Picketts in Poland: Easter 2014…a Weekend in Kraków

Easter weekend....we decided to take another short road trip. It was our second for the year, but this time we stayed in Poland.

We drove for 5+ hours to Kraków, a city we have visited a few times before....but always previously we traveled by train.

There were a few activities we had wanted to do in Kraków prior to us leaving Poland. One was to place an engraved padlock on the "lock" bridge...

Another was to go up in the tethered balloon. I had ridden in the balloon last summer when my sister, niece and I visited Kraków....,and I thought it would be fun activity to do with Mark.

Unfortunately, it was quite a windy weekend....and though we had seen the balloon aloft when we drove into Kraków, it was down by the time we walked over to it, and stayed down the rest of our stay because of strong winds. Too bad for us.

Just a short walk from the tethered balloon was the pedestrian bridge that we were looking for....the Bernatek Bridge.

This bridge was completed almost 4 years ago as a pedestrian and cyclist bridge...spanning one section of the Vistula River.

Since it has opened, it has become filled with padlocks, or "love locks", attached to the fence on the bridge.

The idea is two people who love each other, attach a lock engraved with their names to the bridge....and then throw away the keys, symbolizing that their love will last forever.

There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of locks attached to the fence and other parts of the bridge.

And there were also areas where the "love" didn't last too long....as the fence had been cut so that locks could be removed.

Since we have seen bridges with similar locks in other European cities, we're not sure when or where this tradition started....

....and before leaving Europe we had wanted to leave our own lock on a bridge somewhere.

We had engraved our first names and our wedding date....this year we will have been married for 34 years!

Here Mark throws his key in the river. There must be hundreds, or thousands of keys at the bottom of the Vistula River under the bridge!

Creating this little memory was fun....leaving a part of us in Poland

We ate dinner at a little outdoor restaurant on the Rynek....it was Easter weekend so an Easter Market had been set up. Polish Easter palms were seen in abundance....

These are the tall decorated poles with dried flowers and ribbons around them.

Since Poland doesn't have palms, the people have improvised and built structures like the one above, and called them Easter palms.

There is always something interesting to see in Poland....

....above is a wagon full of long sticks, probably dried willows that can be used in building Easter palms.

Strolling through the market, Mark found some soft gingerbread cookies....

....the kind he likes, made with molasses. Many gingerbread products in Poland aren't made with molasses, but that's the kind Mark likes....

and he liked these gingerbread bunnies so much that he returned to buy some for his co-workers.

I found a beautiful Polish ceramic vase....I hadn't intended on purchasing anything....

....but when I saw this simple and pretty vase, I knew I would enjoy having it in our home.

The Polish Easter palms were seen throughout the market area. These very decorative palms are an important part of the Polish Easter celebrations.

Even though this trip was my 6th and Mark's 5th trip to Kraków....we still found things to enjoy about this beautiful city.

The main reason for coming to Kraków was so that Mark could go on a tour of Auschwitz. I had been to the Auschwitz memorial camps 4 times, once by myself and 3 times with visitors from the U.S.

But Mark had conflicts on each of those previous visits, so this was his first visit. We joined a tour and had a good learning experience.

I have learned that with each visit, there is something new to see or understand a little bit better. On this visit, although it was nice to see spring arriving, with green grass and trees....

....we learned that there was no grass in the camp during the time that people were incarcerated here....there were simply so many people walking on the grounds that grass could not grow.

Below are some of the thousands of suitcases taken from the prisoners after they arrived.

Auschwitz is opened almost every day of the year, but not on Easter Sunday. So there were many people visiting the camp this day before Easter....though the pictures don't show the crowds.

The areas that were not so crowded gave us space to stand still and reflect on what we were learning.

These are the tracks that would bring the trains filled with people into the camps.

Though our friend Aleks had been to the camp before, she had wanted to come again....and we were more than happy to bring her with us.

Standing near the train car in Birkenau.

I'm glad Mark and I could come here together.

Upon returning to Kraków, we went to one of our favorite restaurants ...

....Resto Illuminati.

We enjoyed treating our special friends....the Jensens, a senior missionary couple that used to live and serve in Warsaw.

The other missionaries in Kraków were also invited to our Easter Eve dinner.

Here are a few of them.

Mark enjoys walking almost each morning...and so early Easter morning, he walked over to the Rynek, and watched an Easter morning procession around one of the churches on the grounds.

On Easter Sunday a special church service is held in every Catholic church in Poland. At this mass, a procession of priests, altar boys and the congregation circle the church three times.

The church bells peal and the organ is played for the first time since being silenced on Good Friday.

We attended church at the Kraków Branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After church the Jensens had invited us to their apartment for an Easter dinner.

They also invited two wonderful young ladies from church....Aleks and Katia.

It was so kind of the Jensens to invite into their home on this Easter Sunday....we enjoyed the delicious food and wonderful company.

Mark and I left Kraków in the morning on Easter Monday. Our hope was to avoid the traffic returning to Warsaw by leaving early, and it worked....we arrived back in Warsaw in 4 hours!

Before arriving home, we stopped for gas along the way....