Monday, March 16, 2009
Our son, Chris is here visiting us. What a great way to close out our time in Poland! Chris is on spring break from grad school and I’m thrilled he’s here. I’ve decided that having someone come to visit, is a great way to “recap” my time here. I’ll get to show him my favorite places and favorite things and say good bye to them, as well.
This past weekend, we went to Czersk to visit my favorite castle. It was a fabulous day! The temperature was around 10 C (that’s around 50 F) and the sun was shining as large puffy white clouds floated through the sky. I got a couple of great pictures of the castle towers with the blue sky and white clouds behind them. (Check the Flickr site for pictures.) We ate our picnic lunch sitting on the castle wall and looking out over the valley. It was obvious that the local farmers were preparing their fields for spring. The trees in the orchards were trimmed and fields were showing evidence of plowing.
After lunch and plenty of time to explore the castle towers, we left to go down to the river—the Vistula for my friends back home. On our previous two trips, I enjoyed going down to the river’s edge to watch the water flowing by. Imagine my surprise when we went on Saturday to see the river 100 yards closer to us than before! In Kansas City, the Missouri River is part of the landscape but I really am not aware of its seasonal rise and fall. Occasionally, as I cross a bridge, I might notice something but I’m not usually “up close and personal” with the Missouri River. I say that to say that my experience with rivers is fairly limited. The last time I saw the Vistula was in December and at that time, it was full of ice and flowing fairly rapidly. Saturday, the water was over the banks and still moving swiftly! Now I know why there are such high banks between the river and the apple orchards.
I’ve taken Chris to Old Town (Stare Miasto) and we visited the Royal Castle. We rode the bus to Nowy Swiat so I could show him the palm tree in the intersection (last summer, I thought it was a living tree!) and then walked from there to Old Town. We’ll make another trip to visit the monument to the Warsaw Uprising. This week we will also take the train and go to Krakow. It will be a fast trip but I hope a memorable one for Chris. I’m excited to go back to Krakow because I think it is a beautiful city.
As I said, this visit with Chris is a great way for me to reinforce my memories of my time in Poland. I feel that I’ve been able to “visit” history and it has been a wonderful experience. I’m not quite finished here and I look forward to the next few weeks. Who knows what I’ll discover before I leave?
