Kuriatkowie

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 N.P., Kings Canyon N.P. and Sequoia N.P. which says a lot about uniqueness of this area. First we went to Hunington lake to check our boat on the lake. Kids and us had so much ... read more

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 took advantage of free entry to most of museums in Berlin between 6-22 pm on Thursdays. I picked the Neue Museum since last time I have not seen this one. It is maybe not as ... read more

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 have such a good time. Once we all met, time went back 30 years. We all changed more or less outside but inside at least for those 3 days we were again teenagers. On Saturday ... read more

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. We had a good time in swedish style, close to nature and in a slow pace, thanks to wonderfull swedish-polish hospitality. Thank you Bogucha and Swen.... read more

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, buy the fields were still covered with other blooming flowers. The island has been inhabited for thousands of years and we could still see many old stone structures, graves, windmills and interesting farm buildings and ... read more