Ending Point: N46°80 E48°00
Distance Traveled: 6.8 miles
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The morning started rather abruptly by waking up in the apartment with people sprawled everywhere. Chase was the first one awake, and he was soon joined by George from the Cads & Bounders. George wanted to go to a Post Office and then to a market to make breakfast for everybody, and Chase thought this was a fine idea. However, it is not always as easy to find a Russian Post Office as one would hope. After wandering around Astrakhan without seeing one, they finally started asking for directions. Unfortunately, Chase and George didn’t know if people really understood what they were asking for; and, honestly, whether they did or not was a moot point because the two English speakers never understood the Russians’ answers. Eventually Chase and George saw a mail truck on the side of the road, and they knew that truck would be the missing piece to the puzzle. The mailman was a very nice man, and finally he figured out that Chase and George were looking for the Post Office. He gave a very long account of how to get there, which was presumably very detailed and incredibly precise; meanwhile, the entire time he was talking George and Chase were just exchanging confused glances. Finally the mailman gave up, opened the back door of the mail truck, and told Chase and George to just get in. The mailman started driving with our two explorers bouncing around the back of the truck, with no idea where they were or where they were going. After a very impromptu tour of the city, the mail truck rolled to a stop in front of the Post Office, and the smiling mailman threw open the back door. We made it! Their happiness was short-lived, however, as the mail truck drove away again. After buying stamps, they were left to meander through the city on foot and hope to find the apartment again. Luckily, by walking through the city they found a market where they purchased 32 eggs, a pound of bacon, and a loaf of fresh bread; upon their triumphant return to the apartment, Charla (who had since woken up) joined George in the kitchen to make a massive breakfast feast. Post feast, Charla and George took off with James of the Thunderyaks to meet the Drama of Llama, a team of travel bloggers who had had to abandon their car in southern Russia (perhaps more aptly named Drama without Llama?). Once our crew was more or less together, we arranged for our cross-town journey to the next apartment—conveniently a much larger one for our growing group, which now included us, the Thunderyaks, the Cads & Bounders, Drama of Llama, and Elephanto Equitemus. At the apartment we met up with Igor and Nadia, who prepared an incredible dinner for everybody. It really was a day of feasts, as they made delicious Russian food—fish, veggies, salads, meats, and so many wonderful things we can’t even list them all. That night, we officially celebrated Igor’s birthday with a cake! Then, to our surprise, Nadia and Igor surprised us with giant pens and magnets that featured landmarks of Astrakhan to remember our time there (like we could forget!). We were lucky that night to also receive the official mascot of our team: a stuffed panda that we named Bertha who sings in Russian when you squeeze her hand! Our party went on late into the night with a speaker system and laser light show brought in by the one and only Sitting Thunder. Starting Point: N46°22 E48°03
Ending Point: N46°80 E48°00 Distance Traveled: 6.8 miles
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There are late starts, and then there are late starts in Poland. We woke up in the hostel in Krakow, had a bit of the continental breakfast left out for our group, and recounted the events of the night before (some of which you can find on the previous post here, some of which are Pandaland jokes that don’t belong on here). Then, we went out to see some of the sights of the city that we had only glimpsed the night before, including walking around the main square and market. After a brief daylight tour of the city, we headed south to the Wieliczka Salt Mine, one of the twelve original UNESCO World Heritage sites. Before and after lunch in the café there, Andrew finangled us press entry with a private tour guide. The tour took us through three levels and down to 150 meters below the surface. Our favorite rooms were St. Kinga’s Chapel and the underground pool where we tossed in a coin with a prayer to get us to Mongolia. We also licked salt straight off the walls! Our tour guide even gave us lumps of rock salt to take on our travels; we won’t run out of salt for a long time now. We left Wieliczka but didn’t make it too far that night, choosing to camp in Nowy Sacz (a small town near the Slovak border) after a few shopping stops. We were the lead car, using paper maps to navigate after some mix-ups with the SatNav (GPS), and so we were happy to find a great spot for us all to stop for the night and make a big dinner. Starting Point: N50°06 E19°93
Ending Point: N49°37 E20°42 Distance Traveled: 70.4 miles While Charla was in her morning lectures, Chase visited the Museo Postale e Telegrafico della Mitteleuropa, or the Trieste postal museum. This museum was a pretty obvious choice, because Chase is fascinated with the world’s postal services. The museum was not geared to non-Italian speakers, but luckily one of the museum employees was very excited that Chase had traveled all the way from Alaska so she gave him a personal tour. Unfortunately, she didn’t speak English and Chase didn’t speak Italian, but they made it all the way through the museum together. This evening was one of our favorite moments with the Joyce School. We gathered at the Osteria da Marino for dinner and music led by Gerry Smyth. The osteria’s main room, which we filled beyond capacity, featured a piano and was decorated with old rugby uniforms for the team it sponsors, photographs, and sailing paraphernalia. Gerry performed several selections from Joyce’s “Chamber Music” as well as some traditional Irish ballads to get the crowd involved. We picked up one of his CD’s to listen to on our drive as well!
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