'Tis a time of Discovery!

Apologies for yesterday's lack of post, I was busy getting lost in the countryside (more on that later). You know how I said my day in Dubai started at 1am? Well, my first full day in Poland started at 1pm... I literally slept through the entire morning. Worked out to about 36 hours of travelling, of which only 6 were spent asleep, so no wonder I'm so tired!

Spending the night at my mother's parents' house, I once again discovered how good polish food is... I wasn't hungry at all, until I started eating, that is! After a delicious breakfast, we were off to my other grandparents' house to see them as well. Their house is awesome, it's right on the edge of a small village, next to a huge-ass forest which stretches on and on and on... I always go cycling there, but as of yet the bikes still have to be fully fixed and many screws tightened, which we shall hopefully be doing today.

A little bit about my grandparents: My mother's father is a retired I-love-my-home person, always doing DIY and always buying things, currently building a house next door to our other grandparents'. His wife works as a bank manager, the almost-stereotypical grandmother who always fusses over you and feeds you more good home cooking. My father's mother has rather battled with illnesses recently, but manages to stay alive through her faith. Her husband wears old-school fishing caps, goes fishing in his spare time, and religiously works through sudokus and crosswords (to do second-language crosswords is actually a ridiculously difficult exercise!), and is the most computer-literate and best English speaker of the lot.


Yesterday in the late afternoon, we went to see my father's brother. He has a flat out reasonably near the family home, where he lives with his wife and two young children. The two-year-old was completely batty and ran around with a foam sabre whacking everyone, only ceasing when I picked up another and began duelling him. Later, we went down the memory lane in the old garage, and found some old stuff from my dad's young days, like a backpack with aluminium bracings with old caving gear inside it, and a rusty shot which probably would've served as a cannonball back in those days...

We fixed up the other bike in the garage, and my dad and I decided to ride back, but not using the tar road, rather bashing through the dirt roads across the countryside. Well, the result was we ended up going around 4 times further than expected, as you can see from the photo (with annotations). For the record, dad ran all the way from where he got the puncture, it was like completely flat.

Saw the coolest things on the way: a dude was cutting grass manually with a scythe to turn to hay! Not many of those around anymore, most people today would use a combine harvester... Also, we had a drink from a real one of those old-school water fountains pumps, with an actual lever and everything! I love these old gems that crop up once in a while, I can't imagine what it must be like for people who grew up with these things...

My dad found a "Scoutmaster's Handbook" (in Polish obviously) from when he was a Scout, complete with an ancient greyscale photo of him and another friend hiking somewhere. Wow, how cool it must be to have memories like that brought back to you! When I'm old, I certainly hope I'll be able to look through the corners of my house and find little relics with great sentimental value.

Now I'm busy writing this post and compiling my Leon Paul cart (ready for purchase) before breakfast. Eh, the weather's reasonable (although it did chuck hail a bit yesterday), I wish i could take photos of quite literally everything... this is such a beautiful country, just you readers wait until I get my hands on a proper camera!

Hope everyone's having a great holiday, whether overseas or not... Enjoy it while it lasts!