Poland

So I know its been awhile since I last went somewhere, and it was a well deserved break too. Jack and I went to Poland; a-to have some proper summer weather (doesn't exist in Scotland) and b-so I could meet his family (not too scary but slightly difficult considering I speak very limited polish) And I guess some of you probably already know now but Jack also surprised me and asked me to marry him while we were enjoying the warmth and tranquility of our polish summer holiday. (I said yes)

We left rain in Glasgow, how unusual, and arrived to a sweltering 45 in Warsaw. Jack's parents, who speak only a few words of english, picked us up from the airport and drove us the several hours to some friends of Jack's who live in a small city called Torun. It was kinda late when we got there but Peter and Eva had stayed up and we had a bit of a drinking session. Eva and Peter spoke quite good english, which was good for me, they also had a very new little kitten who kept us entertained with her antics. We stayed a few nights in Torun, doing the tourist tour of the 12 or 13th C castle ruins, the local zoo which had an emu and 2 wallabies. But we also were there for Eva's exhibition opening in the basement bar of a really old building, the evening involved a joint music effort by Peter (decks), Jack(drum machine/computer) and another friend of theirs (drums) and plenty of drinking too.

From Torun we took a 3 hour train ride to Olsztyn, Jack's home city where we spent a couple of nights, we also returned back inbetween spats at their summer house by a lake in an area called Dimotowo. The weather had cooled down to a nice 25-30 so I took to sitting in the lovely garden of the summer house reading a book when I could or walking to the small beach of the lake and cooling off in the water. Most of our meals were steak of sausage from the bbq, breakfast was simple sandwiches and nice cheeses. I got to meet most of Jack's family in the end, his mum's mother and sister stayed with us at the summer house a bit, his brother Greg was around also. We went and visited his dad's parents so she could feed us some lovely polish foods (dumplings, ravioli, baked and stewed things, I can't remember all their proper names.) and on our last day we went and visited Jack's dad's brother and wife, as well as one of Jack's 3 cousins who has an 18 month old daughter.

The day Jack proposed to me we'd been in the city so Jack could organise some things with his passport and the army (one year service is mandatory unless studying) and when we returned to the summer house later that evening Jack gathered his mum, dad, aunt, gran and brother and presented me with a ring and 22 red roses (which is the number to signify your intentions of marriage proposal in Poland) That was friday 27.7.07, we got back to Glasgow the following thursday after having to get out of bed at 3am to drive from Olsztyn to Gdansk to get on the plane, back to work and Scotland weather.