Bill and I got home about 90 minutes ago. We’re both pretty tired and busy with settling in, so I’m not going to try to write about the trip today. I will save that for tomorrow, which is usually the day of the week when I wash the sheets. Since we haven’t been home, and I washed the sheets just before we left, I won’t need to do that chore this week. 😊

This trip was pretty long, and it encompassed visits to areas in four countries. Each place we visited was special in its own way. I took a lot of pictures, although we didn’t do a lot of “touristy” stuff. We mainly drank a lot of beer, did a lot of walking, and enjoyed each other’s company.

I think my favorite stop was Krakow, followed closely by Stary Smokovec, but each place was pretty awesome. We had great weather, too, until the tail end of our journey.

The drive home was kind of yucky, especially when we stopped for lunch at a rest stop. It was just beyond the Hessen state line, and the rest stop was one of the weirdest laid out ones I’ve yet encountered in Germany or elsewhere.

When we got out of the car, it was raining… that kind of cold, light, but fast drizzle, that gets you wet in a hurry. I noticed a woman sitting in the car next to ours, wanting to get out of her vehicle. I hurried to close the door, and then Bill and I had to wait for a couple of cars to pass.

By the time we found the front door of the rest stop, we were really wanting to get out of the rain. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as easy as we’d hoped. One could enter the building on either side of the building, and the two entrances were not easy to get to without walking the long way around the building.

The side we happened to be on had a single door, with a sidewalk leading up to it. For some reason, there was a barrier on the opposite side of the walkway from the building, meaning that everyone had to walk in kind of single file.

As we were heading toward the door, rushing to get out of the rain, a woman and her daughter were coming out of the building. The girl, who looked to be about nine or ten years old, stopped in front of me and suddenly vomited on the sidewalk.

She was under shelter, but I was standing there watching her throw up on the sidewalk. Her mom was right behind her, holding her hair. Fortunately, it wasn’t a lot of puke, but the two of them kind of took their time, and blocked the egress into the building. I felt sorry for the girl, but I’m sure my face registered irritation, because I needed to pee, and we were about to have lunch.

The woman and her peaked daughter finally got out of the way, so we could enter the rest stop. But once we were in the building, we encountered a large group of elderly folks. I suddenly realized they must have been on the busses that were parked outside.

To get to the toilets, we had to follow a series of signs, and go down a couple of flights of steps. As we were trying to go down, they were coming back up to the dining room.

Fortunately, there wasn’t a wait for a stall. In fact, an attendant was even cleaning the toilets as I was trying to find one. And these toilets were the self-cleaning kind anyway, which I don’t actually like that much, because the seats are usually still wet from being automatically cleaned whenever I encounter them.

Once we finished “doing our business”, we had to maneuver through more throngs of people having lunch. But then, after we ordered our crummy Burger King sandwiches, the crowd dissipated, and the place was somewhat sedate.

Unfortunately, the “mess” was still on the sidewalk where the poor queasy lass had left it. I started feeling kind of nauseated myself as we passed it. I was really afraid I was going to sympathy hurl. Fortunately, I managed to get over my disgust. That was a good thing, because I almost lost breakfast at the beginning of our drive home, thanks to a coughing fit.

Anyway… it’s good to be home. I look forward to seeing Noyzi and Charlie in a little while, and writing about the new things we saw and did on this long awaited vacation to Eastern Europe. But… most of all… I look forward to sleeping in my own bed. I really missed my soft bed while we were away. And now that the weather has turned to shit, maybe that will also mean the mosquitoes are done, too!

So… with that, I’m going to close this post. See you tomorrow with my tales from the trip! I promise they won’t be as gross as this one is. 😊