Travel Group

It's time to meet our travel group. To the left is Larry, then Jean (well, almost), her husband Rodney, then Dick and his wife Dee. My picture is to the right. Larry, Rod and Dee are cousins. Dee has done the major part of the planning and we're impressed with what she's done, as well as very thankful! Rod has been doing research on transportation in Europe and I have been trying to contact family members in Slovakia. As I've said below, my new friend Beata has been very helpful in finding people! As Dee works on the plans, the rest of us serve as cheerleaders and offer a suggestion now and then.

Larry is a geneticist who retired from the federal government about two years ago. He worked for the Environmental Protection Agency. Jean is also retired (most of us are). Rod is a retired engineer. Dick owns a Ford agency in Johnstown and Dee is a retired nurse educator. I am retired from teaching and working for the State of Maryland. We retirees smile a lot. It's a great life!

Plans Progress

My passport finally came! Larry's arrived through the mail about 2 weeks before mine, and I was beginning to wonder if they'd let me leave the country. Now that it's arrived, I really feel as though I'm on my way.

The time frame has changed a little. We will leave New York on Sept. 23 and come home on October 10. We're flying in to Budapest. It looks as if the plan is 2 nights in Budapest, 5 nights in Bratislava, 1 night in Brno, 1 night in Telc, 3 nights in Cesky Krumlov, and 4 nights in Prague. Lots of castles! I'm looking forward to some shopping also. We've paid for airline tickets, so things are now carved in stone.

Sunday we went to a presentation from the Czech Republic . We had seen a program on television in which they told about a marionette theater, so when I saw that there would be a local presentation, we certainly wanted to go. I thought I had understood from the TV program that the marionette plays were adult theater, but the people here scheduled it at 3:30 in the afternoon, so there were MANY children in the audience. The play was The 3 Musketeers, and was really too old for the very young audience, so maybe I was right. At any rate, we really enjoyed it! I had wondered about language and what they would do to overcome the fact that no one in the audience would speak Czech, but it was in Czech, with a little French (probably because the book is French) and some English subtitles projected on the top of the puppet theater. It was delightful and the language was not a problem at all, because the action portrayed the story. I hope we'll get a chance to see another while we're in Europe!

I'm thinking about what to wear. I want to take as little luggage as possible. I've read that the weather in Bratislava is the warmest in Slovakia, but I don't really know what that means for the end of September and beginning of October. I've asked Beata what she advises and am waiting for a reply. Am thinking of several pieces of that travel knit. I figure I can coordinate 4 pieces into many outfits. Then there's the jeans question.