and it begins with an incredible evening. i can only hope that the rest of this week will be just as fun. so i drove 120 km to czestochowa to pick up tiago. at the train station. i met up with our mutual friend who happened to be home for christmas in czestochowa. instead of going straight back to lodz, the 4 of us ( by that time we were joinded by ola's friend), decided to go for a beer in a nearby place. the conversation soon went to portugal and all the fun the 3 of us had during the summer, when suddenly tiago declared that he had a nice little bottle of 1978 
porto in his luggage. well since i had driven the 120 km to czestochowa and we had a train to catch the next day from lodz we grabbed ola and 
her friend and drove down to lodz to open the bottle of porto at 1 am. beleive me that every drop of that porto was worth waking up at 6 am to drop ola and tomek at the train station

We departed at 7:30a to visit the monastery at JASNA GORA that stood against Swedish forces during the 17th century religious wars. It was beautiful inside with much gold decoration and had so many rooms to see and we were guided by a monk. We saw the Black Madonna which has become the national symbol of Poland. What I didn't like about it here was how commercialized it was for tourists. I felt uncomfortable walking along the sides (the entire group) with the guide, while many children of all ages stared at us, while a service was taking place, but found out it's normal. John Kennedy was here twice and Pope John Paul had services 6 times. We sat with Paul and Sharon from Australia and had chocolate ice cream and then were off to the next historical destination...