Poland 01/03/2012

Here’s the second blog about our trip around the world. Yesterday we flew from Minsk to Warsaw. It was a very short flight, which took about 1 hour and 10 minutes. Afterwards we took the taxi to our bed and breakfast.  

I hope that everybody knows that Warsaw is the capital of Poland.  The country is a unitary state made up of 16 voivodeships. A voivodeship can be compared with a province.

First I will give you some general and economic information about the country. Poland has a population of over 38 million people. This makes Poland a populous country (if we compare it with the other countries in the world). Poland has a democracy with a president as a head of state. The current prime minister is Donald Tusk. In 2011, he became the first Polish Prime minister in history.

Poland is member of the European Union, NATO, and the United Nations… However in Poland they don’t use the euro. The official Polish currency is the zloty.

But here we are in Warsaw and I’m going to tell you something about it. Warsaw is located on the Vistula River, that’s about 300 kilometers from the Carpathian Mountains and 260 kilometers from the Baltic Sea.

Now I’m going to tell you something about the name Warsaw. Yesterday we met an old woman who told us that there is a folk etymology around the name Warsaw. She said that the name came from a fisherman Wars and his wife Sawa. Sawa was a women living in the Vistula River who fell in love with Warz.

We wanted to visit Poland because the country has a lot of historic elements. Before and during the war, Poland has known its worst time. A lot of people died during the war and it was hard to defend their country properly. However I was mostly interested in the capital because Warsaw is a major international tourist destination and an important economic center in Eastern Europe. The capital also survived many different wars.

Today we walked a lot in Warsaw. We visited the New Town and the Royal Castle. Tomorrow we will visit the Saxon Garden, which is Warsaw’s biggest public park. But I hope we can also visit some sculptures this week. The rest of the week we will visit some other delightful cities. The owner of the bed and breakfast has made a promise to go with us and show us a lot of beautiful places in Poland.

Also I hope that we will see some museums with information about the war in Poland. We have chosen a bed and breakfast for our stay because we wanted to meet new people. This way we learn to live with different cultural aspects.

Up till now I think that Poland is a beautiful country. I hope that I will learn more about the Polish habits.

Kind regards.

Jolien Masscheleyn

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poland
http://www.poland.pl/
http://www.um.warszawa.pl/en

Belarus 22/02/2012

Belarus 22/02/2012

Hi family, hi friends. we promised to you all in Belgium to write at least one blog post every week from every country we’ll visit. So here is the first part of our promise to you.

yesterday evening we landed in Minsk after a relaxing flight and we immediately  changed our clock for the first time in our world trip to the local time (+1 hour) Afterwards we took the train to our youth hostel. Which is located in the suburbs from Minsk, the capital city of Belarus.

For those who don’t know very well where we are now, we’re in the Republic of Belarus, a former state of the Sovjet Union. Belarus is adjacent with Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and the Ukraine. The capital city, Minsk, is located in the centre of the country.

Belarus is an independent country since the 19^th of September 1991 after they left the Sovjet Union. I think that this independence meant a huge step forwards for the country because after that, they started to become more Capitalistic. Nevertheless, I feel that they keep cherishing their Communistic roots.

One of the most important reasons why we wanted to visit Belarus was because of the location. The country is situated between European Union and Russia and we find it very fascinating to see how much Russia needs his partner Belarus and vice versa. For example Russia needs Belarus to put up their Rocket bases and for the use of their pipelines beneath their soil, but Belarus needs Russia because they need the cheap oil and Belarus is also very dependent on Russian support.

Today we started our visit in Minsk and the rest of the week we’ll go on with our discovery of this city and the rest of Belarus. Our tourist guide told us today that the name Minsk probable refers to the legend of Menesk , a man of extraordinary physical strength who used to protect the town from enemies. But he also told us that some people believe that the name refers to the Menka river.

So today we walked in Minsk together with a group of tourists in the city centre and tomorrow we will visit the rest of the city with a moped. Friday and Saturday we’ll visit some museums such as the national museum of culture and history of Belarus, the national arts museum and the Maxim Bogdanivich’s literary museum. For the next day’s, we’ll hire a car and do some road trips around Minsk.

So after one day, we are very happy that we started our trip in Belarus because our first impression of the country was quite good. I think that it is a really nice country to visit as tourist, but that it isn’t the most attractive country to live in and I am definitely not the only person with this opinion because the population number is going backwards the last 20 years.

Stijn De Wulf