Matching Tracksuits

Day: July 5, 2022

Bowling and Cards

Tuesday 5 July 2022

Traveling always risks bad weather; coming to Poland, for us it seems, just about guarantees it. After several lovely days (how many? four? five?), it’s supposed to rain. Every day. For the rest of K’s and L’s stay in Poland.

Still, we make the most of what we’ve got, like using leftover meat from rosol to make pierogi for lunch, or using the rainy weather to chop a little wood for Babcia.

After lunch we met with K’s brother’s family for some more bowling. This time, we took two lanes, and the adults played as well. That was a mistake: my long-injured finger began aching again, and I made it through two frames before I decided that it might be less painful to have my finger in a vice than roll even the lightest bowling ball available.

Afterward, we all headed back to Babcia’s for games and conversation. Hearing the cousins laugh and argue and joke together is a lovely bit of chaos.

And finally, I talked the girls into the first of several photo recreations. The original image is from 2008, when L was a year and a half old and S was a year older. They barely fit into the tub together now.

Polish Stores

Tuesday 5 July 2022

You can tell a lot about a country from its stores. American stores, by and large, are enormous. The Big Box stores rule, in short. The aisles are wide. The shelves have some space at the top — things are not packed into every possible corner.

Stores here are small. Every inch of space is put to use. The aisles are narrow. But that’s only the surface differences.

Look closer and you’ll learn a lot about the culture itself. What does an almost-entire row of various kinds of preserved, canned fish tell you about a culture?

When a village of only about five thousand stretched along three roads has multiple bakeries, and some shops sell almost 20 types of bread, you get the feeling that bread is of utmost importance.

When an entire corner of a store is dedicated to different types of juice, one realizes that everyone, young and old, must drink juice in that country.

But the biggest change since I first arrived in 1996 is the style of the stores: virtually none of the stores were self-service. The salesperson stood behind a counter and all the products were on shelves behind her. It was like the old fashioned general stores of the American past.

Initially that was frustrating; eventually, I learned that it was one of the best things that could happen to my budding Polish language skills.

The only thing that’s really changed since we left Poland in 2004 is the variety.