Evergreen Sunday

Today we went on an embassy sponsored trip to visit the town of Sierpc about 125 km NW of Warsaw. In addition to being a town of about 20,000 people, it is also the site of an open air “village museum,” which was our main interest in going there. The village is actually a reconstruction of 17th/18th century Polish village. The picture above can give some idea as to the architectural style of most of the village.

The title of this post is derived from the fact that today is Palm Sunday. However, since finding a palm tree in Poland is about as common as finding an innocent Arthur Anderson executive, the Polish people all buy small bundles of dried evergreen branches and flowers to use in their Palm Sunday celebrations. People started selling these little bundles on the street corners last Wednesday, but Melissa and I decided that we’d rather wait until we were at the open air museum where we could be price gouged for ours.

We paid a whole dollar for this as opposed to the 50 cents we could have gotten it for outside of our local Quickiemart.

As part of our admission package at Sierpc we were also given the opportunity to take part in judging the local palm competition. In some areas of Poland there has evolved a custom of competing to see who can produce the best palm. Seemingly there are no size restrictions. The palms we judged started at around one meter tall and ranged in size all the way up to the samples Melissa is standing next to in the picture below.



We both voted for palm #9, which I believe is the one directly behind Melissa. Or it could be the one on the far right. Or the one just to the left of Melissa. Okay, I have no idea. I can say with almost utter certainty, however, that it is not the really tall one on the far left. But I wouldn’t swear to it.

After the palm judging and an overwhelmingly large meal of traditional Polish foods we did a little shopping. We bought the previously shown palm and then Melissa went crazy monkey ape loony buying bread. She bought a small chocolate loaf, several semi-sweet rolls that are delicious, and one massive half loaf of bread. And I do mean massive. Take three loaves of Wonderbread, lump them all together, and you’ll almost have a mass of bread the same size as this half loaf.

We were the subject of much ridicule by the rest of our group because of Melissa’s purchases and I must say: I don’t blame them. However, the heat was taken off once Mark, who had been one of the main ridiculers, saw his wife come around the corner with a half loaf of bread that made ours look reasonable.

In the end, Mark was very good natured about it and even agreed to pose for a picture with me. I think he was just showing off because his loaf and his palm were bigger. I’m obviously jealous as can be seen from the sneer on my face. Either that or I was talking, I’m not sure which.

In the end, it was decided that Melissa and I won the biggest bread competition. Mark and his wife may have had the larger loaf, but because they have two children, we went home with the most bread per capita.

-Dave