Part 1: Utah.
First Rocklond, Knoxx, and I flew to Utah. We were picked up by Johns parents, Kari and Terri and they drove us to their house in Cedar City. We Went camping up at Strawberry Reservoir. We also stayed in a cool Time share in Park City. Here is some of our group chilling in a tent.
Next we went to my sister Hillary house in Salt Lake. she lives right by Liberty Park and it was fun to go walking through there whenever we wanted. Knoxx had been going through Lego withdrawals and was so happy to get to play with Joes legos.
We stayed in Utah for about a week then it was time for me to go back to Houston. The boys dropped me off at the airport and then they went down to Arizona with their grandma and Grandpa to see their Aunt and Uncle, Jean and Kaylon.
I stayed one night in houston and then john and I began our journey. 1st we had an 11 hr flight to Istanbul turkey.
the food on the plane was fun and the airline was so professional and nice. It was a very relaxing trip. we had been wary of Turkish airlines from the beginning. But we decided to go forward with our plans thinking that we were just as likely to get caught up in a terrorist attack in the US. Well we were wrong and if I was a little more update about the current situation in Turkey I would have made different plans. We flew in to Turkey, bought some Turkish delight and ate balaclava (for my birthday cake). Then we got on our connecting flight to Stockholm, Sweden. After arriving in Sweden we found out the the Coup attempt happened about an hour after we left turkey. If we had stayed even an hour more we would have been stuck in that airport for about a week.
A cool fact about my birthday. We we in the air most of my birthday and because of all the timezone that we went through. It was only by birthday for about 5 hours. lol So I like to think that I am just going to stay the same age for another year.
Part 2: Sweden
Amanda picked us up from the airport. She was my roommate back in college. when she was going to school in the USA for a year. We have stayed friends over all the years. she took us to her super cute Ikea apartment. I loved her small fridge.
We tried to get some sleep, In the summer in Sweden it only gets dark for about 4 hours. So our jet lagged bodies were not to happy to see the sun come up at 3:30-4:00am
Despite being sleepy we still packed in a full day of sight seeing.
The Vasa Museum. tTheVasa is a super old ship that sunk and got preserved in the mud until it was finally brought back up.
amazing palace.
and churches
funny posters.
ON sunday we went to church with Amanda and ran in to a missionary from my home ward in the USA. Her ward was a large ward. John and I were very impressed by how strong the church is in Sweden. a few of Amanda's Friends helped translate during sacrament and then Elder Blattman translated for us during Sunday School.
after church we went for a picnic. One of Amanda's friends joined us he was good at telling us the history of Sweden and knew where some of the ambassadors home are.
We had a beautiful time. It was cold there and that made it so there were no bugs or ants at our picnic.
That night we went to old town. the swedes like to enjoy Fika. Which is slowly drinking coffee and eating a small cake or something. Since we don't drink coffee we went for hot white chocolate and a rhubarb pie with vanilla sauce. Seriously BEST pie ever!
This was one of my favorite nights of the trip. the weather was so nice and we had such fun company.
The next morning Amanda drove us to the Airport so we could fly to Poland.
Part 3: Warsaw Poland
We arrived in Warsaw and we had to wait for a few minutes till Viktoriia showed up. Viktoriia was our exchange student about 3 years ago. We hadn't seen her in person in 2 years. She had missed her bus and so she was running a little late. She was looking for us thinking we hadn't arrived yet and we were able to sneak up and surprise her.
It took us another 2 hours to get to where we would be staying that night. After the seamless transportation system in Stockholm It was strange to be on some slow moving trains in Warsaw. They would wait at each train stop of a few minutes and it made the trip take forever. We were also super Hungary. we made it to the home of a family in Viktoriias branch. They were so nice they have a cool 4 story town home and work for the state department. They took us out to dinner at a traditional Polish restaurant. It was heaven. there was Polish Kielbasa and soup and brown sour dough bread. A jug of some fruit drink that reminded me of apple cider. The best part was the pierogies!! THEY were amazing! They were fried and filled with potato and cheese I also had some that had the BEST mushrooms ever. I have always had them served with sour cream, but they gave them to us with this onion and bacon "gravy"
this is just a picture I pulled from the internet. to show what pierogies are. I first had them when viktoriia came to live with us and she made us Ukrainian vareniki. She made them with potato, cabbage, and onion. But they take a long time to make and when I finally was able to find a place to buy them they just weren't the same as homemade.
After we were full the sights of Warsaw seemed much better. We saw the palace and walked the old town streets. Warsaw was completely torn to rubble during WW2 so everything has been rebuild just as it was before the war.
The Next day we went out and explored some more
The palaces were very beautiful and nice.
Later we went to chuch with Viktorria. Warsaw has only a few small branches. There are only about 40 people in the Branch and about 8 missionaries. Every one was happy to meet us.
The next day we took a 5 hr bus ride to Krakow (pronounced Cracov)
Part 4: Krakow.
This city has more churches then probably Salt Lake City. LOL There are 136 or something. sometimes one right next to another.
Part of the palace was destroyed during WWII and so many people donated to restoring it. I am 1/4 polish my grandfather was 100% polish. I was on the lookout the whole trip to see if I could find any family names. this is the closes I got was the name NOWAKOWSKI in stead of the actual NOVEROSKE. I was fun anyways to see so many names that sounded like Noveroske. That name has always sounded so one of a kind in the USA.
IN Krakow there is the jewish getto and Aushwitz is near by. Also another concentration camp that I can't recall the name of right now. Auchwitz was closed for international youth day that was happening in the city in a few days. The Pope would be coming to Krakow. So we went to Schindlers Factory instead. I found this picture of polish soldiers lined up in the palace. You can see it is the same spot that I had taken a picture of john the day before.
Schindler factory is not really much of a factory at all anymore. It is really a museum that takes you though a whole history of the Jews in Krakow during WWII . It was a very sad place to go and made me look at the city in a different way.
The saddest thing i learned about was the ghetto wall where the Nazi's build a wall around the Jews that was shaped like a tombstone. The only people that ever got out of there alive were the ones that Schindler rescued.
After the tour of the Factory we were able to go on a little tour of the city.
There were so many beautiful churches. We would try and use them as landmarks so we wouldn't get lost, but they all start to look the same after a while.
the two nights we were in Krakow we stayed in a hostel. It was a closet sized room with a 3 level bunk bed. After walking 8+ hours every day the beds were ok to sleep on. It was about this time that my shoulder started acting up. I have had a few little problems with it at the end of the school year but it had goten better with rest. Well wearing a backpack and walking all day had brought back the pain in full force. I couldn't lift my left arm above my shoulder. I sucked it up and kept trying to push through the pain, but I must admit I was probably more then cranky for the rest of the trip.
Knoxx and rocky were having a great time at Grandmas. They got plenty spoiled.
Then the time came for us to leave Poland and go to Vienna.
Part 5: Vienna, Austria
If you are going to go to another country you should really learn all you can about that country BEFORE you get there. I felt super inadequate during the whole trip that I hadn't read up on my history of ANY of the places we had gone. Vienna was the one that I really should have read up on. IN Sweden we had Amanda to show us around. In Poland Viktoriia knew where we were, and some of the history. (She has only lived in Poland for the last 2 years as she goes to school) Vienna we were all going blind. And none of us knew the 1st thing about German.
That 1st day we got off the 5 hr buss ride and began to wander. At every corner we found more and more amazing surprises.
It was so fun to just be able to see all these things so close to each other.
That night we found a place where they show past recorded ballets and operas for free on a big outdoor Projector screen. So we stayed up super late and watched a really funny Opera. and what was nice is it wasn't in German so everyone there was just a clueless to what they were actually singing about as Operas should be.
The next day we over did it on the museums. We spent FOREVER in a really nice art museum that is inside one of the palaces. John could stare at some paintings for hours. I like art, but I don't usually spend more then a few seconds looking at each paining.
Then we decided to go and tour one of the palaces that has the same furniture from when Emperor Franz Joseph lived there. The palace was nice,but after you have seen a few they all start to look the same. But the gardens where one of a kind. The garden was HUGE! we walked it for a long long time and still had barely made in in half way.
that night we went to a concert in that same palace (Schonbrunn) Mozart played there when he was 6. I was happy to see that they still use some of these grand rooms for what they were designed for. the concert was great and played a lot of Mozart and Strauss. and some other things. the whole program was written in German and so I am not sure what everything was.
the next day was Sunday and there was a church that was so close to our apartment that we were staying in that I knew we had to go. We had a picnic in the morning near this fun tree and hammock.
The church was so cute. The best part was that it was an English speaking ward. which was a nice.
I liked how they had the organ pipes. I have never seen one like that in an LDS church building.
Everything was closed on Sunday. which was really cool and sort of frustrating because there wasn't much to do. Our apartment was nice but there was no AC and so we really couldn't just hang out there. I think we ended up just wandering around and we saw some cool park or something.
Then we went to the Opera house. They Opera season doesn't start till September and so we couldn't see an Opera but were were able to take a tour of the muesum. This is one of the palces that we should have researched a little before we went. The tour guide pointed out a statue of Mozart that had some pictures behind him. She said "does anyone know what opera these pictures are depicting. ..there is a flute and a boy..... It is the most famous opera.... how about The Magic Flute"she said then she gave us all a disappointing look. I know it is sad to tour an opera house and not know the name of ANY operas.
I thin this is the wall I was just talking about
thanks to my brother Billy I did however know who Gustav Mahler was and so when I saw his statues and room. I knew that they were significant.
After the opera we did more wandering.
I like the picture of the rat in this sign. I think it means whoever feeds the Pigeons is also feeding the rats. (google translate)
We ate really goof indian food in vienna. ( we also had good f food too)
Another day we went and found some amazing castles.
We got lost one day trying to find another castle and found a cool church instead.
I made john take several pictures of him in front of cool doorways.
Then the next day we tried again to find the castle. This time we made it.
Our last night in Vienna we walked around the Palace gardens and just looked at all the beauty.
We went back and tried to watch Romeo and Juliet the ballet. the description had been in German and so we didn't know it was a modern dance version. And it was a BAD version. lucky we couldn't stay and watch it all because we had to catch our bus. We laughed about it all the way home.
We stayed 4 nights and 5 days in Vienna and then got on an 14 hr bus ride that took us all the way back to Warsaw.
Part 6: Traveling Home
back in Warsaw our feet swelled up super big after the long bus ride. We stayed one more night in Warsaw and then said goodbye to Viktoriia. She had done a great job planning our our whole trip and being our guide, and sometimes our translator. That is a lot of pressure for a 19-year- old.
The flight back to Stockholm was short and sweet.
We stayed in a little hotel that was close to the airport we would fly out of in the morning. There was a picture of a pilot above our bed that looked like John. Then we watched source code. which is about a train being blown up. That was not a feel good sort of movie before you are flying anywhere. I regretted that I hadn't rerouted our flights I had trusted that if the USA had resumed allowing flights from turkey into the US then we should be fine. And we were, but it was still a risky choice and we weren't as calm as we had been on our first flight.
In Istambul we went through rows and rows of security. They asked us so many questions and then we would go to another line and they would do the same thing again.
We Were so happy to be back in the USA. security didn't take too long and soon we were on our way home. Knoxx came up to us and gave us a big hug. Rocky ran away from us.
They loved all the stuff we had brought back. there favorite things were the chocolate and the little necklaces.
Kari and Maria had flown from Utah with he boys earlier that morning. they where there for the next day and Ammon and his boys had come down from Dallas so we had a full house to come home to. we went to a lazer tag place and knoxx fell asleep on the floor. He had been to short to get to play with the rest of us. Now We are all adjusted back to being home. I am very thankful for all of those who let us stay with them. and for the safe travel that we had. I am so glad that we had this amazing opportunity to go on such a great trip.
