L I G H T S would be nice

Polish pottery is very popular among military and civilian wives who live in Germany. You see it everywhere. With cobalt as the traditional color, I did not initially fall in love with it.

While having dinner with friends, or walking past it in the mall, I always thought it was nice, but I could maybe live without it. It was a lot of blue and we just don't have a lot of blue in our house.

Until this summer.
We now have some blue.
I'm also now in love with it.

I'm not sure we can ever have too much blue now.

I don't know if it is better or not that I waited three years to decided I wanted our own collection.

In July, we had friends over for dinner. They were moving back to the states and I knew she knew how to shop and buy polish pottery.

I threw out the idea of going on a shopping trip to Poland that week before she left so she could teach me how to shop and where to go.

We convinced the husbands we needed to go and within a couple of days we were on the road.

Along with another friend, we left at 2:00am on a Friday morning.

The drive to Boleslawiec, Poland, the polish pottery capital, is about six and a half hours.

Our plan worked perfectly with one quick stop {by the policja} along the way.
We had crossed into Poland and noticed the police in front of us on the highway.

Not knowing the speed limit, I decided to just keep going slow behind them. You can't speed if you are following the police, right? We were going really slow.

Within a minute or two, they held their lollipop STOP sign out the window for us to pull over.

Seriously, I had no idea what I did. It definitely was not for speeding this time.

They {two of them} came to my driver's side window.

My heart was beating a little fast, but I knew we were fine.

One of them knew a few words in English, so we spoke mostly broken German between us. Crazy, I know.

We figured out we did not have our headlights on. In Poland, it is law to have them on twenty-four hours a day.

Oops.

He said I was flashing them on and off. All we could figure is that I had them on auto and they must have been turning on and off. I'm still not convinced.

I gave him everything I had and we waited in the van.

Where we pulled over, there was a chain fence with a padlock.

Michelle {our pottery expert who just forgot about the lights... we were so excited to shop} let me know we were NOT going in that gate- no matter what.

We couldn't stop laughing.

This is not always a good thing when you are trying to sweet talk your way out of a ticket. This is not the first time to have this happen to me. In Poland, when you receive a ticket you are required to pay on the spot. They will take you to an ATM to get the money if you don't have it. They are serious.

A few minutes later, they motioned for me to come over to their car.
What police does that?
Polish police, obviously.

I had given him my international license, military id, germany driver's license, passport and our car registration. He asked which was my license and if I was a soldier.

Nope, not a soldier but I let him know my man was a mighty fine one. I'm not sure if they understood what I was saying, but they didn't ask me any more questions.

He wrote down one of the numbers from one of the ID's and let us on our way.  
Before leaving, I did ask what the speed limit was and reassured him the lights would stay on.
Lesson learned. Welcome to Poland.

Running in to no fewer than a dozen more police that day kept us on our toes.
They were out in full force, but we didn't let that ruin our day of shopping.

We shopped all day without another person in any of the 10-15 stores that we visited. It was amazing and overwhelming at the same time. In the states, the prices are outrageous. In Germany, on base they are maybe not as high but still very expensive.

Not only are the prices better in Poland, the experience is unlike any other.
We finished up when the last shop closed at 6:00 and headed back to Germany.

Driving into Mackenbach right at 2:00am, it was exactly a twenty-four hour trip.
This weekend, Jim and I decided at the last minute to make a quick trip back.

We had a fabulous time.
This time, we decided to spend the night.
And, he kept the lights on.