Only nine days in Poland, I wanted to make it more relaxing and family oriented. Here are five highlights of that time:
1. Spending time with my family and friends:
2. Making pierogis according to my grand-mother’s recipe, (and of course eating them):
3. Celebrating the feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary the Polish way. It reminds me of our Thanksgiving, when we bless the crops and food. In Poland we bring herbs and flowers to the church to have them blessed. My friend’s mother prepares small bouquets and sells them in front of the church to raise funds for the parish
4. Eating familiar Polish food:
5. Watching Polish news on TV. The main theme this year is drought: big losses in agriculture and shortages of water.
This special truck delivers water to some communities. Their wells are almost empty.
As you can see the level of water in our main river Vistula is regularly measured.
Poland’s longest river, the Vistula, on Tuesday hit its lowest water level in more than 200 years because of a drought ravaging the country, a weather official said.
Its level in Warsaw fell to 50 centimetres (20 inches), the lowest since records began in 1789, according to Grzegorz Walijewski, a hydrologist at Poland’s IMGW weather institute.
He added that the water level, which usually averages 237 centimetres in the capital but reached a high of 787 centimetres in 1960, would continue to drop in the coming days.
The Vistula, which is the EU member’s longest river at more than 1,000 kilometres (600 miles), splits the country in half and deposits in the Baltic Sea.
Warsaw officials have taken advantage of the drought, which has hit the farm sector hard, to hold an archaeological dig on the Vistula. New objects are found every day. (http://phys.org/news)
