KRAKOW: October, 2000

Book, book, book. Food, food, food. Bed, bed, bed.

This was how I jumped off the train in Krakow. A woman with a list and a mission.
While traveling I read, a lot. In restaurants, on trains and in hotel rooms. I was downing an average of five books a week as I scurried across Europe. I'd turned the last page of a novel at the end of the six-hour train ride from Olomouc to Krakow.

The railcar creaked to halt and I alighted in a city painted gold as the sun dipped. A promising vista, but I was without a hotel reservation, I was hungry and I had nothing to read. And that was before I learned some sort of business conference had most of the city's rooms booked.

Filmu.

Krakow sits on the Vistula River and, like Prague, was left fairly undamaged after World War II. The German army invaded Poland and used Krakow as their headquarters. The small city houses a population of just over seven-hundred thousand and is divided into walkable districts. The most engaging area is Stare Miasto (Old Town), a walled center enclosing a large market square attractive to tourists, locals, and certainly me.

In Old Town I searched for a hotel room and found a place for exactly one night. The next day, after much scrounging, I would luck into another room for two nights. Both hostelries charged thirty-eight dollars a night, including breakfast. A water closet down the hall meant no private bath, but I was used to that. Neither was comparable to my expansive apartment in Prague, but to even find a pillow on which to lay my head was fortuitous.

After a cursory glance at my first hotel room, I raced back out to the streets to find a bookstore. There were many, but none with books in my language. I whipped through four stores before spotting one lonely rack of English paperbacks. Not exactly bestsellers, but I was desperate and grabbed a couple of British spy adventures.

Room: check

Book: check

Dinner: Hmmm?

Twilight settled over Krakow. Restaurant windows framed in lace glowed amber in candlelight. Cobblestone walkways reflected lamplight and the scents of roasted meat floated from doorways. Couples swayed, teetered and giggled, presumably after pre-dinner cocktails. The city's atmosphere radiated warmth and giddiness.

A stone-walled restaurant caught my attention. Tapered candles stuck in wine bottles flickered with tiny flames, casting shadows off the ancient brick. Settled at a table with my book and a glass of wine, I exhaled with satisfaction. Small potatoes roasted on the hearth of an open fireplace in the center of the room. Customers helped themselves to tender charred morsels. I dined on borscht, pork stuffed with prunes, two glasses of red wine, mineral water, cappuccino and as many of those potatoes as I could pluck from the hearth.

The next morning my I started my exploration of Old Town. As in the Czech Republic, a youthful exuberance resonated from cafes offering internet services. Posters hanging on city walls advertised all sorts of artistic performances and gallery viewings. I trekked up Wawel Hill to Wawel Castle and Wawel Cathedral, and further on to the Jewish district with its synagogues and cemeteries.

Across the main square, pigeons fluttered into nooks and onto windowsills of apartments and offices. I rested on a bench alongside the Vistula, munching on an apple and a homemade pretzel, salty and warm, I'd picked up in a farmer's market. Under the shade of a stone archway, I studied the details of the architecture around me. I was grateful this jewel of a city had not been obliterated in the war — but the next day I would see, up close, the handiwork of the Nazi regime.

In a short telephone conversation with William, it was impossible to describe all that I'd seen in these three cities. The routine of his workdays continued unchanged and he seemed content with that.

"I miss you."

"Me too."

OLOMOUC: October, 2000

Olomouc, a town with a population of a hundred and four thousand, had been recommended as an agreeable stop on my way to Krakow. Across from its train station, a charmless, gray-slab high-rise hotel waited for me. For a mere fourteen dollars I booked a clean, top-floor room with pristine white sheets and a cozy duvet. Breakfast in the downstairs dining room was included. It became increasingly clear that prices in the Czech Republic would soon change as mobs of world travelers discovered these jewel-box villages.

The previous night, I had celebrated my exit from Prague with a farewell dinner. I cast myself in a movie from the nineteen-sixties: imagine Elizabeth Taylor circa "The Last Time I Saw Paris." A dining room, grandly ornate in gold and red, with heavy drapes framing floor-to-ceiling windows. An all-male wait staff on guard, straight-backed in black suits and white gloves, ready to serve.

Each course was elegantly ported across the room on a silver tray, then flamboyantly swooped to eye level as a shining cover was pulled away to reveal its contents. The entree was a dish of braised meat glazed in a rosy sauce, with a parsley sprig daintily adding color. Was I underdressed in my black corduroy pants and black sweater? The ambience screamed for a jade cocktail dress and strings of pearls.

Solitary travel sits well with me. The opportunity to silently observe and to embrace the challenge of getting from here to there. Reading books on long train trips, no problem. I'm fine with every aspect — except the evening meal. It's at the end of the day, as I sip a glass of wine and peer out a dark window, that the pangs hit and I want to be with him. To hear of his day and tell of mine.

Olomouc, perched over the Morava River, was delightfully free of tourists. A small town full of churches and palaces. The city, painted in pastel tones, spoke of a peaceful existence. Pale blues, yellows and creamy stone blended with windows trimmed in gold or sienna. The October light cast a pink tinge on the masonry. Stone trumpeters balanced on rooftops next to statues of bishops solemnly blessing the city down below.

Cobblestone streets and a village center with a towering fountain welcomed me on this warm, sunny day. Small store windows featuring fine Czech glassware and china clamored for attention. Workmen repaired streets, carpenters remodeled apartments and schoolchildren chased pigeons. Old men in hats and women in headscarves chatted in small groups.

A young tour guide in Potsdam, Germany, explained a social chasm that had occurred since the fall of the wall. Under the Communist regimes, people would retire by fifty years of age and the state would take care of them. As a new democracy replaced the old system, those in their late forties or early fifties panicked. Their children jubilantly stomped the Berlin Wall to pieces while the older generation was preparing to end their working lives. But now they faced...what? Who would pay their rent, their medical bills? Who would take care of them?

Suddenly, with a long future ahead, fifty looked far too young to call it quits. To make matters worse, as capitalist elements worked their way into society, an older citizen would notice a neighbor who suddenly owned a big-screen television, or a laptop computer, or a new car. A social competitiveness closed in.

The twentysomethings thrilled at no longer being forced to speak the Russian language imposed on them. Their vistas opened to include the entire world via speedy internet connections. Jazzy, stylish blue jeans and all kinds of movies and music showed up. Nightclubs sprang open and the possibilities for variety in higher education spoke of serious money in their futures.

But for the middle-aged, things could not have looked bleaker.

In Berlin, striking laborers camped in tents by the Brandenburg Gate. They argued for higher wages, but construction chiefs could hire new immigrants for a fraction of their pay. It would take years, perhaps generations, for these societies to adapt to their new democracies.

Olomouc townspeople huddled with worried faces as pigeons flapped for crumbs. Guilty twinges grappled at me when I ordered up a dinner of schnitzel, salad, beer and a cappuccino...for a total of four dollars. The area could benefit from an onslaught of tourists. I resolved to stop my joyous, secret buzz whenever I discovered empty towns. These places need an influx of western cash, not just western idealism. I left a hundred percent tip, and that seemed measly.

KUTNÁ HORA: October, 2000 (Part 2)

After those two unsettling tours, I joined townsfolk lunching under maple trees at a pizza restaurant. Biting into a slice of thin-crust basil and cheese, I counted myself lucky not to have lived in a time of rich Burghers and poor peasants staving off the plague as crazy monks concocted macabre art installations.

By five o'clock the autumn air cooled, the robin's-egg blue sky had deepened into navy, and I zipped up my sweater. It was time to return to Prague. Reading on an outdoor train station bench while occasionally checking the track for oncoming engines, I regretted not bringing a heavier jacket.

After an hour, I hopped on to a warm train car. A dark landscape passed by outside my window. Home, home, home to Prague, the wheels rumbled....Home, home, home to my little apartment. Good day. Weird but interesting.

A young blonde conductor moved down the row, clicking her metal hole-punch on passenger tickets. She smiled and took mine. I was so content thawing out my chilled body and fantasizing about a hot bowl of borscht that I didn't notice her expression until she rattled off something in decidedly stressed Czech. She shook both her head and my ticket in my face. I was on the wrong train, barreling off in the wrong direction.

Hovno.

The train stopped to kick me off into the middle of God-knows-where in the Czech Republic. A station sat empty but for a lonely ticket seller, a young man with about three words of English to match my three words of Czech. His few were mostly taken up chastising himself. Apparently, his wife had been nagging him. She say, learn English! He wore a pained look and banged his fist on the counter. I consoled him and considered patting his hand, but that seemed a tad forward. The guy really needed a hug, but we weren't going there.

Okay, look...we'll figure this out. I need a ticket to Prague. I have to get to Prague...Praha...tonight. My finger tapped at my watch. He attempted to explain that it would be two tickets, two trains, and not for another hour.

Travel is a leap of faith. Despite being cold and tired, and despite the nightmare visuals from Kutná Hora in my brain, I trusted somehow, some way, this young man would get me back to Prague.

For an hour, no one else came in or out of the station. What a lonely job for this guy...late at night in the middle of...where, exactly? We occasionally eyed one another and shared the self-conscious smiles of people who do not speak the same language. We bobbed our heads like popinjays until I heard the welcome squeal of train brakes. My friend pointed and nodded and I danced an international goodbye polka before jumping aboard.

I finally arrived back in Prague later that night, my travel confidence soaring with the surefootedness borne of surviving on foreign soil. I remembered my trepidation back in my Los Angeles apartment. And I thought of William back in our Berlin apartment.

Was he eating a sausage with mustard before going to sleep? Was he wondering where I was? I wanted to say Guess what I saw today and I got so lost in the dark of night and it was so cold and the language undid me but I made my way back and here I am in a Prague restaurant eating pork medallions in cognac sauce with boiled potatoes and a glass of red wine all for seven dollars. And I miss you so, so much.

KUTNÁ HORA: October, 2000 (Part 1)

With Prague as a home base, it was my intention to visit a couple of small towns in the Czech Republic. The next morning I boarded a train for a day trip to Kutná Hora, a medieval town settled by a group of monks in the year 1142 and well-known for its silver mines.

In his hilarious account of European travel, "Neither Here Nor There," Bill Bryson writes of this same borough. I remembered Mr. Bryson's admonition to avoid, at all costs, one particular and gory monkish site. Duly noted and thank you, Bill.

I disembarked and, unsure of where the train station was in relation to the actual town, trailed a group of Czech students on their own sightseeing excursion. Surely they would lead me to the town....Oh, hey...where are we going...? In there...? Okay, then—

And I landed in the exact spot I wanted to avoid. The one place Bill Bryson alerted his readers to shun: the Sedlec Ossuary, or the bone church of Kutná Hora.

The Black Plague of the thirteenth century swept across Europe, killing millions. Here, in the town of Kutná Hora, a monk went completely cuckoo as bodies piled high. With the assistance of his half-blind brother monks, he constructed a ghastly "holy" shrine to the victims...using the bones of the dead.

I found myself trapped in this stifling, horrific and cramped display. Stuck behind a gaggle of giggling teens, retreat was not an option. Forced forward, I tried not to even glance at the bone chandeliers, the bone candelabras, the bone chalices and the hundreds of skulls hanging from the ceiling. I failed.

Hard to miss the cavernous holes where eyeballs used to be. I pushed my way through the crowd, out the back door and into a fenced graveyard to suck in the clear October air and....good Lord, it went on. Skeletons of bony scarecrows were everywhere. As if randomly dropped, skulls lay staring at a blue sky. The joint was seriously creepy and foreshadowed my further misadventures in Kutná Hora.

Climbing hilly territory through the picturesque and walled village, I arrived at a gothic, fortressed peak. A painted sign advertised visits into a defunct silver mine. The ticket seller informed me the current tour would be led by a German-speaking guide, and perhaps I would be better served by a private English guide. Yes, please and thank you I agreed, using my entire Czech vocabulary.

Dressed in a white raincoats and hardhats, we began our excursion. Glass cases held exhibits of miners' clothing. Elfin leather boots and child-size chainmail leggings made the point that the adult miners were tiny in stature, and the low-ceilinged caves further proved it. The silver mine tour of Kutná Hora is not for the claustrophobic.

Similar to my experience in the bony chapel, there was no going back. The caverns got progressively narrower to the point that my backpack bumped off the walls. My guide pointed down, down, down to a pale and creamy pool of greenish water. He explained a typical miner's week required six days of hard labor in pitch-black conditions, and each work day consisted of a fourteen-hour shift. Such a workload would cause great thirst, but it would be a terrible mistake to drink the water far below. Highly toxic, it would result in sure death.

Between the mad monks and tiny overworked miners, I was privately calling Kutná Hora...Kutná Horror.

PRAGUE: October, 2000 (Part 2)

Prague, mostly left intact after World War II, is often described as the Paris of the nineteen-thirties. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the city's fairytale architecture and the adolescent exuberance of its citizens have quickly made it a must-see for travelers. Hollywood started making movies in the Czech capital, and one could see why. Prague has castles, a winding river, and stone bridges, including the impressive Charles Bridge. Also, Prague is cheap — almost as cheap as the Paris of the thirties, I'll say. For thirty-four dollars a night, I snagged an entire apartment for myself.

Arriving late in the evening, I was hungry and tired after navigating my way from the train station to the pension. Its front door opened into a small foyer. Not completely sure I was in the correct place, I crept down a hallway like a suspicious cat. Past a small kitchen with a table set for two was a door leading to a bed-sitting room with couches, chairs, a black-and-white television and two large beds. Shuttered windows opened to a view of the city. I looked around, fully expecting others to show up and share my new home.

I went back outside in search of a light dinner. In a dark, lamp-lit pub, I quaffed a large draft beer, ate a bowl of onion soup and dark bread...all for a buck and a half. Maybe the Paris of the eighteen-thirties, I was thinking.

Breakfast, included in the apartment's nightly rate, became a major highlight. Every morning I rode the elevator to the top floor for breakfast. Actually, "banquet" would be more apt: old-world sideboards laden with platters of cheeses, cold meats, bananas, pears and apples. Baskets filled with breads of all shapes. Jams, jellies and blocks of creamy butter. Boxes of cereals and containers of creamy (read: high-fat) yogurt in myriad flavors. I put aside all thoughts of an American diet and dug in.

Fueled and sated, it was time to hit the streets of Prague. I wandered over bridges and through stone portals into secret gardens where large, abstract sculptures sat under trees dripping with yellow and red leaves. With no one around, I sat on a bench and opened my novel for a quiet read.

Later, I walked through Staré Město (Old Town), with its market square and shops filled with amber bracelets and necklaces. Its cobblestone streets led me past pastel-colored buildings covered in posters for theatre, music and dance productions. Outdoor cafés welcomed both locals and tourists with frosty beers or caffè lattes.

Old Town's Jewish neighborhood, with an ancient synagogue surrounded by a black iron fence, brought to mind the evil cleansing masterminded by a Führer to the north. An outdoor farmers' market overflowing with peppers, apples, breads, meats and cheeses reminded me of Communist food lines of the not-too-distant past.

Now Prague hummed with internet cafes. Political and artistic voices were free to express opinions. Like I said, it had an adolescent charm. I saw a new generation forsaking cynicism, anxious to participate in the world at large. As in Berlin, the city's young people embraced the English language, and fast. Certainly quicker than I could learn Czech.

I took a lunch break at a cottage-style restaurant next to the Charles Bridge. Seated at a wooden table, I looked out a window with diamond-shaped panes. I wrote in my journal, and like a character out of a fairytale, dined on a cheese plate and a bowl of cabbage soup with a glass of wine.

PRAGUE: October, 2000 (Part 1)

I spent a couple of days doing laundry, filled our hotel room fridge with groceries, cuddled my boyfriend, kissed him goodbye, and left on a foray into two countries. I purchased train tickets to the cities of Prague and Olomouc in the Czech Republic. These would be followed by visits to Krakow and Auschwitz in Poland.

The train pulled away from the modern landscape of Berlin and... here it was, the Europe of pure fantasy. Mountains in autumn light rose high and I pressed my cheek against the train window to see...to see...trees abundant in red and gold.

The train sped over trestles across winding rivers and we rolled straight into the picture books of Hans Christian Anderson...castles. Also embedded into the green hillsides were homes cut in gingerbread patterns and villas like small palaces with turrets. Their shuttered windows opened wide to inhale the clear October air.

A tiny crumpled woman sat across from me in the train compartment and smiled. I nodded a silent greeting and she proffered a wicker basket. I looked inside at the apples she was offering. I chose one and bit into the fresh-picked sweet-and-tart fruit. Without a word, we shared. The trip to Prague lasted four-and-a-half hours. I could have skimmed through the countryside for days.

Doesn't he miss doing this? Isn't he curious?

With me away from Berlin, William worked, ate the food in the fridge, worked, watched television, worked, read, worked, and slept. We would exchange brief phone calls. I felt slightly guilty gallivanting around the Czech Republic, but he assured me he was fine and not missing traveling.

Is it possible to be so different and be a couple?

BERLIN: October, 2000 (Part 8)

When William and I first started dating, we spent a lot of time at my place. Finally, it came time for an overnight in his house and I drove across town full of curiosity. He greeted me at the door with a big smile as he held tight to his rambunctious dog's collar. Stinky was a mere pup, overly exuberant, and shot his snout right for my crotch. Nice to meet you too.

Once inside, William led me on a tour of his house. Basic, white walls, exceptionally clean, big television, red couch...a guy's place. I noticed all the window blinds were shut tight. No light. It would take years for me to truly understand the depth of William's need to travel under the radar. Incrementally, it became clear to me.

His clothes fit two sizes too large and other than occasional gatherings with his high school friends, he didn't socialize. After attending a party or dinner with me, he'd question everything he said or did and then cringe if he believed he'd made a misstep.

I didn't know how to respond to these insecurities because I thought he was amazing. What I saw was a confident man willing to be alone. I saw a man sure of himself at work and a man who could make me laugh as I wandered the world, spilling self-doubt. It can take a long time to see the whole picture.

He'd spent the day of my first visit cleaning his house, but what was really impressive was when he started opening cabinets and cupboards. I was at the latter end of healing my hot wax burns, but William wanted to be certain I had all I needed. In the bathroom he showed me bandages, gauze and ointment for my injuries. In the kitchen he showed me my favorite snacks I'd mentioned in passing over our time working together. There were Pringles, bagels, saltines and ginger ale. In the fridge he had angel food cake, whipped cream and strawberries.

William listened. William took note. I saw, for the first time in my life, that love was an action more than it was a notion or a feeling or a squiggly rush up the arms.

On that anniversary night in Berlin, I recalled our fiery first date and looked at the regret etched across his face. I read his love note, threw my arms around him and hugged hard. It's a "doing" thing, this love business. Also, I was about to leave Berlin for another adventure, and I was already missing him.