I guess this is a catchup day. As I write it’s Saturday evening, the 26th and I’m getting ready to go to bed.

So yesterday I was in Riga… Riga, a name that will forever mean “wasted time” in my world. The last day I checked out of my hostel and decided to take another walking trip. I walked around for it seemed like forever until I got this idea to start taking pictures of graffiti. I’ve always liked street art, and there was some good work around Riga. I’ll include some of them in my pics. Anyway, it was pretty much a wasted day, since my bus to Warsaw didn’t leave until 6:30.

I also started taking pics of older buildings. You know the abandoned buildings that cities really don’t want you to see.

One of the things that I thought was unusual was that the “FA(t)” at the top of the one photo must be a tag (the artist’s mark) because I saw exactly the same tag about 40 miles away. Unless there is some other reason why I would see the same word, done in the exact same style, this artist gets around.

About 5 I went back to the hostel and got my backpack… and my debit card was there. I don’t know why I didn’t trust my bank, but I didn’t think it would show up for weeks. I can honestly say that Wells Fargo is the best bank ever… ever.

So the bus trip was to take me to warsaw, but I found out from this Russian girl that I could go to Krakow if I just stay on the bus… and pay extra of course:) Russian women are so awesome. :) It’s funny that the ticket lady told me that I couldn’t. So I left about 6:30 for Krakow. Normally I wouldn’t be this detailed, but the trip to Krakow took me through Latvia, Lithuania, Warsaw, and finally to Krakow. That’s a lot of area to cover, and it was an interesting trip. There were two things that really stood out to me. The first is how geographically the area is to Oregon (my original home) and second, how totally americanized Poland has become. Before you get to any town in Poland, you get billboards for hotels, restaurants, and every thing else. Then when you get to the outskirts, you start seeing strip-malls, and McDonalds. It was quite depressing from my perspective.