More Poland

It has been a full week in Poland. Not much time to catch up on blog stuff. We really had a mix of weather here. From quite cold any raining to snow to sunny and clear. Fortunately the days we were walking turned out to be real nice. As well as our Gace day trip we also made our way to Czestochowa, our "pilgrimage" started with Peter throwing up in the car about 1 hour into the trip. The salt mines of Wieliczka also took us another day to get to and view. This site is listed as #1 in the 7 wonders of Poland. Maybe the most impressive thing in the salt mine was the large chapel " probably a little bigger than St.Alphonsus church in Winnipeg" that is located some 150 meters below the surface. All of the statues and alter are carved out of salt. Mass is still celebrated each Sunday at 8 am there. We also made a couple of trips into Krakow. Edek guided us 1 of the days through old Krakow. Amazing how much more you can see and learn when you have a guide. Tonight we traveled to Bierawa to visit Edek & Mariola and their family at their home. This was a great week! We will leave Poland in the morning and head toward Austria via the Slovak Republic.

Pozdrawiam

Gace Slupieckie

If we were looking to note a time on this trip that we were not anywhere near a tourist area it would be this time. Not much that can be written today, this will have to be a story to tell when we get back. Way too much information. On the way here Lukasz Zwolinski said " time stopped 100 years ago in Gace". Not sure if it did in all of Gace but it certainly did at the property marked 63 Gace where Eugeniusz Pyrz was born.

Wierzchowie

We are now at a house that we are renting in in Malopolska, "little Poland or lesser Poland". The house is owned by a forensic psychiatrist that only spends 3 days every 3 months here, the farmer next property over looks after it for her. The village of Wierzchowie already seems unique. It is only perhaps 30 minutes from Krakow but it is quite a different place here than in the city. We measured out the winding road that leads up to the house where we are staying and it is 8 feet wide with quite a few blind curves. Hopefully we will get some good photos of the limestone cliffs that are right here.There is also a cave that is about 1km long at the end of the road here that we will hike up to later in the week. It is has been very cloudy and cold and has been poor for pictures. We had visitors yesterday. The Zwolinski family, Edek Zwolinski is Rob's 1st cousin. Actually quite a historic contact. It was fun communicating between our family and Edek's. We planned a day trip for later in the week together. Pope John Paul II is everywhere, when we were walking through a store there was a restaurant and right beside the menu they had a 8x10 glossy photo of the Pope, in one of these pictures there is a yard with a bronze statue in the front of the house. At the market today we saw and bought something that looked familiar. To all of us anyway, or anyone who has hung around 593 Henderson. Rob asked what it was called to someone in the line up because he thought it was just something his mother used to bake with spare plumbs. An older woman called it Sliwa and then a young girl called it Sliwki. Maybe we can figure out the spelling of this one. Anyway that was desert tonight. Not as good as Babci's though said everyone.

68 years

Well it took a while to get here but we made it: Polska
We had some good laughs on the way to Poland, alot of them seemed to come at Rob's expense. Rob picked up poison ivy in Germany from Natalie's shoes from when she was on his shoulders and his face has the characteristics of a terrorist. So that combined with our terrorist van gave Polish immigration some fun. We crossed the border into Poland and there was snow instantly. It looked like they had at least a few inches. Today was the first day Peter put on long pants, he has been in shorts up until now, he still is running with no socks though. When we were in church today in Opole a few funny things happened. First Jackie was taken to task on not dressing Natalie warm enough, the woman who of course did not speak any English was insistent that Jackie bring Natalie to a warmer place. After church someone came up to Jackie and gave her some loose change and then a little later in the parking lot another person handed Olivia 20 zloty. There must be a custom that we don't know about or we are starting to look pretty rough. The first time in a Polish church was pretty memorable, also at this church there are 9 masses Sunday. We counted 6 priests at the alter and at least 20 alter servers. The church was packed right to the outside. Standing room outside. We are continuing east to the village of Wierzchowie where we will stay for a week.

Wenceslas Square

We have taken it pretty easy in Prague. We must have been tired, we kept pretty low key and took some short days. Today is the day before we will leave. We took the trolley up to Wenceslas Square. It is more of a big street with no car traffic than a square. All 1.2 million people who live in Prague must have been there. It was busy!! In talking with Michal our ground man he commented on how fast the hundreds and maybe thousands of shops and vendors have popped up since 1990. Capitalism is certainly hard at work here. Almost spooky to see all of the western influence along side of all of the history. It seemed like we just got there and it was already dark and almost 8:00pm. Our plan is to pack up eat supper and get ready to travel further east to Poland.

Prague Castle

Having now seen a few castles you start to compare them in some ways. One thing that seemed different was the guards when compared with something like Windsor castle. The guards at Windsor castle looked very stately, and the guards at Prague Castle looked very military. We were able to catch the changing of the guards it is quite a site. Within the castle area there is a town within the walls. Without a doubt, I think we have run into the narrowest streets and smallest old houses that we have seen so far. It is hard to even imagine life here 1000 years ago. The wood floors and stone streets are amazing how they are able to stand up for that long. Wonder who is paying for all of the repairs to all of these old buildings. Is that why they make you pay for the toilet all the time: 9 times 5 Czech krouns. Wonder if they did that before the wall came down.

Old Town

We made our way to the “old town” today. We took the trolley through past Malanstranska which is one of the main squares outside of the old town. Jackie always seems to navigate all to the right spot. The entrance gate is massive, the gate in this picture is the entrance to the Charles Bridge. This is a walking bridge across to the old town. It perhaps took us 45 minutes to walk across and it could have taken hours as the whole bridge is filled with venders, artists and buskers. A real neat site. Not to mention there are about 50 statues that are 15 feet tall at least along the bridge. It appears that one of the reasons that it was so high many years ago was the flooding that Prague had.. We walked for hours along the streets of the town. Always another small street with something to see. These streets being so narrow become “ours” as soon as we slow down as a group. Sooner or later someone is going to leave us some change or something especially when we all sit on the street and start eating our lunch. It must be a pathetic or fascinating site.

Brevnov Monastery ( Brevnovsky klaster )

We are learning our way around with the transportation system. In Prague trolley,bus,underground and water are all used. We quickly figured what areas were out of line with regards to us driving. Things get steeper and narrower all the time. We are about 200 meters above the old town where we are staying. The person who ones the building: Michal Roucka, has been very helpful with directions and local history. Apparently the increase of automobiles has gone through the roof one the streets of Prague over the last 5 years and a very high tax is going to be put in place to drive anywhere in Prague. We made our way to Mala Strana (the little quarter), our first taste of figuring dates in Prague. Lots went on here as the years 950-1050 seems to be referenced a lot on many of the buildings in that hub. We saw the Petrin Hill Observation tower; it is a small version of the Eiffel Tower it is in a beautiful garden area overlooking Prague at the highest point in the area. Later in the day as we made our way back home we went to the monastery across the road. It seems to go by a few different names; Benedictine Archabbey of St.Vojtech (Adalbert). It is like a fortress, it is one of the oldest inhabited parts of Prague, can’t imagine how many monks this place could have held back then. We went to mass Sunday evening in the church of St. Margaret in the monastery, there had to be at least 500 people in there and it didn’t make a dent. Peter, Natalie and Ruby had lots of fun in the grounds climbing on the rocks in the garden while we waited while Ruby was feeding some ducks in the pond.

Eastward to Praha

We got a good start and headed off to the Prague; our next stop. We will make our way there and spend a week in the area. The border crossing into the Czech Republic was by no means hard, it just was just a far different process than we have seen so far. We are not sure if it was the route we took or not but although the number of small villages that we were passing through along the way were as plentiful as Germany the villages certainly looked a lot poorer. The entire infrastructure just seemed to look beat up. Also we must have passed 20 old factories in small towns that were abandoned. The landscape was rolling much like the foothills in Alberta. We didn’t have a long journey today, maybe we just didn’t get lost as much it seems but we made it to Prague quickly. The quarter where we are staying is called Brevnov. There are about 1.2 million people in the Prague area, Brevnov is about a 15minute trolley ride from the old town. The person who owns this building where we are staying kept talking about how modern his building is. It was built in 1890. It is a fairly large building where his family and 2 others live, plus the apartment where we are staying. It is directly across the road from a Benedictine Monastery that was built in 989 AD. It is the oldest Monastery in the Czech Republic, more on that later. For now we will just settle in to our new place and start to get oriented with the city.

Auf Wiedersehen

We will leave Haus Stern today. We ended off last night at one of the local Gasthous, Poechal Schtuble. It was funny when we went in around 6 pm we were the only people in there. Boy or boy can we take over a place. We have been commenting all along on how much friendlier most of the restaurants seem to be toward vegetarians than in North America from at least what we have seen so far. It looks like Livy and Sarah’s order won. They ordered something that was like a roasted vegetable filled in a baked light pastry. Neither of them got halfway through it there was so much. Somehow there was still room for the deserts though. This morning we went for a last walk around town and took a few more pictures around the rail station and picked up some fruit at the market in the square for our ride tomorrow. We finished the day off with a horse cart ride through the Arber forest. There was a property along the way where a guy has a small water turbine creating power for his “Pension” and then sells the extra that he creates back to the grid. It was raining and a bit foggy so we didn’t get many pictures today Interesting how much logging is going on in this area. Liv, Abby and Ruby played a bit of Ping Pong in the evening before we packed up to get ready to head off to the Czech Republic in the morning. Rob almost bought a Bavarian hat before we left but instead saw a Superman ball cap at the second hand store for E 1.50 so he bought that instead. Hopefully the hat doesn’t cause us trouble at the border.

Schwellhaeusl Second Attempt

Bayerischer National Park is behind were we are staying. Today all of us made the trek out to Schwellhaeusl where Jackie, Rob and Natalie tried a few days ago. We had just heard it was worth the walk. It was about 15kms return. Once again we had a great weather day. There once again is a complex series of ski and hiking paths through the forest with of course shines along the way. This one was dated 1860. When we got to the hut at the end we had some lunch and a cold drink. Our German is improving, surprising how fast a language can be picked up. We will have to remember to talk about our exciting walk home when we get back; it is just too flavorful for the blog. Once again all are safe and back at home.

Passau

We made a day trip today to a town called Passau. One of its unique features us that there are 3 rivers that meet there. Sort of like the Forks but with another river. The Danube, Inn and Ilz rivers all meet. Were trying to make it to St. Steven’s Cathedral, it was built around 1600 and has the worlds largest pipe organ (17,974 pipes!). There is an organ concert at 12 pm each afternoon that we were trying to catch. The narrow streets at 12 noon really got us good this time. This town as many others were not made for vehicles. The steep grades were also amazing. We ended up closer to the Austrian border than the church. We did manage to get on a boat though and cruise up the Danube, it was a beautiful afternoon, clear and 20C plus, like most of the great weather that we have been having. In the old town there are so many squares that we walked upon towns within a town. There was also lots of talk of the great shopping that Passau also offered. “Major shopping” Natalie certainly is not taking any of this lying down.

Thanksgiving in Germany

We almost missed it but Emily and Sarah figured it out. We kept a slow day visiting a local museum in Lam which is north up the mountain form us. We came back early and started setting up cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. Our place even smelled like Thanksgiving when we were done, the leaves have been falling here and we picked up some leaves, acorns and such to decorate our table. Sarah was really looking forward to pumpkin pie but it just wasn’t meant to be. We ended up with dessert being a plumb & apple strudel. No cooking tomorrow, we have plenty of leftovers.

Zwiesel and Schwellhaeusl

We are continuing to mix trying to get out and do/see things while just settling in to as much as the culture and just take it real easy. As much as possible we still try and wake up and not put too much pressure on ourselves to rush out if we are not traveling. There is a thick forest behind where we are staying. Rob, Jackie and Natalie took a hike up to Schwellhausel. It is a hut that originally used by forest workers that dammed up the rivers to aid in logging at the turn of the century. Now there is a small café up there (apparently) we never made it all the way up there. You cannot get there by car. Hopefully we will take another stab at it before we leave. Zwiesel is the local town just west of Eisenstein about 15 kms. We don’t have internet access in Eisenstein so Rob went in to Zwiesel at night to try and follow up on some communication that we needed to do for next week at about 6:00pm. It turned into a bit of a night, after he finished doing the internet communications at a café he found our Renault completely locked up! It was parked in an area that becomes locked up all night after 7:00 pm. After trying to get the compound unlocked he ended up getting a cab back to Eisenstein and then went back in the morning to pick up the vehicle. The German cab talk must have been pretty good with the cabbie as he didn’t charge full fare.

Gruess Gott

Gruess Gott is the Bavarian greeting. This Sunday, the Sunday before our Thanksgiving is the “Harvest Mass” at St. Johann Nepomuk Catholic Church in the village. We walked up the hill to church this morning for the 9 am Harvest mass. We got there about 8:50 but there was a procession from somewhere (likely the town square) the whole congregation seemed to be in it. It was complete with people in traditional full Bavarian dress, horns and squeezebox; the music could be heard all the way up the hill. Not being familiar with the mass it was something like blessing of the food on Holy Saturday. A fabulous choir. One funny thing that happened was that as we made our way up for communion we sort of got separated and Ruby ended up being the last person she ended up standing up with the priest at the front of this church by themselves with him bending down and whispering to her. Rob walked back up to the front to see what was up. They were having a communication problem but the priest was trying to ask Ruby if she had made her 1st communion. After mass the priest apologized to Ruby in English explaining to the congregation what had happened and was very sorry and said kind things of Ruby, he then repeated the whole thing again in German to the congregation again where everyone was smiling at Ruby. After mass there was a bake sale right outside the church where we bought some real Bavarian baking. Some sort of honey cake/torte and a berry role.

Pictures

We have not been finding great internet access where we have been around lately. Since we are on slower than dial up right now we won't post anymore pictures until we come along faster service. Check back later...

Bavarian Forrest

We have made it to Bayer Eisenstein Germany. This is where we will stay for about a week. It is situated in East Bavaria literally on the border with the Czech Republic. There are about 1400 people who live here. The village is surrounded by 8 mountains. The Bavarian and Bohemian ranges are on each side. The area was originally owned by a master glassblower who expanded the glass industry. It is just amazing how much glass there is everywhere. There is some great WWII and Cold War history here. There is a train station that is the only one in the world apparently that is in 2 countries. The border goes right through the middle of the entrance where in the station. In 1948 the station was closed and the tracks were removed on the Czechoslovakia side and became part of the “Iron Curtain” There is still many visual signs of the past division. One story that was written was that the children in Ruda ( a village just across the border) were taught in school that evil was on the other side of the fence but when the bells from the Church were heard on the other side in Eisenstein that many of the skiers called them “freedom bells”

Traveling Germany

As we make our way eastward through Germany a few things seem to jump out right away as compared to what we have seen so far. Wind generators seem to be almost everywhere, as well solar collectors are on many house roofs. In some of the Villages that we have passed through it even looks upwards of 75% of houses. Things seem very clean and orderly. Even when comparing a small village to what we saw in England to a small village here there is a marked difference in how clean it is here. We have also seen how many people are on bicycles, very young and very old. The level of people being active has to be far higher than North America. It is set up for it though, with bike/ski paths running between many villages and towns. You could ski and bike for hundreds of Kilometers with huts and shrines marking many of them. We talked about how sometimes we think we are so advanced environmentally in Winnipeg, one example and difference was in a few grocery stores that we stopped in. Shopping bags are not even offered or sold in the store. There is just an expectation that you will bring your own reusable bag. What a great idea! We will continue to travel toward Eisenstein.