Blog is alive

I'm not giving up, I promise! I've got some good stories to share/places to write about but I can't do them justice without the pictures I've been taking.  Since I last posted, I've visited Salzburg, Prague, Krakow and Wroclaw.  My mom met me in Prague and we have been travelling together for the last week.  Berlin is our next stop (and last for mom, who flies home in a week), but we hit a minor bump in the road this morning.

We got up at 6:15 this morning to catch the train to Dresden, a 4 hour trip. We got to Platform 4 right on time and got on the train. I remembered reading in my travel books that sometimes there are multiple trains at a platform. This was an important train and the Wroclaw station was undergoing major renovations and things were confusing and Polish, so I decided to double-check with the conductor. I stepped  off the train and asked in English if this train was going to Dresden. He gave me the International Facial Expression for "I don't speak English you damn American who assumes everyone speaks English," so I said "Dresda?" and pointed to the train. I have no idea if Dresda is how you say Dresden in Polish, but it felt right and I went for it. He said something in Polish that I didn't understand, so I gave him the thumbs-up sign and got back on the train.  I have generally used thumbs-up to mean, "I don't know what is going on but am going to pretend like it's all good. Please stop me if I'm doing something wrong," which I'm just assuming everyone understands. the conductor responded by pointing at the train and saying a few Polish words before returning to his phone. I interpreted this to mean "Of course, we'll take you wherever you want to go. If you say Dresda, then Dresda it is. Also, nice beard. You look wise and classy."

I may need to reevaluate my hand signals. That was the wrong train. Thirty minutes later and several miles in the wrong direction, the same conductor came by to check our tickets, stamped my ticket, looked at my mom's ticket and told us we were on the wrong train via translation from a Polish guy in our compartment who thought this all was hilarious. He's headed for the Russian border without a visa and I'm not exactly rooting for him. Seemed like a good guy though.

I'm chalking up this travel error to two things, both food related.  I neither ate breakfast this morning nor ate a kebab during my time in Wroclaw.  I've had one in every city I've stopped in, even Linz, Austria, where I had a 30 minute train layover.  I just ate breakfast and will likely correct the kebab mistake at the train station before we leave.  This unexpected extra time in Wroclaw gave me some time to upload pictures and I'll catch up on the blog from Berlin.