Mark’s Blog

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A Jarring Experience in Munich

Dachau: A day I will never forget. Kadyn and I toured the Dachau Concentration Camp through a self-guided audio tour. You had to be 13, so Kinnon had to stay back. At times I had to ask Kadyn if she was doing ok, as the images were graphic. I almost broke down a few times: walking through the “bunker,” basically the jail within the jail where people were placed in standing-only cells, “the firing wall” was their view to the...

Get to the Choppa! Austria We Go!

Vienna, Austria was ok. Again, we had limited time here but it gave me a “just another old European city” vibe: lots of old buildings and history but no “wow” factor. Nothing that I could not stop staring at and nothing that I was excited to see (re: St. Stephen’s Cathedral was definitely quite beautiful). It is an old sleepy city in a way, where you walk and gawk, eat supper and go to bed early. We don’t want to...

Buda-Pesh

Buda-Pesh…still feels weird saying it that way, but do as the Hungarians do, right? I remember Kelly Schwartz, who served here in the past with the Canadian Infantry and called it Buda-Pesh. I asked him finally, “why do you say it like that?” His response, “that’s how you properly say it”… I had no clue what to expect from Budapest. Honesty, I dropped it on the itinerary as we were close to it from a destination we wanted to see,...

Party City in Prague

Prague was beautiful, similar to Edinburgh, with narrow streets and magnificent monuments. However, it had more color, literally, as the buildings were colorful, and more youthful energy… The city buzzed with young people aged 15-22, who appeared quite young to be there alone or in small groups. While the legal drinking age in Czechia is 18, I guess ID checks are rare. At night, the city became busier, with clubs, casinos, strip clubs, and parties flooding the streets. Prague had...

Life

En route to our 7th country in the last 27 days, you start to notice several similarities despite the miles that separate each nation: food & drink, community, social problems, daily routines, and technology, just to name a few. We are all experiencing similar lives: getting groceries, connecting with people, eating well, laughing together over drinks, walking past the homeless and using our phones as our distractors. Instead of driving to work, Europeans use the metro; instead of drinking in...