This was the part which was really stupid. I got it into my head that if I took the train north from Iași, I could save time getting to Southeastern Poland and my flight home. I suppose it technically was shorter than going via Budapest, but there is this problem that the Ukraine is not really wired yet and you can't buy a through ticket. So be prepared to buy onward tickets in Ukrainian at 4 in the morning.

All aboard the train from Pascani, Romania, to Ternopol, Ukraine. These little underseat compartments keep your luggage safe while you are asleep.

How I traveled. BG's grandmother gave me the bors in the juice bottle. From the Internet, a note on bors, which may be helpful: Bors — nothing to do with the Russian beetroot soup of the same name — is the souring agent which gives Romanian soups their distinctive tang and is of ancient Moldovan origin. Bran bors is amber in colour and is supposed to be as clear as possible. It is made by fermenting the protein contained in the outer (bran) layer of wheat in small oak vats. Bors — unlike vinegar and lemon, which can be substituted — is only mildly acid and preserves the flavour of the grain, and therefore can constitute up to half the liquid volume of the soup. Homemade bors is often seen sold in Bucharest markets, but in recent years brand-name bors has also appeared in the shops.

Lace curtains on the Ukrainian railroad cars.

Romanian no longer rolling stock.

Romanian no longer rolling stock and regular stock in foreground.

I had a couple of hours layover in L'viv so i walked downtown and back out to the railroad station. It was gloomy. I think L'viv would be a very pretty city with proper color balance and light temperature. They seem to be into dragon slaying. Here is one now.

The usual baroque-to-nouveau Atlantes.

Yura the Dragon Slayer Church.

Once again I was inconvenienced in seeing church interiors by worshippers. Another wedding.

Admirable wedding cake. They should expect tourists when they choose to have a party in such a famous space, and not glower at us.

Here we are on a sunny day in Poland; on the drive to the Andy Warhol Museum. I happened upon signs to some of the wooden churches for which Southern Little Poland is famous. I don't think this is really meant to depict Jesus on the toilet. I am sure there were religious wars about whether he actually needed to use one.

There are dozens of well-preserved wooden churches in the small towns of southern Poland. Getting inside one is something I never figured out how to do. I suppose you need to be on a package tour.

A cemetery.

This church is in a small town in Ruthenia, on the Slovakian side of the border.

Its cemetery.

The town of Medzilaborce, on the border between Slovakia and Poland, is near the ancestral home of the Warhola family and they have somehow managed to put together a much larger museum celebrating the Warhols than the town can support.

A fountain featuring Andy Warhola.

The door to the museum. You will notice it's kind of big. On the inside, forgive them, but they don't have a lot of Andy Warhol originals because they are just too expensive. This is an itty bitty town in a country that barely had enough pensioners to abandon to be allowed into the European Union, let alone public works to sell off. So what they have done, and it's quite touching, is feature Andy Warhol in the context of his family, who all live within walking distance. There are works by his brother and his cousins and his uncles. Lots of newspaper clippings. It's like being in a great big scrapbook. And they have copies of things, and they do have some Major Donated pieces; and they elide over some of the more urban aspects of his life. It's like being inside his grandma's scrapbook. Which you more or less are.

There was a kid with a genuine Slovakian mullet on this square but the picture didn't come out.

The entry way. No photos in the museum — the iconoclasts are everywhere. Where in Hell would Andy Warhol's fine art career have ended up if he hadn't been permitted to take his camera into public places? Has Marilyn Monroe's estate sued him? It would happen if such a work were produced now.

Across the street. We aren't in New York, nor even Pittsburg.

A traffic jam on the way back to Rzeszow.

Fog.

The marker of an important building.

The old churches always seem to have new churches next to them, for daily use.

Evening in Krakow

The moon was passing Mars. You might have seen it yourself.

The morning I started for home, unless you count the whole week of frenzied travel from Iași as going home, which it was, for all I accomplished. This view is out the window of the hotel room.

English countryside, on approach to Stansted. Notice how the Gulf Stream has moved the season back to late summer from late fall.

RyanAir.

I have no idea what this artwork is. I wouldn't go in it. Some kid has made a model of the Shuttle booster out of the cardboard tube inside a roll of paper towels, and some other kid has painted it green and made it into an airplane. They are probably arguing who owns it with the teacher right now. If my parents hadn't both been teachers I wouldn't have got to go so many places on summer vacations, but I couldn't ever be one. Too much hostility.

A farewell dinner with Frank Colcord and his family and friends. Frank is the most reliable person to drop in on in London, he and David Kaplowitz, even if it weren't for the air fares they would make it the ideal gateway and egress from that hemisphere. It was nice to be eating real people's food again. Getting back to my own damaged kitchen — well it will be a long time before I get to eat my real food and by the way it's bad luck to put talk about your house at the end of a travelogue, look at the last photo in the Turkey trip in 1999. Stupid dot com bubble.

She likes cheese.

Leaving England.

The mountains of Scotland.

It never got dark though it tried to.

North America.

On to Desktops