Dannevirke teen has dream trip to Poland
What are the chances of being just 50 metres from the Pope in a crowd of two million? What are the chances of meeting your sister by accident in Krakow?
Both happened in a three-week visit to Europe by Monique Barrow of Dannevirke July 13-August 3.
Monique is a senior student at Dannevirke High School and was top student in Year 12 last year.
She applied through the Rimbrook Study Centre in Hamilton, where she had been helping out in a refugee holiday programme and hostel in January, to go to Krakow in Poland to celebrate World Youth Day.
Gaining selection, she worked furiously to raise the $4500 to get there and on July 13 she flew first to Rome with four other kiwis and 20 Australians. For a week her group toured the sights of Rome — the Pantheon, The Colosseum, the Vatican, St Peter’s Basilica (where she saw the Pope in the distance) the Catacombs and the Trevi fountain.
Then it was off to Warsaw in Poland where her group spent four days in a women’s hospital for the chronically ill. This was the service aspect to the trip and Monique found it very rewarding just getting to know the very friendly patients who mostly spoke English.
She visited several sites in Warsaw, including the President’s Palace, the old city which was not bombed in World War II, and the new city, and the Warsaw Library built of glass with trees inside its walls and a garden on the roof.
A six-hour bus trip to Krakow to attend the World Youth Day followed. Two million young people attended the ceremony and Monique found herself behind the VIPs and only 50 metres from Pope Francis. Through radio translation she heard his message in which Pope Francis said many of the youth of today “are already old” because they don’t do anything. He pleaded with them to get active.
Monique and the other Kiwis found themselves the centre of attention because they wore All Black kit. Many Poles wanted to have selfies with them.
With Two million visitors in a city of fewer than a million Monique found transport impossible to catch and walked a lot back to the tent city where she stayed.
On one of the free days she encountered her sister, Ruth, who, living as a gap year student in Canada, had also come to World Youth Day. It was a fluke. Although Monique knew her sister was there, Ruth had no mobile phone to call her. Monique was able to unload all the things her mum had given her to give to Ruth, like Marmite and sweets.
Returning home, Monique had a brief stop in Austria before coming home.
Monique says her trip has whetted her appetite for travel and she has organised a gap year in 2017 working in Sydney at a university hostel.