In 18 days I will be leaving the country for a three week trip to Poland. You may ask, why Poland? Well that is where my wife was born. She moved to the United States with her parents at a young age and last visited her hometown of Raciborz (about two hours outside of Krakow) in July 1999. Yes it has been nearly 10 years since she has seen many family members and walked the streets of where she spent the first 10 years of her life.
So I am pretty excited. Not just about traveling, but about the valuable time she will get to spend with her family. Aunts, uncles, cousins and her grandmother, who was a prisoner during World War II by the Nazi soldiers, will all be awaiting her arrival. I had the chance to meet her grandmother about 4 years ago when my wife graduated college. So it will be great to see her again and enjoy some home made Polish food. Of course we have a language barrier between the two of us, but my wife can translate and I happen to speak a few words in Polish.
During my stay in Raciborz, I will have a 1-bedroom apartment with my wife that is located right in the town square. If you have been reading this site, you know my love of town squares, so it is going to be great to live by one for three weeks. I will just have to figure out the WiFi situation, lord knows I can not go 10 minutes without internet capabilities. It is a sickness!
I will be updating the site as often as possible while on the trip. I mean I will not be glued to the internet nor will I be updating you with travel deals. Instead for three weeks this site will be strictly updates from locations like Krakow, Zakopane, Tatra Mountains, Katowice, and of course Raciborz. We had planned a few days in Prague, but have since decided that we want to focus on Poland during this European trip.
So much has been planned already for our visit, so it just didn’t make sense to travel outside the country during our stay. No complaints here, I am looking forward to getting the “real” Polish experience. That means plenty of borscht, blintzes, pierogis, potato vodka and beer. Lots and lots of beer!
Other random thoughts:
- I am obsessed with travel…yet my wife hates it. Well let me rephrase that. She doesn’t hate it, she simply hates me talking about it so much. She loathes flying, hates to book a hotel, and wants to sleep late when away on vacation. As for me, I will find any excuse to board a plane, always make the travel reservations, and am up early each morning while I am away. Well maybe not so early if I am out a tad bit too late the night before.
- Am I the only one that has never watched American Idol? I believe they just ended a 7th or 8th season yesterday. I have no clue why it is so appealing to such a large audience. It is basically karaoke. Some people sing good and some sing bad. But usually when I do karaoke at the bar, we enjoy the bad singers over the showoffs.
- H1N1…swine flu…whatever. No one is dying from it here. I am sad to hear that people in places like Mexico have passed, but the American media is scaring the hell out of people…and for what? A flu!? The people that have died “due to swine flu related causes” were already sick. Shame on the media for making much to do about nothing more than an extreme case of the sniffles. People are dropping dead by the millions each day from hunger, AIDS, war, and various other threats. Yet this flu gets front page news for a month. What? If I had the time, I would be on a plane to Acapulco, Cancun or Cozumel taking advantage of the super low flights and hotel rates right now.
- As much as I love bread, wine, expensive cheeses and crepes…I have yet to visit France! It is on my short list of places to visit…along with Japan, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.
- Places that I have “tentatively” scheduled to visit by the end of the year include Austin, Chicago (for the marathon), Napa Valley, and Portland, Oregon.
- I do not watch much television, as I find most shows to be painfully boring to follow, but I have to admit that I never get tired of Rescue Me. Since it debuted a few years back, and was filmed in my hometown of Rockaway Beach, it has had me glued to FX each week. Bravo to Denis Leary for making such a fun show to watch.
- The “Best Town Square” poll round 2 is doing good this week with the votes. For 48 hours there was an eight way 1st place tie. How odd?! As of this post, one of the eight took the lead…and not by a little either. Of course after Sunday morning 10 of the 20 town squares will be cut.
- How will you be able to win this free guidebook you ask? Stay tuned for that announcement this Sunday. Trust me, I will make it as simple as possible.
