Christmas in Poland and welcoming The New Year

Happy New Year guys! How is it going? Here in Spain the year barely started and there are already thousands of memes all over Internet. Filomena Storm covered almost all Spain with snow and one of very few cities that resists and has no snow at all is our beloved Barcelona. So right now, our city is bombarded with jokes. 🙂 But, for the first time in months the news are about something more than pandemic, so let’s enjoy this moment as long as we can!

We had a small break from blogging in December because between traveling to Poland for Christmas and celebrating New Year, all I wanted was to relax and don’t make any commitments. I think it was actually good to put social media on hold. Now we are back with our batteries well charged and ready to share with you our last weeks of 2020.

It’s been weeks since Edwin first asked me if we would see snow in Poland. When I was a little girl, there was not even one Christmas Eve without snow in my home country. But the clime has changed a lot in the last 10 years, so unfortunately there was no snow in Poland this past December. We would also like to point out that snow wasn’t our main problem while planning our trip to Poland. With all the pandemic restrictions and traveling requirements, we were not sure about our trip until a very last moment. We had to do a covid test in Poland because Spain requires it from every person who travels there, no matter if you are already living there or not. And because it was Christmas period, all laboratories were closed and it was very difficult to find any place were we could do this test. After many days with stress and my entire family involved in the search for the laboratory, we found one place and everything eventually worked out. And to end up this story, we paid a lot of money for this test and once we landed in Barcelona, no one checked the results, so imagine our faces.

I am sorry for this pessimistic introduction but I wanted to share with you our experience and once again, repeat that everything worked out, we were able to spend Christmas with my family and this is the most important thing. After such a difficult year far away from them, nothing else matters. 🙂

Polish Christmas traditions

Poland is one of the most catholic countries in the world, so as you can imagine, Christmas is the most important Holiday for us. For many people Christmas preparations start at the beginning of December – creating an Advent calendar, baking gingerbread cookies for the Christmas tree, looking for gifts…. Everything has to be ready before Christmas Eve because this is when we have a family dinner and find presents under Christmas Tree. There are many beautiful Christmas traditions that we celebrate, so I will share few of them below.

Did you know any of our traditions? For Edwin it was his first Polish Christmas and he had to try every single dish, otherwise my Mom wouldn’t let him leave the table. 🙂 We also talked about Venezuelan traditions because their local cuisine is way different from Polish one, but this is a good topic for a separate post!

We didn’t take many pictures during our stay in Poland because all we wanted during these 5 days in Poland was to disconnect and don’t check our phones. The only pictures we have are the ones with my family but I won’t share them because we want to respect their privacy. We didn’t do any tourism neither, all we did was eating, visiting my relatives, watching movies and taking walks. 🙂 This time I didn’t even see my closest friends from Poland because it was all about family, but we’ll make up for it next time! I prepared gift boxes for my friends and send it over to them the day after Christmas. 🙂 I am very grateful for spending these few days with my family considering the circumstances and how hard if was to make this trip happen. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas time and that you could have shared it with your loved ones.

2021, you are more than welcomed!

We already shared our reflections regarding 2020 on our Instagram, and despite all the craziness happening all over the world, it wasn’t a bad year for us. It was different and hard, but we want to remember the best of it because there were many amazing moments. We are truly grateful for every day and every opportunity. Even if we couldn’t travel as much as usual, we still managed to go for some road trips and discover new places in Spain. I also visited Copenhagen in March and Edwin spent his first Christmas in Poland with me. We are very lucky to have each other and this is the best gift from universe.

This year we’ve learned a lot, especially to not take everything for granted and to appreciate little moments like a simple walk, sitting on a bench in front of the sea or doing FaceTime with our friends and family. Slowing down a bit wasn’t that bad and planning something for more than one week in advance is not really necessary, you can always make a last minute decision.

This year we also both focused on our professional projects and we will continue learning and risking because we love to challenge ourselves and always try new things! I started new job in August and Edwin has been dedicating a lot of time for studying because he’s going to change his professional career soon as well. So yes, 2020 did its job!

Of course there were days when we cried and felt vulnerable like everyone. It wasn’t always easy, but we did it all together and and we celebrated the last day of 2020 with our closest friends. We had a dinner and just chatted and enjoyed our company, feeling grateful for every moment and every single thing we learned. We don’t make any New Year’s resolutions this time, let’s see what happens. We just want to enjoy every single day and continue growing, because there’s still so much to do and explore!

Happy 2021 everyone!