Debbie’s Travel With Intent‘s One Word Sunday this week has the theme curve.
Photos taken in Warsaw, Poland in April 2022




Debbie’s Travel With Intent‘s One Word Sunday this week has the theme curve.
Photos taken in Warsaw, Poland in April 2022
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week is to post Man-Made Items.
Humans have been creating and building things for thousands of years. Some are monumental and awe-inspiring, some are fun or functional, and some are ugly. Everywhere people go, they leave behind something, carelessly or with a purpose.
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this week is reflections and shadows.
Debbie at Travel With Intent has a “One Word Sunday” challenge and this week her word is dust.
I drew in the dust on our rental car’s back window after driving along dusty roads in Saguaro National Park, in Tucson, Arizona. This photo was taken from inside the car.
Thursday Trio is a weekly photo challenge by Mama Cormier, who invites us to share our trios.
This trio of teenaged girls in Olomouc, Czech Republic were dressed in costume to collect funds for a cause which I don’t remember (I think it was something for their school).
In this same town, I saw this ad for ice cream – the only way I can remember how to say “ice cream” in Czech is to look at this photo!
On a recent trip to Poland, we spent a day and a half in the southern city of Krakow. Krakow is a vibrant city with a well-preserved Old Town and full of interesting public art! Here are four of my favorites and most well-known.
In the main square of the old town, was this head. “The artist’s gift to the city of Krakow, 2005” read a plaque (which I translated with the help of Google translator). The artist is Igor Mitoraj and his bronze sculpture (created in 1999) is called “Eros Bendato.”
Nearby was a wooden pole with colorful birds, called “Emaus tree.” A sign in English explains that the Emaus tree “refers to the traditional trees of life” which were found at the stalls of the annual fair in Zwierzyniac on the 2nd day of Easter. The Emaus tree could be a nest with figurines of chicks or a bird mounted on a stick decorated with leaves, usually made of wood. The tradition of making this ornament dates back to pre-Christian times when it was believed that the souls of the dead came back to life as birds who sheltered in tree branches. It also symbolized nature coming back to life in the spring.
A “fire breathing” dragon is a popular site for children, located below the wall of Krakow’s castle. Every evening at 6 p.m., this dragon is supposed to “breathe fire.” I don’t know exactly how it works and our guide didn’t explain it, but the day we were there, no fire issued forth from the dragon’s open mouth, disappointing this crowd of expectant kids.
We visited the old Jewish quarter, where the Steven Spielberg movie, Schindler’s List, was filmed. Nearby is an art installation consisting of tall, stark chairs, each representing 100 Krakow Jews (about 6,700) who were killed in the Holocaust. The artist and the installation’s title are on the sign below.
Cee’s Midweek Madness Challenge this week is “white or off-white.”
Di at Pensitivity 101 is subbing for Melanie’s Share Your World challenge this week.
4. If you were to compare yourself to a plant, what would you be?
I’d be a saguaro cactus. I love these majestic giants and sometimes they have many arms in a variety of positions. They look awkward sometimes, and I can relate!
GRATITUDE:
I am lucky to have a lot of happy memories from my childhood. Please share one from yours.
Most of my friends during childhood lived in my neighborhood in our hometown in southern Wisconsin, so we played together outside when weather permitted. We’d ride our bikes, go to our local beach (a man-made pond with a sandy shore), or play in the woods behind our houses. In the summer, we’d stay out as late as our parents let us – it was perfectly safe then, even after dark. In the winter, we’d go to each others’ houses, but usually ended up at mine. If one of the kids left a scarf or hat at my house, I’d smell it and then I’d know who it belonged to!
Lens-Artists’ challenge this week is maximalism/minimalism. As explained in the post, this can mean different things, but reading it made me think of all the ostentatious, Baroque-style churches I have seen in Europe vs the much fewer simple (usually modern) ones.
Note the difference in these two photos that I took of altars at the Jasna Gora Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Poland (above-maximalist) and the new church of Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial in Berlin, Germany (below-minimalist).
Each has its own kind of beauty. The first was built in Baroque style, which featured many intricate details and elements, while the second was built in the 1950s and in which the focus is on the many small panes of blue stained glass. Each has a fascinating history. Click on the links above to read about each of them.
Maximalist can mean a view of an entire scene with flowers while its counterpart, minimalist, focuses on one flower.