July 31, 2010 The way home and musings

We woke up at 6 a.m. in Warsaw and couldn't go back to sleep. We finally got up at 7:00, showered and went down to breakfast. We didn't have to have our luggage out until 8:30 and to the bus by 9:30. We were taken to the airport, got checked in and went through security and then had to wait until 11:35 to board our plane. We got on and were supposed to take off at 11:55, but someone didn't show and they had to find 4 pieces of luggage and then reschedule takeoff. We were about 50 minutes late leaving, but they were able to make up most of the time and we were only about 15 minutes late arriving at Heathrow. We had to get our boarding passes and go through security again before we could go to the gate. Then we had to wait for the gate to be listed. As it happened our gate was in another terminal so we had to take the tram and then walk a fair distance to the gate. We were checked through to get on the plane and I was informed that I had to be taken down for another security check of my carryon luggage. What luck! I guess my boarding pass just happened to be marked for a random check. They went through all my stuff and I was frisked (that was sure fun - not). The flight left on time (4:10 p.m.) and we followed the sun all the way to Las Vegas, arriving at about 6:45 p.m. We went through customs and waited for our luggage, caught a bus to the terminal where St. George Express was waiting and then had to wait there until everyone with reservations arrived. We left about 9:15 and got to Howard Johnson's in St George at 12:15. By the time we got our luggage off the van, found our car and drove home it was going on to 1:00 a.m. We figured that we had been up for 28 hours and boy did that bed look good! There is no place like HOME!



Some random observations:



Eastern Europe is beautiful, green, generally quite cool and wet.

It is a pain to have to scrounge up coins of whichever country you are in to go to the bathroom!

The food we had in all places we went was really good and it was fun to see the differences and similarities from one country to the next.

Everywhere we ate, the breads were delicious.

Lots of people smoke.

Drinking is part of their way of life. All restaurants always offered beer and wine. At one restaurant in Warsaw there was a group of people at a large table with two big cylinders of beer, each with a tap on it, right on the table.

Even though these countries are part of the European Union, some of them haven't converted to euros and so it was necessary to exchange some money into the local currency. This is a great pain as we had no idea exactly what we were spending. We found out when we got back and checked our credit card charges. We were told roughly how to convert, but it is hard to know exactly. The euro is easy to figure as 1 euro = $1.30, but who knows 50,000 Forint. Sheesh!

It is easy to get "ripped off", especially when you are having a hard time converting the money. We had lunch that was just 2 sandwiches, nothing fancy, and 2 bottles of water for what later we figured cost us $45. Ouch!

It is very admirable what these countries have done to rebuild their cities from the devastation brought on by both World War II and the following years of Soviet/Communist rule. When you see what socialism did to these countries for over 40 years, it is pretty scary. I think we need to be very watchful of what is happening right under our noses in America that is taking us down the slippery slope, especially under our current administration. Beware America! My sister-in-law and her family were living in Budapest, Hungary and they recognize and see all the signs of socialism and they know from first-hand experience what it is to live under that type of government. We must not let it happen here!