This post is from Mid-September; apparently I neglected to upload it at the time.

I made it to Albania safely without any problems.

After I left the States, I landed in Rome and took a high-speed train to Naples, Italy.  On the train was a group of four wild middle-aged women from New York City.  They were on vacation without their husbands and they were raising all kinds of hell.  We had a blast on the train!  Once in Rome, I then hopped on a slow local train to Sorento.  No A/C, rats, standing room only....and the train stopped at EVERY station.  Lots of gypsies (beggars, thieves, scammers, pickpockets) along the way.  Finally arrived in Sorento after passing Pompeii.  I went into Sorento with my tour group and had a chocolate and limoncello tasting.  Limoncello is an alcoholic liqueur.  It tastes like grain alcohol mixed with lemons.  The chocolate, however, was divine.  we sang some Italian songs with the Limoncello Master, Anthony. Mostly songs by the rat pack (Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr,) I found my way to the harbor and sat down on a bench to watch the sunset.  An adorable Italian grandmother sat down next to me and started talking...in Italian to me.  I responded with what Italian I knew (probably 20 words or so), but she kept on talking to me.  After a few minutes her daughter joined us.  She could speak English fluently as she is a tour guide in Spain.  So we all three laughed and talked together while watching the sun go down.  I love how friendly Italians are and how they will happily engage in conversation with others.

The next day we took a boat to the Isle of Capri.  The water along this coast is the bluest water I have ever seen.  We visited the Blue Grotto which is a water cave which is accessed by a small four person boat.  Once inside, when you turn and face the cave entrance, all of the water eerily glows iridescent bright baby blue.  It was an incredible sight; I'm not sure it was worth the 20 Euros to see it, but I am glad I at least got to experience it.

After this tour, I started the second part of my tour in Eastern Europe.  Eastern Europe is not generally a tourist destination, even less so now because of the mass migration of people fleeing the Middle East and Africa.  I flew into Prague, Czech and ate a meal at a restaurant that served me my drinks via a train.  Yep.  They put my drink on a flatbed car and delivered it to my table.  Tom would have never left this restaurant!  It was so much fun.  I admit I ordered more drinks than I would have just so I could watch the train come, stop, allow me to take off my drink and put my empty glass in its place, and watch the train disappear down the tracks into the kitchen.

Our first stop on the bus tour was Kutna Hora.  Kutna Hora is a church which is decorated with the remains of 70,000 humans.  Way back in the day, it was a monastery.  One of the monks went to Golgatha and brought back some dirt form the mountain.  Everyone heard about it and decided they wanted to be buried at this church with the holy dirt.  Needless to say, the church soon ran out of room.  So one of the more 'artistic' monks started making decorations out of the human bones.  Another thought it would be neat to construct pyramids of human skulls.  Anyway, the result is an interesting, very creepy church which has made it onto the list of UNESCO heritage sites.

The next day we traveled through Poland, parts of which look a LOT like Switzerland and Germany.  Who knew?!  Now I understand why so many countries have tried to invade this land over the centuries.  We made a stop at the Auschwitz and Berkenau concentration camps.  The experience was quite sobering.  It is chilling to see mankind at its worse.  We then made it to Krakow, Poland which turned out to be one of my most favorite cities in Europe.  The city is absolutely stunningly beautiful with a very large city center square, cobblestone streets, ornate four-story buildings bordering the square, and a beautiful cathedral.  I took a bike tour of the city and in the afternoon I visited the Krakow Salt Mine.  Down deep in the salt mine, the workers have carved out statues, rooms, and even an enormous chapel out of the rock salt.  It is amazing to see that these things were carved, not built.  It definitely was a highlight of the trip.  The next stop was in Zakapone, Poland which could pass as a Swiss ski village if you weren't aware you were in Poland.

Next we moved on into Slovakia.  More mountains, more beautiful scenery.  We stopped and rode in a Russian tank with a kindly, a-little-bit-crazy Slovakian man named Joszef. The tank ride was the best 15 minutes of the entire tour.  He took us straight up mountains, slid down the other side, through a river......nice and muddy of course.  It was a blast!

From Slovakia, we made our way to Budapest, Hungary.  Budapest is a HUGE city, lots of fun, too much to see.  It would take a week to see all of the historical places, monuments, museums, and sights.  We took a dinner cruise on the Danube River.  We then headed over to Croatia.  Getting from Hungary into Croatia is difficult.  Hungary has erected barbed wire fencing all around its borders to keep out the migrants.  They stop every vehicle and search it.  Our bus was there for over three hours while they inspected everyone's passport, searched the bus interior as well as the luggage holds.

The next destination was Plitvice National Park.  It is an unblemished, amazing
natural wild area filled with tall waterfalls and beautiful lakes colored teal and green and blue with waters so clear that you can see the bottom of very, very deep lakes.  We ended the tour in Split, Croatia where I got to spend the night within castle walls.  It was a fun tour and I am glad I was able to experience Eastern Europe.  I see a return trip to Krakow in my future.

Starbucks Red Cup

One of the worst things about social media is the hysteria is creates over the silliest things.  The latest hysteria involves the Starbucks red holiday cup.  Apparently Joshua Feuerstein, an American evangelist who is known for polarizing people using religious topics , posted a short video rant against Starbucks for not placing the words "Merry Christmas" on their cups.  This video lasts barely longer than a minute, yet has managed to offend both Christians and non-Christians alike.  The posts on Facebook are once again portraying Christians as idiots who don't think.   So, well done Mr. Feuerstein, you've increased your Facebook presence at the expense of common sense and civility.  What I'd like to know is who appointed this man as the official spokesman for Christianity?  Why do so many people believe that because this man expressed his OPINION, that every Christian in the country shares his OPINION simply based on the fact that we are Christians?  This is getting ridiculous.

Seeing the posts on Facebook bashing ALL Christians and spewing false information really sets me off.  When people who have a problem with the color of the cup that their $5 coffee is poured into, they really have no idea what real problems are.  They are definitely suffering from first world problems.  I'm serving in a country where women have no rights or value in society.  They are restricted in everything they do from the clothes they are allowed to wear to the places they may go.  I live in a country where the poor have to sneak out at night to get firewood from the forests to heat their homes because if they did this during the day they would be arrested.  These people work from sunup to sundown on their land trying to produce enough food to feed their families.  They can't work any longer or harder than they already do.  Yet their food production frequently falls short of their needs.   This results in crushing hardships for them such as not being able to afford shoes for their children or medical care.  These are not lazy people.  They are people trapped by poverty, low education, and idiotic, centuries-old mindsets.  These are real problems.  If you gave them a cup of coffee, they wouldn't care what color the cup is; they would be grateful to have a coffee.

This paragraph is for those who insist sharing inflammatory posts.  The next time you feel led to share a post whose purpose is solely to inflame emotions at the expense of a group of people, please stop and ask yourself if the subject of your post REALLY a problem. Please fact check your post also.  So many posts are filled with misinformation or even worse, made-up information.  Sharing misinformation and falsehoods makes you look like a fool and you are simply perpetuating the problem of ignorance.

This paragraph is for those people who can see the big picture.  If you truly want to make a difference, do it behind the scenes.  You don't have to go and serve in a foreign country. Take $5 per month from your coffee budget and at the end of the year, use that money to support an organization whose sole purpose is to lift people out of poverty.  Do your research on this and choose your non-profit wisely.  I highly recommend Heifer International.  After visiting a slum five years after Heifer International had provided the residents with ducks,  I saw firsthand how the income from duck eggs has changed the lives of the residents.  The money saved from one or two cups of coffee a month can buy flocks of chickens, geese, or ducks as well as rabbits (the world's cheapest form of protein and quickest turnaround from birth to slaughter) or even a goat.  Please note, I do NOT recommend water buffalo, cows, or sheep because the children are the ones that watch these animals during the day and this means the children would not have an opportunity to attend school.

So, if you're seeing red over this stupid controversy about the color of a disposable coffee cup, I encourage you show your love by helping someone out of poverty.  Another alternative is to just be nice.  And civil.  Let's stop perpetuating stupidity and ignorance.