Krakow

And here are some photos from the second stop on our trip: Krakow, Poland.

Yes, it was as cold as it looks. I'm too lazy to attach captions to the photos so you'll likely have to guess what some of them have to do with anything. The photos include a picture of our hotel, the Wieliczka Salt Mine, the Dragon of Krakow, and some of the other major sights.

Ann wants me to mention that there are an "insane" number of churches here -- all Roman Catholic, of course -- and that they are in constant use. It's true. The praying and confessing Poles outnumbered the tourists in all of the churches we saw. I hope some of them are praying for better weather.

On our last night we sat near a guy at an Indian restaurant in the old town, a friendly radiologist from Detroit who was in for a conference. As he began telling us about Jainism and how it relates to vegetarianism I got the uneasy feeling that he might be proselytizing. But when the conversation naturally shifted to lost & stolen wallet stories I realized that he probably wasn't. I also noticed that nearly all of the ten to fifteen diners in the small restaurant were speaking English. Our waiter didn't even bother to respond in Polish when we tried out our practiced three or four Polish words. English speakers are fortunate in Central Europe because English has become the lingua franca.