Amy at 38 weeks!

As promised here is a nice snap of Amy on our balcony. As you can see her tum has expanded since last month! All we have to do now I guess...is wait! :)

We had another trip to the doctors this morning (our usual doctor is on her hols). All appears to be fine and Amy is enjoying her first day off work!

Tomasz Stańko

As part of the 63rd anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, Tomasz Stańko (a famous Polish Jazz trumpeter) performed a free concert on Saturday evening in the Old Town Square.

We went along to watch (complete with camping stools!) and had a really nice evening. The square was really packed and even though we didn't get to see much of the stage it was nice to listen to (v.cool) Jazz on a warm summer evening.

Amy is beginning to feel the weight of our baby now. Fortunately Friday was her last day at work, so we're both a bit hopeful that she'll get a bit of rest before the baby arrives - I'll take another shot of her tummy in the next day or so, which I'm sure you'll be far more interested in....than reading about Tomasz Stańko!

Anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising

Today was the anniversary of the Warsaw uprising. It was the blackest moment in Warsaw's history, which was fought over 63 days during 1944. Throughout the uprising around 200,000 Polish civilians were killed mostly from mass murders by retreating German troops. The uprising was only planned to last for a few days until the Soviet forces arrived. But instead the Poles were left to fight with little outside assistance until both they and their city were destroyed.

Warsaw (and now the whole of Poland) commemorates the uprising on 1 August at 5pm (W - hour) which signified the start of the battle.

There is a rather eerie horn sounded throughout the city and absolutely everybody stops in silence to remember. People leave flowers, wreaths and candles on the numerous monuments throughout the city. I was at the Little Insurgent, just outside of Warsaw's medieval walls.

Signing the contract with the midwife

Tonight we went to the hospital to do our pre-registration for the hospital and to sign a contract with our midwife, Maria. Filling in the registration form was a bit like going through the Spanish inquisition and I actually felt myself breaking out into a sweat as I was bombarded with question after question.

We were lucky to be able to sign a contract with a midwife who speaks English as there are only 3 English speaking midwives available at the hospital. Apparently we should have made arrangements very early on in the pregnancy but somehow people had forgotten to tell us this! Luckily my Doctor is the director at the hospital and was able to pull some strings and get us sorted out - friends in high places do help out!

Now with all the paperwork done, all we can do is wait...

Tinky Winky strikes back!

The Polish Government is not exactly known for its forward thinking policies. Earlier this year the education minister threatened to sack any gay teachers from Poland's schools. Also, (amongst other things) a senior official wanted to outlaw the Teletubbies from being broadcast on Polish TV, when she discovered that one of the characters, Tinky Winky was a 'boy' and yet was often seen carrying a handbag (shock horror!)

These are not the views of the Polish people, just the somewhat righteous and antiquarian leaders who run this country.

We had to laugh therefore when we saw this piece of graffiti painted on a gate. Translated it reads 'There are many of us!' - good work!

Wrocław Film Festival

We were lucky enough to be guests at the Wrocław film festival this weekend as Australia was this year's feature country. So we had a great time hob-nobbing with the stars of Poland's stage and screen.

Wrocław is a city in the South West of Poland, just over 5 hours by train from Warsaw. It's a thriving city and has a beautiful 'old' town, which like Warsaw was re-constucted after the war.

The festival was showing 440 feature films(!!) -34 from Australia - during the course of the week, from 45 different countries, with around 100 getting shown for the first time. It was such an exciting time, and we both really got the 'bug' for seeing films and spent Saturday running/waddling ;) between cinemas and seminars.

We managed to catch 6 films, from around the globe, if you're in anyway interested these were: Silver City; God Willing; Alexandra's Project; The Mourning Forest; Playing the Victim and Falling.

One of the highlights for Amy was meeting renowned Australian film critic David Stratton who was one of the special guests at the festival. David had chosen most of the Australian films to be screened and was giving about 3-4 introductory comments at screenings each day. Trevor had to convince Amy not to follow David about to all the films otherwise he would think she was a scary stalker!! It was also great for us to meet a couple of Australian directors and the Polish-Australian actress Gosia Dobrowolska (who is originally from Wroclaw and was also a special guest at the festival - they were showing 11 of her films!)

We were very sad to have to get on the train and come back to Warsaw as we would have loved to have stayed for the whole festival (it runs until 29 July). That way we would have got a good hit of movies - something we probably won't experience for a while once the baby comes along!

However, we do hope to go back to Wrocław for a mini-break with the little one as we didn't really get to do any sightseeing this time around (apart from what we could see dashing from cinema to cinema!)

Amy chooses her next film

The opening scene from Falling (note the two sets of subtitles - how cool are we huh?)

Amy in front of the 'Puppet Theatre' with festival flag

Newbury Flooded

My friend Alessio sent me pictures from Newbury in the UK which has experienced heavy flooding over the last couple of days. If you want to see the pics click on this link Newbury under water