers? It's true -- everywhere you go, you'll see folks in sweatsuits out for leisurely strolls on the various Czech freeways. The challenge of missing them is compounded ever so slightly by the fact that the entire Czech Republic is rather dimly lit. At first, we thought we were exaggerating things. After all, the first couple towns we drove through were very small and might understandably have had very few lights to illuminate the surroundings. Still, as we hammered on through bigger and bigger towns, it became obvious that someone or something is turning off the lights in the Czech Republic. Huge towns went almost completely lightless, only a few flickering yellow lights dotting the area. Things were looking a mite strange here in the ole Czech Republic.

Things got a whole lot stranger as we rolled into Brno around 11:00 PM, the second biggest town in the Czech Republic. We had begun to get a bit drowsy, so rather than endangering any more nighttime highway walkers, we decided to see if Brno might not have a hotel that would be up to our exacting standards (that is, it had a bed). Predictably, Brno was dimly lit, making it a little bit difficult to follow the signs to the "Zentrum." What lights there were tended to flicker in this sickly yellow hue that nicely accented the evident urban blight. It didn't help that the only thing the lights illuminated were groups of dangerous looking youths drinking their way down otherwise deserted streets. Apparently, somebody had forgotten to tell Brno that they were no longer communist. Quickly deciding that perhaps Brno was not the best place for us, we began following the signs back to the freeway, hoping to make a quick exit and head on to Prague.

It was not to be. As we turned through the town square, following what signs there were to the freeway, a looming presence made itself known in front of us, furiously waving a red plastic paddle at me. This had never happened to me before, but I decided that, generally speaking, it was probably in my best interest to avoid plastic paddle-waving looming presences whenever possible. As I began cranking the wheel to the left to avoid this new Czech Oddity, Kristanne alerted me to the fact that this particular looming presence was, in fact, the police, and that maybe I better stop.

Ack. Getting stopped by cops in Brno who probably didn't realize that they were in sort of an "open" country now, did not exactly appeal to either one of us. Nervously, we got out of the car as instructed, images of gulags and watery borscht dancing in our heads. It was not readily apparent exactly what we had done wrong. Since neither of us spoke Czech, Kristanne did her best to figure out what was going on in German. Apparently, they claimed that there was a sign preventing us from making the turn we had just made. This they told us even though the signs we saw instructed us explicitly to turn this direction to get to the freeway. This they told us even though we followed another car through the turn, a car that was not pulled over. This car, in what I'm sure was just a bizarre coincidence, happened to have Czech license plates instead of the Swiss ones we were sporting.

There was absolutely no doubt that they were just hassling us, along with any other foreigners who happened by. Our suspicions were confirmed as they let Czech car after Czech car go through the intersection unimpeded, only to pull over a pair of motorcyclists with German plates a few minutes later. So, we were definitely guilty of Driving While Not Czech. As the motorcyclists loudly exclaimed to one cop that there was absolutely no sign indicating that their turn (and ours) had been illegal, the other cop informed us that we owed him 1000 kroner. At the sound of numbers, I looked up from Kristanne's German phrasebook (where I had vainly been trying to figure out the words to say, "Well, maybe if you had a single light in your whole damn, dimly-lit country, I'd have been able to see the sign that wasn't there. Butthead.") with a mild panic. We didn't have any kroner, since we hadn't been able to change money yet. The cop was decidedly unamused about this, letting it be known that one of us would have to go get kroner while the other waited there with the car.

This is exactly the kind of decision you really never want to make. Should I let Kristanne stay there with the cops, completely untrustworthy though they were? Or should I let her brave the nighttime streets of Brno to try and change money? There was no good answer, but we eventually settled on me heading off for money. So, I sprinted off into the night, leaving Kristanne there in the car to take the sneaky picture of the two cops you can barely make out there at right. She had to be covert...that's why it's kinda shaky. It's Extreme, too, in case you were wondering.

One thousand kroner turned out to be only $33, so I was slightly relieved as I sprinted back to the car. My relief became complete as I saw that Kristanne was just fine, and we clambered back into the car, covertly flipping the bird to the two cops and getting back on the freeway. We were definitely wide awake now, so we decided just to go for it and drive the remaining 200 kilometers to Prague, a city which we hoped would only be better than Brno, nothing more.

Coming in at night, it was fairly difficult to tell exactly what Prague was like. One thing we could tell for sure, though, was that there were a heckuva lot of dead ends, one way streets, and areas forbidden to cars. We know because we found just about every one of them. At one point, we passed a street with a hotel we were looking for. Attempting to go around the block and get back to it, we very nearly ended up in two ditches, the path of a tram, and, in one memorable mistake, Hungary. Deciding that perhaps that hotel was not worth the effort, we took the next hotel we saw, laying ourselves down to sleep at about 2:00 AM, happy to be out of Brno.

Prague, as reputed, turned out to be quite beautiful, its old town surviving forty years of communist rule relatively unscathed. We spent about six hours taking in the major sights, and then continued on south. We had to be back in Zurich the next day, and still wanted to stay in Strobl, a small town in Austria where Kristanne went to language school about ten years ago.

This turned out to be a fantastic idea. Though we didn't get to Strobl until past nightfall, we were able to get a scenic hotel room right next to the beautiful alpen lake the town sits on. We woke up to the vista you see in the picture at left, drinking in the fresh mountain air, soaking up the morning. We kept pinching ourselves, chanting, "We're not in Brno. We're not in Brno." People looked at us funny, but it was worth it.

After a quick walk around part of the lake (including a boardwalked portion attached to that headland you see in the foreground), we regretfully drove on, not wanting to leave Strobl, but realizing we needed to get back to Zurich. At this point, we had been on the road for seven days and over 3500 kilometers. We were tired -- tired of driving, tired of touring. So, when we got to Salzburg, Austria, we pretty much just said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, castle on a hill, scenic old town nestled against a mountain, yada, yada, yada," and kept on going, stopping only long enough to get caught in the really quite incredibly gridlocked traffic through downtown. After giving short shrift to Innsbruck, we soon found ourselves back in Zurich and ready for bed.

And that's the Odyssey! Even as I write this, however, we are packing our bags for our imminent departure to Edinburgh, Scotland (we leave 8/28). Be sure to check back next week to see if Kristanne can convince me to wear a kilt, eat some haggis, or drink some scotch. I'm personally guaranteeing that she'll be successful on at least one of those fronts. See you next time on the Odyssey!

Last Week's Front Page Picture

Viva, cow! We spotted that pastoral scene you see there at left as we drove through the Polish countryside to the impossibly tiny hamlet of Zaorze (I challenge you to find it on any map) to hang out with Jacek and Loydie. And, yes, we do know that this is the third time in the last six weeks we've seen them, but you have to admit, they're pretty cool. Still, there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that we are considering changing the name of this feature to "Extreme Telecommuting, Starring Jacek and Loydie," so you can just stop those emails right now. Do you hear me "Loydie Lover from Louisville?" Knock it the heck off. You're giving us a complex.