First, breakfast — that old Polish favorite, salceson. It’s one of the things along with flaczki and tartare that I look forward to having while in Poland. (I’ve had tartare, and now I can check salceson off the list. Still looking for that bowl of flaczki.) Headcheese (I love that name) is available in the States, but I never buy it. It’s a Polish thing for me.
It is, I suppose, an acquired taste: the consistency is a little odd, alternatingly gelatinous and firm, but the flavor is quite pleasant.
After breakfast, we headed off to the jarmark. It’s Wednesday in Jablonka — there’s only one place to go!
The Boy still has money that’s burning a hole in his cliche, so we stopped at every single knife monger (is that even a term?) for him to look at the available wares. His concern was simple: he wanted something that he could use in scouts, but most of the knives were switchblade-esque: they didn’t look like the old switchblades you’d see in West Side Story, but they did have spring-loaded blades that flipped out at the press of a button.
“I’d better do some research before I buy one,” he wisely decided. (The verdict, as we predicted: such knives are not acceptable for scouting events.)
After we got home, the Boy and I decided to go for a bike ride. After a few kilometers, the Boy turned back. I continued.
It was the same ride as yesterday until the point at which I turned right instead of left. The route I’d mapped out earlier would drop me down toward Chyzne before turning back up toward Jablonka. However, I didn’t count on one thing:
Over a kilometer of deep, thick mud. Virtually impassible mud. I spent a good bit of the middle of the ride with one foot up on the only-slightly-muddy bank pushing myself along or, when the mud to got six or more inches deep, simply walking in the less muddy part and dragging the bike beside me.
After lunch (pierogi z borówkami), Z, a Georgian who rents from Babcia, and I finished up the wood. Even Babcia said we were done — there were no lurking piles that I had not noticed.
Listening to Babcia and Z communicate was a lesson in the value of hand gestures: he speaks a bit of Russian and almost no Polish; she speaks Russian fluently and no Georgian. Their conversations reminded me of Dziadek and Papa talking: I got the feeling neither was really responding fully to the other.
As for me, I used Google Translate to talk with him. I showed Babica and suggested she could use her tablet the same way, but her response was predictable.
Finally, the Boy and I took one more bike ride in the evening, this time through the fields between Jablonka and the two Lipnicas.
The sun was setting so we had to make our ride short. Of course, on the way home, we had to take a spin through his favorite riding location: the empty jarmark.
At the far end were long-abandoned stalls that had seen neither seller or buyer in years. It’s a testament to the changes in Poland: the jarmark is shrinking, probably because of the availability of items in Poland and, truth be told, the comparative lack of quality of many things sold in the jarmark, especially clothing items.