We are thoroughly enjoying the little apartment for ourselves. It's warm, even at night! And there is water (even hot water!) right out of the tap!

We spend four days hiking around Zakopane. We don't go too high at first because of the snow we're warned about, so we loop around lower trails and visit the famous Morskie Oko lake. Zakopane is rather popular, even at this time of the year and we are sharing the trails with many other visitors. It is a cute place though and easy to go around by local buses. Trails are also marked really well and information is easy to find. All in all the weather isn't so bad, we get a bit of drizzle here and there and it's a bit chilly sometimes.
The last day we have the courage the go higher, risking the snow with rented crampons, to the Giewont peak. We need not have bothered with the rental, because the trails are already largely free of snow. And also up here are enough other hikers not feel any danger. We don't get any view from the top because of the clouds, but it's a very nice hike in the end.

Time to move on and we head into Czechia. (I didn't know before, but the country more or less informally changed its name from 'Czech Republic'.) The drive across the border is fantastic, as we go through tiny towns on the way over small roads up and down hills, where the trees show full autumn colors. We even see 30 minutes of Slovakia. We spend an afternoon in Olomouc, an amazingly pretty medieval town. We sleep just outside by a lake and kept awake for a bit because of a loud party by ~16 year olds. Funnily enough they seem to play mostly 'old' songs we'd hear in high school.

We decide to stick to the north of Czechia, entering another mountain range: the Giant Mountains. Here we enjoy the sights and do a big hike, where we are again surprised by a large number of fellow visitors.
We spend some time doing nothing on an empty campground and now drove closer to Germany. This included spending about an hour stuck in traffic getting around Prague, the first traffic jam we had since leaving Germany about 3 months ago. Now we are camping by a picnic area on a hill, overlooking a castle painted orange by the setting sun. Back down here out of the mountains the temperature is delightfully moderate.