Goodbye Zloty. Hello Koruna!

Last night, I said my sad goodbyes to the amazing city of Krakow. For the first time since leaving Adelaide, I was actually quite sad to catch that train. Krakow is a place full of history, culture, food and life. I will miss the Elvis puppeteer in the market square as much as I will miss the crazed old woman who would stand listlessly, motionless, two doors from our hostel. I will also miss Slavek, the hostel owner, but not for long - his day job, taking Poles on international tours, will lead him to having a beer with me in Melbourne in early October.

I continued the Jewish pilgrimage part of my holiday yesterday by visiting what was once the Krakow ghetto; an area cordoned off by the Nazis, which became the scene of a slaughter. Apparently 95% of Krakow's Jewish population was killed during World War II. I wasn't any more aware of this than when I walked up the stairs to visit what was Oskar Schindler's office, in an industrial area just outside the ghetto. That was in many ways more real, and more intense, than Auschwitz itself.

There were things I missed in Poland. My first experience of potato pancakes came on the train today, having continually missed my opportunities on 'traditional' food in the Jewish quarter. I also decided to eat with fellow hostellers in the Vegetarian restaurant, rather than rush to the nightly Chopin concerts. However, I ate zurek (white borscht) and pierogi, and washed is down with apple juice flavoured with garlic, chives and cinnamon. So I think I made the right choice.

This morning's train was amazingly pleasant, considering the horrendous experience between Berlin and Krakow. This train was separated into compartments, where I spent much of my trip talking to an Australian girl whose name I am sure I never discovered. I wonder if the fragile, doll-like Czech girl beside us could speak English, and what she might have thought of our conversation. The best part of the train, however, was clearly the 'restaurant'. Most European trains have a small cafe, serving bad filtered coffee and month-old muffins at hyperinflated prices. This train, however, had a sit down restaurant, where we were led to a table and handed menus. Potato pancakes were followed by a huge omelette on a bed of baked potatoes. When an impatient, middle-aged man approached the cook, he was sternly but happily told, 'This is a restaurant! This is not KFC!'

It was a carriage on a Poland to Czech train.

At least it wasn't the night train, where I'm told many people have had their belongings stolen by enterprising thieves using sleeping gas to ensure their victims don't wake while their compartments are emptied. My fellow Krakow-Prague travellers, however, chose the night train, and when I went up to see them asleep in our dorm room, I found the only thing that went missing were John's tennis shoes. Which are still in a dorm room at the Ars Hostel.

And so I'm in Prague. This makes it eight countries in less than three weeks. And about eight hours sleep in three days. As my anonymous fellow traveller and I agreed somewhere in the Czech countryside over our non-KFC delightes - we're really not on holiday. But then, I am in Prague.