Sarah and I are in our hotel room outside Poznan, Poland, and I was finally able to wrestle the laptop away from all interested parties. (I think we probably should have brought 5 or 6 of them). Sarah told you all about our trip to Berlin, so I won't bore you with any more of the details. We've been traveling in Poland for the last few days (before that, we were on Germany's Baltic coast, towns called Rostock and Warnemunde), and it's been pretty interesting so far. A few things have surprised me:

1. The roads: pretty nice quality pavement, but many the highways/freeways/expressways are curvy, two-lane country roads with 43 mile-per-hour (70 k/h) speed limits and lots of construction stops that cause major traffic back ups. (I guess there's no getting around summer construction projects).

2. The scenery: much of Poland's countryside is dominated with grain fields covering rolling hills. Very bucolic. Very midwestern.

3. The exchange rate: very favorable to the dollar. Last night, we stayed in the nicest hotel room in which I've ever stayed--total cost: about $65.

4. The tourists: I think we're the only American's I've come across, but there have been lots of non-native Polish people and Northern Europeans wandering around. A few nights ago, we were in Gdansk, Poland, and Sopot, Poland (two touristy areas on Poland's Baltic coast), and there were 100's or maybe 1,000's of people milling on every street.

Later this morning, we're going to head to Wroclaw, Poland, and after spending the night there, we'll go on to Bratislava, Slovakia and then finally back to France. I just heard an ominous knock on the door signaling that it's time to go, so I'll post more (including pictures at some point) when I get a chance.