Why Polish children will never wonder which bathroom to use...

**DISCLAIMER: This post isn't meant to spark a debate on politics.

First off, ALL the world watches American politics. Oftentimes, when people find out we're American they'll want to discuss Trump vs. Clinton. Random people here express very decided opinions on the matter...sometimes I feel like they know more about American politics than I do!

But even I am aware of the recent debate about Obama's directive on bathroom rights for transgender students.

Which brings me to my observation:

Polish children will never wonder which bathroom to use. 

Unexpected Gems in Lviv, Ukraine

Now that we've been back for three weeks... I guess I better say something about our little rendezvous in Lviv.

Or Lwow.

Or Lvov...

Lemberg? (Okay, I think you get the point. Let's just say that has a lot to do with history and politics and I won't bore you with that discussion this time.)

Speaking of politics, one of the first little "gems" we encountered in this Ukrainian city was at the booths for the Easter festival. Turns out, Ukrainians aren't big fans of of the Russian president...

Vladimir Putin souvenirs in Lviv, Ukraine

A Trip to the Hospital, Polish Style

I wish I could say my trip to a Polish hospital was for curiosity's sake, or for an educational field trip with the medical school, but it wasn't. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had a miscarriage in January and after four months of my body not returning to the normal, I finally visited a gynecologist here in Lublin. She recommended I go to the hospital asap. 

You'd think that would be some pretty straightforward advice, but it's surprising how such things can be so complicated in a different language. Let's just say that my tears of frustration were completely justified after searching for the szpital for over an hour and then having the non-English speaking receptionists dismiss my inquiry about the hospital even when I desperately pointed to the sign for szpital that was just down the hall. That's when I decided to just go home and let my husband help me with this one. (Since he knows about 20 words of Polish in comparison to my 5 :)

Two hospitals, four days, and six needle sticks later... 

Poland's Constitution Day

We came back from Ukraine yesterday (post coming soon) since Alex has been pretty sick with a terrible cold. He still didn't have school today though since Poland celebrates Constitution Day, which is basically the equivalent of the United States' Independence Day it seems. I assumed there would probably be some sort of event going on since I could see police cars blocking the street below our apartment. When you live where I live, all you have to do is step out your front door to join the festivities.:)

I arrived just in time to see the parade of soldiers and military trucks.

A week in Italy: Bergamo

Bergamo is technically only an hour outside of Milan, but it was so uniquely special I thought it deserved a post of its own. For those of you who read the Milan and Venice portions of "A week in Italy," you will remember that Alex and I figured out transportation and accommodation as it came each day. Right before leaving Venice, we found a deal to catch the bus from Venice to Bergamo for a whopping 1 euro each! (We had to even out our transportation costs from the first day in Italy when we booked a hotel near the wrong airport...refer to the Milan post for that story.)

Anyway, after Venice I honestly thought this would just be a last stop before getting on the plane the next morning. I had absolutely no expectations for it. I mean really, how can any place follow the magical maritime city of Venice?

We got a room in the center of a quiet restaurant/shopping district. We may have just spent our last few hours roaming those streets, except that fortunately a very nice local woman asked if we needed help when we were looking at our map. For the next twenty minutes, she walked us through the streets to find our room, chatting the whole time. By the way, she was shocked when she found out we are married: "But you look so young!" Haha. Last thing before she left, she told us we had to go check out Citta Alta, or high city. "You'll thank me for it."

Dear Bergamo lady, you were right. Thank you!!!!!!

Predictably, Citta Alta is the highest residential area in the city and the streets to get there aren't necessarily terribly steep, they just consistently keep going up...and up...and UP.

A week in Italy: Venice

Getting to Venice was an adventure all it's own. We used a ride sharing site called BlaBlaCar to catch a ride with an Italian man named Alberto and his wife and five year old daughter. We never did manage to have the internet other than at our hotels and a restaurant or two, so keeping in contact and figuring out a meeting place in a city we didn't know was...interesting.

Oh, and Alberto and his family didn't speak English... haha.

Luckily Alex's four semesters of Italian in college paid off and he could quite easily carry a conversation anywhere we went. Anyway, once we did meet up with Alberto and his family they took us to their home outside of Milan for a quick packing trip before we left. The little girl shared her Easter chocolate with us while we petted their dog and six cats. And she got even more comfortable falling asleep on me during the 3 hour ride to Venice.

Visiting Alberto's house

A week in Italy: Milan

If the definition of "backpacking through Europe" involves fitting everything you need in just a backpack (no bigger than 42x32x25cm according to Wizz Air policy) and trekking around without knowing where you'll sleep that night, then I can cross that off my bucket list now. Okay so it wasn't all of Europe; it was just Italy. Still counts, right?

One of the great things about living in Poland is that Alex got an entire week off of school for Easter! We decided we had to take advantage of living in Europe and go explore Italy. Our little adventure started with catching the train from Lublin to Warsaw. This was a first for both of us. I was giddy with relating everything to the Hogwarts Express. And then a man came by to see if we wanted to buy goodies from his cart. ("Anything off the trolley, dears?") Such a happy moment fulfilling my childhood dreams!

With seven of our nine flights in the past three years being incredibly long international flights, we were thrilled to fly to Milan in just over two hours. But we were quickly brought back to earth when we realized that we had booked our hotel for the first night only fifteen minutes from the wrong airport. Apparently Milan has three airports...

That was our one major mistake from this vacation. And it cost us dearly. (€8 each for the hour shuttle to Milan Central Station. Then €5 each for another hour to the airport on the opposite side of Milan... Then €15 for the taxi to our hotel, €10 for the shuttle back to the airport the next morning, and another €5 each for the shuttle back to Milan the next morning.) That's a grand total of sixty-nine US dollars! Yikes, I know.

Fortunately, the rest of our vacation didn't follow this same trend. In fact it was all amazing, starting with our first stop: the Duomo.

Coming out of the underground metro, the Duomo wasn't hard to miss as it towers over the square

Drown the witch!

Happy first day of Spring (yesterday)! The past week in Lublin has been beautiful with the sun actually out for more than an hour at a time. Our first three weeks here the sun shone for an average of probably five hours per week. It was a little discouraging. But with Spring in the air I'm hoping for more sunlight. I guess when you live in a place with so little winter sunlight you really appreciate Spring. And the Poles certainly do...although not in the way I would ever imagine.

An array of fresh flowers are sold across the street from my apartment
 every day--even in the Winter!

Majdanek and the Nazis on my street

It's not often that you get to walk where tens of thousands of men, women, and children died under the order of Nazi leaders. But it's even less common to walk on your very own street and know that that is where many of those Nazis marched by command of Hitler.

Although I am determined to to learn some Polish history outside of the grim details of World War II and the Holocaust, the overwhelming presence of the Nazis in Lublin during WWII deserves a post of its own. 

My first encounter with some of this history came unexpectedly on a walk to the bus station. I passed by a large rock monument, to the side of a building and stopped to read the plaque. It commemorated the sad ending of Polish poet Jozef Czechowicz who left Warsaw at the start of the war because he thought his hometown of Lublin a safer option. He died just over a week after the start of the war, when the building where he was getting his hair cut was bombed. 

Monument to a famous resident of Lublin who was killed at the start of WWII

An introduction to Lublin

Despite our rough start with finding an apartment, we found one that we love. Not only does it have plenty of lighting that I need as an artist, but it is in a great location right in the heart of the city. Multiple bus stops are located within steps from our apartment, so we can easily get anywhere in the city for less than a dollar. (Oh yeah, that's the other amazing thing about living here. The exchange rate from the Polish zloty to US dollar is about 4:1. One of the things I love about being American!)

View from our window (gotta love the pigeons)

My favorite thing about where we live, is our close proximity to Old Town. Within ten minutes, I can walk through the 14th century Krakovian Gate and into a darling cobble-stoned Medieval town. According to my tourist guides, Lublin boasts the best preserved Medieval town in all of Poland.

Taking the leap...Poland here we come!

The past few months have been probably the craziest of my life. Within 24 hours of each other, my husband changed career plans from dentistry to medicine and we found out I was pregnant. A few weeks later we left for a family visit in Brazil. Returning to Utah, our next few weeks were a blur. First there was the disappointment of a miscarriage. Then studying and taking the MCAT, solving a tax auditing issue, panicking at 10:45 pm when we find out that the passport photo won't work and the only photo center that is still open will close at 11, and then driving Alex to the airport at 4:30 the next morning so he can fly to LA to get a Polish visa AND a new Brazilian passport within 4 hours. 

(Wait, there's more.) 

Selling our apartment contract, selling all of our furniture, packing everything else, re-packing everything to store at my parent's house...the list goes on. And yes, we were both still working at our jobs during all of this. 

I get panicky just writing about it...

Predictably, when we finally boarded the plane my brain was doing the equivalent of that thing that happens after a day at Lagoon--right when you are about to fall asleep and you jerk awake with the feeling of somersaulting through the air. 

The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful. We flew to New York (I tried without success to convince Alex that visiting an airport doesn't count toward our list of "visited" places...but he still wanted to take a picture,) then we flew to Istanbul. If we were to take any pictures, that should've been the place. I have never been around so many Muslims in my life. And orthodox ones too; women covered from head to toe, even wearing gloves, with only a small hole for their eyes. This time, we thoroughly enjoyed playing our long-layover-game where we watch people walk past and comment on the first thing that stands out about them.

After just one overnight flight we already look exhausted