fun in threes, sometimes fours
polska
My always obsession...
There's a river just about a mile away from K's parents' home. A dirt road leads though the fields to the river.
Summer, winter, spring, and fall -- a good walk.
When Nana and Papa came for our 2004 wedding -- obviously not "Nana" and "Papa" at that time -- we headed to the river.
Once with Kajtek at the river, we decided to see if he'd charge into the water for his beloved "Daj". He did.
And brought it back with joy.
We'll take our first walk to the river in eleven days.
12
What would a list of things we're looking forward to in Polska be without oscypek -- that smoky, dry, chewy sheep milk cheese that brought the European Union to its knees?
Sheep milk cheese? It does at first sound a little questionable, and the idea of milking sheep seems a little daft. But urban ignorance aside (after all, the "King of Cheese," Roquefort, is made from sheep milk), it's a wonderful tradition, which was the catalyst for much heated debate when Poland entered the EU.
Wikipedia gives the following regarding this Polish wonder, shedding a little light on why the EU had concerns:
Oscypek is made using exclusively salted sheep's milk. Addition of cow's milk is strictly regulated by protected trade name recipe. Unpasteurized salted sheep's milk is first turned into cottage cheese. This is then repeatedly rinsed with boiling water and squeezed. After this, the mass is pressed into wooden, spindle-shaped forms in decorative shapes. The forms are then placed in a brine-filled barrel for a night or two, after which they are placed close to the roof in a special wooden hut and cured in hot smoke for up to 14 days.
The whole process traditionally takes place in a bacowka -- a wooden hut where shepherds sleep and make their cheese. It is, in a word, dirty. So said the EU.
Additionally, it's sold at open air booths (see example at Flickr), unwrapped. A vacuum-packed, sterlized version is available, but it's relatively tasteless.
In twelve days, we'll be on our way to piles of oscypek.
"What are you looking forward to?" I asked K.
"Riding in a bus," she said with a smile.
While we lived in Polska, we often dreaded a bus ride. Bumpy, crowded, cold or hot depending on the season, a bus ride could be torture. And it could be real torture.
One winter evening, coming back from Krakow on the now-obsolete 6:35 public bus to Lipnica Wielka, I was sure my toes had completely frozen; I was fully expecting to have frost bite. I pulled my boots off and sat Indian style -- or "criss-cross apple sauce" as it's called now -- in the hopes of warming my feet under my folded knees.
One summer afternoon, on a bus to Kielce, I was sure I would melt. No one directly in front of me saw fit to open a window, and I was suffocating in body odor and heat.
But when you haven't had one in three years, nostalgia sets in.
Bus ticket prices are a sure indicator of inflation. When I first moved to Lipnica, the ticket to Nowy Targ, about 35 km away, cost less than four zloty. Three twenty, I believe. When we left in 2005, a ticket cost an even five zloty. Three years later I'm sure it's up to six.
We'll find out in thirteen days.
We'll wander down to the river that runs through the edge of Jablonka, toilet plunger in hand, ready for the first game of fetch with Kajtek, the family dog.
Kajtek has always loved toilet plungers. He has his own, in fact, to keep him from stealing them from the bathroom.
"Daj" is the imperative of "give" in Polish, and is pronounced like the English word "die."
Give a plunger a toss and off he goes: through snow, tall grass, mud -- it doesn't matter.
It came to be know as "daj" because, well, we all said "Kajtek, daj!" and he knew what we meant: off he'd go, searching for his toilet plunger, inevitably bringing it back with more excitement than would seem possible.
Shortly, we'll be introducing L to the joys of the daj.
Greenville doesn't have enough fields. And it certainly doesn't have enough cows.
Soon, we'll be wandering among the fields and cows of Jablonka -- "Little Apple Tree."
Americans don’t eat bread. By that I mean it’s not a staple. We don’t buy bread daily.
We don’t eat bread daily. And what we eat really doesn’t deserve to be called bread. Most stores sell gummy, soft, baked masses called bread, but it is to real bread what Nescafe is to real coffee.
Real bread is dense and dark. It goes bad in a few days and can be bought still warm if one gets to the corner store quickly enough.
In seventeen days, we will eat bread.
One of the things we're hoping to do in Polska is a lot of walking -- hiking, sightseeing, general wandering. And the Girl gets heavy toting her. And she can't yet walk very long distances. And we really didn't want to carry our bulky backpack-carrier with us. So -- we bought an Ergo Baby Carrier.
We gave it a test-walk yesterday. Other than L being very close to my back, it was relatively comfortable. The hugginess will only be a problem here, in the super-humid South Carolina.
I have visions of walking with her in places like Chocholowska Valley or the market square in Krakow...
Only eighteen more days.
In May 2000, I unexpectedly returned to Poland. It all happened suddenly: I'd been planning a fall visit, but then I found one of my friends was moving out of Poland and another was going into the army, so I wouldn't get to see them were I there in the fall. Within a week, I had tickets and I could hardly contain my excitement.
Eight years later, a repetition: we will be going to Poland this summer after all. We leave at the end of the month, and we'll stay for almost two full weeks. We'd stay for the summer if it were possible, but given American companies' generous vacation allowances, we don't have a choice. And K is not prepared to do something like this:
Tell them you're planning to take 2 months off. Don't ask. Tell them. Make it clear that you're going to go regardless of whether there's a job waiting when you get back. They'll accommodate you. Trust me.
Two Weeks Vacation is only a Recommendation, not a Rule
So two weeks will have to do.
And it will be a crammed two weeks. We're going to get the Girl baptized; we're spending a couple of days in Krakow; we're going hiking in the mountains; we're visiting half the population of Podhale; we're climbing Babia Gora;and more.
We're leaving in nineteen days.
L loves music. One of her favorite albums is a CD of Natalia Kukulska’s childhood songs. When I listen to them, I feel like I’m at a Polish wedding, for the music has that ’80’s, canned-music sound in which wedding bands tend to specialize. I’m not to crazy about it, but L loves it — and that’s all that matters.
One of the songs on the album is “Co Powie Tata?” — “What Will Daddy Say?”. (The English version of the song translates it “Please Tell Me, Daddy,” but that’s really only to make it fit the melody — literary license and all that.) It’s a song about all the questions a little girl has about ladybugs and whether it’s possible to love a snail. Cute lyrics, like all most children’s songs.
K tells me that today, when they got home, L was listening to that and recognized one word: “tata.” She looked at K, asked quizzically “Tata?”, then began the search. She looked in the bathroom, peeked in the shower, and generally wandered about the house looking for me.
Before we know it, she’s going to be demanding to know where I was when she finally sees me after such a search…
(As an aside, this is what Natalia’s up to these days.)