Poland 9

The last thing Damian, Areya and I did before we left Swinoujsice to go back to Szczecin was take a small trip into Germany. We drove to the village of Ahlbeck and walked the promenade and the pier.

They have some very old buildings which were built way before WWII. Damian was telling me that you won't find building that old in Swinoujsice because before the Germans left (Poland won Swinoujsice back from Germany) they burned the whole village.

There was this great boat docked right on the beach.

Our our way back home we stopped at the border and took pictures Damian on the Polish side of the boarder and me on the German side. They are about 10 feet from each other. Here is a small fact about Germany that I did not know: Germany is called Deutschland.

It was a long day and Areya could not last any longer, on the way home she fell asleep. We thought the way she was sleeping was funny so we took a picture.
The next day we packed up and drove the 2 hours back to Szczecin to Adrian's house where we spent the night and got up extremely early the next morning to drive 2 hours to the Berlin airport. We waited in line just to find out that we were to early to check in, so after waiting another half hour we finally got to wait in line again to check in. After we finally got checked in we said our goodbyes and headed to our gate. We got pretty lucky because the plane was only half full and they let us move to seats where we could all have a seat. (Aniela was a lap rider) The plane trip felt so much longer this time, lucky for me both the girls took a 1 or 2 hour nap. (not at the same time)

At the Paris airport we were unloaded outside and had to board a bus which took us to the terminal. Then we had to get off that bus and load another one which took us to our terminal. After we got to our terminal it was up and down several sets of stairs and a walk half way across the airport to security where we found out that Aniela was not allowed through. The agent in Berlin did not print her a boarding pass and even though she was a lap rider they said she needed one, so Areya and I took all the carry on bags and went through security while Damian took Aniela and their passports to look for someone to print Aniela's boarding pass. Luck for us someone helped him out and he did not end up having to go all the way to the ticket counter. They finally made it through security and found us just in time to get on the plane. We were so close to missing our flight. We finally made it back to Chicago where we had to go through customs (we were not given the necessary forms in Paris so we had to fill them out there while waiting in line) and get our bag. I'm so glad that Ida was waiting for us just outside.

I think we're all happy to be back. (Yes even Damian) Now the hard part will be adjusting to the 7 hour time difference.