Krakow was my favorite place. I will be shocked if Prague tops it. I didn't write about Krakow on my free day, Monday, after I got back from the city. I took a long, quiet walk out to the park and sat writing about what I had seen and felt at Auschwitz-Berkinau, instead, and that seemed to block any words about the giddy fun times in Poland from coming out.

I till can't think to write about Poland, really. It's pretty. I shared a meter (yes, meter) of beer with someone in a tourist bar off of the old town square.

I'll tell more stories about the drunken Scottish stag party, but not now.

I want to write about Znojmo and castle Bitov.

Bitov is the only castle at the bottom of a hill in all of central Europe. (This may not actually be true, but in my experience it is.) Usually we have to hike up great huge mountains to get to a castle, but we had a nice leisurely walk down. Our tour didn't start for a half hour, so I explored the main courtyard and found two kittens in a stairwell. I picked a blade of grass and dangled it on front of them, making them leap and bite the air and sometimes tumble into each other with their enthusiasm. They tried to climb up my pants, and when I shook them off they ran away to climb up a tree. One would cimb the tree a few feet and then drop like a bomb into the other, thent hey would switch roles. It was adorable.

The castle was converted into a more modern chateau in the 18th century, blah blah blah, the first few rooms were full of stuff that we have seen before on this trip. Then we got to a room full of a collection that was begun by the last owner of the chateau. The room was full of cases that were crammed to brimming with stuffed birds. Owls, eagles, even tiny stuffed humming birds filled the cases. Some of the birds were exotic jungle birds with brilliant gem-colored plumage, and some were drab little pheasant hens with goggly black eyes. But a thousand beady stuffed bird eyes had absolutely nothing on the next few rooms. Bitov is, apparently, home to one of the largest collections of stuffed dogs int he world. I'm not talking Pound Puppies here, but cockerspaniels, great danes, and everything in between. They have all been arranged in a single room, on a big coral-colored carpet. They are all in fairly life-like poses, and though they are over one hundred years old (and that is seven hundred in dog years), they look as though they are about to roll over or yip or leap at any minute. It was extremely eerie.

The last few rooms of the chateau were full of stuffed cats. WEaring clothes. And hats. Okay, so the owner of Bitov was kind of an eccentric fellow. Apparently his neighbors considered him "noveau riche" and snubbed him entirely, so he turned to other forms of company, including the largest animal menagerie in Moravia (live ones, this time, apparently he didn't have anything killed with the express purpose of being stuffed, he waited until they died.) The last glass case had a doll-sized table and a half dozen squirrels around it, wearing jackets, smoking pipes and playing cards. Okay, the guy was a full blown kook.

After that we drove to Znojmo, which is pronounced something like "znoy-mo", and we went into the underground. The underground is an elaborate undercity that started as cellars in the 12th century and gradually became passages. In times of war the people of Znojmo added chimneys and air ventilation shafts. By thr 1960s the passages were forgotten and abandoned, but then they started collapsing and houses, people and cars started falling into them. So the city went down, uncovered the undercity and started patching up rooms and reinforcing walls, so that it would be safe to build new homes and department stores above them. They are only used as a tourist attraction now, but how splendid is that, an entire city under their feet.