Wednesday at the UK

  Supraśl, Podlasie Voivodship, Poland
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Wednesday. Always the day for excursions at the UK. As usual I didn't sign up for any of the excursions on offer. Neither did the Germans. Once bitten twice shy. At my suggestion we went to Suprasl... a sleepy town outside of Bialystok. We took along another Australian and a couple of Koreans who also hadn't signed up for anything.

Quite interesting but we didn't stay that long. Had a look, had something to eat... headed back again. It's called being lazy.  The food was pretty good and it was a really peaceful town.  If it had been up to me we would have stayed much longer and had something more to eat. 

Plus the waitress had the hugest, bluest eyes you've ever seen. 

There was a pretty impressive monastery but I don't seem to be able to find any of the photos of it that I took.



As usual, if you go far enough into eastern Europe you're sure to find some storks...  Not a very good pic but it's up now.



This house was the private residence of some rich German textile manufacturer. It always amazes me what sort of mansions they used to build for themselves. I suppose when you had to provide a lot of your own entertainment - billiards, balls, piano-playing - and needed somewhere to keep the servants, the necessary rooms start to add up. It's bigger than it looks as there's another wing to the right.



The Esperanto presence in and around Bialystok is so great that they even have Esperanto books for sale in the local book-shops.

Back in Bialystok, the Germans left us and the rest of us decided to go in search of the spot where Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, was born.



Actually, all the spots with some Esperanto tie-in are detailed on these info-bords around town. Quite well done, with an explanation in Esperanto as well as a few other languages and some sort of hologram photo in the middle that displays two different images according to the viewing angle; usually displaying the same spot as it appeared at different times in its history.



Here's where Zamenhof's house stood; the one he was born in. We happened to run into another couple of Australians so of course they had to pose for me.



Richard and Gloro hamming it up. Well, I think his name's Gloro, but he wouldn't give me the address of his blog... so I presume he won't be reading mine!



Back at the pub, we discovered that there's even an Esperanto train time-table. Very impressive.  It's at moments such as that, that you realise what sort of world it almost would have been if English hadn't become so dominant.  Perhaps if the French had supported Esperanto a bit more instead of fearing that French would be superceded by another language... 

If only they'd known.