We all were very excited, well….let me back up, most of the Hope Singers were excited when we got up this morning, for today was our free day of touring in Warsaw! A few of us got up alittle earlier to see Matt Gingerich off, he left this morning to move back to the states after living here in Poland around 3 years. We miss you already Matt!
Well after a fast delicious breakfast of fried potatoes(without dill mind you) and sausage, around 7:45, we left for our 2 mile(some would tend to disagree) walk down to the train station. The evening before we had numbered off into 4 groups and the leaders of those groups were: Anita, Gideon and Esther, Ria, and Nate and Maria. Those in Anita’s group left for the old town in Warsaw right away in the morning while the rest of us headed off to a museum about the uprising of Warsaw during WW2. The museum’s atmosphere set the tone of being in terror and wanting freedom, with dark interior and air raid sirens and “bombs” dropping. It just put into my mind again how desperate these people were for their freedom and how they planned and planned this uprising against Germany and were just waiting for the signal to fight back. The thing that stuck out to me the most was the young boys and girls that were used as mail carriers and they used the sewage tunnels to get out of the blockaded city of Warsaw and brought ammo and guns back into the city with them and also the amount of children that volunteered or had their parents volunteer them, was simply astounding!
From the museum we rode the bus down to old town. I had memorized the name of the stop and was able to say it a few times to please Gideon but I just can’t remember it. Anyway, our group went into old town and spent around an hour just walking around and looking at all the sights. We actually went into one of the big churches and got to watch one of the many weddings taking place in Warsaw. It seemed like there was a line of brides waiting at every church you passed, must have been the day to get married! We also enjoyed going to E Wedel which is a chocolate brand and they have a café and serve the most amazing chocolate drinks, warm and cold! Ahhhhh, delicious!!!! So yea we just walked around the city for the day and just had a great, fun, and relaxing day!
Lloyd went to the recording studio today and got the editing down on our recording! He said everything went and sounds great! Can’t wait to hear it!
Tomorrow we have two programs in Warsaw to finish out our tour here in Poland!
-Dervin Martin