And of course, there was music.
Reunion
polska
Pyzowka
I keep repeating myself: X is always a highlight of our time in Polska. When you come here only every few years, I guess everything becomes a highlight. Still, going to Pyzowka to visit K’s dearest friend D and her family has to count as a highlight no matter how you define it.
D is the type of friend you have that, no matter how much time has passed since your last visit, the years disappear in an instant and except for the topics of conversation, your relationship feels little different than it did when you were in high school together. These days, you might talk about the cost of your child applying to college versus the cost of your child going to college if you lived in the states. You might talk about friends that only one of you has seen in the last twenty years and how they’ve changed or not changed. You might talk about the cost of heating your house this year as opposed to last year. These are discussions your parents would have had years ago, but now you have them.
Before you know it, your children will be having them as well. But for now, your children are happy jumping on the trampoline and playing with a puppy. The cost of heating is as distant to them as it was to you when you were their age. They hear your discussions, but they don’t pay much attention to them.
Then again, neither did you.
Castles and Old Friends
Today was a day of castles: Niedzica and Czorsztyn. The former was once guarding the Hungarian border; the latter was protecting the Polish side of the border. In the middle ran a river. A dam completed in 1997 turned that river into a Czorsztynskie Lake.
In the afternoon, we headed to Nowy Targ, just for a bit of ice cream at the best ice cream place on the planet and some baked goods before heading to the highlight of the day.
A visit with my oldest friend here.
Market, Slovakia, and Lipnica
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.”
Bowling and Cards
Traveling always risks bad weather; coming to Poland, for us it seems, just about guarantees it. After several lovely days (how many? four? five?), it’s supposed to rain. Every day. For the rest of K’s and L’s stay in Poland.
Still, we make the most of what we’ve got, like using leftover meat from rosol to make pierogi for lunch, or using the rainy weather to chop a little wood for Babcia.
After lunch we met with K’s brother’s family for some more bowling. This time, we took two lanes, and the adults played as well. That was a mistake: my long-injured finger began aching again, and I made it through two frames before I decided that it might be less painful to have my finger in a vice than roll even the lightest bowling ball available.
Afterward, we all headed back to Babcia’s for games and conversation. Hearing the cousins laugh and argue and joke together is a lovely bit of chaos.
And finally, I talked the girls into the first of several photo recreations. The original image is from 2008, when L was a year and a half old and S was a year older. They barely fit into the tub together now.
Polish Stores
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.
Family Party
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.
Wypasiona Dolina Plus
There was so much more — so much more — today that, at 11:59, I don’t care to cover. But this was the most insignificant event of the day.
Trzy Korony
Climbing mountains is something my mind loves but my body questions. Ever since I seriously injured my knee about 25 years ago hiking in the Tatra Mountains, I’ve been wary of mountains. The way up is not the issue. In fact, it’s a great relief sometimes to be heading up. No, it’s the way down – that crash! crash! crash! against the knees. Almost 190 pounds dropping on knees time and time again.
So when we started our trek up to Trzy Korony today, I was a little concerned about the effect it might have on my knee. I was more concerned when I saw just how steep it was. Fortunately, we all made it fine.
And I’m so exhausted that I can’t say much more than that about the whole day.
First Saturday
Originally, the plan was to meet with K’s brother’s family and head out for an adventure on the Dunajec River this afternoon after a morning hike around the Three Crowns Mountains. But in fairly typical Podhale fashion, the weather turned suddenly overcast, threatening rain. We decided it wasn’t worth it: what’s the point of hiking up a mountain if you can’t see any views? And we always have tomorrow.
So since we were all up (meaning, the adults and the Boy) early, we went ahead and had an early breakfast. And as we had nothing else to do in the morning, I went out for a walk in the hilly fields just west of the village.
I saw a gentleman sweeping hay from the floor of his barn with an old-fashioned twig broom. I thought to ask him if he would mind me taking a picture of him, but I didn’t. Why? I really don’t know. What’s the worst that could have happened? He would have laughed, said “No,” and I would have gone on about my walk. Instead, I am writing about it hours later with just a little regret. Next time.
After lunch, the plan was to head to Wypasiona Dolina for a little line-park action, but just as the weather put a quick end to our river plans, the rain put an unforeseen end to our afternoon adventures: though the park is only a few kilometers from Jablonka, and though it didn’t rain all day today, it poured there apparently, and the owner, seeing that all the wood was wet and thus slippery, sent all the workers home.
Instead, we went to the outdoor museum that we almost always seem to visit while here. It seems to grow each time we go.
On the way back to Babcia’s to pick her up for church, we stopped at a new place that had — strangely enough for a small village — a small bowling alley. It was not quite a normal bowling alley: the pins were suspended by strings and seemed to be lighter plastic. The Boy managed to win the first game but didn’t do so well with the second game.
After bowling, we rushed to pick up Babcia to head to church so that we can have tomorrow completely free. Afterward, we dropped by the cemetery to tidy up around Dziadek’s grave and pay our respects. As always happens at the cemetery, we met an old friend of Babcia’s, a former teacher of K’s.
And finally, back home, Babcia began teaching the Boy how to make a fire for hot water — a basic skill in old-school rural Poland
Friday Afternoon Walk
First Day 2022
Coming to Poland is always the same old new: it is always a question of what has changed and what has not changed. The things you would think are timeless are just that: without change from who knows when. Yet some of these things for our kids are indeed new — at least, they don’t remember doing them.
Like drinking hot black tea with breakfast. Admittedly, we don’t even really have that with breakfast in the States. We generally have spiced Indian tea — close to the traditional breakfast drink here, but taken in an entirely different direction.
The food largely stays the same, too, yet completely different from our everyday reality. Boczek, for example, is the impossible dream where we live in South Carolina. Sure, there’s bacon, but that’s hardly the same.
These differences create differences in L’s breakfast patterns, too. Smoothies are out. Scrambled eggs z boczkiem are definitely in.
Or just some slices of boczek on some good Polish bread with a little butter.
After breakfast, a bit of unpacking, and some ironing (everything we packed of course is now too wrinkled to wear around here — what a shame that would be), we head to the store to do some shopping after dropping in at the kantor to get some zloty. Another different-same: while the stores in Jablonka are much bigger than what they used to be but still much smaller than what we’re used too. Granted, such mega-shops exist in cities, but your average rural sklep here will be only a fraction the size of its American counterpart.
On the way home, we stop at Pasieka, the small restaurant where K and I met when dating, for some afternoon refreshments. We look over the menu, commenting on how much inflation is evidence from the time we left in 2005. Beer now costs double what it was, for example.
“Prices are starting to equalize” seems to be our mantra this trip. It’s not so ridiculously cheep for someone earning in dollars despite the generous exchange rate.
On returning, we resort to one of our favorite pastimes: sitting at the table and chatting with Babcia. I don’t know how many times I’ve taken this same picture.
Babcia is so easy to talk to that it’s hard not just to sit around and talk about anything and everything.
After dinner, the Boy, K, and I head out for a walk to the river, stopping to talk to an old childhood friend of K’s for some time.
All in all, a perfect first day — and only the second post on this site that I’ve completed completely on my telephone, pictures and all. The ease and convenience of it all…hard to beat.
Arrival 2022
The trip here seems endless — completely
Coming to Poland is always worse than returning as far as the travel itself goes. Returning to America, due to the time change, only feels like a really long day. The sun just never seems to set. Going, however, is deceptive because you have that night in the middle, but in reality, it’s not much more than a short nap at best. So you feel cheated, tricked — and your body does not appreciate it. It was not expecting one long day with the illusion of sleep in the middle.
Having a six-hour layover after an eight-hour flight doesn’t help much either. It seems like that will be long enough to catch up on sleep just a bit, but just like the night itself, it only teases.
So we board the plane from Munich to Krakow some twenty hours after we began the whole adventure with eyes barely open. K and L try to nap on the flight, but it’s of little use. E and I, each having a window seat, spend the flight looking out the windows at the shapes below.
Anyone flying into Poland with a window seat as we have knows exactly when we’re over the border. The shapes change immediately and drastically. The irregular, large shapes of fields and forest interspersed with houses and towns disappear, and in their place stretch long, narrow fields, one beside another. This is Poland from the air.
Packing
Tonight is our last night in the States for a little while. Four suitcases and four carry-ons are ready to go. The Boy is going around the house constantly saying, “We’re leaving for Poland tomorrow!” K is going around the house saying, “I can’t believe we’re leaving for Poland tomorrow.” I’m going around the house saying, “Does anyone know where the bladder for our backpack is?” And L — she’s been at work, so she hasn’t been saying anything this evening.
Planning Rides
This summer, I’m hoping to get back on the old mountain bike I left at Babcia’s and ride a bit of the old areas I’d covered so many times in the early 2000s. Much of my riding then was on a road bike, which I don’t have in Poland (or America anymore for that matter), but I rode a fair amount off-road as well.
To that end, I’ve planned at least a few rides I want to complete — three of them completely new.
Ride 1
The first ride I want to do — though not necessarily the first ride I will do — involves crossing over the border at the top of Lipnica Wielka, the village where I lived for seven years. I’d always heard there were villages on the other side running somewhat parallel to LW, and I discovered getting to them is fairly simple. Since one can cross the border freely now, there’s no risk of getting in trouble coming back into Poland without any documentation of entering Slovakia.
Ride 2
Next up would be a ride that begins the same ride four — one I’ve done a few times but instead of turning left in the fields, I’ll turn right. I never went right because I didn’t know where I might end up. Turns out, I’ll end up in Chyzne.
Ride 3
The third ride is through the fields of Lipnica Mała and Lipnica Wielka. It goes along the top of a ridge I’d looked at countless times when riding in Zubrzyca but never bothered to explore. I’ll explore it this summer.
Ride 4
The small loop through the fields, I rode this route a few times in the past. It’s a fun one, especially that climb at the start.
End of the 2021/22 School Year — Countdown Begins
Today was the final day of school for me. The kids didn’t have school, but teachers have to go in for at least one more day to get things squared away for the summer: materials returned, documents completed, papers signed, report cards mailed. During my first year at Hughes, I was overwhelmed with the amount of stuff we had to do. Since then, teachers’ “To Do” list has been drastically simplified. One whole task, which often took hours, has been assigned to others. I use the passive voice there because, quite honestly, I don’t know who made that change, but I am grateful nonetheless.
Getting this last day out of the way is such a relief because I reach a point where I can finally stop thinking about school for a while — I’m not even planning on doing any prep work this summer. For one thing, I have too much to do this summer:
- Trim the Leyland cypresses (a two-day job in and of itself)
- Clean the outside of the house
- Pressure-wash the deck
- Apply ample coats of water-proofing to the deck
- Pressure-wash the concrete portion of the drive
- Complete the furniture assembly for the remodeled basement
Then there’s all the travel:
- L’s final tournament in Orlando
- L’s job
- L’s physical therapy
- L’s volleyball conditioning
- L’s individual volleyball lessons
- E’s play dates
Still, this is a fairly short list for the summer, but this is all in the next three weeks, for in just 23 days, we’ll be heading to Poland as a family of four for the first time since 2017. Five years. Five years. It’s the longest period of time I’ve not visited Poland since I first went in 1996. K and E went last summer; L went on her own in the summer of 2019. (Or was it 2018?) But it’s been five long years since we all went.
That means L was E’s age the last time we were there. And L has gone from being a pre-teen to an almost-licensed (driver-permitted?) employed teen with all that entails.
The Boy has one from a little five-year-old thrilled with everything new to an increasingly cynical (but still fascinated by many things) ten-year-old.
We’ll probably take the same walk we always do on the day we arrive, and we’ll definitely enjoy Babcia’s rosół the day we arrive, but everything will be just a little different. And that’s probably good.
Songs
American/Polish Ognisko
Fields, 20 Years Ago
Last Saturday in April
The Boy’s soccer team is finishing up this weekend with a tournament. They lost their first game today 0-4, and they tied their second game at one apiece. I didn’t take the camera to the first game; I wasn’t at the second game, so no pictures.
Instead, a picture from twenty years ago.
