Reworking Pictures from 2013
polska 2013
Borders, 2013 — Part 2
It was a lovely spring afternoon, and I was done with school early, so a bike ride was in order. I decided to go on one of my favorites: dip down into Slovakia that loops back to Lipnica, where I lived.
Crossing into Slovakia was no problem. I made my way around Orava Lake, through Trstena and to the border at Sucha Hora ("Dry Mountain"), where I duly handed over my passport to the border guards. The Slovak guards stamped it and gave it to the Polish guard.
"Gdzie pan mieszka?" he asked.
"I live in Lipnica," I replied.
The guard thumbed through my passport like the bloke in Mis, and then he looked at me with a puzzled look. "But how?"
At the time, I didn't have a valid work visa: I was in the process of renewing it, following all the protocols the fine folks in Krakow had laid out, and they had assured me I had nothing to worry about. And yet here I was, on the border, starting to worry.
I explained my situation to guard, but he insisted he couldn't grant me entry. "You don't have a valid visa," he said.
"Yes," I explained, "but you can't keep me out for that reason. Perhaps you could suggest I can't live and work here, but you have to let me in on at least a tourist visa, which means a stamp of the passport and off I go." I didn't say exactly that -- I used much more diplomatic terms, but that was the general idea.
"But you don't have a visa," he insisted, waking into his little office and punching some things up on the computer.
I stood there, dressed in my Lycra shorts and top for cycling, having only a bit of cash in my jersey pocket, and wondering what I would do if this guy seriously didn't let me in. A friend of mine was one of the head border guards at the Chyzne border crossing, so I thought I would just ride back there. But what if he wasn't working? How could I pull this all off? I was tired; it was nearing sunset; I had very little money. Disaster seemed just over the next hill.
The guard came back and gave me my passport, waving me through with a smile. "We'll let you through this time," he said, "but it would have been a different story for me if I were flying to America without a visa, wouldn't it?" His smile grew.
"That's what this is about," I thought. "Someone in your family -- a sister, a brother-in-law -- got turned away from the States on some technicality, and now you're having a little fun." Naturally, I said none of this. I simply thanked him, took my passport, and rode as fast as I could over the border, which was actually another half-kilometer or so from the crossing station.
In 2013, we drove through that crossing, which was empty due to Poland's and Slovakia's mutual EU membership. It looked exactly as it had a decade earlier.
Zab Walk
The Neighbor
Borders, 2013 — Part 1
Random memory from the past, brought about by Lightroom playing…
Living in the south of Poland for several years, I had occasion to cross the border into Slovakia countless times. Theoretically, could have walked out of the teachers’ housing where I lived and walked across the border behind the complex in less than an hour. That would have likely been a bad idea: had I been caught…well, better not to think about it.
The nearest border crossing was down the road in Chyzne. It was a border crossing that looked like something out of a film — gray, concrete, depressing.
By the time I went back to Poland in 2001, it was all but free-passage. Border crossing took only a few minutes as opposed to over an hour if there was a long-enough line.
By the time we were living in the States and visiting only every two years, it had been torn down. All that remained was, well, nothing.
Tatra Mountains
Zab Barn
Z
Zab Revisited
Reworking a couple of shots from 2013.
Chess in Spytkowice
M is K's sister's-in-law father, and he's a keen chess player. I first played in him Krakow, at their apartment, in 2003 or so. We played one game, which lasted probably an hour and a half and went to roughly 40 moves, I'd guess. I knew I'd won with about 15 moves to go: he'd underestimated the queen-side attack I'd slowly been building.
Years later, when we went to Syptkowice to visit with them at their summer house, we'd always play. Since I'd won that first game, my ego was soothed, and I took more chances. In this particular game, those chances didn't work out for me.
Wieliczka Revisited
Reworked in Lightroom some shots from a few years ago.