Finally Marek was able to leave everything behind and go on vacation. We took our little boat and went where is green, cool and not too far, to Sierra (officially called Sierra Nevada). It is 6 hours of driving from our home (with the boat in tow 8). Sierra is about 350 miles long and 80-40 miles wide, having picturesque alpine lakes, deep canyons, numerous cascade waterfalls, little glaciers, high summits to conquer (with Mt. Whitney including) and many more, is a playground to people who like hiking, fishing, rock climbing and any other adventures. It has Lassen National Park, Yosemity [View Full Entry]

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This was an unusual aproach to our national holiday but we had a lot of fun and definitely we beat the heat. With few polish friends, with whom we are starting Polish Club in our valley, we decided to do "the bonding" by walking 11 miles and gain and lose 2600' (about 870 m) by climbing San Jacinto Peak (second tallest in So. California 10804 '). It was still the easiest way to get there, because we took a tram, which starts from Palm Springs. It took us up from 2643 feet elevation to 8516 feet in a ride which by [View Full Entry]

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I am home already, but my last two days in Berlin went very fast, so I did not have time to write anything. We left Poland with my sister on Thursday morning. By the time we reached border it started to rain, then it got really bad, when it was time to change freeways towards centre of Berlin we could barely see anything in front of us. Somehow we found our cousin house at the end of very nervous trip with our noses touching front window to see better names of the streets. On the same day in the evening we [View Full Entry]

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Today was a very relaxing day. We did last minute shopping to take back home (books and polish candies). Afternoon we went for a short drive to the nearby park in Przelewice, the weather was perfect and we enjoyed polish red poppies. [View Full Entry]

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Finally came the day I was looking for, our high school reunion. From Gdansk we drove to Wroclaw around 400 km. in 9 hours. Polish roads are horrible, but I could see everywhere road costructions, so there is a hope. So instead coming at 10pm. we arived after 12 at Krzysiu and Asia house. The next day we picked up Magda and Basia and 5 of us met rest of our old class in Szklarska Poreba to hike about 2 h. up the mountains. With us was our teacher with her husband. In my wildest dreams I have not expected to [View Full Entry]

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When we arrived in Gdynia, it was raining heavyly. When I decided to take Ania with me, I made a point to show her how european young people travel. Keeping to this promise, instead of taking a taxi to the centre we walked to the bus stop in the rain, when with a norvegian guy took the city bus to Gdynia train station and later train to Gdansk main station. I don't have to mention that we were the only ones from the whole ferry to do that. In the beginning of the day it rained, despite of this we left [View Full Entry]

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On Tuesday morning we left Monsteras to Karlskrona, where our ferry would take us to Gdynia, Poland. On the way we took last chance to visit Kalmar, relatively big city, capital of county and big university center. It has a nice old town and castle in renesance style. We had there a sensible lunch (according to Bogucha) which consisted of good pastry and coffee in one of the old town caffeterias. Then we headed for Karskrona, where we, after visiting a Marine Museum, old town and eating a very good dinner, boarded our ferry. We had a very smooth overnight trip. [View Full Entry]

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Yeasterday finally the weather was good enough to take the boat trip. It was not perfect, it was still pretty windy but warm enough to enjoy it. Swen knows this area as "his own pocket", so we were save, but honestly I would be lost in this "archipelago" in no time. It is a maze of small and big islands with small and big penisulas, which all look the same.There were a lot of summer houses around, some of them on really small islands. Most of the buildings here have color, named by my Bogucha, "swedish red" and really look right [View Full Entry]

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On Saturday was a beautifull sunny day, but it was too windy again for the boat. So the next on " must see" list was Oland, the long island along south-east coast near Kalmar. It is quite long, 160 km. but relatively narrow. Many Swedish go there camping during summer, it is popular among bird watchers, good place for long walks and bike rides. We decided to go visit only southern part of the island with famous grassy areas called Alvar Plains, where during May are they are covered by certain kind of local orchids. We were late for orchids, [View Full Entry]

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Two days ago, having a really bad weather, we decided to go visit Vimmerby. Any fan of famous swedish writer Astrid Lingrens should visit her park. The park was a "swedish style", (oposite to american) not too fancy or big, but Ania, being a third generation reading Pippi, Emil and Lotta had a lot of fun. There are minatures of the houses and villages from the books, and there were several shows (in swedish) with kids favorites characters (for me it will be always Emil). Dispite swedish language we had a lot of fun watching the shows and they sang a [View Full Entry]

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