Museums and Lody.

We spent today with our friends Ania, Łucasz, and Zosia. It was "Kid's Day" in Poznan which means there are events all over the city to spoil - or indulge - or appreciate your children. So we went to the new soccer stadium in Poland where there were attractions. Like bounce houses and games and fire trucks and police cars. You cant quite see below that all of the children in Poznan were here and so there were very long lines for all of the things.

Some of us were detained because of unruly behavior in the lines.

Actually, we abandoned and went to do something else, after we waited in line to pose with goats.

The goats are a quirky bit of folklore that you find all over Poznań, but I'll get into that later. Maybe. We traveled south of Poznan to Komorniki to see an agriculture museum with a "palace" on the grounds. The palace is a large home that was, of course, commandeered by the Nazis in WWII, and then eventually taken over by some local government to be a school to learn horse-shoeing. I'm not making any of that up. The grounds are beautiful and there are lots of agricultural implements to see and ponder. A shout out to Whitman County:

Also at the museum were bee hives (not occupied).

We then went to dinner. This place is favored by Łucasz, good food and large quantities for when you're working. It's next to a gas station next to a highway. "Milk bars," by the way, were communist era establishments where you could find inexpensive food - but no alcohol. The food was fantastic (we forgot to take pictures of our entrees - how poorly we do social media) and the portions were massive. We also fed 6 people for $27.

Then, on to the Muzeum Arkadego Fiedlera. Arkady Fiedler traveled all around the world collecting various things - masks, statues, carvings, animal skins, beetles, photos, and the like. His home south of Poznan, in a town called Puszczykowo, is now a museum where you can see all kinds of things from his journeys, and some not. For example, there's a 1:9 replica of a 53 meter high budda that was demolished by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001:

There is also a 1:1 replica of the Santa Maria in the yard. Yes- the Santa Maria that Columbus sailed, and yes, it was actual size.

Arkady's sons finished the project, and a direct descendent of my old buddy Christopher came to the unveiling.

Or, if the Santa Maria seems like it might be too slow, you could hop in the Hawker Hurricane parked next to the boat. My pics don't do this justice- you should check out the museum web page and click the Santa Maria link to see photos and more. Also check Wikipedia for some info about Arkady - though the list of books in English is deceptive- the wall of books in Polish is more than impressive. As is his list of travels:

• 1927 - northern Norway
• 1928 - southern Brasil
• 1933 - Amazonia and eastern Peru
• 1935 - Canada
• 1937 - Madagascar (specifically Ambinanitelo)
• 1939 - Tahiti
• 1940 - France, Great Britain
• 1942 - 1943 - USA, Trinidad, Guiana, Brasil
• 1945 - Canada
• 1948 - Mexico
• 1952 - 1953 - USRR (Georgia)
• 1956 - 1957 - Indochina (northern Vietnam, Laos, Camboja)
• 1959 - 1960 - Africa (Guinea, Ghana)
• 1961 - north-western Kanada
• 1963 - 1964 - Brasil, Guiana
• 1965 - 1966 - Madagascar
• 1967 - Brasil
• 1968 - USRR (eastern Siberia)
• 1969 - Nigeria
• 1970 - Peru
• 1971 - West Africa
• 1972 - Canada (British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec)
• 1973 - South America
• 1975 - Canada (Ontario, Quebec)
• 1976 - 1977 - West Africa
• 1978 - 1979 - Peru
• 1980 - Canada
• 1981 - West Africa

For the museum: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=www.fiedler.pl%0A
If that doesn't work, plug this into google translate: http://www.fiedler.pl

And then, a stop for coffee and lody, which you might remember is ice cream. "Poles are loony for lody," one of my guidebooks says... Today's happened to be particularly delicious gelato style lody.
Next time - tune in for "Inducing cardiac stress by driving and parking in places that might not be roads or parking spaces," or "The Pigeons in the Stary Rynek."