Krakow 2022, Day 1
Month: July 2022
Reunion
And of course, there was music.
Pyzowka
I keep repeating myself: X is always a highlight of our time in Polska. When you come here only every few years, I guess everything becomes a highlight. Still, going to Pyzowka to visit K’s dearest friend D and her family has to count as a highlight no matter how you define it.
D is the type of friend you have that, no matter how much time has passed since your last visit, the years disappear in an instant and except for the topics of conversation, your relationship feels little different than it did when you were in high school together. These days, you might talk about the cost of your child applying to college versus the cost of your child going to college if you lived in the states. You might talk about friends that only one of you has seen in the last twenty years and how they’ve changed or not changed. You might talk about the cost of heating your house this year as opposed to last year. These are discussions your parents would have had years ago, but now you have them.
Before you know it, your children will be having them as well. But for now, your children are happy jumping on the trampoline and playing with a puppy. The cost of heating is as distant to them as it was to you when you were their age. They hear your discussions, but they don’t pay much attention to them.
Then again, neither did you.
Castles and Old Friends
Today was a day of castles: Niedzica and Czorsztyn. The former was once guarding the Hungarian border; the latter was protecting the Polish side of the border. In the middle ran a river. A dam completed in 1997 turned that river into a Czorsztynskie Lake.
In the afternoon, we headed to Nowy Targ, just for a bit of ice cream at the best ice cream place on the planet and some baked goods before heading to the highlight of the day.
A visit with my oldest friend here.
Revisiting Hell
Market, Slovakia, and Lipnica
Market
For six days of the week, the stalls stand empty, a sort of minimalistic ghost town of spare wood framing and corrugated metal roofing. The corner of Market and Forest Streets normally looks like this.
But on Wednesdays, when the jarmark comes to town, everything looks different. The stalls fill with vendors and goods, and the streets are essentially closed to traffic as potential customers weave in and out, walking between the various vendors' invitations to inspect their wares.
"Can we go see the chickens?" the Boy asks as we enter the market. It's always been a favorite spot for him.
Of course, chickens aren't the only attraction. Tables covered with knives, hoodies with the most incredible images.
And then there's all the food.
Slovakia
A trip to Poland isn't complete without a short trip across the border into Slovakia. Babcia always likes to do a little shopping there, and it's always pleasant to see a slightly different view of central Europe. Things haven't changed here as much as they have in Poland. The supermarket on the small rynek looks like it must have 30 or even 40 years ago.
Lipnica
My Polish home for seven years, Lipnica holds a place in my heart like no other.
It's always a highlight of a trip to Poland, especially when you find out some parts of it are disappearing for good.
The first apartment I had Lipnica was the lower-left apartment of the six-apartment dom nauczyciel. I found out during today's visit that the entire building is to be demolished in the near future. It suddenly occurred to me that trying to get into the apartment one last time, now that I know that it's empty, is a bit of a priority for the rest of the time I have here.
But the real surprise of the visit, though, had to do with people.
Two old friends of K and mine whom we haven't seen over twenty years were there. One is not surprising: she still lives in Lipnica; the other, also named K, lives in New York, home visiting her parents. It was these three women, then girls, who approached me during one of my first visits to a disco in Lipnica and said, "You're the new English teacher. We want to practice our English."
Bowling and Cards
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
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.
Family Party
This evening, we got together with Dziadek's side of the family: two aunts, a handful of cousins, a lot of food, and a wonderful evening.
This is the primary reason for coming back at all. All the rest is wonderful, but none of it feeds the soul like evenings such as this.
Wypasiona Dolina Plus
There was so much more -- so much more -- today that, at 11:59, I don't care to cover. But this was the most insignificant event of the day.
