Warsaw and Kraków

The last three days have flown by!

We left Gdansk Tuesday morning and toured a few more of the villages that our people occupied so many years ago.  There of course no descendants left but the cemeteries still have a lot of tombstones with the Mennonite names.  The information that I have on pictures will give me hours of work in my hobby of tracing our heritage.

This is a field of canola and the yield potential looks great; no wonder our people farmed in this area.

In Elblag we saw one of the few churches that was built in a city (most were in the country) by Mennonites in 1590.  It was not destroyed by the wars since then and is now used by the Polish Catholics. 

The highways are great in Poland but are very busy and so there is a lot of construction with very up to date equipment:

If this tank could fit into our luggage I'm sure it would have been purchased on the spot:

 

The wheat and the other crops look great.  Vast areas of farmland wherever we have traveled:

 

In Warsaw we received the good news of the arrival of a grand-daughter!  Our whole group rejoiced with us and our Polish tour guide presented us with a gift for her for when she is two years old.

The proud grand-mother would like to present these flowers to the first time mother; all the best Bobby and Alana!

A part of the wall of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw:

Wednesday we travelled to Kraków and on the way stopped to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau;  I was surprised at the many people that were visiting and found out that last year 1.7 million people visited this site.  My hope is that the world will understand the evil of this place and that we will all do our part to make sure that this will never happen again.  The visit here was very sobering and I appreciate my freedom more today then I did yesterday.

Just inside the gate at Birkenau:

The grape vines on the way to Kraków looked great:

Beautiful lanscape and buildings as well:

Enjoying iced tea in the old town of Kraków:

This young fellow was feeding the birds:

This sign was posted by one of the many small restaurants; the coffee in Poland certainly has the desired effect; it's very strong!

Our tour of Poland has been a tremendous experience so far and we have only two days remaining.  On Sunday we are scheduled to fly back to Edmonton, Alberta.

Good nigh and may you all be blessed by God, the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!