euroSlurve

I knew it was going to be a good day when I heard “The Final Countdown” by Europe playing in the cabin next door to us on the train from Vienna. I kid you not. Someone was actually listening to that song for pleasure. In 2007. I love this continent. I wanted to stick around to hear if they played Wham or REO Speedwagon, but the train was pulling into the Dresden Hbf and it was time to move on.

Today was a great day. Well, it started out great and ended great. The stuff in the middle was interesting and a bit trying. Traveling into Poland without a car is apparently more challenging that we originally thought. We took a comfortable overnight train to Germany late last night (Thursday) after eating dinner with Anette in Vienna. (She was staying another day in Austria and then flying back home to Denmark on Friday.) We pulled into Dresden, Germany at 6:30 am, ate a quick breakfast and took a quick look around the city. Dresden was firebombed by US and British planes during WWII and then built up by the Soviets in the 1950s and 60s. Many buildings from the Soviet era have since been demolished and rebuilt in the old German, classic style. It’s quite a beautiful city. We walked past Frauenkirche, a church that was demolished during the war and rebuilt again on the 1990s (mostly with money from the US and UK). It was apparently a beautiful city before the war and is still being developed. It would be interesting to see Dresden in 20 years.

OK, back to our trip to Poland. We (Jamie, Josh and I) received faulty intelligence from the Germans and ended up traveling on a handful of Soviet era trains and buses through small Polish towns that probably don’t see a lot of tourists. The Polish people were extremely helpful and pleasant. Their English was really choppy, but hey, their English was much better than my Polish. So they win. But yeah, there was a lot of gesturing and pointing and panicking at times. Especially as we waited for a bus at a rustic station in a small border town called Zgorzelec. We were (sort of) relieved when a 30-year-old bus rolled up and the driver nodded when I tried to pronounce the name of our destination. After winding through country roads for about 30 minutes, the bus (which was packed with Poles — people were sitting on the steps at the front of the bus) pulled up to yet another rustic train station, where we boarded a train bound for Gryfow. This was our third train of the day.

The next challenge was getting off at the right station, since the Polish version of a “station” is a bit different from ours. Often the train would stop in the middle of a field in front of small brick shelters that were, well, rustic. (I know, I’m being nice here.) By the grace of God, we got off at Gryfow and found Scott Pursley (our pastor) waiting on the side of the tracks with Eddy, a fellow from the local church. I can’t tell you the relief I felt. I contemplated jumping into Scott’s arms but that probably would have been awkward.

Anyway, we’re here in Gryfow at an amazing ministry center that has a couple dozen rooms. There are rolling hills and horses and Polish people all over the place. It’s great. This country really is beautiful and the people are amazing. I’ll have to check in again tomorrow and talk more about the conference, but now it’s time for bed. Laters.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Germany, Poland. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.