Dacha

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Anna caught up with her friend Aldona and she invited us to join them for a weekend in their dacha, holiday house, near Wlodawa which is on the Ukraine border.

Dacha

We hired a car from Joka (I am being straight) and drove 6 hours to meet Aldona and her husband Tadeusz. They took us to the dacha. It is in the bush and has no facilities. Water is hand pumped from a well, light is by candle and cooking is on a porta-gas stove. Very romantic.

Inside

The mosquitoes were in abundance and as usual they preferred Anna. She was pleasantly surprised that the itch quickly went away, unlike Aussie mossies. Little did she know that it would came back with a vengeance days later.

Saturday morning presented rain in abundance. Tadeusz took us for the day in his Ford S Max. We began with a visit to the house that Kosciuszko held a woman captive until she agreed to marry him. We then drove on to the Zamoyski museum. This

Zamoyski Museum

is a grand palace. The furniture, paintings etc were not looted during the war or by the subsequent Soviets and they are amazing. No photography unfortunately and no way to sneak any. It was still raining so we visited the Museum of Socialism which is another building in the grounds. This was pretty special. There was a copy of Poland’s communist manifesto as well as many period photos. The highlight for us was a larger than life stylised bust of Fidel Castro.

We had not been to church for a while so Tadeusz took us back to the River Bug and a Russian Orthodox Monastery. Apparently they have 24 hr mass. I did manage to sneak a pickie here.

Russian Orthodox Church

Our plan for Sunday was to have a leisurely trip visiting Lublin and then spend the night in Sandomierz, allowing us a gentle trip back to Krakow on Monday. It was still raining when we got to Lublin so we drove through. I somehow don’t fancy walking around an old city in the pouring rain.

The rain had eased a bit by the time we got to Sandomierz. We decided to check out the old centrum. Parking was tight but amazingly we found a good spot opposite the Rathaus near the information centre. We had lunch in a pub nearby. As we were paying we noticed that the Straz (city police) appeared to be booking cars parked near us. It was then we realised why we got such a good spot. Still there was no pink slip on the screen and we have only another 10 days left in Poland. It is likely we will make a clean getaway.

Speaking of getaways, it was raining heavily again so we packed up and drove back to Krakow. It looks like Sandomierz and Lublin will need to wait for next year.