polska 2025 | matching tracksuits

What do you do when it’s raining, raining, raining? When we took our trip to Charleston a few months ago, we went to watch the Dylan biopic that first day because of the weather, but there’s no movie theater in Jablonka. Where could you possibly go when you’re in a small village relatively far from any town?

Well, when there’s a break in the rain, you can take the dogs out for a walk. There’s always something to look at and to talk about with the Boy. So that’s exactly what we did this morning. The little suka that Babcia adopted some years ago (a poor pup clearly abused earlier in your life–she’s terrified of me and all men in general) got out of her collar and caused the Boy no bit of initial worry.

“She’ll follow us and make it back home,” I assured him.

We cut through the jarmark, which, by that time, was closing up.

“Almost nobody is there,” the Boy informed me when I finally dragged myself out of bed at nearly nine this morning, exhausted from waking to take K to the airport and then unable to fall back asleep at 4:30 when I got back to Wujek D’s house yesterday.

(K made it home safely: the animals are thrilled to have part of the family back home, but still wondering where in the world the rest of the family is.)

Finally, after lunch, we decided the best place to go was the outdoor train museum we seem to visit every visit lately. It was a little different this time: the Boy wasn’t as fascinated with every little thing like he was during our first visit, and the cold rain was a radical difference from the unbelievable heat we endured in 2022.

We talked about the fact that all this equipment was once new, modern, and cutting-edge. We entered an empty passenger wagon that had nothing but a wooden floor and rusted ceiling:

“Just think, son–at one point, someone climbed into this carriage and thought, ‘Wow! A new, modern car!’ And now, it’s difficult for us to imagine traveling like that, difficult to imagine the carriage as anything but an exhausted antique in a museum.”

Krakow 2025

Tuesday 8 July 2025

The changes in Warsaw between the time I first explored the city in 1996 and finally returned with my family in 2017 were enormous: it was almost an entirely new, entirely different city. I’m sure the changes in the intervening eight years have not been as drastic, but certainly it has grown: new skyscrapers, old buildings torn down or renovated, more diversity in its populations–all the changes I observed in 2017 continued to some unknown end.

Krakow, on the other hand, is a city that seems to have changed little in those years. The Old Town has a lot more variety in its culinary offerings; the prices for apartments in that part of town are likely out of reach for the vast majority of Cracovians; there’s much more diversity in the population of the city and in the tourists who visit it; some buildings have been renovated a few new structures have appeared. Still, it is by and large the same city I visited first in the summer of 1996.

The kids and I explored a bit of Krakow today since we were already so close having taken K to the airport for her return to the States. (The kids and I will be staying another two weeks.) L’s knee is still giving her problems (it all started last week in the mountains), and the forecast predicted severe thunderstorms and continuing rain starting around two, so we made a short day of it. We really only went to two major tourist attractions: the sukiennice on the main rynek for the Girl to get a few more gifts for friends, and Wawel because, well, it’s Wawel.

Along the way, we of course stopped in several shops that lured the Girl’s attention with vintage dresses or exotic plants, and we took a break in a charming little cafe just off the rynek for coffee (three lattes, please). All told, we spent there only about four hours–certainly not enough to do the city justice at all, but we’ve all been there so many times that it felt fine just reliving a few highlights. Besides, relief for an aching knee is more important than any tourist attraction.