My mother land...POLAND

Can I just start out by saying...POOR POLAND. There is so much history and sadness in this country. Because of War and Communism there is a lot of poverty and run down buildings but they are very resilient and have always come back.
And no one speaks English (ha ha just a side note) well actually a few do.......We started our tour of this crazy country in Krakow and then went on to visit Warsaw.

Along with their run down buildings, ha ha their trains weren't any better....they honestly sounded like they were braking down or derailing every 2 seconds and not to mention NO air conditioning and it was seriously 90 degrees with 100% humidity ahhhhhhh!!! This is Austin looking SO happy in the heat.... I didn't look much better :)


Once we arrived in Krakow we were totally impressed, the down town square was beautiful!! And can i just say Poland is VERY cheap! So we ate in the square both nights we were in Krakow, and our hostel was a 5 min walk from here.
Their parking was pretty much amazing...EVERYONE parked on the sidewalk
So i thought this sign probably meant watch out for little children? OR small scary girls with giant candies on sticks??? ha ha who knows


These little stands were EVERYWHERE! Apparently Poland likes their funny round pretzel bagels? I have to say though they were super good :)While staying in Krakow we took one day and went to the Auschwitz and Birkenau museums. This was honestly one of the saddest and most emotional experiences. They are ACTUAL Concentration Camps from World War 2 and Auschwitz was one of the largest of the death camps. You start out the tour by seeing a movie that was recorded right after the Ukraine troops invaded and is actual footage of the people and tragedy (so hard to watch), and then you continue through all of the museum which are actual bunkers all over the camp. You see so much, including rooms full of hair and shoes that they found when they invaded the camps, you actually go into the gas chambers and crematory rooms... everything we saw and heard really impacted me. I was so affected by all that I saw, I honestly broke down. It was something I am so glad I was able to see, I learned so much that i never knew before and it put the holocaust and what happened in a whole new perspective.


You weren't allowed to take pictures inside the museum (all the bunkers in the camp) so all these pictures are ones I took of around the camp....... and to be honest i wouldn't have wanted to share pictures of the stuff we saw in the museum.
After staying in Krakow we headed up to Warsaw. This was the old town in Warsaw (hands down the prettiest place in ALL of Warsaw)

This picture is my favorite...this building looked so beautiful all lit up at night. We stayed at a hostel (our first night) 2 min from the square it was so wonderful!!
Austin eating a chocolate donut that they are supposedly famous for..... YUM!
Lots and LOTS of Lody (ice cream in polish) so so good!!So while we were in Warsaw we decided to do some Geneology work (my ancestors come from Poland). While we were at the church(doing Geneology) Austin met Marcine who offered for us to stay at his house with his wife Beata. They were both recent converts and were the sweetest most humble people ever!! Ha ha Marcine was so sweet he made me laugh! He LOVED maps and seriously had a map from EVERYWHERE!! ha ha you could quiz him on any place and he knew where it was.... the rest of their apartment was so fun and interesting. Beata loved Elephants and they were everywhere, and they honestly had hundreds of books about all sorts of things. They were so kind to us.

Just a picture from one of their bookshelves....
Him and Austin playing ping pong at game day at the church!
We ended up staying in Poland for a few extra days and attended church there. It was in an office building (they only have one church building in ALL of Poland). It was so awesome...it was an international ward so they had a translator so we wore earphones, and guess who spoke?....yes AUSTIN! We were at game day (the day before) and they needed another speaker so they asked Austin...he honestly did such an amazing job, he talked about sacrifice and EVERYONE after came up and said how wonderful it was!! It was hard cause he would say a line and then had to wait while it got translated into polish. I love him so much!!

On our last night In Warsaw we were able to have dinner at Marcine and Beatas with the Branch President and his Wife. They are on their mission in Warsaw and are from Arizona...they were a lot of fun and the dinner Beata cooked was sooooo good!! Yummy polish food.

Poland was awesome and we were able to see some amazing historical sights that I am so thankful for :) Yay Poland!!