Day 3

Where to begin? Well, I may as well start at the beginning. As you may surmise, my day started out with breakfast, sniadanie…. But nothing simple, a wonderful vegetable salad containing leeks, cork, onions, celery, leeks, mayo, and other secret ingredients…. And pierogi. And other goodies like herbata (tea)… I was certainly filled.

Then, after a bit, we took off. It was Alicja and Wojtek and Filip and it. We barely got out of the town of Grabiny-Zameczek–a few hundred kilometers from the house, when Wojtek offered me the chance to drive. So, of course, I took it. Me and Polish roads and Polish drivers. Well, in the next hour or two, I did not set any speed record, but we did arrive at our destination safely.

Eventually, we arrived at Kandyn, a small down on the coast of a part of the Baltic Sea. There were supposed to be some horse stables there we did not find them. But we still had a nice walk through the downtown area, if you can call it that. It was very quaint and the roads are under construction. Oh, and on the way, we came to a ferry. We had to wait a bit, but eventually took the fairly over a tributary of the Wisla river.

After Kandyn, we did a bit of driving…well, Wojtek did now. We went all the way to the Russian border that goes to Kaliningrad. The unfriendly guard there told us “no pictures” but you can check my web site when I get home… LOL…but we did see Russia!!

The we went to Frombork. It’s a very impressive church that is fortified with a wall around it. Wojtek and I climbed to the top of the steeple and I have some great pictures. You can see the Baltic Sea from there, among other things.

After that we started to head back and find some dinner, but first there was a very sobering stop….. We’d seen this cemetery earlier on our way, but now decided to give it a brief visit. It was a sobering remembrance of World War II. In a large area there were some mass graves or Russian soldiers, and some markers around the outside. A few of the markers had actual names on them, and a very small number had flowers or some other sober remembrance that someone knew who was buried there. But for the majority, it was just a nameless mass grave of Russian soldiers who died in 1945 trying to defeat the Germans. There were over 31, 000 people buried there. Think about that number. Thirty One Thousand. …. 31,000…. Over that. Amazing.

After that, we needed some fun…and some food…so we headed to the Baltic, of course, to a beach. Eventually we ended up in Stegna, and went to the beach there. We also had dinner there. I had a bowl of soup (grochowa) which was a sort of split pea with ham and very good, and fish (dorsz), fried Cod, with potatoes. Also a salad of cabbage, red cabbage, and carrots which was very good.

After that we went to the beach for a bit. Nice sand, nice wave, sand people in the water. Filip went on a ride or two, but it was a good time. Eventually it was time to leave.

We took a route along the Baltic home, too, and had to take a ferry across the Wisla..actually not the “real,” historic Wisla, but a channel artificially created by the Germans. But we got across after a bit, and eventually arrived “home” in Grabiny-Zameczek. I could live here, no doubt!

After a brief respite, the evening’s activities began with the arrival of (English speaking) friends Zygmut and Patricja and their two boys. It was a wild evening, fueled in part by three boys and by a combination of (a) Jack Daniels and Coke and (b) White Zubrowka and orange. And then we had dinner. Once again, Alicja out did herself, with various pierogi, salad, and a lot of other dishes. Eventually there was szarlotka as well. It was all delicious.

And now it is time for bed, time to end my amazing adventure for today. Let me just end with telling you that Polish people are not much different than other, ordinary, American people…except that they are very solid and firm in their beliefs, and family and friends seem to come first….