January and February

During January it was blistering cold and snowy all month long. It was too cold to go do anything, so i spent most of the time in January in the house working on homework. It was very depressing.

February was much much better though. We spent most of the time in Scotland and Ireland, where it was warmer, and we could actually see the ground with no snow.

The first place we went was Edinburgh, Scotland. Edinburgh was probably my favorite city so far. It was the most American place in that I've been to. There were many interesting sites there, including the Elephant Bar, where J.K Rowling first started writing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. She actually currently resides in Edinburgh. I didn't get to see her though. :( Also in Edinburgh, there was Dr. Pepper, which they do not have in Poland. They didn't have any root beer there, so I'm gonna have to wait until i get home for that. Some other sites in Edinburgh that i saw were the Scottish Writer's museum, which included authors such as Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott and Robert Louis Stevenson.

After 4 days in Edinburgh we went on a plane ride across the Irish Sea to Dublin, Ireland. I found Dublin to be not as good as Edinburgh but it was still good. Unlike Edinburgh, which was all packed together and easy to get to, Dublin was more spread out, and you had to take more buses. Some interesting sites in Dublin included St. Patrick's cathedral, where in the courtyard of the church, St. Patrick himself baptized the pagans of Ireland. Another site was the viking museum, which was interesting. Ireland was overrun by Vikings in the 1500s, so that was what the museum was about. On our last full day we went to the Dublin zoo, which reminded me of the KC zoo. It was under renovation so we didn't get to see some of the animals like the penguins, but it was still good.

My next blog will be about March, where we didn't go anywhere, but my aunt Pam came to Poland.

Tragedy in Poland

For those of who have not heard yet, The Polish president Lech Kaczynski was killed in a plane crash in Western Russia on Saturday morning. His wife, the head of the bank, and many top military and the chief of the military were also killed in that crash. In all around 96 people were killed. The nation of Poland is in shock and mourning for their fallen leaders.

The plane was headed to a ceremony to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre where over 20,000 defenseless Polish soldiers were killed by the Soviet Union. The place will now be remembered for two tragedies.

The Polish people are very patriotic and everybody has their flags hanging from their apartments or houses. The flags have a black ribbon on top of them to remember "Black Saturday."

This has been called the worst tragedy in Poland since World War II, and the Nation of Poland will mourn for their fallen leaders for a very long time.

Budapest

On Christmas Day we left Gdansk for Warsaw for one night, then we took a train down to Bratislava Slovakia.

After a 2 night stop in Bratislava, Slovakia, we took a three hour train south to Budapest Hungary. Budapest was one of my favorite cities in Europe. It had a lot interesting sites and attractions to see. Hungarian is a very hard language to try and learn (even harder than Polish). Luckily though many people spoke English as a second language so it wasn' that hard to communicate.

One of the interesting sites that was in Budapest was the Hungarian Parliament. Hungary has the second largest Parliament builiding, only Englands is bigger. I went on a tour of it with My Dad and his collegue. It was interesting inside, since it is a different government than America. It looks really beautiful from the outside. From accross the river. I' ve posted a picture of it below.

Another interesting site in Hungary was the Fisherman's Bation. Its an overview where you can see most of Budapest from the height. The first day we went there it was so foggy we couldn't see anything so we tried again the next day. It was clear and the view was absolutely spectacular. It's even better at night. I've posted 2 pictures below one of what the Fisherman's Bastion looks like, and a picture of the view from it.

During Communist times in Hungary, The communists would put up statues showing themselves as heroes or leaders. After the Hungarians became free, instead of just destroying the statues, they moved all the statues and moved them to a park where people could see them. It was appropriately called Statue Park. It also called Momento Park also. It has over fifty statues from the communists. Ive posted a couple of my favorite statues from the park.

We spent New Years Eve in Budapest and it was an exciting experience. People were blowing off little fireworks on the sidewalks, and it was crazy so we decided to go back to the rented apartment for our safety, where we watched the countdown and the fireworks on TV.

My next blog will be written by the end of this week and it will tell you about my families trip to Scotland and Ireland.

sorry for lack of blogs

I would like to apologize for lack of blogs because I have gotten lazy. I will now bring you up to date on how my adventure in Poland has been going and I promise to update more often.

I left off in November after my Berlin trip. About 2 weeks after that we went to Warsaw, the capital of Poland.It was early December and they were getting ready for Christmas in Warsaw. Warsaw was actually really nice and a lot of the people there spoke English.We got to see some friends from America who are on the same program as my dad here. In Polish Warsaw is spelled Warszawa and pronounced Var-shaw-va. In Warsaw we saw the Warsaw uprising museum and saw the Palace of Culture built by Stalin after World War II. We went out to eat a lot and my favorite place was this German place where we ate lunch with some of my dad's c0llegues. Warsaw is about 5 hours by train from Gdansk. It was 80% destroyed in World War II by the Germans. The Red Army was coming close to taking the Germans out of Warsaw, so before the Russians could get to Warsaw, the Germans destroyed the city. We saw where the Jewish Ghetto uprising was, which is different than the Warsaw uprising. They were two different uprisings in two different locations. In the Warsaw uprising, the Polish fighters would get through town through the sewage system because otherwise they would be killed by the Nazi army. The Warsaw uprising could have been a success and the Polish were winning, they just expected the Russians to help them when the Nazis called in for back-up. But the Russians stayed on the other side of the Vistula River and watched as the Nazis quashed the Polish rebellion.

After Warsaw we went to Budapest, Hungary in late December/ Early January. I will tell you about that in my next blog which I promise will be soon.

A trip to Berlin, Germany

From Tuesday to Sunday my family and I took our monthly trip and we decided to go to Berlin, Germany. I wrote different sections of this blog on the days when it happened and then I uploaded this as one blog so that it is easier to read.

We finally made it to Berlin. After two, four hour trains, we arrived in the new train station that was built in 2006 for the World Cup. The station is an engineering marvel. It is made mostly out of glass and has no support beams. It's an arch and it uses its weight against itself to keep the station from falling down. After we arrived we took a subway train to our rented apartment and then we went to find somewhere to eat dinner. We ended up at an Argentinean meat restaurant where we had some really good steaks and potatoes. After the meal, our waiter brought out 6 glasses with Schnapps for the adults and kinder schnapps (apple juice) for the kids. My dad let me have a sip of his and it was not what I expected. I thought it tasted like cough medicine, so we just left the rest of it on the table, paid and left. Tomorrow we will be going to the Berlin Wall and the Brandenburg gate.

I returned to America for a brief moment today as we stepped onto the property of the American embassy, which is considered American soil. Right next to the embassy is the famous Brandenburg Gate, which was almost destroyed in the Second World War, and was an accomplishment to walk through during 1989, when the Berlin Wall finally came down. We actually got to see the longest still standing piece of the wall which is about 1.3 km long. People have since decorated the wall with art on both the East and West sides and it serves as a reminder not to have another thing like the Berlin wall happen again. It was kind of fun jumping over the mark where some of the wall once was and going, East, West, East, West. People 30 years ago living in Berlin probably did not think anyone would be able to do that for a very long time. For dinner we had Bratwurst and Sauerkraut, because Germany is the land of Sauerkraut.

Today we went in the morning to see a church that had been almost destroyed during WWII, and was now left as a reminder of what World War will do. Right outside of the church, they were putting up the city Christmas tree and I videotaped it with my camera and I will upload it. After that we went and shopped from the stores close to the church. I got a German soccer jersey and I will wear it when Germany plays in the world cup. (unless they are playing USA.) After lunch we caught an intercity train and we went to the Olympic stadium from 1936. It was the stadium where Jesse Owens from America beat all of the Germans and made Hitler very mad. Hitler thought the Germans were a race superior to all others, so you can imagine his anger when his Germans lost to an American. Worse than that for Hitler, Jesse Owens was black and they were considered inferior to everyone back then so Hitler must have been furious. In 2006 the Stadium was renovated to hold the World Cup and it was the site of Finals between Italy and France. (I'm still mad that Italy won.) Today the stadium belongs to Hertha BSC, Berlin's club soccer team.

Friday was rainy, so we decided to make it museum day. We first went to the Prussian palace which belonged to the Carlotta family during the 1800s and early 1900s. Today it has been converted into a museum and as we walked through it, I was thinking how awesome it would be to live there. The thing it's famous for isn't so much the palace, as it is the garden out back. It is very beautiful and is similar to the gardens for the French Kings and Queens. After the palace we went on a double-decker bus around the city. We went on the top so that we could see Berlin well. When the bus ride was over, we went into a museum of old statues of the Babylonian and Assyrian era. I took a lot of pictures and I will upload them. Tomorrow is our last full day in Berlin; I hope it's as good as the other days.

Today was a beautiful day weather-wise. It was sunny and warm so we decided to shop-around at some of Berlin's good stores. I got a Berlin hat to add to my collection for only 6 Euros. (Which is very cheap) I also got a new wallet because I left my other one in Kansas. (It was empty so it really didn't matter) We then went a got some very good kebabs for lunch. In the afternoon we went on another tour bus except going the other way, so we pretty much got to see all of Berlin. We went to church this evening because it would be easier not to have to go to church tomorrow because of our train schedule tomorrow. The church is called St. Mathias and now I have been to 3 different language masses. (English, Polish, German) We leave tomorrow at 2 and will arrive in Gdansk at about 10. Hope it goes well.

I am writing this as I'm on the train because I have nothing better to do. What was originally one train from Berlin to Szcenzin, and then Szcenzin to Gdansk turned into 3 trains and a bus. They had to split the trains because of something with the tracks so we thought we had to go on 3 trains. Ok that's fine. When we get off the 1^st train there's a bus because of more track problems and that took us to another station where a second train took us to Szcezin. Now we're finally on the train coming home. Only four hours to go. Overall this trip was pretty fun and interesting. The only regret I have right now is that I have to go to School in the morning. And Gardner better watch out because nobody can stop the Saints now.

Hi samantha

November 3rd

Here in Poland they really don't celebrate Halloween. They instead celebrate All Saints Day. It is probably the 3rd most important Holiday here besides Christmas and Easter. People will travel throughout the country to the site where their parents or grandparents are buried. People will buy lanterns that they light and put on the tombstone of their deceased loved ones. Not wanting to miss out on all of the fun, my family bought a lantern at our local supermarket and we went to a cemetery that is about 50 meters from our house. This cemetery is special because it is full of the people died at the defense of the Post office in 1939 when Germany first began attacking Poland. It was 56 post workers against more than 200 German soldiers and the Poles repelled the attack not once but twice and the battle went on for more than 15 hours. After the Germans pumped gasoline into the Post office and 3 workers burned alive the rest of the workers surrendered. When they went outside the German army captured them and shot them against the nearest wall. This battle was one of the first of World War II. I have attached some pictures that i took of the graveyard. Next Tuesday my family is going to Berlin, Germany for the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down so that will be very exciting.