Few things happening

Bonjour, quick catch up on what is happening abouts.

Eryn's birthday on Monday 21st... please don't forget. You know what she's like.

Angus and Janet are heading up this weekend for a couple of night which will be great. We have been down to their city pad a couple of times recently so it will be nice to have them up here at our quiet rural retreat.

Eryn had a car "incident" on Monday. She is fine. She ran into the back of a stationary car at a roundabout, and wrote our Corsa off. Oops her bad.

YAY we beat Norwich today 2-1. Our local derby. Yay (clear, 42 characters. Eryn says I should mention that this is football/soccer/Beautiful Game, but this shouldn't count on my "not allowed too much about football on our blog tally") If Eryn hadn't smashed the car into the back of someone there would have been more room for football news.

Ohh, some of you may not be aware as she keeps these things fairly quiet, but its Eryns birthday next Monday.

Eryn's had her radio debut on British radio this week. Did one hour while the usual host had a MEETING. "I've got a meeting, do you want to do an hour or so?" What? Anyway she said it went well and the listeners liked her.

Booked next trip, four days with the car cruising around the north of France, Belgium and Luxembourg. Are trying to book two nights in an 11C castle and have another two in a nice wee B&B on the border of France and Belgium.

Kent and Eryn x

Czy mówisz po angielsku? (Do you speak English?)

Fortunately for us, most of the people we ran into in Krakow did – thank goodness, because for foreigners, Polish looks a lot like someone hiffed the Scrabble letters around and decided on the most confusing combinations!

Our first impression of the city was that it looked much like a former communist Eastern European place might look – quite boxy and functional, and a bit brusque. From the air, there are lots (and I mean streets upon streets upon streets) of unloved looking apartment blocks, but the train, which was square and aged, but toasty warm and comfy, into town also went through quite a bit of rural land, with some houses that wouldn’t have been out of place in NZ.
Once we arrived at the train station, the underground concourse was a fast and furious introduction to Poland – there is very little in the way of English signage, lots of busy locals in a hurry and wizened old people selling delicious bread rings or folk cheeses every few metres – they’re on virtually every corner, and cheap as…mmmmmm.
Our first stop was Rynek Glowny, the biggest market square in Europe, at 40,000m^2. There quite a few rather cool buildings there – the gothic Kościół Mariacki (St Mary’s Basilica) which was just stunning, with a very ornate gilt altarpiece, which we took lots of photos of. It also has two huge brick towers, the taller of which has a bugle playing a trumpet signal every hour on the hour, which stops in mid-stream to commemorate a 13^thC player who was shot whilst sounding the trumpet alarm when the Mongols invaded the city – now that’s history.
The photos are at the bottom, so if you want to skip our rambling/lecture, scroll down...
The square also has the Sukiennice (Cloth Hall) market, which was packed to the rafters with all sorts, although some of the stall holders were, ahh, abrupt… although we supposed that was just the manner of people in this part of the world.
We spent quite a bit of time eating – Polish food is awesome, and pretty cheap… my highlight would have to be the sundae from a ‘cocktail bar’, which is actually an icecream shop – how’s that for confusing?!
We saw a LOT of churches, there seems to be one in virtually place you look, and we visited most of them – methinks Kent has had about all the religious experiences he really wants now! Poland is largely Catholic, and the home of John Paul II, there are photos, posters, bunches of flowers dedicated to him and monuments celebrating him all over Krakow, it was lovely to see that the city’s Catholics are still so devoted to him.
We managed a whopping 13 hours sleep on our first night – so, not surprisingly, we were full of beans for Saturday, where we visited Kazimierz (the Jewish Quarter). Alas, I hadn’t really thought it through… as the synagogues were closed to visitors for the Shabbat – bad luck, for us, especially as the only way into the Old Jewish cemetery was through one of them… but we did climb up high to see over the walls into the New Jewish Cemetary – which was a bit of a reality check – the Nazis destroyed it during their occupation in WWII, but it was rebuilt in 1957, with a monument and some walls made of smashed bits of the headstones from the original site, I found it quite moving as most war-type things don’t feel especially real when you’re from the other side of the world, but this did.
We wandered into a market in a random square in Kazimierz, featuring china bearing the swastika, and some of the registration cards carried by the Jews during the war – nothing like seeing history to make it even more real.
We were hoping to take a bit of a cruise on the River Wisla, but for reasons unknown to us, the boats were moored and not running – grrr.
Next stop was Wawel Hill, home of a Royal Castle and Cathedral, - wikipedia tells me it has been inhabited since about 100 000BC – although the buildings there now only(!) date back to the 11th or 12^th C – and featured Kent and Eryn being kicked out of the Palace courtyard by a very angry Secret Service guy – there was some kind of diplomat who turned up unannounced while we were looking at the Royal Armoury and Treasury, this was somehow our fault and we had to make a speedy exit out a side door, being berated in Polish – great international relations!
It was then on to more churches – although I relented and suggested photos of the outside would be okay.
Click on the photo below for the whole album:

We also managed, after a few misfired conversations, to find a Polish copy of Asterix - at this rate he may need his own seat on the plane home at the end of our OE!
The final chapter involved a bit of a delay at the airport – thanks to snow closing the runway at Gatwick…Luckily the airline waited to tell us about it until we were on the plane, so we got to sit in the stifling heat with no air conditioning… coincidentally, we bought a chess set at the market, so we had a game (which Kent won, I was graceful in defeat, naturally) to kill some time. For future reference, it’s quite hard to keep the pieces upright during takeoff… although it was only my King, and Kent’s King and Queen, so it was pretty much over! The landing made the flight though, with breathtaking views of Kent (the county, not the boyfriend) covered in snow – I should be used to it by now, but you have to admit, there’s just something quite magical about snow, and I don’t think it matters how old you are, it’s just pretty!
Ooops – that was rather longer than I meant… hope you’re still awake!
Kent & Eryn x

I'm Dreaming of a White... Easter?!!

Things are looking up. We have had a nice wee touch of snow, some visitors over the long weekend and the days are getting longer, getting dark at 6:35, and it is supposed to be a whopping 10^oC tomorrow.
Jordan and Jax (friends of Eryn’s from New Plymouth) came and stayed for a night on Saturday. Thanks to the delight that is public transport we had to drive most of the way to London to pick them up. What should have taken an hour and cost ₤15, was going to take two and a half, involve three trains and two buses… and cost a rather ridiculous ₤120.

After a bit of a drive to the north bits of Suffolk, where we checked out Framlingham Castle (in the dusk), tried to drive to the disappearing town of Dunwich (in the almost dark), and went for a walk on the beach at a town which we have yet to locate on a map (in the dark). We ended up in a cute little pub in Aldeburgh (which, the locals inform us, is pronounced ‘ALL-borough’… we’re beginning to agree that English is the hardest language to learn!) where we discussed the sometimes absurd challenges of life in Blighty. In hindsight, it might not have been the best location for this conversation, so we beat a somewhat hasty retreat after a couple of nasty stares from the natives.

The others indulged in some good old fashioned British binge drinking – which is a lot like the binge drinking at home, only less frequent and finishing earlier – while I looked on in disgust and judged them for being so common…and some middle of the night phone calls to NZ – it’s about the only time that the time difference comes in handy!

Woke up to snow the next day, proper on-the-ground stuff too, none of this ‘it’s snowing but not settling” rubbish in Ipswich… so we headed off to the park and made a snowman. When I say we I mean Eryn, she was about as excited as a Labrador chasing a stick… And about as good at making snowmen as the Queen’s corgis. As soon as we got inside (completely soaked), it stopped snowing and was nearly gone three hours later.

Click on the photo for the whole album:

As soon as we’d loaded Jordan & Jax back on the train, Rod and Louise turned up for a couple of nights – was great to see them, and an opportunity to retrace our steps from Saturday in the daylight! We did discover we have an uncanny knack of leaving a town once the snow cleared up and arriving just as it started in the next place… it made for some picture-postcard-type scenes, but there comes a point when you’ve had about enough, really.
This weekend is a pretty quite one, I've just been at the football... watching Ipswich Town draw 0-0 (lucky Eryn wasn't there to whinge and point out the futility of such games!) and we're off for a wander in the countryside tomorrow... then we're heading to Krakov, Poland on Friday, which we're both really looking forward to...
Talk soon,
Kent & Eryn x

Como esta?

...Gee, 3 days in Portugal and we think we can talk like the locals!
Have just got back from our first sojourn to the continent, spending 3 days & nights in Lisbon, Portugal... it was awesome.

Kent's been teaching some Maths at his new job, so he's obsessed with numbers at the moment... there was no shortage of them on our long weekend:

1... motorcycle accident. The guy was only on the ground for all of a second before he leapt up, got back on the bike and whizzed off... I suppose it's hardiness like that which led the Portuguese to takeover large sections of the globe in the 15th and 16th centuries!

2... copies of Asterix in Portuguese. I think Kent has decided this is his new 'thing' and that we will be hunting down as many of these in foreign languages as he possibly can - it definitely beats collecting coke cans or stamps.

3... the number of different types of drugs on offer from a street seller who approached Kent... who was slightly taken aback by the little bag of 'herbs' he was being offered... brilliant! Quite ballsy too, as there were Policia just a couple of metres away. Not surprisingly, he didn't make a sale, but we've been giggling about it ever since...

6... days a week the Naval Museum is open. This does not include Monday... which, and I know you can see where this is going, is the very day we went to visit it, at the bottom of the steepest hill we've seen since leaving NZ... can't win 'em all.

10... 45pm. The time we left a massive shopping centre in the new part of Lisbon on Sunday night when everything, even the hairdresser, was still open... on a Sunday!

25... trips on the metro underground thingy... which is soooo much nicer and cleaner than the one in London (although it is far smaller and newer, so not surprising) so no black snot here!

13... minutes by ferry to Cacilhas, Almada on the other side of the river... where we walked. A lot. Then we walked some more. During the all the walking (most of which was in the rain, thanks to the tail of that big nasty storm that hit the south of England) we stumbled across what might be the cutest little restaurante ever - it was exactly like we pictured family-run Portuguese restaurants, the woman running it didn't speak any English, but we muddled through - even ordered things I didn't know the contents of - very brave! It was just lovely and definitely one of the highlights of the trip - especially as Kent left a tip, which is usually unheard of!

17,000... teachers protesting (or, as we like to call it, shutting down the entire central city) at their rubbish pay, which a street artist told us is pretty abismal, and they were awfully organised, so you have to give them credit for that. As it turns out, we think the locals have a penchant for picketing as we saw another march two days later and several signs advertising further protests (for different causes) on weekends later this month... they were all very orderly and well behaved though.

110 metres... the height of the Monumento a Cristo Rei (Christ the King statue) that overlooks the city (like the one in Rio, only newer). It was simply massive and had the weather been kinder, the views back across to Lisbon would have been even more breathtaking than the towering statue of the big guy itself.

50 million... the number of knots of wind on Monday while we traipsed uphill and down dale. Well, maybe not quite that bad, and certainly not so strong as all the pics of England on the news (talk about picking the right time to flee the country) but it was v breezy... we even had a bit of a dodgy landing at Heathrow on Tuesday, well after the worst was over... so glad we didn't come back on Sunday night or Monday - eeeek.

It would be pretty easy to go on and on about it, the whole trip was unforgettable... here are a few of our pics:

Lisbon

Talk soon,
Kent & Eryn x