Hotel Korona Lublin

... ceiling were covered with paintings and frescos. It was magnificent. I am so glad I went. It was by far the best thing we saw in Lublin.

It was raining heavily when we left so we decided against walking round the old town any more. We returned to the car and Eartha retrieved her lost postcard to Laura in Lithuania from the hostel. Onwards - and with the windscreen wipers going.

... this, Gilad played a recording of "Tradition" from Fiddler on the Roof, and read stories from members of the community. I suppose the town was typical of how Jews used to live back then. Back in Lublin, I shared a room again with Bernard and Joel, but Bernard got to the room first and chose the single bed. So I had to share a double bed with Joel - thankfully his look is the only thing he has in common with George Michael.

We really felt the need to learn more about the war, the camps and the Nazis regime so we decided to visit another camp, that was less well know. Again, this is not for everyone but we found it totally compelling, educational and emotional.

... were killed in there. You can still see the blue residue on the walls and ceiling from the Zyclon B gas. You can also go into the crematorium building and see the original ovens that they used. The wooden building is reconstructed because it had burnt down, but the ovens are the originals. There are barracks that you can go in and see displays that have been set up. One barrack had original things such ...

On Monday, I get to a city called Lublin doing some hitchhiking (I wanted so much, that I did it for this small distance), not so touristic but it will be because the city centre is really nice and getting restaured. Getting out of the car which took me there, I wasn't in the center so I asked some guy to help me finding a bus to get there. He was a really nice English teacher student (nice expression he :)). We then eat together in his university restaurant, and ...

... quite a lot of money, youth hostel was full). I finally found a room in the camping just in front of the youth hostel, 30 słoty, really good for this place ! I then made some sightseeing, the river allee, the castle ruins, the tower and some churchs. Just see the pictures :)

Bosnia and Herzegovina is wonderful, we spent only five days there ( no camp sites) but made the most of every minute. The people all friendly and welcoming, the food great (and cheap) and the countryside is wonderful to admire. Deep gorges, rivers, mountains and well sealed roads to drive on while appreciating the scenary. Sleeping in Banksy in the very heart of Sarajevo was a great experience, since two armed ...

January 8 So the bus ride from Warsaw to Lublin was still a few hours and I was quite tired of the previous night with its lack of sleep, so as there was plenty of space I could sleep easily. And the bus, even if being an old western europe coach bus wasn't too bad and still comfortable enough. Later on, I also kept on looking at the flat polish landscape which was pretty interesting as we were heading South-East where there was less and less big cities more natural and farming ...

I didn't get a chance to write anything yesterday because we were in Lublin and I had a problem with getting the ADSL modem to work with the laptop. The trip from Warsaw to Lublin took us about two and a half hours and wasn't too bad compared with today's trip which I'll write about in the next entry. Leo wanted to watch his first World Cup game yesterday, which was USA vs. Czech Republic. There's not much to say except that he was ******. USA lost 3 to nil. Before the game ...

i'm going to skip the usual dribble about what we did every day and instead give you a rather quick and painless update...for once A rather bad night train...no bed and a rather full train took us to the eastern edge of poland to lublin to visit a lesser known but more well preserved concentration camp. I'll save the details as I'm sure everyone is well aware of what we saw. There are some photos that you can see at your leisure.