matching tracksuits

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 cheap 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.