Polska

Shirley and I just returned from a wonderful trip to Poland. Until we started planning the trip, I hadn’t appreciated exactly how huge Poland really is. Its almost the size of Germany!
I always think that the best way to see a country is with a local, and Shirley’s friend Casia looked after us even better than we could have hoped. Had we not been staying with her, we might never have discovered the likes of Pierogi, a wonderful dumpling like creation that I’d certainly never heard of before. Yum!


Casia lives in Warsaw, and so we spent our first couple of days there. Looking around the city, we had a leasurely stroll around the small old town, and went to a science exhibition in the same building as the old communist assembly, a huge monolith the dominates the city centre. Warsaw was devastated during the second world war, and quite a lot of the city is drab ‘social realist’ architecture, so on the weekend we decided to go to the more beautiful southern town of Krackow. Aparently Warsaw was even more beatiful than Krakow before the Second World War, and what an amazing city it must have been! Krakow has a wonderful city centre, and I was particularly wowed by the church architecture. The highlight for me had to be the Fransciscan church right near the heart of the city. It was damaged early in the 20th Century, and as a result, the building was entirely refurbished with art nouveau murals and stained glass. Truly amazing.
One of the more amusing, and frustrating parts of the trip, was following the Pope around the country. The amusing bit is that I’m now the proud owner of a delightful ‘Keep strong in your faith’ Pope badge. The not so amusing bit was that everywhere had a 48hr drinking ban! This kind of tokenism really hacks me off. Of course, the sex shops were all still open. Doh!

Anyway, all in all we had a fantastic few days. Poland was definitely a hit!

8 thoughts on “Polska”

  1. dude. i ate some delicious kettle chips for lunch yesterday and dang them were some tasty nibblins. MY LIFE!!! i miss laughing with you in the office on the once-a-week day that we would both be there at teh same time!! haha –
    lots of love my friend.

  2. …that button will go well with the pin you got in berlin when you were drinking like a local.
    but you weren’t drinking in poland. you know, even chugga has stopped drinking. maybe God’s trying to tell you something. and it must be pretty important indeed if he sent the pope to deliver the message to you.

  3. Buttons are what you do clothes up with, darn it! And I think it would take the audible voice of God to stop me enjoying the occasional tipple (please no, please no, please no…).

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