Being McKinley: A Roadtrip for the books

I have now been with my Poland family for a little less then a month, and it has been a roller coaster to say the least. After hanging out with the kids and exploring Warsaw for a week we loaded all 5 of us (including 2 car seats with me squished between them) and left for a month long road trip around the Balkans. I have been on some great road trips with friends during college, but driving for hours and hours and hours with 2 kids in foreign rural countries where you cross the border and have sex trafficking signs all over is completely different.

Our first stop: Romania. We drove for what seemed like hours and final made it to the Romanian border the first night. At the border they decided they needed to hold onto my passport for a long time. It is interesting because at a all the borders they take my passport for however long they want to have it and barely glance at the families European passports. We finally made it to our first stop for the night and passed out from exhaustion. We spent a total of 6 nights in Romania. Though I should have been writing ever little detail down, I didn't so I'm just going to write down a few of my favorite parts. Every day we traveled to a new city to spend time looking at all of the old towns, churches, Gypsies, landmarks, and sometimes yummy, often times not very good, foods that Romania has to offer.

One of the best parts about our drives have been the rows and rows of Sunflowers that seem like they go on for miles. Every time we passed a field full of them I can't help but smile. It seems like we end up spending most of our time in the car during this road trip, but We have found ways to have fun... Oh like having Maks throw up a couple times from eating to much and the whole car getting motion sickness except for Alex who is driving up and down windy roads like a maniac. But honestly it has mostly been good. When the kids are asleep we put on a audio book, but most of the time we just sing songs, dance, eat pretzels, and play a game of who can spot the stork nests first.

The first town we went site seeing in was Spanta and saw the amazing artwork on the Merry Cemetery. While driving through we also stopped at an old Village Museum. Apparently these type of museums are really popular in Europe, they are a village where they bring all of the old country houses that they could find to one place and made a town with them. Featuring all of the old tools, barns, and the simple way of life. It was fun for the kids to run around.

The next day we went on a very long train ride through the mountains. We thought we were getting the best deal because when we got there there was a cart that was completely empty, but then after sitting around for an hour we learned that our train was going to be the slowest. We were suppose to leave around 9, but didn't end up leaving until 10:45. It was pure beauty riding around and through the valley, but after 2 hours we were all hot and tired. We ended up getting to the top and jumping on a different train to ride home in 1/3 the time it took to get there, but we still did not end up getting back until 16:00.

That night we went to the beautiful town of Sighisoara for a medieval festival. We slept in a AirB&B right next to the main town square so we were blessed with the Irish/polish/Bulgarian folk bands jamming until late at night. The music was awesome!!!!!! We spent the whole next day around the town watching sword fighting, dancing and climbing the bell tower.

Those first few days were my absolute favorite so far. We also traveled to Bucharest, which is Romania's capital, but there was nothing fun about it. The rest of the country was beautiful, filled with colorful buildings and happy people. Unfortunately Romania, like a lot of the countries over here, have been ruled by communism for a long time, so all of the building in the big cities are boring, old and look very dirty. Though times have changed it has still taken them a long time to get where they are now.

Riding on the train