matching tracksuits

“We need the rain” everyone said throughout the day, but we didn’t need the rain — a handful of days in Polska and we don’t need one filled with rain. But rain it did, all day.

Tomorrow is the baptism, so we did some shopping. First, to a bacowka for oscypek.

Bacowka outside of Nowy Targ

One step inside and you know you’re getting something traditional, something with character and heart.

Fresh cheese

True, it is a little frightening — from hygiene’s point of view — how they make the cheese.

Sheep milk boiling over an open flame

But that’s really just my hyper-clean American safety-sealed conscience speaking. We consume so many germs by the second that it would probably terrify most of us, and put OCD-clean folks into a catatonic state.

The price of oscypek is a good indicator of inflation in Poland. When we bought it before our 2005 departure, one cost 15 zloty; we paid 100 zloty for four of them today.

The price of everything in Poland is on the rise in a way that doesn’t compare to anything America’s experiencing. One friend told us she earns about 2,000 zloty a month, but spends 500 zloty a week on food for their family of five. One whole salary just for food. Add to that gas (we paid 100 zloty — about $50 these days with the falling dollar — for a little less than half a tank of gas, which costs about $9 a gallon), electricity (our electric bill here would be 500 zloty a month, K’s father informs us), and the various other costs and it’s difficult to imagine how anyone can survive in Poland.

Afterwards, we continued with the traditional theme, visiting friends who live in a traditional Podhale home, complete with connected barn.

Landscape?

Or portrait?

K and her university friend played with the children for a while

Putting together the Lego present

and talked for a while

while I snapped pictures

and the kids played.

L and yet more new friends

Lastly, it was back to Nowy Targ to visit my Peace Corps buddy C and his family.

On the way we stopped for ice cream (literally freshly handmade — so good that it’d difficult even to consider describing it), but fighting the rain and a sleepy girl didn’t inspire any photographic moods.

It’s not supposed to rain anymore for a while, so perhaps tomorrow the Girl and I will go to the river and entertain the dog, or maybe we’ll walk to Jablonka’s center for some ice cream. Babcia and K will be busy preparing for the baptism — one of the main reasons for the trip.

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Yesterday began with a visit to an outdoor museum in a village nearby.

The Girl didn’t have the greatest of times, and we left before the tour was over. No big loss — we’d been there several times before.

The only reason we paid for a guided tour was to get to go into the buildings.

Old Style Stove

They used to be open to the public, but theft and disrespect put an end to that.

Still, there was a good bit of adventure outside.

Afterwards, it was time for the Girl’s nap, so I took the dog out for a walk to the river. I felt a little guilty, with everyone around me working:

Bringing water to the cows

But then again, throwing the toilet plunger for the dog to fetch can be tiring as well.

Not to mention how exhausting it can be to process all the beauty.

Jablonka, with Babia Gora to the left

Finally, the girl awake, we began the afternoon’s visiting. First, to Lipnica Wielka, my home for seven years. So many people I could have visited, but in the end, we only went to the very closest of friends. It’s a question of quality or quantity — five minutes with all our friends, or an hour or so with a few of a closer friends.

We went with the latter, with the hope of seeing most of the others Sunday during an anual summer festival in Lipnica.

Before leaving, we took a walk in “centrum” — the closest thing Lipnica has to a center, anyway.

The Official Grandmother Uniform of Southern Poland

We made it just in time to catch everyone heading to church, which allowed us to meet a few more people.

Lastly, we met some friends for a late dinner in Nowy Targ. It was a restaurant specializing in traditional highlander cuisine, which means they brought out smalec as an starter.

Smalec is one of those few foods that is either amazingly tasty or amazingly disguisting. There’s no such thing as so-so smalec. I really was looking forward to it, hoping it would be good smalec: bits of bacon in it, with chunks of good meat. Our friend tells us that the best meat is from the throat. He took one look at last night’s smalec, swirled a knife through it, and declared it unfit for human consumption. “They used liver, for goodness sake!”

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