Krakow is a beautiful City, here is Rich at Castle Hill in front of the amazing Cathedral.
Warsaw is a huge city. We walked our feet off and still felt that we didn't really get a grasp of the City. It is simply too big, and has no center that you can point to. The Warsaw Rising museum was amazing though. It chronicles the almost 2 month long fight of the people of Warsaw against the Nazis near the end of WWII (not to be confused with the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, which was earlier in the war, when the Jews decided to fight back.).
The Polish Home Army fought hard, hoping for Ally help, but ultimately lost control of the City again, and Warsaw was bombed into oblivion. The Rising memorial depicts the heroic fight. Here a solder descends into the sewer tunnels which were used to travel and communicate during the battle. Museum website: www.1944.pl
Then it was on to Wroclaw, where we stayed with a Servas family. Wroclaw was the most rewarding stop of our time in Poland. Not only were Wojliech, Malgorzata and Carolina fun to talk to and very hospitable, but we went to the school where Malgorsata teaches and spoke to two of her English classes. She teaches at XII Liceum in Wroclaw and the kids in both classes, III fgh and IE2, were lovely. Rich and I talked about San Francisco and our lives while Malgorzata quizzed the kids and encouraged them to speak up. I talk so fast that I'm amazed they kept up, but they did. English is becoming an even more important second language for a lot of people.
Kids, if you're reading this, keep up the English. You were all wonderful and made our stay in your beautiful city even more fun. Come visit us in SF, we will be signed up as Servas hosts when we return.
To top off our great stay, we discovered that Rich and Malgorzata share a birthday, Oct 24th.
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