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From Prague I headed to Krakow with a small posse of Irish and English lads I met in the Czech Republic. I almost missed my train to start, so after piss-bolting for about a kilometer, I started the journey rather sweaty, and with no water or beer to rehydrate me.

Poland was not on my list of places to see this year, but after meeting a bartender from Krakow in the Greek Islands and hearing some incredible first hand stories of grandparents in Auschwitz, I thought I should see it for myself, and after hearing almost every single person I’d spoken with in Western Europe rave about Krakow I was surely destined to visit.

The quality and enjoyment factor of Krakow was accentuated by the people I met and the hostel I stayed at for the majority of my time. The first night I ended up in a dodgy hostel which was not a good start. For the first half of the day there I ended up sleeping in the luggage storage room, as there was no way they were going to let me check in before 1pm and I desperately needed rest from the over night train ride. The next day I gladly checked out and met up with my friends from Prague who were staying in a new hostel called (oddly) Hostel Giraffe. This place was fantastic, and once it gets a little better known on the backpacker scene, it will be hard to get accommodation there without booking ahead. The staff were great, the other guests were great, and the place itself was great. All new, clean and funky, for less money than the shitty hostel I stayed in for the first night and with much better services. It was even attitude free from the owners and staff! It’s amazing how much these things affect your quality of stay.

The problem for me was, with three Irish guys, two English lads, and me, an Australian together, we did little apart from drink excessively. First thing most days were breakfast beers, followed in the late afternoon (which was just after waking up mind you) by Vodka and Black Russians.. It got worse from there.. Each morning the drinking stopped sometime around 8am to find some sleep, before doing it all again..

Apart from drinking excessively I managed to see the Auschwitz Death camps. These were possibly some of the most depressing places on earth. Thankfully we found a night club called Prozac that night to help relieve the depression a little =). I also went to a salt mine in Krakow which, strangely, was kinda fun.. The workers obviously had plenty of time (not mining salt) as they had carved statues of all sorts everywhere (totally out of salt mind you). There was even a grand chapel carved out of salt 130 meters underground. The stairs on the way down were over 50 flights, and the dizziness factor from turning in one direction so many times was not pleasant. The guide constantly encouraged us to lick the walls, as EVERYTHING was made from salt. Bloody fantastic. I wanted to go hustle up a bag of slugs and release them deep underground to see how far they got., but the idea stopped there.

The locals in Krakow were friendly too and many attempts at lengthy conversations were had in the streets. I had an especially hard time with the Polish language. The hostel barman tried to give me some language lessons but trying to learn Polish, in a bar, at 5am..? Not overly successful.

A friend and I took great pleasure one day in buying replica BB guns from a street vendor for around 10 Euro each and spent the entire day shooting stuff. As they are illegal back home for each of us, we took great pleasure in this and you should have seen the grins resulting. Unfortunately I had a flight to catch later that day, so it was a short lived venture.

Poland is definitely worth a look-see when you’re next in the general area.

for my photos from Poland, click here.

Prague was a much talked about destination for me and it was also a pleasant step up from Austria. I’m not saying i didn’t enjoy Austria, but for me it was a little slow and I ended up feeling boredom creep into most days. No such thing in Prague. Of course, the company you’re with really makes a difference, but from the over night train I caught in, it was different and strangely exciting. In the morning after a decent nights sleep, peering out of my sleeper cabin, I noticed a group of people standing on the railway tracks up ahead. As the train slowed to a crawl, I was shocked and strangely surprised to see one of the most mangled bodies lying in almost full exposure i think i have ever seen. Looked much like something you would find on www.rotten.com. It was totally disgusting, and I didn’t have my camera out..

After arriving and getting settled in my hostel for a short while, I went out to ‘Czech’ (sorry - couldn’t help myself) out Prague’s beautiful architecture for which it has quite a reputation for. After a few days of wandering aimlessly in short doses, it was clear that this reputation was accurate. Walking around the old town was an absolute pleasure.

After seeing a million churches and a million galleries, you start to get a little blasé about them all, but I found a torture museum which was amazing - Amazing to see how cruel the human race can be. And I also found one of the most incredible galleries I think I have ever had the pleasure of seeing. It was an exhibition of Mucha, who was in my opinion one of the most incredible artists for his sensual style and detail. Go check his work out when you get a chance, and no the web site does not do it justice.

Prague was also a good place for a drink, and some of the Czech beer was fantastic. I spent a big part of my time trialing the various ales and not to mention the Absinthe (please don’t mention the Absinthe.. Oww my head..).

I missed out on venturing to some of the other towns in The Czech Republic and will have to come back to see some of them later.. The whole area of Western Europe is amazing and it was an absolute pleasure to discover it.

For Photos of the Czech Republic, click here.

Austria was great. Clean. Sophisticated and generally ‘nice’. I think I had higher expectations for Vienna than I perhaps should have, but it was still a very nice city. Coming from Italy, I had some serious issues with confusing Vienna and Venice. They are very different destinations, and when you try and buy a train ticket, with a minimal of Italian communication skills to Venice, Austria, you get mixed results. Actually at the very best you get rather short answers, and if I could understand what the ‘nice’ ticket sales person was actually saying, I’m sure it wouldn’t have been overly pleasant. After the cue built up quite considerably behind me, a cueee corrected my brain-lapse and suggested I try to go to Vienna in Austria instead.

So after a few days milling around Vienna, I headed to Innsbruck and Tirol where ‘normally’ without global warming, you could ski all year round on a glacier..! I made it to the Glacier and yes, you could still ski, but the one run that was open was not worth the effort involved and so I took some time hiking around on the Glacier in the remaining snow and the surrounding mountains. Innsbruck was a beautiful city, and I will have to come back in winter one day to test out the snow and the legendary skiing (when there is more than one run open that is..).

For photos from Austria, click here.