Anniversary Marathon (Warsaw, Poland)

So if you want to stay fit, be healthy, see new things, destroy your body, and have no time to do anything. You should train for a marathon! HOLY cow...

First of all, running a marathon was a cool thing to imagine, but then once you sign up, you actually have to do it. 

So we started training and it wasn't so bad! After our first hour-long trek through the romantic cobblestone-streets of Prague and down the banks of the Vltava River, we were like, hey! Maybe we CAN do this! We were pumped and optimistic. About a month in to training, we bought new shoes. Now we're getting serious...

Then the runs started getting longer and the cobblestones not so romantic (in fact, we began to hate the cobblestones). We started saving the long runs for Saturdays and we found a nice black-top path that was close to home and forgiving to our knees. Unfortunately, when you live in the middle of Europe and 4 hours of your Saturday is taken up by an activity that shuts your body down for the rest of the day, your mood starts to deteriorate. 

Here's where the marriage lessons kept popping up. How is it when you are both so run down and your mommies are continents away, that you're supposed to support each other?? This marathon became our marriage teacher. It was pretty cool the way we were learning how to bring each other up and how to work together when we're down. We were learning about what were the types of things we needed from the other. Like I learned that asking a lot of questions and talking about what we could eat once we got done was NOT a way to boost Tom's spirits. Tom learned that not answering my questions was not a good way to boost mine. 

Remembering that we love each other and it's not the other's fault when we feel down or stressed or tired. We just feel down or stressed or tired and when it's just us in the flat, the other person gets to hear about it. I bet you learn all these things anyway, but maybe a marathon and living in a different country became our fast forward pressure cooker (in a great way).

So anyway, we finally tapered down our running distance, booked our hotel (first time in a real hotel instead of airbnb/couchsurfing/guesthouses), and our sleeper train to Warsaw. That's when we started getting excited.

[The reason we chose the Warsaw marathon was because it was exactly on the day of our anniversary. The reason we chose to run a marathon on our anniversary was because the reason we got together in the first place is because we watched the Chicago Marathon together. Tom's Polish. Boom, destiny.]

So Friday night, we arrived at the train station at 11pm. We've taken a sleeper train before, but the sitting in the seats with 5 other people in the car all facing each other with no leg-room kind of sleeper train. We splurged for the lay-down car this time and were crazy-surprised when we found our car this time. It was like a mini hotel room! 

  

There was a sink in the corner, comfy comforters, and a nice man comes and wakes you up in the morning and brings you coffee and a croissant!

When we arrived in Warsaw on Saturday morning, we found our hotel, dropped off our stuff, had an incredible breakfast and headed to the expo to check in for the race! 

Cool stadium huh? This was the location of both the expo, AND the finish line. Woo!

We found the map of the race and our names in the "C" of the "racebook". 

No backing out once you're in the racebook.

So here's what the finish line looked like without all our screaming fans :)

Then after a ton of free samples of gels and goos and protein bars, we went back to the hotel to sit on our butts, rest our legs, and research a place for a carbo load. 

We woke up and kind of anxiously ate breakfast and made our way slowly to the stadium. The weather was PERFECT for a race. We checked in our stuff, went to the bathroom like 50 times, then made our way to the starting line 

That's where we found our pacemaker...

That bunny and those balloons kept us focused!

So we started! The first 10 k was pretty sweet. Everyones cheering and pumped up.

Then it gets harder. 

But there are banana stands and little kids giving high fives and 60 second concerts and middle-schoolers handing out cups of water and cheering for you in English because "Megan" or "Thomas" certainly aren't the spelling of Polish names...

We also got to run past and through a lot of cool places! The castle gardens were my favorite...

There were sculptures

The Royal Castle

 Ladies on stilts giving high fives

This guy was at kilometer 39...

So we got to 40 K (just 2 kilometers to go) and we turned a corner with a marching bland playing and saw the stadium. I gotta say, that combination was like a kid seeing Santa's boots poking out of the chimney.

 Then we were done!!!!

And then they gave us fleece capes and soup to keep us warm. It was funny, everyone was moving slow or huddled over eating soup with a huge blanket-cape hanging on them. 

It was like a zombie apocalypse!

Then we ate huge cheeseburgers and hobbled back to the hotel. We found some strength to go out to a cool place for our anniversary dinner where we ran into a big group of people wearing Detroit Marathon gear (they were actually from Detroit-so cool)! So we chatted it up with them.

Then we shuffle stepped back to the hotel past this stuff...

Then the next morning, we took the train home.

When we got back we had an e-mail waiting for us from Momma Hardin that told us Tom has relatives who live in Warsaw, wah wah...hehe.

It was a super memorable anniversary/crazy marathon trip. Thanks for reading :)

So here's a story worth telling...(Bratislava, Slovakia and Vienna, Austria)

So we thought we would be cool and take a day trip to Bratislava, Slovakia. Just go to another country for a day like it's no big deal. We had found bus tickets for super cheap because it's not a super popular destination, but turns out Bratislava is SUPER cool! They've got all kinds of statues and sculptures every where like that's their "thing". But it seems like their thing is also just being cooky and quirky and old towny and cool all at the same time.

After leaving at 5 in the morning, we arrived at 9 and headed in the direction of the center. We passed this sculpture and this really cool clock that rang every 15 minutes.

Then we kept walking and saw a bunch of people walking into a big building, so we followed them. There was a farmer's market inside!

Then we left and ran into a square where a bunch of festivals take place.

In this square was a bike rack that had a Michael Bauhof stamp on it.

 While I rode bikes, Tom chatted it up with this guy...

There were lots of classic buildings in the city mixed with some cool modern art...

Yes...that IS an ad for a Limpbizkit concert coming up in June, and speaking of crazy...there's a super-odd UFO-like observation tower/bridge on the edge of the Danube.

Ooh! Here's the crest from the Slovakian flag.

So here's the Bratislava Castle, and the grounds are pretty cool.

We couldn't get enough of the view from the castle. Bratislava is cooler than you think!

 

There was this guy stuck in a man hole working.

And a church made of blue!

This is a high school. Don't you think this looks like the Cheesecake Factory kinda?

OOooh...for lunch we went to this really yummy brewery

There was this beautiful garden in the middle of nowhere and if you look close you can see a random bride and groom snappin' a few pictures.

Oh my gosh, then we found my favorite coffee shop in the world. It's called Urban House, if you're curious, here's a link to their website: http://www.urbanhouse.sk/ We sat there for a couple hours playing Uno and drinking yummy coffee drinks.

We had one more thing (a hotel) we wanted to see before dinner, and on the way to the super cool artsy hotel, we passed by this government building and its gardens.

We don't know the story about this hotel, but it's so dang cool! It's called the Galeria Spirit Hotel, if you're curious about it, here's a website with more pictures: Click Here

We turned around and headed back towards a cool restaurant for dinner. Another statue on the way...

So here's where the craziness begins...we're sitting eating a delicious dinner and drinking big glasses of red wine after a pretty tiring day and Tom goes, hey we should double check the tickets...(both of us for about a month thought that our 20:40 departure was 10:40....after months of living here, we're apparently not used to military time yet...bah!). So, at 8:33, we checked our tickets that said our bus leaves the station at 8:40! We waved over the waitress, asked her to double-time the bill. We threw down some cash and SPRINTED the mile to the bus station.

The bus was ever-so-smoothly pulling out of the station just as we finished our race into the lot. We were close enough to see the numbers on the side, but apparently they pride themselves on being on time. So there we sat in the parking lot, trying not to throw-up our full meal, looking at the bus schedule...

In two hours, there was another bus to Prague. However, in one hour, there was a bus to Vienna, just 45 minutes away. Then and there, with no extra clothes or soap or tooth brushes, we decided to make the best out of this bummer and go to another country.

A couple hours later, we pulled into the station in Vienna. Even in the middle of the night, this place is cool. We hopped inside to steal some free wifi and looked up the closest cheapest hostels. 

We found a place that has those bunk bed rooms where you stay with other people and just pay by the bed. For about $40, we met some interesting people, had not a ton of sleep, then woke up for a free breakfast that was delicious! We stuffed ourselves, then went and bought ourselves some bus tickets to Prague for that night and triple-checked the departure time. 

Once our bus-stuff was settled, we headed to the enormous and gorgeous grounds of the Schönbrunn palace, just on the edge of the city...

We could have spent all day on those castle grounds, but we only had a DAY in Vienna, so time was a wastin'! We left and saw this cool owl building.

And then these pieces of art and memorials...

Everyone in the city is drawn to St. Stevens Church. This place is gorgeous and it's hard to capture it all in one photo, luckily Tom's pretty talented and got it in two.

 

Now everywhere you turn in this place there's another grand marble building with sculptures and statues hanging off of each corner.

Then we ran into some festival!!! We had no idea what they were celebrating, but we bought beers and celebrated with them!

Across the street and around the corner were more things to see...

That's when we realized how worn out we were and we took a nap in the grass.

Then, we took a trek that landed us an hour early to our bus....we were a little paranoid about catching it this time around...

 

So you know, we did catch our bus this time, and we're back in Prague, caught up on sleep, loving life, and amazingly grateful for these opportunities. Thanks for listening. 

Our mini-message...Don't be sad the next time you miss a bus! Just take another one :)