Matching Tracksuits

And of course, there was music.

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.”

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.

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.