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.