Kraków, Poland

After the conference in Wisła ended, all of the volunteers went to Kraków for about a day and a half of sightseeing before heading back home. We stayed at the Novotel Kraków City West hotel, which was pretty nice.

I liked the pops of color and that the shelves and lights were incorporated into the headboard

The bathroom was split into two separate, adjacent rooms, which seemed like a poor use of space,
considering the spatial economy of the rest of the hotel room

View from our room on the 5th floor

The afternoon we arrived, Mirek, one of Rita's co-workers who lives near Kraków, kindly picked us and a few of our friends up and took us to see some sights and have dinner. First, we went to Krakus Mound, which is the oldest structure in Kraków and the highest point. It is 52 feet high and has a base diameter of 197 feet. Its exact age is unknown, but it is thought that it could be about 2,500 years old.

Krakus Mound

View of Kraków from the top of Krakus Mound

From the top of the mound, you can also see Liban Quarry, which is a limestone quarry that was established in 1873 by two Jewish families. During World War II, it was converted into a Nazi forced labor camp. The site was also used as the concentration camp set in the movie Schindler's List (the Płaszów concentration camp site is nearby).

Liban Quarry

Some flowers on the side of the mound

From there, we went to the Niepołomice Royal Castle (also called the Castle of the Polish Kings) in Niepołomice. It was originally built in the mid-14th century. We ate dinner at the restaurant in the castle. Mirek recommended a traditional Polish meal that included a breaded pork cutlet, potatoes, and cabbage, so I got that, and it was very good and filling.

The next day, I went on a group tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp site and museum. I'll do a separate post about that.

Rita and I also walked around Kraków in the evening, taking in sights, getting gelato, and picking up a few souvenirs. I got an orange scarf to go with my navy trench coat from Wisła and some postcards to send to family (which were mailed at the end of May and arrived in mid-July!).

St. Mary's Basilica

Skałka Church

St. Florian's Church

Main Market Square (Cloth Hall)

The Barbican

Wawel Castle

 

Grunwald Monument

Town Hall Tower

I enjoyed everything we did, but there's just too much to do there in a day and a half. It would have been nice to spend some time in Kraków during the daytime and go to the market in the square and go inside the churches. If I go back, I'd like to do that.

Wisła, Poland

In late May, I went on a trip to Poland to volunteer at the European Leadership Forum, which is an annual conference for European Christian leaders. The conference was held in Wisła (pronounced veese-wah), which is in the mountains near the Czech border on the Wisła (Vistula) River. About 100 volunteers, mostly from the U.S., helped to run the logistics of the conference. Rita, a friend from BSF and church, invited me to go, so we were roommates (Ed couldn't go because of just starting his new job). Some other members of our church in Rockford also went.

A view of Wisła from the hotel

This trip was immediately after our move to NC, so it was kind of a stressful, busy time, and I felt linguistically unprepared (I didn't have time to learn many Polish words or phrases), even though everyone at the conference spoke English. However, the Polish people I interacted with spoke English and were kind. The conference was held at Hotel Gołębiewski, which is HUGE and very nice.

Our room at Hotel Gołębiewski in Wisła

Those are pretty much the only photos I took in Wisła, because I was busy almost the whole time, and when I wasn't, it was raining (bad for photos). I had many different duties, including bookstore inventory, conducting audio interviews for conference scholarship recipients, typing session evaluations, room monitoring, and meal seating, but my primary job was to run the projected visuals for the plenary sessions, which were twice a day. It was a good fit for me, because it included editing slide text and advancing the lyric slides during the hymns and songs, so it combined both my technical writing/editing and music skills.

With the exception of another guy from a different church in Rockford, everyone else on the production team (there were six of us on the team) was from Scottsdale Bible Church in Arizona. Probably half of the volunteers were from that church, actually. It became evident that they were indeed from Arizona when it suddenly started storming and pouring rain one afternoon, and everyone but the two Illinois residents jumped up and ran to the window. We all found it quite amusing.

I downloaded the following four photos from Facebook (not sure how to credit these).

A plenary session

Aaron running lights and Kevin running sound

I spent most of my time here, trying not to mess up (that's apparently my concentration face)

The worship band is to the left, and the production team is to the right

The worship band was from the UK and were nice to work with. I liked that they tried to have a balance of hymns and more contemporary songs that were doctrinally and biblically sound.

During one of our breaks, we went to this kind of discount general store called Biedronka, which I'm a total fan of now. I got some really sweet deals there, including a scarf, a shirt, some walking shoes (didn't pack them in the post-move chaos), and a $10 navy trench coat that fit perfectly and came in handy later in Kraków. I also got some chocolate-covered wafers, and they were so good. I highly recommend Polish wafers and chocolate bars, both of which can be ordered on Amazon if your local international market doesn't carry them. I got a few other necessities, as well, and my total was only about $30 (USD). And speaking of food, the food at the hotel was pretty good, too. I was impressed with some of the different combinations they came up with so as to avoid food waste (strawberry mousse-filled pierogi were interesting and actually not bad). And speaking of pierogi, we went to a restaurant just down the hill from the hotel one day, and I had some delicious spinach and cheese-filled pierogi with a Gorgonzola sauce on top. I love pierogi, so it was a culinary highlight for me to have them in Poland.

But the main highlight of my time in Wisła was what happened when we were about to leave Biedronka. It started pouring rain, and we had walked there, so we waited for it to ease up. While we were waiting, a Polish woman overheard us speaking English and started talking to us. She was really nice and asked what we were doing in Wisła, so we told her about the conference. She said she was also a Christian and that she was getting ready to move to another town and start a new job, and she didn't really know any other Christians. We prayed with her and invited her to meet us at the hotel the next morning for the plenary session, so we could introduce her to someone who might be able to help her find a church when she moved. And she came! She got to talk to someone at the conference who could give her some information about a church in the town she was moving to, and she seemed to really enjoy the worship time and fellowship. Her name is Maria, for those who might feel led to pray for her.

Also, I kind of met Wayne Grudem and John Lennox. I say "kind of" because I'm not sure if it counts when all you do is exchange pleasantries and names. I have this thing where I don't say much when I meet someone well-known/famous. I think it's an instinct kicking in to keep me from saying something stupid, but it doesn't do much for conversation. Not that they had time to converse with me.

I'll do a separate post for some sightseeing we did in and near Kraków at the end of the trip.

Knitted Toys

Our nephew is already a year old! We went to his first birthday party in early August, and our gift to him was a set of knitted toys. They're quite adorable, if I do say so myself.

I knitted the cat above in the round with double-pointed needles. I found the pattern on Ravelry (it's called "Beans the Cat" and the designer is Linda Dawkins), but it's also available on her web site here. It was a good project for my first attempt, because it was small and quick. It was also my first try knitting an i-cord (for the tail). So now I can officially check off #2 on my list of knitting goals with this cat and the beret (the cat and the hat!).

I knitted the cat because it was just too cute not to knit, and then I saw some patterns on Ravelry for some other animals that I had to make. These were actually knitted flat (not in the round), so I got some practice with seaming, which I had mostly managed to avoid until now.

These patterns were designed by Aine Marriott and are called "Mini Elephant," "Mini Lion," and "Mini Hippo."

I knitted all of these toys with cotton yarn, so they are washable (hand washing is probably best).

He seemed to like them. We noticed when looking through the photos Ed took from the party that he held onto the cat through the opening of several gifts.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

I'm not implying that he wasn't interested in those other gifts, but I think it's sufficient proof that he liked the cat I knitted for him...at least for about five minutes.

Some adults enjoyed playing with them, too:

My dad is saying he has the cat by the tail (and the others are forming a cheerleader-style pyramid in the background)

My dad juggling the toys and displaying classic concentration face

Uncle Brandon victoriously completes a feat of balance (it lasted approximately 0.5 seconds)

It was a good party. Lots of people came, and we got to see family and friends we hadn't seen in a while. It's nice to be a few hours' drive away again so we can do stuff like this.

First Knitted Hat!

Well, I meant to post this at least six months ago, and I've already worn it through a harsh Midwest winter, but I finally knitted something in the round! So I can technically check off #2 on my list of knitting goals. I say "technically" because I didn't use double-pointed needles, but I've got another post coming up about that.

I used circular needles and followed this cabled beret pattern. It was pretty straightforward for the most part, since I figured out the whole cabling thing on my previous project. By the way, this is the same yarn I used for the orange coffee/mug sleeve, and I just barely had enough to make that and this beret from the one skein. I did run into a couple of challenges, but I always find that if I put it down for a while and go back to it, I can figure out what went wrong and correct it.

Once I had decreased to about 60 stitches, things started to get a little tight and uncomfortable on the needle, which I expected to happen. I really didn't like stretching out my stitches, so I looked up a how-to video on YouTube and used the "magic loop" method to finish. The pattern didn't mention anything about that, but it seemed to be the best solution.

I'm pretty sure I did something wrong, because for some reason, I had to knit it inside out, which resulted in probably the most awkward way anyone has attempted the magic loop method for the first time. I did put it down for almost a week, so maybe things got turned around in that time. Anyway, it all worked out in the end, once I figured out what was going on.

This orange complements my dark purple wool coat rather well. Now I just need to knit a scarf to match before winter rolls around again.

This was a good, portable project to take on a trip. I got a lot of it done on the drive to and from Florida over Christmas break.

See my Ravelry project notes here.

Bologna, Italy

The conference I went to in Parma, Italy ended in the early afternoon on the last full day my co-workers and I were there, so Heather and I decided to take the train about an hour southeast to Bologna for the afternoon while Heike and Mike checked out the museums we'd already visited in Parma. We didn't get there as early as we would have liked, due to the train schedule, but we did get to see a couple of things during the few hours we were there.

Fontana di Nettuno (Fountain of Neptune)

San Petronio Basilica at Piazza Maggiore

The main thing we wanted to do was to see the two leaning towers and ascend the taller one, Asinelli Tower, for some panoramic views of the city. We did, but unfortunately, it was overcast, so the views weren't quite as good as they could have been.

Left: Garisenda Tower; Right: Asinelli Tower

Garisenda Tower

The sign says that the tower was likely raised at the end of the eleventh century (this site says 1109) and that it's the highest tower in the city (97 meters, or about 318 feet). In the thirteenth century, it belonged to the Asinelli family. The stronghold that surrounds the base was built in 1488 to house the soldiers on guard; it was later occupied by shops. On the western side is a sandstone bas-relief of St. Michael the Archangel by G.B. Gnudi (1727).

Asinelli Tower is actually the tallest leaning tower in Italy--much taller than the leaning tower of Pisa, which is about 55 meters (180 feet) tall.

Garisenda Tower was built around the same time. It is 47 meters (about 154 feet) tall and leans at a sharper angle. It is mentioned by name in Dante's "Inferno" from his Divine Comedy.

There are 498 wooden, steep, narrow steps.

View through a window while ascending

The view from the top:

There were once at least 100 towers in Bologna, but now less than 20 remain. Some of the others can be seen from Asinelli Tower.

Azzoguidi Tower in the front and the bell tower of St. Peter's Cathedral (a.k.a. Bologna Cathedral) behind it

Prendiparte Tower

Garisenda Tower is in the bottom left corner

We didn't have time to do much else after all of the walking around and going up into the tower, other than to grab a cappuccino on our way to the towers and a panino for a quick dinner on our way to the train station. There's so much more to do, see, and eat in Bologna, but it was a fun little afternoon trip, given our time constraints.

Considering I was only in Italy for about four days and three of them were conference days, I think I got a decent amount of sightseeing in, but it was a whirlwind! Italy was never really on my top 10 list of places I wanted to visit (well, I have wanted to go to Florence since I took an art and architectural history class in college), but I'd totally go back, now that I've had a taste of it. Maybe some day Ed and I can explore more of Italy together.

Ciao!