My mom and stepdad came for a week and a half, they just left saturday. We had a pretty good time, especially my mom, who bought an assload of Polish pottery. So much that there are still two big boxes that we need to pick up from the store and ship back home to her. They got here on thursday, then we took a train to Krakow on friday and spent a few days there. This was the second time in Krakow for Kim and I and we still haven't seen everything. There's a legend about the founder of the city slaying a dragon in a cave back in the day and apparently you can go check out the cave and there's a big sculpture of said dragon somewhere, we just haven't found it yet. That's going to be my priority for the next trip. But the coolest thing about the whole trip was the old town square at night. I have always really wanted to take pictures of those people that swing fireballs attached to chains, but I've never actually come across any. Until now. There were two dudes and a chick and they were awesome. I took about 100 pics in 5 minutes. Most of the time there was just one of them playing, with another one starting up just as the first's flames started to die, but I did get some shots of two of them together. I played around a little bit with different shutter speeds and ISO's to get some different looks and I think I got more than a couple good shots. There was another dude about 50 feet away all by himself that was doing the same thing, only he had two sticks with flames on each end that we was twirling around. I think he was a little newer to it then the other people since he dropped the sticks every minute or two, but he was still quite entertaining. But the other 3 were pros, not a single mistake that I could tell.
As per usual, go to my Flickr page to check out some of the pics I took. I only posted the best ones. My favorite is "fire twirlers 30". Click on the pic, then click the "all sizes" icon above it to see it larger.
We also went to Aushcwitz again, which is just as depressing the second time, if not more so. Our guide the first time was a low talker, so I only heard about a third of everything he said. Our guide this time wasn't much louder, so I only heard about half of what he said. I guess another two or three trips and I'll finally know the whole history. I'm not sure I want to know anymore, though...
The last few days of their visit was spent just wandering around Warsaw. Kim and I thought we had seen most of the city, but apparently we were way off. There's still all sorts of cool stuff to find, so that should keep us busy for a while. We went to the zoo one day and spent almost the entire day there. It was way bigger than any of us expected. And we basically had the entire place to ourselves since it was the middle of the week, so that was really cool. We watched the otters wrestle eachother for a good twenty minutes, which was hilarious. Even funnier if you've ever heard Denis Leary's bit on otters from his "No Cure for Cancer" cd.
On the way to the zoo I wanted to stop and check out the old soccer stadium that's been out of use for years. On the weekends people set up little booths all around the stadium and it's basically one big flea market. There were a couple vendors when we were there, but it looked like a ghost town. There was an old man who had a bunch of cool stuff like old cameras, Russian and Polish army uniforms and helmets, and even some random Nazi memorabilia. My mom asked how much for the cigarette holder with the nazi eagle and swastika, but the dude wanted 300 zloty (about 110 bucks). I think you can get that stuff on ebay for like 20 bucks, so we passed on that and didn't even ask him how much his other stuff was. He had a kick ass old WWII Polish sword, but I sure he wanted way too much for it. Besides, I don't think they'd let me into the zoo with it, especially since he didn't have a sheath or anything for it.
We also went to the Polish Army Military Museum, which was awesome. They had a ton of stuff, lots of old medieval armour and weapons. Unfortunately they don't allow cameras inside so I couldn't get any pics. But I took a bunch outside where they had all sorts of kick ass tanks, canons, planes, etc. They even had a 7.1 ton bomb that was found unexploded in the ruins of a downtown restaraunt. Pretty impressive.
I have lots more pics that I plan on posting to the Flickr page in the next day or two, so check it out every couple of days or so. That's all for now. I'm out!
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