Day 9 – Polish hospitality

Today was a more relaxed day than yesterday. Our only appointment was the 11am Parish Mass and then we could spend the day with our host family.

The Mass was a beautiful service with 3 Australian and 3 Polish priests concelebrating. At the end both the Australians and Polish expressed their gratitude for the amazing week together.  Afterwards we were presented with a photo gift and given one more chance to talk to the locals. After that it was free time with host families.

While every pilgrim’s story will differ, the time with my host family involved a scrumptious lunch consisting of chicken soup, rissole(that tasted far better than a rissole), a gnocchi-like potato and some red cabbage sauerkraut.

After lunch we went and visited a castle(along with at least a quarter of the pilgrims). Now the Kamien Slaski we visited the other day may be considered a castle but I don’t watch Downtown abbey and I expect my castles to look like old castles. So I was quite impressed with the Moszna Castle.

Moszna Castle is a gothic/baroque style castle that was set on fire by the Soviets before being renovated to it’s former glory. One room has about 6 paintings of the owner’s wife from when it was owned by a Duke. I wonder whether I could stand to look at 6 paintings of myself everyday (perhaps if they painted me driving a race car or playing State of Origin).

We ended the night with more amazing food and drink. Tomorrow we leave for Krakow. Pray for us.

Craig