Polska

Leaving Berlin, we drove into the rural area of western Poland.  This may actually be the highlight of this road trip.  

Just so you remember where Poland is . . . it's a big country - not much smaller than Germany and pretty much surrounded by countries that used to be part of the USSR.  

It is also very homogeneous - meaning nearly 97% of the population are native Poles.

We stayed in the little town of Lubniewice, Poland (population 1,924).  This whole area is very rural and incomes are fairly low here.  

Ross looked up the minimum wage in Poland and it's $515 per month.  That's $2.97 per hour.

Here are some pictures of houses taken as we drove into town.

Before heading to the hotel we stopped at this grocery store to see what sort of things a Polish grocery store sells.

Here are a few things we bought.  The Pierniki cookies were delicious and reminded us of cookies our friends, the Walters from France, used to send to us.  I sent some of the goodies to Randi and family.  Jim ate those sardines.  And survived.

The store was fairly small, but they made room for a very large display of vodka.

We bought wine, vodka and a beer to try.  The wine isn't Polish, but the beer is from the oldest brewery in Poland and the vodka is apparently famous.

As we were heading toward the town of Lubniewice, we passed this cemetery and decided it was worth turning around and going back.  It was.

It's called Cmentarz Komunalny and it was pretty amazing.  Nearly every grave was adorned with flowers and trinkets and almost all had a little bench for family and friends to sit when they come to visit.

I've definitely never seen anything like this.  Seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

Each grave is very close to the next one and you can see it went on and on.  Many had candles and nearly every one had a crucifix.  Poland is 90% Roman Catholic.

Did you know that all female names in Poland end in "a"?  Popular girls names are Aleksandra, Paulina, Anna, Karolina . . . popular boys names are Mateusz, Jakub, Michac, Jan.

Many of the candles were lit as if someone had come by earlier in the day to light them.  Very interesting and apparently a very revered place.

This is the hotel we stayed in and although there were a few other guests, we felt sort of like we were on the movie The Shining.

We nearly had the whole place to ourselves.  Here's Winslow making himself at home.

This is Jezioro Lubiaz or Lake Lubiaz.

This nice pathway ran from the hotel alongside the lake.  We took a long walk and the weather was really nice that day.

It seems the lake is popular in the summer for water sports and vacationing.

We could see this building from across the lake so we decided to check it out.

It appears to be a church, but it must not be in use at this time.

This guard made sure we didn't get any ideas about going into the fenced area.

I have enough trouble making out signs in Dutch, and certainly have no idea what this says, but our best guess is that the EU has funded this project to attract visitors to this lake area.

It is definitely beautiful and peaceful and quiet and very remote!

You would definitely need GPS to find this place.

These are boats belonging to the Wodne Ochotnicze Pogotowie Ratunkowe or in English . . . the Water Volunteer Rescue Service.

Before heading out of town, we drove around a little, visiting a little store and the Post Office.  This building is also the bank.  One window for each - very convenient.

This is the City Hall.

It's basically a one horse town and also a nice place to visit.

As we headed back into Germany, we kept seeing cars pulled off and parked along the rural, wooded areas. 

Turns out the owners of those cars were out picking wild mushrooms.  We passed by some for sale and turned around to check it out.  We asked if we could take their picture and the younger woman seemed embarrassed and didn't want to be in the picture, but this lady was just fine with it!

I snapped the other woman's picture anyway as we made a purchase.  I think they were probably mother and daughter.  There was no way to communicate. They didn't speak a work of English, but seemed happy with the 5 Euros we paid for the mushrooms. 

Jim really wanted to cook them, but by the time we got home with them, it had been a few days. He's famous for trying nearly anything, but thankfully, even he didn't think eating them was a good idea.

We stopped in the next closest and largest town and snapped this photo at a real estate agency.  In Poland, the currency is the zloty and is more or less 1 Euro to 4 Zloty.  That house on the poster would cost about 50,000 Euro (or $64,000) and their website says the houses in that area are anywhere from 1,000 sq ft to 1,900 sq ft.

Back to Germany, it wasn't long before we saw lots and lots of windmills - there are about 22,000 of them here.  

We put "avoid motorways" in the GPS so we could drive down some beautiful roads like this one.

From the GPS, we could see this lake so we veered off to have a look.

It's hard to tell, but the water was crystal clear.

On the back roads again.  What a nice barricade to keep you from being killed by a sycamore tree.

We may never get the chance to return to Poland, but I'm sure glad we got to go this once.