Snapshots of Czestachowa, Poland

We are spending a couple days in the city of Czestachowa (pronounced chesta-ho-vah). during that time we are visiting some significant sites, and I will submit a significant posting on them. Here, however is a quick glimpse of today.

It was a fairly low-key day, spending three hours driving from Warsaw, and getting settled in a different hotel. It is a small city, and unlike Warsaw, the streets are not crowded with walkers, sight-seeing couples, diners, drinkers, and tours. The on-and-off rain didn’t help but we arrived at a hotel I would describe as a “country estate”. It is very beautiful, and the accommodations are luxurious; but it is a bit isolated.

Nevertheless, we did some sight-seeing and ate a couple excellent meals!

Czestachowa Ruins94 — This is the City Hall on the main town square in Czestochowa. It was beautiful, but as you can see in the picture, there were not too many people out sightseeing.

Czestachowa15 — The gorgeous dining room at our hotel made it feel like we were outside but protected us from the elements.

I spent a lot of time today learning how to pronounce Polish words. Our guide Radek is exceedingly patient and complimentary! One potential problem was that I was using the names of the beer we drank to practice and so the quality of the practice gradually declined

Czestachowa Ruins97 — OK, this beer was not terribly hard to pronounce once I learned that the L with the slash through it is pronounced like “W” (of course). So this one sounds like, “Mee-Woss-wahv”

Czestachowa Ruins80 — This one, however, was nearly impossible! The “KsiA” part of it is pronounced like “shone” and the rest of the word sounds like “jentzia” so to order the beer depicted–and it was excellent–you must day, “shone-jentzia”!

Czestachowa Ruins71 — Czestochowa has many beautiful churches and the area appears to be more uniformly catholic than the big city.

Czestachowa Ruins41 — My sister Jane accompanied me in a light rain up a large hill to visit some ancient ruins. They were very cool!

Czestachowa Ruins96 — Tomorrow we visit the Monastery, and home of the sacred “Black Madonna”

2 comments

phat50chick says:

August 12, 2014 at 8:09 pm

So in the town that I live in, Coventry, RI, there is a large polish population (and french and portuguese) and the polish church is Our Lady of Czestachowa. Took me a while to learn to pronounce it when I moved here. Without paying much attention, I would always say “you know, the Czechoslovakian church.”

1. Tony says:
  
  August 12, 2014 at 10:15 pm
  
  Hahahaha!!!! that was like the EASY thing to pronounce over there!