Poland

heh

yeah I need my birth certificate from Poland

so anyways I started of course to get distracted and to look around at Polish sites and hoping to find some pictures of the city that I was born in and lived in until I was 11, a city called Elblag.

Here's a site with some pics, and it's all Polish writing so ... yeah have fun

http://www.elblag.pl/m2_2.php3

And here's another city, Gdansk, about an hour north of Elblag, I think it's right on the Baltic Sea. I remember going here for school trips and such, and I LOVED IT, it's very historical and just a very old city, cool old buildings, cobblestone roads.. very cool. This site has webcams of some of the city sights. The next-to-the-last image down, I can specifically remember walking down that way... there were different shops and stuff all over the place.
http://www.gdansk.pl/gdansk/cam.php

Here's a couple in case you don't feel like clicking on the links. Heh.

Then here's some old pics of the city, some of which look like the Mines of Moria from Lord of the Rings
http://www.gdansk.pl/gdansk/article.php?category=295&article=973&history="

And then there is Malbork, where there is this OLD OLD castle, it's hard to explain Polish history in one sentence but there were these knights that occupied this castle, and they were bad. I went here on a school trip too, and it was really cool! OOh i found a site also that explains the history of the castle, in English! woohoo

history - http://www.polandtour.org/regionsandcities/uniquesites/malbork.html

Here's a little map of the area where I spent pretty much 99.9% of my life from birth to age 11.
http://www.polhotels.com/Elblag/Kadyny/map.jpg

Kadyny is where there was a horse farm and the first time I went horseback riding was there, when I was probably about 5 or 6. And my grandparents lived about a mile from Kadyny in a tiny town not even big enough to be on this map. I spent the first couple years of my life there, my parents lived with my grandparents for a couple years after they got married. And most of my summers were spent there, including the 2 or 3 times my sister and I flew back to Poland in the early 90's.

This is in Kadyny, it's right in front of the horse stables. Back in the day it was just a place to ride horses, now it's a fancy schmancy hotel ... I'm not sure if it still looks like this, but it just sends shivers down my spine because I've been to this place SO many times as a kid :

And this is where we used to always go to the beach. Don't look too close... sooo many speedos. haha.
http://www.zalew.org.pl/z/60.jpg

and a birds view shot of the beach - this is Krynica Morska on the Baltic Sea.. obviously

It says on the bottom "all you ever need.." or "you don't need anything else..." or something to that effect

And then there's the capital, Warsaw, where I've only been a few times. It's a big busy city, but also has a historic section which is amazing.

And here I also found the train station in Tolkmicko, a tiny town about a mile or two from my grandparents house. We used to ride bicycles to this train station and then ride the train to another sorta nearby town for the meetings, there was no kingdom hall anywhere closer. It was about a 20-30 minute train ride. The train passed through forests and over lakes and stuff, it was really interesting, and ever since then I just absolutely love trains.

It's funny I can remember some of these sights, but most is just basically blurry. Isn't it wierd how memories just blur away? I want them back. I kinda wanna go to Poland and just revisit everywhere I lived, and visit some new places too. Poland is really a beautiful country. Too bad I'm deathly afraid of flying now and I don't think I will ever set foot in an airplane again.

I wanna go to Poland though.. maybe it's time to start workin on that land-bridge....