the great European adventure: The last few days in Poland

Hello again!

This blog is about my last few days in Poland and the trip to France. Super exciting stuff (not really...)

When I got to Poland, my grandma told me that they had a surprise for me, but that I wouldn't find out what it was until tomorrow. However, later my uncle spoiled the surprise by telling me that they bought two baby cows! My cousin Lukasz was really angry because he wanted to surprise me in the barn haha. Anyway they were pretty cute and they liked to be petted.

Cows! They cost about 1000pln each, so about 300 dollars. Interesting, huh?

After I saw the babies, I checked up on all the animals from the summer. The animals grew so much! One of the cows that was a few months old during the summer because a giant. Seriously, he looks like a monster compared to what he used to be. I named him Hortensio during the summer, and I refer to him as such in my head, but no one else knows that. I didn't venture into the barn again while I was there, mostly because it was cold outside and I'm a sissy for the cold.

Hortensio the Giant

I named her Mary Moo Cow over the summer

When I was watching tv one day, I realized that on Polish tv, during tv shows that are like soap operas and stuff, they have a person in the bottom right hand corning signing. I thought it was pretty cool, but they did get distracting sometimes haha

hard to tell but there's a lady in the bottom right (she's wearing black)

On the Wednesday, my uncle said that he'd be putting in some insulation in the attic so me and my cousin Ula helped. It was soooo cool up there, mostly because of the stuff I found. One thing that wasn't cool is that in earlier times, they'd insulate attics with this like dirt/dust thing which seriously just piled up in the attic, so in order to put down these styrofaum insulators we had to move all the dust stuff to the side and it got really dusty in there. However, we were able to open this little window thing which brought in fresh air and light. One of the first things I noticed when I got up there was that that near the slanting part of the far wall, there was a random chair just sitting there. It was actually really creepy looking, but I loved it.

styrofaum, dust stuff, and the chair after we put it to good use holding stuff

View from the attic window (it had just snowed)

In the attic I found so many cool random things. One thing we found were these old paintings that my grandpa had painted of my mom and her siblings. They look really realistic! I also found a lot of old pictures in a box which were so much fun to look through. I love seeing family members when they were younger. Another awesome thing I found which probably not everyone would think is really cool is a tube of old toothpaste. Obviously toothpaste isn't very exciting, but it was a Russian toothpaste from when Poland was communist. Super cool! Another really cool thing I found is 50zloty bill from 1940. It's really big and looks nothing like the current ones. I love it though, I'm gonna take it home with me and maybe frame it.

mi madre when she was younger, in painting form

Russian toothpaste!

the money (sorry i forgot to flip it)

The other days when I was Poland I just sat around mostly. There isn't too much to do in the winter. Below is a picture of my grandpa and their dog Murphy. No matter where or when, Murphy will sit underneath the chair my grandpa's sitting in. It's so cute.

On the Thursday, I went with my uncle to Dabrowa Tarnowska (a bigger town) to exchange money for euros and do some grocery shopping. It had snowed overnight and the roads were not plowed like at all. A 15 minute drive became over 30.

a park in Dabrowa Tarnowska

And then in no time, Friday came. My flight from Krakow was at 6:35am so I got up at 2:30 because we were gonna leave at 3 (the airport is about 1.5-2 hours away). When we left Zelichow, it was seriously like a blizzard. It was snowing so bad and none of the roads were plowed (see a trend?). We eventually made it to Krakow though, where there was like no snow.

From Krakow I flew to Munich, where I had about a 3 hours layover. I spent the time walking around, sitting, attempting and failing to get wifi to work, and eating. When i got there i was starving so i bought a chocolate muffin. It was delicious.