Well, the hiking never got discernibly better than that pilgrimage to Marianska Hora. No, that’s unfair – the hiking trails in the Tartra mountains in Poland and Slovakia are excellent, it’s just that I was still shaking off that cold from Vienna and when it wasn’t actually raining, the rain clouds were circling ominously above me. So after about five days of trying to convince myself that it wasn’t really that bad, I spat the dummy and moved on to Krakow. Like Prague, Krakow was never bombed during WWII, so the old town still has that fairy-tale charm that tourists like me find so irresistible. Sure, all the other European cities have restored their historic buildings and look very impressive (I was certainly ready to emigrate to Vienna when I was there) but Krakow shows you what the old Europe really looked like. For example St Stephen’s in Vienna has a big old spire at the front, but St Mary’s in Krakow not only has that spire, but about ten little spire-lets erupting around it. Even when the facade of buildings in Krakow is falling off, it has much more detail than the maybe 30-year-old facades in Vienna. Also, beer in Krakow is much cheaper than in Vienna. It’s got everything going for it!

Auschwitz
About an hour outside Krakow by bus is the Polish town of Oswiecim, the home to the largest Nazi concentration camp, Auschwitz. There are two separate camps that are now part of a museum. Auschwitz I was the first camp, converted from a Polish army barracks. There are about 30 one- and two-storey brick buildings and tall birch trees lining the straight paths through the camp. It felt completely at odds with how I expected to feel in Auschwitz. Take out the tourists and you could be in a university campus. Well, except for the message on the iron gates above the camp entrance - Arbeit Macht Frei, or Work Makes You Free.

Three kilometres away is the second, much larger camp Auschwitz II - Birkenau. The second I walked through the gates I knew exactly where I was: it's a factory. First of all, the place is vast - much bigger than the Melbourne CBD. It took me 15 minutes to walk along the railway line from the gate to the ruins of the gas chambers at the back of the camp, and the place is many times wider than it is deep. From the very middle of the camp it feels like you could pick a direction and walk there for as long as you like.

Some of the prisoners were housed in brick barracks to the left of the railway line, but most were stored in hastily-constructed wooden barracks with chimneys to the right of the railway. I had the same sense of instant recognition when I saw those wooden barracks - they were stables. As it turns out, they were designed to hold 50 horses and were used to house between 800 and 1000 prisoners. The fleeing Nazis set fire to the barracks so most are gone, but on the right there is a forest of the brick chimneys stretching off into the distance.

I came with pretty grim expectations, but I was still shocked a few times. A sign said that the bodies of prisoners who tried to escape were left by the entrance for about a week. The other prisoners would march past the bodies twice a day, to and from work. And where were they left? This wall right in front of me. Or the ruthless efficiency of the way they exploited the prisoners, even after their death. After the prisoners were killed in the gas chambers, their bodies were taken past a dentist who would remove the gold from their fillings and bridgework on the way to the crematorium. And not just that they thought to do this - they designed the gas chambers to make this as easy as possible. Or the conditions of the camp - three levels of wooden bunks with a fourth level sleeping on the floor. The prisoners would fight over who had to sleep on the floor, because it meant sleeping in the diarrhea of everyone above them.

But even knowing these details of the atrocities, I just couldn't really comprehend what really happened here. I could imagine, maybe, a hundred people being gassed at once, but not the three thousand that the Nazis gassed at once. And the million victims in total? No way. Part of it is that the camp itself has changed since the war. There is no mud, only long grass and flowering weeds. The sky is now clear, the smoke and stench of the continuous cremation is long gone. From the gas chambers I walked further into the back of the camp to get away from everyone else and try to digest the idea that not only did it happen, but it happened right here. But to be honest, it still seemed surreal. I saw photos of Jews walking towards the gas chambers along the exact same road I was standing on, but … but I was there 60 years later as a tourist. Maybe it's a good thing that I can comprehend the Holocaust, can't digest the immense death that occurred. Maybe we should never try to understand why it happened, just know that it did.

The clearest memory I will take away from Auschwitz is sitting on the grass at the back of the camp looking at the gas chambers through the trees and the long grass, everything quiet except for birds singing to each other overhead.

I’ve received two interpretations of my pilgrimage. First is Mick from Canberra who thinks the whole event can be summed up as: "God gets His own Back on Unrepentant Atheist". Or perhaps "God 1, Harder 0".

Next is my housemate from Melbourne, Matt, who has broadened the scope of the request to sledge the entire three years I spent in Melbourne. With these instincts for the pay-out, you can see why Matt and I got along. Safe in his new job, Matt also seems to be venting about our illustrious and fine but mostly former employer. Take it away, Matt:

Ooooh lights.

This is a three dimensional juxstaposition of an antithesis of the bible story in which Peter denies Jesus three times before the cock crows, against your personal struggle along Maslow’s hierarchy of needs towards self actualisation, against your self loathing justifications for having remained an employee of pwc, err, Monday, err whatever, for tooo god damn long. (There can be little question that god is damning you for this.)

And the fact that you never got to root your mother.

Let us deal with the pilgrimage first. Contrary to Peter’s effort, you actually proclaimed your faith by continuing along the pilgrimage despite loss of direction on three instances. This explains why there was no need for the cock to crow. I can only hypothesise that somewhere close by, there was indeed a cock, but its carefully considered silence understandably failed to elicit the cognitive trigger necessary for you to have perceived its significance.

Enter your professional career. The first instance of you being at a loss was undoubtedly Tampa. It is at this point that you first began to regret, nay, resent the enterprise as a whole - along with 90% of its constituent parts. But we digress. The second instance conspiring to loss of soul was Norwich. You undertake the role of project bitch. By this time you have fulfilled your survival needs, being the recipient of a roof over you head for as long as you care to sit at your desk and takeaway food at your beckon call. Your focus turns to social needs, and your inner emptiness combined with dosed schlackings by project management embitter your enterprise to you further. You cut a deal with the devil (oddly enough to buy your soul back), get off Norwich, try and get back on track, but ironically find yourself on Career Point. This is the last - and most complete - loss. The eloquent, poetic irony is that Career Point is un-overstatably pointless to your (anyone’s) career and it is this that finally illuminates your only course of action. Bail. Thus signifying your total exhaustion.

I must confess I know not what the nettle is doing in there? Was Jung a horticulturalist? Can someone advise?

Moving quickly now
because I have a lot of ground to cover. When I last updated you, I was in Dubrovnik, way down the bottom of the Croatian coast. You remember, I kept going on about the water like I was from Alice Springs or something. Well I got to know the Croatian bus system pretty well over the next few days -- it took two days of travelling before I was back up north, in the Slovenian capital, Ljubljana. It's a cute little town, made all the cuter because I have absolutely no idea how to pronounce it. I fell back on my old trick of just saying the name confidently and fast -- it's gotten me by so far. The town reeked of the Austrian monarchs, the Habsburgs, with pale pastel townhouses and cobbled squares everywhere you turned around.

Walking along the river one night, I stopped to look at a menu in English. My attention was pretty quickly grabbed by the range of steaks they served: Turkey, Pork, Beef, Veal, Horse, Stallion. Yes, really. I kept moving past that particular establishment, but later in the night I ate at a fast-food place called "Hot Horse." While I wasn't so starving, I ordered a "burger" and didn't ask any questions.

So then to Bled. I've avoided using the word until now, but there is simply no other way to describe Bled: quaint. Some quaint little towns around a quaint little lake. A quaint castle on a quaint hill. A quaint church on a quaint island in the quaint lake. Quaintness (whatever it really is) oozes out of every pore of this gorgoeous little town. It hangs ever-present in the air, like the rain did for the whole time I was there.

I promptly met an American named Andy as we were both kicked off the bus into the aforementioned rain. Making the best of a bad situation, we spent the next few hours in various bars waiting for the rain to stop. Andy is studying to become a psychiatrist and I am a pseudo-intellectual, so the conversation took some profound turns (Is work a means to an ends? Do you know yourself? Can you ever escape yourself? What is the purpose of life? Do you believe in love? What is that strange hook thing on a Swiss army knife for? Should we have another beer?) but all the better for it.

Next on my travel checklist was Poland, but I had used my visas for Czech and Hungary so I had to carefully work my way through Austria and Slovakia so I didn't run afoul of any of the power-tripping, I-have-a-gun-as-well-as-a-stamp-let's-just-see-which-one-I-decide-to-use border police. Happily, this meant I got to spend a couple more days in Vienna. I had also developed a pretty disguisting head cold by this point, so I was keen to just take it easy for a few days. One thing I did find time to do in Vienna, though, was go to the opera again. I only paid 2 euro for my ticket this time, and I saw Carmen, which is a very famous opera indeed. The staging was once again fantastic, and the actress playing Carmen was suitably raunchy. Unfortunately, though, my cold was at its most disguisting during the performance. Just after the second intermission it switched gears from storing as much mucus as possible, to evacuating it from every available orifice. It was made even more pleasant because my tissues were in my day pack, safely stored in the bag check. Strike one for me.

The road to salvation
The next adventure took me right into the heart of Slovakia, far away from the English-speaking comforts of Vienna. I was avoiding the Czech Republic, but also I wanted to do some hiking in the Slovak Tatra mountains. But on my way there, I stayed one night in Levoca, a pointless little town which Lonely Planet recommends for some reason beyond me. It does have some old city walls and some big-arse churches inside, but it takes more than that to impress me these days.

One redeeming feature of Levoca, though, is the large Church of Marianska Hora overlooking the town, which is the destination of Slovakia's largest Catholic pilgrimige every year. The night I spent there happened to coincide with it, and I saw thousands of pilgrims up on the hill around the church. I had sleep on my mind that night, but the next day I set off with a convert's zeal to climb this little puppy. The real pilgrims went there looking for salvation or enlightenment, and what the hell, I could do with a bit of that myself.

As it turns out, this particular road to englightenment was signposted. But it still didn't help me. I got very lost three times on the 2km hike to the church, basically circling the town the first time. The second time I got much closer, walking around the hill instead of up it. I back-tracked and took a road up the hill until I saw that I was running parallel with the real path to the church. Rather than back-track yet again, I decided to cut across the field that separated me from the path to salvation. The farmer had just harvested the hay from the field, so it all looked too easy. At the end of the field, though, I came across a gulley of thick, thorny-looking plant things. (My rule is that I don't learn the name of any animal or plant I can't eat.) Just to set the scene for you, it was a hot day. I was wearing shorts. But I was not turning back at this late stage and I was definitely visiting this bloody salvation church. Dammit, onwards!

I spotted a reasonable route, down some thick-ish plant life to a lower field, and then an easy stroll up through some long grass, so I proceeded. I waded through the first forest of the little buggers, trying to stamp them out of my way before I moved my leg forward, but not encountering much in the way of success. I came out of the other side with a few thorns stuck in me and a lot of irritated stings. Fuck. I picked out the thorns, and at a loss of what to do about the stings, I just poured some of my water over my shins. Surprising, the stinging sensation was replaced by a cold and damp unpleasentness. It was an improvement, and good enough for me. Onward. The next stretch of the outdoors was just some tall grass, so tossing out all my Austrailan programming about poisonous snakes I bounded through it and into the clear, right up to the path leading to the church.

Well, it wasn't a path. It was a road. Made of fucking bitumen. It was built so cars could go up there, while there I was, schelpping around Farmer Brown's poison ivy plantation trying to get in. A few choice comments on this turn of events escaped my lips, and I set up the hill, even more fucking determined to get to the top.

Now this last part of the hill was really steep. I climbed a few mountains in the week after this little episode, and I never encountered a climb that was so relentless and exhausting. After the parking lot (The Parking Lot!!) there was a rest station every 20m or so, and I used most of these little fucking beauties.

Finally I made it. I collapses on the lawn in front of the church, sweat pouring out of me, getting into my eyes and smudging my glasses, my shirt sticking to me front and back. A sqaudron of flies set in around me, probably sensing imminent death. I did, however, have a nice view of the town and the gently rolling hills for my efforts. So then I just sat back and let my mind meditate, free to find enlightenment, the secret of life, and so forth. But no matter how much I tried to ascend to the Zen plane, I always came back to the one thought. I. Hate. Fucking. Slovakia.

So there we have it. Man performs religious pilgrimige, gets incredibly lost three times, is stung by nettle on return to path, is exhausted by path when he finds it, regrets whole enterprise. Can anyone provide a meaningful interpretation of the symbolism of this tale? No really, bring it on. I'll post the responses here, so your name could go up in lights.

All That You Can't Leave Behind
I don't know what U2 were talking about with this as the name of their last album; probably something deeply spiritual or whatnot. For me, though, there are a few material things that I literally haven't been able to leave behind, despite my best efforts. These nine little buggers have followed me around from Florence to Dubrovnik, and everywhere in between. Not even in the smallest towns have I been able to lose them. In no particular order:

1. Crap western pop songs played too loud in every public space -- Including Eminem in a Zagreb restaurant (they actually turned the radio up when it came on), Kylie Mingoue everywhere, at all times (and not just her latest song, either. I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Especially for you, her apparently timeless duet with Jason Donovan, in the international ferry terminal in Bratislava).
2. Pepsi or Coca-Cola -- you can lose one but not both.
3. the Magnum ice-cream -- Different company names, sure, but the same logo and same packet. And different models in the posters, but they were all apparently caught practicing fellatio on the ice-cream.
4. Pizza -- but considering some of the food in Eastern Europe, having pizzerias is definitely a good thing. And just a note for future travellers: when they list 'olive' as an ingredient, that's what you get. An olive.
5. German tourists -- So long as they keep their clothes on, they're fine by me.
6. Museums of torture -- Saw my sixth one today.
7. Carbonated water -- But I'm getting used to it. Well, you would too if you ended up with it about half the time you bought water. Why is it, please tell me, that all these Eastern European countries have basically one way of saying 'Hello', but about a million different ways of saying 'No Gas'? Hmm?
8. Little sausage dogs -- Like the water, I'm beginning to appreciate the cute, worried little way they waddle around every public square. I still get the urge to run past, pick it up and hand-ball it back to its owner, though.
9. Young, beautiful people doing crazy things in mobile phone ads -- Three of them, jumping in the air while holding balloons. Diving out of planes while having a chat to his girlfriend on the mobes. In the first ad, leaning forward to blow out the candles on a cake, but then ... wait for it... in the next ad someone has pushed his face into the cake, and now it's all over him!! Oh, these crazy European kids sure know how to have a good time.

Private Rooms
Get off any inter-city bus in Croatia, and you are in for a shock. There will be a phalanx of grey-haired little old ladies waiting for you, their eyes hungry and narrow. As soon as they see you, they start shouting "Zimmer, Sobe, Accomodation" and walking towards you. These are the dreaded private room ladies of Croatia. Retired women or maybe couples who have converted one or more rooms in their house to guest accomodation, they are everywhere in Croatia. If you aren't defensive enough, one of them will latch onto you and that will be the end of it. But even if you've faced them down before and know how to play the game, forget about the hostel that you saw in the Lonely Planet. You are going with one of these ladies and that is all there is to it.

After communicating across several languages (German, Italian, Croatian, whatever) you will get the price of the room (usually $20 or so) and be repeatedly assured that the room is only five minutes walk away, so what the hell, this one will do. And besides, the second you agree to stay with one of them, she will protect you from all of the other private room ladies. And THAT is worth $20 in itself. Then she starts off towards her house at a cracking pace, and it begins to hit you: I am following a stranger to their home from the bus station. I am so sure that my mother warned me about this, and hang on a minute, I haven´t even got any sweets!

The couple in Pula were real charmers -- Sylvana was her name, never got his name. I had arrived in Pula a few days before the Jamiroquai concert and one day before Daniel and Louse, and I had to get some accomodation for all of us by the time they arrived. If that sounds a bit stressful, well, it was. Unlike most other towns, I had to go to a travel agency to find a private room. They rang up Sylvana and she sent her bloke down to the travel agent to pick me up from the agency. He arrived in ex-communist Croatia's finest chariot -- the Yugo. About the size of a Barina, with all four gears and the take-off power of a lawnmower, the Yugo is still surprisingly popular in Croatia. I can only imagine they haven't been relegated to the great parking-lot in the sky because they are cheap to run and have even less re-sale value than a 1990 Camry.

Normally, a private-room is take it or leave it, but this one was a little more complex. It was a little out of the way, so I had to use my burgeoning charades and map-pointing skills to extract information like where the buses ran, whether there was a supermarket nearby, and how long did it take to walk to the city. Surprisingly, my attempt to convey "I like the room but I'm a little concerned at how far out it is, and I can't make a decision until I talk to my friends" was ultimately unsuccessful. After that, we all quickly agreed that Mr Sylvana would drive me back to the tourist agency so they could translate. Once there, I took a little more reassuring about the room, but when he offered to pick me, Daniel, Louise and their luggage from the bus station, I was convinced. Not just through the generosity of it, or the aplomb he demonstrated in miming the offer, but just at the chance to ride in the Yugo once more.