Dobra robota!

"Dobra robota!" means "Good Job!" in Polish.

 

We went to Poland last week end.  Luckily, it was open!

A walk through the Saxon Gardens in Warsaw is lovely this time of year with all the leaves changing colors on the trees. 

 

 

And falling off the trees...

 

 

And accumulating on the ground...

 

 

They have lots of interesting statues in the Saxon Gardens...

 

This guy needs to buy himself a Bluetooth headset. 

 

"Hey, could you call me back?  I'm kind of busy with a flaming pot here..."

 

The coolest thing about Saxon Gardens is that they don't give up on flowers just because it's winter...

 

They plant cabbage instead!  How cool is that?

 

When you get the end of Saxon Gardens, you will find the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

 

Perhaps it's not as grandiose as the ones in Paris or Rome, but just as powerful.

 

It was especially cool to be there on the weekend of their Independence Day, which is November 11 (same as our Veteran's Day holiday).  (Any guesses what the Polish Flag looks like?)

 

 

Because of the celebration, all over the city on the statues of famous Polish figures, they put a red and white ribbon, that we called the "Good Job" ribbons.  This is Józef Piłsudski, who was kind of a founding father of independent Poland.  He rebuilt Poland after the first world war.  "Good Job, Józef Piłsudski!"

 

You may have heard of the next recipient of the "Good Job" ribbon.  Who do you think this is? 

 

 

If you said Nicolaus Copernicus, you're right!  Did you know he was Polish?  (Remember, he's the guy who figured out that the earth revolves around the sun...)  "Good Job, Nicolaus Copernicus!"

 

Let's name a science museum after you!

 

The third recipient of the "Good Job" ribbon is Adam Mickiewicz.  He is a famous Polish poet.  What's that?  You haven't heard of him?  He's world famous in Poland!  Surely you have read one of his amazing works like

Oda do młodości, Grażyna, The Crimean Sonnets, Konrad Wallenrod, The Books of the Polish People and of the Polish Pilgrimage, Pan Tadeusz, and/or Dziady.

 

Yea, I haven't read any of them either, but apparently, he did a pretty good job.

 

Well, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, Rome has the Coliseum, Brussels has the Atomium..... 

 

 

 

Warsaw has the Palace of Culture and Science.  It was a "gift" from the Soviets after World War II.

 

At night we like to call it the rainbow circus building.

 

Sometimes it takes a break from the rainbow circus.  And that is when Kieran jumps over it.

 

I don't know who this guy on a horse is.  Clearly, he didn't do a good job.

 

This is the Presidential Palace.

 

There were a bunch of young soldier-y guys who looked kind of like a Polish ROTC field trip in front of the palace.

 

Just up the street from the Presidential Palace is the Royal Castle (they may sound like the same thing, but do not be confused.)  One is a palace, and one is a castle.  And they were both built after World War II.  Actually pretty much everything was built after World War II, because it was all gone.  The whole city was destroyed by the Nazis. Pretty amazing that they rebuilt it all.

 

 

This was really exciting.  We saw an impromptu concert of the Polish Army Band.  It was actually pretty good!

 

Well, we even found the LDS church in Warsaw on Sunday.  The meeting was in English and Polish.  Polish is even more hard to read than German.  It's like someone banged their hands on a keyboard, deleted all the vowels, and said, "Yeah!  That's a word!" 

 

We saw the most epic crosswalk ever.  Did you know that Frédéric Chopin was Polish?  We didn't make it out to see his statue, but I bet he got a "Good Job" ribbon.  We think this crosswalk is in honor of Chopin.  (It looks like a keyboard...in case you didn't figure that out.)

 

My favorite thing about bikes in Poland is that apparently they don't have any pedals.  (According to this sign anyways...he's just kind of levitating and moving his legs around pointlessly.)

 

An interesting place we went that tells about the history of Warsaw is the Warsaw Rising Museum.

 

It's basically memorial and historical documentation of the Polish Resistance against Hitler during World War II. 

 

The Polish had an underground uprising movement to counter Hitler.

 

There was some funky armored vehicle outside.

 

And a memorial wall...

 

Inside they tried to create what it would have been like on the streets of Warsaw during that time.

 

There was a huge life-size replica of a B-24 Liberator plane.

 

This is a symbol of Warsaw Uprising Museum.

 

The Polish flag was an important inspirational symbol during that time.

 

And it still remains a symbol of national pride.

 

One last good job ribbon was awarded to this lion.  I'm not sure what he did, but I had to take a selfie with him.

 

 

"Good job, lion!"

Eines Tages. Drei Städte. Een dag. Drie steden. Un jour. Trois villes.

Eines Tages. Drei Städte. = German

Een dag. Drie steden. = Dutch

Un jour. Trois villes. = French

One day.  Three cities. = English

It's pretty cool when you can spend time in three cities, in three countries, that speak three different languages, all in ONE DAY!

 

That's what we did on Columbus Day weekend!

 

City #1

Dusseldorf, Germany.  Language = German

 

First thing you need to know about riding on the tram in Dusseldorf is that there are no fries or ketchup allowed.

 

 

What????

 

But somehow, Wolves can open their own bakeries.

 

So...we saw a statue of a guy on a horse.  It was outside the Rathaus.

In Dusseldorf they have two parts of town.  The old town where they have cute old buildings with bells on them...

 

and statues of guys sitting on heads playing ping pong??  (Okay, we're not sure about this guy...)

 

An old church of course...

 

With a fancy door with....chickens?

 

Here are the towers and stuff in the old town.

 

This is a bridge over the Rhine.

 

And they have leaves that are bigger than your face.

 

Moving to the new part of town....every good German city of any importance has its own weird T.V. tower.

 

This one is possibly used as a spaceship landing pad...

 

The aliens who landed in Dusseldorf prefer to stay in the strangely slanted buildings of the "Media Harbor."

 

And so there you have it...Now you know.

 

If you look closely, you can see the brightly colored aliens climbing up the side of this building...

This is not an alien.  This is my mom.  She is excited because she saw a boat named after her.  (Yeah...she's got her own hill...she's got her own boat...)

 

Let me tell you - this place has like the best tourist logo ever.

 

What better way to say, "Hey - come to Dusseldorf!" than a giant texty smiley face.  Which is a D.  Get it?  Dusseldorf?  :D

City # 2

Roermand, Netherlands. Language = Dutch

 

After our morning stroll through smiley face land, we drove across the border to the Netherlands.

 

 

They have bikes.  I'm serious.  No, like a lot of bikes.  Did you know that the Netherlands is the number one country of cyclists in the world?  No, I'm not kidding.  99.1% of people here have a bike.  Like there are 16,652,800 people in the Netherlands.  And they have 16,500,000 bikes.  That means even babies have bikes.

 

Here's the rathaus equivalent of Roermand.  (The Dutch call it a Stadhuis.)

 

Here's the little church of Roermand.

 

Here's the little bridge of Roermand.

 

Here's the little cobblestone road of Roermand.

You get the picture...

 

 

City #3

Brussels, Belgium.  Language = French

 

After spending a few hours in Roermand, we drove across another border into Belgium.  Our final destination was Brussels.  Here is the European Union Parliament Building.

 

 

So, yes...we've already been to Brussels, you say.  We had to come back just for the food.  Remember these fries?  Remember this creepy fry guy who probably showed up in your nightmares?

 

We saw a new church.  Well, it's actually old. It was just new to us.  It's the church of St. Michael.

So we went to a comic book museum.  Did you know that a lot of famous comic-strip-ers...comic-kazis....comicartists...(what's the term I'm looking for here..??)  Well, people who draw comic strips.  A lot of them are from Belgium.  

 

Kieran is pretending he's Tintin.  He could kind of use some more emotion...or something. 

 

The Smurfs are a Belgian....thing.

 

There was a giant fez - probably the world's biggest - hanging from the ceiling at the museum.

 

It had cool Art Deco architecture.

Another place we visited in Belgium that we had not been to before was the Atomium.

 

WHAT is the Atomium, you ask??  Well, it's a giant replica of a unit cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times.

 

So, if you ever wondered what the inside of an iron crystal looked like inside, they have tiny escalators.

 

Here's the view from inside one of the tunnels.

 

There's even a disco escalator!  Man, I'm glad they magnified this 165 billion times!  It was really fun! 

 

They even have an elevator!  No way!  Iron crystal atoms have everything!  What could be better than this?

 

I know! Belgian chocolate!!!  Nothing's better than that...

 

 

 

Wait!  I stand corrected!  The only thing better than Belgian Chocolate is...

 

 

The Belgian Chocolate Outlet Factory!!!!!!! 

 

With all the free samples you can eat!!!! (Which you quickly learn, is not very many or you get a belly ache...but still...)

 

What's even better than that?????

 

Nothing.  But here's Waterloo.  In case you ever wanted to see where Napoleon got his butt kicked. 

 

 

 

So, here's a giant hill called the Butte de Lion made by a bunch of people dumping buckets of dirt in a pile and putting a statue of a lion on top to commemorate the battle fought here.

 

So here's the game plan...the blue blue guys are the French and the red guys and the green guys and the dark green guys....oh just forget it.  You know who wins...

So here's the view from the top of the Lion's butt.

 

Kieran's still looking for Napoleon's Dynamite.

 

Okay, you got me.  There's no way I could go to a giant 165 billion times magnified iron crystal without taking this shot.  Right?

 

 

See you next time!