Day 4

Today, we woke up early so we could visit Schindler's Factory ( a museum about the life of Jews in Poland before, during and after the war- including the German's invasion and the ghettos they lived in.) Schindler was a German Nazi who took control of a half-functioning Jewish-owned factory. Jews were being taken to concentration camps,such as Auschwitz to die but instead he bought them and used their labour in his factory. Also prior to the museum, we met two separate groups of Italian scouts, luckily for us someone in both could somewhat understand our language. Following that we had lunch when it began to rain so we quickly finished and left to go to meet with our tour person for the doll making. As we were children, we instead got ice cream at the beginning rather than beer before going to the live studio to make the dolls. At the studio we made the dolls from scraps of fabric and wool/string. Some of us made women, some made men and all looked brilliant. Some of us refused to tell our wishes that we made the doll with, partly because if you tell a wish it won't come true and mostly for the fact we didn't actually have one. Some wished for safe passage during the rest of our trip. The place is all about helping the homeless and such. They make soup on Sundays and invite them to help out and join workshops to change their constant routine. After that we jumped on a tram to visit the leaky cauldron, a Harry potter themed coffeehouse, where we had iced butterbeers, mochas or crackling lemonade. We then found our way to the hard rock cafe where we waited a while for a table, I mean there are 10 of us. In the meantime we sat and edited this blog and our continuous story...

8 very tired Guides finished their dinner at Hard Rock Café then asked to go to bed without a pudding.

Day 3

Today we had a polish style breakfast which contained a selection of different bread, and granola with Polish quark. After breakfast we went to the Wawel Royal castle and visited the dragons den before marvelling at the Wawel dragon who blows fire every 5 minutes. We enjoyed a quick snack of crisps in a thunderstorm, then continued on to a souvenir shop and edulged in polish ice-cream.
After our exploration of the castle and shops we headed to CiuCiu sweet shop, where we learnt the making of rock and made our own lollies. We then made our way to an illusion museum where we became rather intrigued with the interactive displays. To en our day we headed back to our apartment and ate a yummy meal of vegetable spaghetti Bolognese.

Day Two

After a breakfast of toast, we all gathered our belongings and walked to the back to back houses (had to reroute due to road works). We arrived to a warm welcome from the team and soon set to work. We got split into groups and each completed multiple cleaning tasks in the fascinating houses. Each house's interior was designed like it would have been in a different time period. Surprisingly, the team seemed to enjoy the community project and finding out about the past. We said our goodbyes to the volunteers and found a place to eat our now melted sandwiches we made earlier. It was then time to head to Birmingham New Street station to catch a train to Birmingham International. A shirt change and shuttle bus later we arrived at the airport to catch our flight to Krakow in Poland. We checked in our bags and headed to security which resulted in three body and two bag checks. After bags were reclaimed and we could continue we headed through to the food court where we enjoyed a burger king. Before we knew it, it was time to head to the gate and board the plane. The plane landed and we all got off to get onto a shuttle bus for a short ride to the airport. Once arrived we quickly went through border control and collected our bags and were greeted by a friendly women who was going to take us to our accomodation that we are staying in in Krakow. The team split between two cars for the around twenty minute car journey to reach the spacious apartment which we are now settled into now, ready for the adventures that await in Krakow.

Day One

We started the day at Warwick Castle, where we met the other groups we're competing against. After a friendly welcome we began our challenges. As a team, we started by going around Warwick and doing a quiz. As well as the quiz , we also had tasks to complete and prizes to collect. The first challenge was finding the "porridge pot" which was related to the story Goldilocks: there we received a sporfe (spoon/knife/fork combination). Later we climbed to the top of the conquers fortress after been frantically waved at by leaders at the top and received a jelly bean prize after answering a trivia question about the date of the building we stood in. We visited the bear tower shortly after , taking a picture with the trunk and shackles used to restrain former bears from ages past. Following that we trekked up the steep, small-surfaced spiral staircase then had to agonisingly had to walk back down realising that Rapunzel was not in her tower but lay at the bottom with friendship bracelets for us. The maze was mayhem but in the end we got a badge to show our effort. We returned to the event marquee for lunch slightly early so by the time we finished people were still eating , we took this in stride and did the gingerbread men characters (many resembling Antonio (single Pringle man )) before enjoying them and moving on. We had one task left , puss in boots' Welly wanging. It resulted in achievement and a near miss for the judge. We then sat and played ludo before being moved onto the coaches to Birmingham train station and Birmingham airport where we made our way through crowds and trains in order to arrive at our apartment for the night. There we played another game, stocked up on food for the following day and finally began to write the first piece to our story.

Once upon a time

Our story will soon begin.