Neighbourhood party

Just a few pictures from the barbecue that our

branch put on for the neighbours.

We will probably get more pictures from

Elder Siebert.  He has a good camera.

Scenes on the way

I took this picture while the police had a little chat with Clarence.

Houses here are built with cement blocks.

 An old windmill in Rydzyna where the castle is.

 A statue and a pink building at the end of the road

when we were leaving the castle.

A field ready for harvesting at the end of June.

 Rynek (market) in Poznan.

 The flower arrangements in front of this statue of eagles

were beautiful and interesting. This was in Szczecin.

We saw two blue fields like this one.

When we first stopped the car, we thought that they

were thistles.  But they were not.

We don't know what they were.

Leszczynski castle

This picture was taken in front of the castle that King Stanislaw Leszczynski lived in.

It is just south of Poznan in a smaller city called Rydzyna. 

 Part of the castle is now a hotel

.  They gave us a tour of the floor that is not usually open for public.

This is just part of a hallway.

 Somebody at some time must have been a hunter.

 There was even a stuffed bear in one corner.

 The ceiling and the corners of this room were quite interesting.

See the next two pictures also.

Just a piece of furniture

 They have about 4 weddings there every weekend. 

 This room was all ready for one that was being held the next Saturday.

 This is another entrance to the castle.

This is actually the one they use for the hotel.

 This is one Leszczynski standing by another.

The statue is of King Stanislaw Leszczynski.

 This is the back of the building.

 This was a table in our bedroom.

I think I took this picture of the moat that surrounds the castle

from our living room window.

New Elder

This is Elder Lyzwinski (I hope I got it right).  Elder Łapot is not with us

any more.  Elder Lyzwinski is from Warsaw and will be in Gdansk only

till the end of June.  He was called to serve a 10-day mission to be

a companion to Elder Krzymiński.  Beginning of July will be the time

for official transfers.

Westerplatte

Today we went to Westerplatte, Gdansk.  This is the place where the

German army entered Poland in Aug-Sept 1939, at the beginning of the WWII.

The ruins of a building in Westerplatte.

The cellar of this building was used as bomb shelter.

There were several plaques like this with the names of the

Polish defenders.  They had planted roses in front of all of them.

This is the monument to remember the men who faught

for their country.

There were many groups of children and youth touring Westerplatte

when we were there.  Seesome of them on the steps of the monument.

As we walked up the hill to the monument we enjoyed

the fragrance of pink and white roses. 

What does this mean?

I saw this on a wall of a building.  It said:  "Michael mówi: (Michael says)

Will go like from a cornflake"

My English must be getting pretty bad.  I have no idea what this means.

Elder and Sister Moon's visit

The day after Karlo left a Senior missionary couple, the Moons,

came to Gdansk for a couple of days. They are serving in

Wroclaw, Poland.

We spent the first day of the Moons' visit to Gdansk at the Malbork Castle.

The next day we went to Hel.

Hel is a resort  town on a peninsula east of Gdansk.

Some of the road to Hel is lined with wild roses.

The roses in Hel are bigger than the ones in Alberta, Canada

We have arrived.

Our first stop was at the beach.

Here's Clarence touching the Baltic Sea.

There are some fairly nice restaurants in Hel.

We stopped for dinner at one of them, but we

didn't have halibut, so we couldn't say that we

went to "hel for the hal-i-but"

(Very funny, haha)

This missionary does not seem very happy in Hel.

We saw these two missionaries wanting to thumb their

way out of Hel. We gave them a ride.

The next day, before touring the Old Town, we went to the

historical park where the Upside-down House is.

This park tells us about the life of Kaszubians. They were

taken to Siberia and later returned to Poland.  Many Kaszubians

also moved to eastern Canada.

The Moons sat down for a moment hoping that the

rain would stop, but it didn't.

  

Kaszubians do beautiful, colorful embroidery.

Every color has a meaning for them.  One hue of blue stands for

 ocean, another for lake, yet another for river. etc.etc.

These beams of various colors support the roof/ceiling of

an open-air building in the park. 

I can't remember for sure what these handprints were for.

I think they were of some of the people who have made

donations to the building and upkeep of the park.

  

This is inside the Upside-down House.  See my wet coat.

Boy, was it ever raining.  It rained the last time we were too.

On the way home we stopped at our favorite perogie

restaurant.  Oh, those blueberry perogies were tasty.

Karlo's visit

Old Town - Karlo at theStatue of Neptune

Długa (Long) Street in Old Town.

A Pirate ship in Old Town.

This is the stairway up to the top of St. Mary's church in Gdansk Old Town.

They seem to have St. Mary's church in every city in Poland.

The first part of the stairs were spiral.

The men climbed all 450 stairs to the top of the church.

My sore muscles allowed me to climb only the 160 spiral stairs.

The rest of the stairs were just normal strait stairs, but they went round and round also. 

Coming down was another spiral staircase 130 (I think) and then 30 steps

so steep that Karlo thought I would pass out.  He wanted to get a picture of my horrified look,

but he was too slow.   Clarence kindly went in front of me down the stairs

so I didn't need to look at how steep they were.

We call this the "Anno-building".  It has on it "Anno 1650"  (I'm not sure of the year)

At the solidarity monument.

"King Karlo" at the Malbork castle.

At the Malbork Castle.

They have ipods as "tour guides" in several languages.

 

At Sopot pier with another pirate ship in the back ground.

In this picture you can hopefully see the beach in the back ground.

The longest wooden pier in the world, at least that's what they say.

Karlo at the Baltic Sea.  He got to touch it.