Back from a week in Poland

Three hours ago, I arrived in Malmø Airport after 8 days of travelling around Poland. This trip has been all about saving money and doing it as cheap as possible, but still experiencing as much as possible. Therefore, I spent my last night in the airport and two other nights on night trains. But apart from my lack of sleep some nights, I’ve had a great time, and Poland has really surprised me in a positive way! There is so much to see there and I still have things that I want to see even in the cities that I went to.

I’ve explored Gdansk, Sopot, Warsaw, Krakow and Poznan; I’ve had a thought-provoking experience at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp; and the best part of my trip was when I went to the Tatra Mountains and hiked to the most beautiful lake called Morskie Oko! But more about all of that later!

For the first two nights that I spent in hostels in Gdansk and Warsaw, I didn’t find any friends as absolutely nobody spoke English.. But once I finally got to the more popular (and by good reason!) Krakow, I met some awesome people and made some great friends! Rocky from Canada showed me around Krakow and Bethann from Australia joined me on the trip to the mountains and is coming to Denmark to see me soon! It’s such a great feeling to have friends all around the world, it really makes me feel like a global citizen!

The country of Poland is a beautiful place: There are long, sandy beaches, vast forests and tall mountains; There are cozy market squares, numerous fountains and beautiful architecture; the air is fresh, the cities are clean and the people are the loveliest!

The Polish people are generally very kind and friendly and I’ve especially noticed how well they treat animals: I’ve seen numerous old ladies throw bread at birds; People let their dogs take thém for a walk and not the opposite way around, which unfortunately doesn’t happen often in Denmark; and I’ve seen no stray dogs and only three stray cats in Krakow. But these cats were also taken good care of. It’s a funny story, actually! I met these three cats and they were really cute and miawed at me, so I felt sorry for them and went to the store to buy them some cat food and water. When I started pouring the food out, a lovely old lady came by and she had a load of cut up meat and water for the cats. The cats ran to greet her and loved all around her. Even though she only spoke Polish and she knew that I couldn’t understand her, we spent over an hour together, feeding the cats, playing with them and her telling me a lot of things that I wish I could understand. But I got to the conclusion that she takes care of the cats, feeds them everyday and has even made small huts for them to sleep in. What a lovely lady!

There are many stories to tell and this was just one of my favourite moments, but there is much more to come and many more pictures to post! So stay tuned for more blogs about my trip to Poland! Right now, I’m in Copenhagen waiting for my friend and we’re going to spend three days in our beautiful capital, which will be awesome! Afterwards, it’s back to work for a month and then I’m off to Australia and China! 😀

Beautiful Morskie Oko