polska 2015 | matching tracksuits

polska 2015

More Climbing

Thursday 16 July 2015 | 0 Comments

Kajtek has been feeling a little out of sorts. Somehow he's gotten injured -- maybe a fight, maybe something more innocent, maybe something less. Today, he finally came out of his hiding place, and E was thrilled and went to comfort him. Afterward, a bit of digging -- he built a swimming pool in Babcia's onion bed, and he goes back from time to time to make sure it's still useable.

In the afternoon, we returned to Wypasiona Dolina, the line park just outside Zubrzyca. E has been begging to return almost every day, and so we met some friends with their kids and let the kids go crazy.

The kids weren't the only ones who went crazy. K decided it was finally time to try a line park adventure. After some training, she began on the course. Sadly, though, her forearms began giving out long before the end of the course, and before she completed it, we had to call for help. I wasn't going to memoralize the picture, but as she was being rescued, she laughed, "Take a picture!"

In the meantime, the Boy and his companions worked on the greatest adventure of the day: building an actual swimming pool -- of sorts.

He came home dirty and wet, signs that show just how perfect the outing was.

Trains and Lipnica

Wednesday 15 July 2015 | 0 Comments

Morning: the outdoor train museum in Chabówka. It's nothing like the train museum in Savannah -- trains that you can only look at but not really touch. The trains at Chabówka are open and ready for ladder-climbing, knob-turning, and pretend-coal-loading.

Afternoon, Lipnica Wielka, my home for seven years, and always a highlight of any visit to Poland.

Slovakia to Nowy Targ

Tuesday 14 July 2015 | 0 Comments

Morning: a trip to Slovakia to do some shopping. Babcia explained that the flour there is much better quality and that the crocheting thread is much cheaper, so we headed to Trstena, the first real town across the border.

Despite all the changes in Lipnica and Jabłonka, Trstena really hasn't changed all that much. The town square still looks more or less like it did the first time I went in 1996. Sure, there have been a few updates in architecture, but mainly face-lifts to get ride of the old socialist realism of the previous era.

We made our purchases and then found a cozy restaurant for a bit of lunch. And of course since we were in Slovakia, there was only one thing on my mind for lunch: bryndzové halusky. I could eat the stuff by the kilo if it weren't for the fact that it's a complete fat and carb bomb.

Since Babcia wanted to stop and get some trash bags -- the local trash collecting agency will only pick up trash and recyclables that are in the proper bag, in typical bureaucratic fashion -- and since the bags are available only in one location, we decided to drive around Lake Orawa and come at Lipnica, where the trusty bags are located, from the backside. This meant we went over the dam that formed the lake some decades ago and prompted the creation of the town of Namestovo for the displaced residents of the valley. Of course, the boy loved it.

Part two: Nowy Targ. K had some shopping to do and wanted to get her hair done, and since two people recommended the same hairdresser in NT, there was only one place to go. I on the other hand had other things on my mind: no trip to Poland is complete without a visit to C, the Other American in the area with whom I spent countless weekend hours in the late 90s.

A quick walk over the river and through the cemetery and soon, C and I were catching up, reminiscing.

K came by, showed off her lovely new hairstyle, and chatted with us a bit before we turned back toward Jabłonka.

In some ways, nothing special about today's events. Had today been eighteen years ago, it would have been almost typical -- not for a Tuesday, perhaps, but maybe for a Friday or Saturday. All it takes to turn the typical into the extraordinary then is eighteen years and a few thousand miles.

Bike

Monday 13 July 2015 | 1 Comment

Living in Poland for seven years, I rode various bikes for a total of at least 6000 kilometers. That’s how many kilometers my two bike computers showed when combined. On my road bike, 3500; on my mountain bike, 2500. That total was during my second stay, from 2001 to 2005. It was then that I became something of a cyclist, spending an asinine percentage of my salary on cycling equipment. During my first stay (1996-1999), I had a fairly cheap mountain bike that I virtually gave away when I left. I had no cycling computer on it, so I’d have to guess how much I rode, but I wouldn’t think I did more than 1000 kilometers in those three years, and that’s probably being generous. But that second extended visit to Poland — I rode like mad. One summer alone I did 3500 kilometers, riding in the morning and early afternoon on my road bike then riding into surrounding forests in the late afternoon on a mountain bike.

This afternoon, I dug out the mountain bike, cleaned it up, fixed a wobbling wheel, then took it out for a short spin. It had recently sprinkled a bit, and I was wary to head out on untested equipment more than a few kilometers, but still, I couldn’t resist. I rode paths I’d never done before, ending up in a spot behind the river — the destination of The Walk — that I’d always wondered about.

Two things were different this time out: first, I felt oddly conspicuous. A young man on a bike doesn’t look all that odd; a man in his forties on a bike, clearly riding for recreation and not simply as a means for transport, is a rare sight indeed. Bikes for me of my age are usually just means of transportation, often to the fields to work or from the bar after a binge (though often the rider is pushing the bike in the latter case). The second oddity had to do with the pedals: the first time in probably fifteen years or so that I’ve ridden with regular pedals as opposed to clipless pedals that attach to a cleat on the bottom of each shoe, allowing a rider to pull as well as push. I found myself wanting to pull, especially on the one or two small climbs I encountered, and the result probably looked amusing to anyone who happened to see, adding to my feeling of conspicuousness.

Despite the oddness of riding in this area for the first time in over ten years, it’s safe to say that the quick trip was a success. And in the meantime, K and the Boy were visiting other friends.

And the Girl? She’s at her first summer camp experience. She called this evening in tears, scared at the thought of her first night alone. What she really needed was a hug, and fortunately, a family friend was there with her to provide it. Still, it’s a stressful experience for us as well as for her.

Saturday Evening, Sunday Morning

Sunday 12 July 2015 | 0 Comments

Saturday evening, with the air not so warm but also cloudless, I thought I might be able to get a shot of the Tatras. It’s a difficult shot to get because of the haze that usually clouds the view from Jabłonka in the summer. You have to be right in front of them to get a clean shot. So I headed out in the early evening, and almost on cue, clouds began sweeping in.

It still amazes me how this region can go from the one extreme to the other so suddenly. It’s not like a few clouds appear, then a few more, then still more until the sky is gray. No — it’s a line of gray that suddenly appears and seems to put a lid over the whole region. Suddenly the sky doesn’t seem endless, for the clouds aren’t even that high. It’s as if you can reach up and touch them.

Still, I continued to the spot in the fields I always go to when I want to photograph the Tatras. It’s only about a ten-minute walk from Babcia’s, so for an impulsive photo-walk, it’s perfect. Still, the conditions were far from ideal. It took a fair amount of fiddling on the computer to keep the mountains from blending into the sky.

As for Sunday, a stay-at-home day. Mass, lunch, packing for L — she heads off to camp tomorrow. And finally, a recreation from the last Poland visit.

Line Park

Saturday 11 July 2015 | 0 Comments

Out of the blue, or perhaps out of the gray, we suddenly have blue skies. Within a few hours of sunrise, it's possible to be comfortable outside without a jacket. By late morning, it's possible to put on shorts. With the rich blue in the sky, I decide I might try for another picture of Babia Gora. During our walk yesterday, I'd discovered a spot where only a field of dandelions and Babia were visible. Gone were the houses, the power lines, everything that makes modern Jablonka modern Jablonka. I take a few pictures, but none of them measure up to what I see in my mind's eye.

The afternoon promises more interesting adventures, though. More touristy, to be sure, but nothing's wrong with that. We're tourists now. We walk around the small centrum in Jablonka and recognize no one. K tells me that even at church she sees almost no one she knows. We are strangers when we're here, tourists, so why not act it?

We head to a new park at the base of Babia Gora that includes a line park, several playgrounds, and those enormous inflatable balls that kids get in and look like they're shrink-wrapped until the attendant inflates the thick plastic ball. L takes an hour to go through the line park. The Boy rolls about in a net of plastic balls. And K and I? We sit and scheme how we might get back alone so we can run the adult line park.

A touristy day in K's home village. Who would have thought it?

Pyzówka Ognisko

Friday 10 July 2015 | 0 Comments

The day started with a walk. The walk. The walk we go on several times while we're here. The walk K and I took together countless times before moving to the States. That walk.

It starts in "town," so to speak, with fairly common rural Polish views -- the metal worker neighbor who also raises ducks and chickens in his yard. K's parents used to have a similar little farm where they raised chickens, rabbits, the occasional pig. During the Communist period, there were so few goods in the shop that it really was the only way to have access to certain items on a reliable basis.

But within a few moments, the walk leads us into the fields, away from any house. Or at least it used to be that way. These days, the houses are moving further and further into the fields. People are converting beet or potato fields into lots.

But it's still fairly rare to find single houses out in the middle of a field. They still tend to clump together near the two main roads that go through Jabłonka. We went out in search of mud, getting the kids dressed out in gum boots and jackets, and both kids were completely convinced that we'd find plenty of mud.

We walked among fields of potatoes and various grasses

but in the end, we could only find a few mud puddles. And when we did find puddles, the kids took turns in the small puddles.

In the end, we walked probably close to two and a half miles and had only a little mud on the gum boots to show for it.

In the evening, we headed back to Pyzówka to visit with K's nearly-sister and a mutual friend from Warsaw whom they met more than twenty years ago at a summer camp and stayed in touch since. The last time the three couples got together, we were, more or less, just that. Three couples. One couple had become a family, but the rest of us were childless and thus, in a certain sense, without responsibility.

Ten years later and among the three couples, six kids are running around. Well, five kids running around and a beautiful nine-month-old taking turns in everyone's arms.

There were some things that were fairly standard: there was a cook out over an open fire with plenty of meat.

The amount of meat in the average Pole's diet always made me wonder about those Poles who were vegetarian. These days, that's a much easier dietary choice. In the mid-90s, it seemed to me that for a rural Pole to be vegetarian, it meant essentially eating potatoes and cabbage and cheese.

Going into the average rural shop in the midst of winter seemed to confirm that suspicion, but perhaps it was just a linguistic issue: I really wouldn't have been able to ask freely about winter vegetarian dietary options that first winter.

This time around, I'm not the one having linguistic difficulties. The Girl has blossomed into a fairly fluid speaker, but the Boy still struggles. When playing with children, he tends to keep fairly quiet, occasionally saying things like, "Watch this!" but mostly being a silent participant.

But L was the same way, if memory serves, so I'm not terribly worried about it, and K is not concerned at all.

The day ended with the promise of a beautiful sunset, but unfortunately, the cloud cover returned, and it was a typical gray affair.

But that's okay too. I always grow a little nostalgic when I return to Poland, and the gray, cold days filled with the smell of coal smoke as people heat their houses in early July fits that nostalgia just fine.

Arrival 2015

Thursday 09 July 2015 | 0 Comments

“Do you know how many days we went without rain?” K asked. She counted on her fingers quickly: “Eight days. Eight days. And the heat!”

When we arrived in 2010, I believe, we arrived to similar news. “It was beautiful for the last few weeks, and if anything, we needed rain.”

So I guess if you need rain in Poland, just arrange for me to fly in, because as soon as we arrived in Little Apple Tree, the sky clouded over, the temperature dropped, and the rain began.

So I made it safe and sound, joining my family for the first as four together in Poland, and the temperture returns to normal, as does the cloud cover.