House-hunting and Swimming: Do those go together?

A couple of weeks ago when we were doing castle, castle and more castles, we went through a town called Paniowki and spotted an old brick house sitting in a field with a for sale sign on the fence. Aneta commented that it was the kind of house she wanted. I kept bugging her to go back and look at it and today she agreed that we should do that.

I spent the morning packing up some items to send home so I don't have to carry them on the airplane and we took the box to the post office to mail. That was quite an experience. You may think postal workers in the US get a bad rap for being slow but I have to say the lady graciously helping us at the post office in Knurow takes the prize for slow. I am sure she views it as methodical but Aneta was extremely frustrated by the experience. She offered me two options for shipping - both costing considerably different amount of course - but could not give me an estimate of delivery time for either one of them! Lengthy conversations resulted in the determination that the least expensive method could take up to three months! I opted for the more expensive one as I have some Christmas gifts tucked into that box and I don't have three months!

Mission accomplished we head for Paniowki to see if we can find the house again. We were successful, after a few missteps and false starts, and Aneta called the number on the sign. The owner just lived a couple of blocks away and came right down to show us the house. It was a 100 year old brick house with a full unfinished attic. The downstairs has four good sized rooms plus a bathroom that was added on after the fact. The place sits on a nice piece of property and has a wonderful old brick barn as well as an addition on the house with animal stalls in it! Of course Aneta loved the place and it really was quite charming but the reality of what it would take to make it habitable is quite daunting. But it gives us something to talk about and dream about and fantasize about.

Fot: A small house spotted by us, Linda

Next stop a swimming pool near this house. This is the pool Aneta takes Ania to for her swim lessons each Thursday evening. It is my first visit to the pool and what a nice surprise. This is just a fabulous pool. No other words to describe it. The pool my grandsons frequented at the YMCA in GreenBay, WI was very similar with a giant yellow solid tube slide that shoots around and around and dumps you out in a special area. Not that we went on the slide - no way - but the children's pool here is very large and even has some depth to it so Ania could actually swim, and did she swim! What a happy little girl when she is in the water. I swam laps in the big pool and had the lane all to myself for the entire hour. Everything about this pool was state of the art and very clean. It was a great exercise day.

Witek is home again tonight as his group is heading to the Tatra Mountains near Zakopane for mountain rescue training and he is qualified to teach the course. He gets a 5-day break and he is really ready for it!

Linda