Here were 14 things that surprised us about Poland: There are bunches of bugs here in the summer and no screens. The window sill ends up looking like a small bug cemetery. You’re welcome for that mental image. They seem to like transparent toilet seat covers with kitschy images on them, whether it’s sea horses or fish.…
I wouldn’t have guessed it, but Poland turns out to have a lot of complicated, beautiful, and interesting street art. A few examples: Warsaw: Kraków: Sopot: Łódź:
Restaurant Eteria: This was our first meal in Poland, and it was a great start. I ordered zucchini cakes – like my grandma makes, which came with salmon. The quality was quite good, as confirmed by the next time I had zucchini cakes: the latter ones were fairly saturated in oil. B ordered the schnitzel. We sat…
Bar Targowy: This was a ‘milk bar.’ We trekked to it, out in a decidedly non-touristy part of town; the moment we walked in, eyes were on us. I imagine they were wondering who in their right mind would make a trip to see something that would be reminiscent of a US high school cafeteria. I ordered surówki (pickled cabbage) and…
We spent two days in Kraków. Stained Glass Museum: The name is a bit misleading: this is actually a tour of a workshop where stained glass windows are produced. It’s a great look at the process of making them: from colored glass characteristics and cutting with diamond tools to lead joiners between glass pieces and paint layered atop glass. It…
Today, we took a 3-hour walking tour of Kraków, plus a few hours of strolling on either end. The result is this magnificently-uneven souvenir. B has a much more even version that exactly follows his t-shirt line. Thanks Poland!
The good news about the Polish language is that it’s in the same family as a language I speak. The bad news is that it’s not a close-knit family. What that means is that I can understand about 30% of what I hear (up to 40%, if someone magically speaks slowly), but I can say…
We were in Warsaw for nine days. That might seem strange, once you read how little we saw, but we did a lot of sitting in cafes and people-watching: enough so that I feel confident saying one entire day passed that way. No regrets. Multimedialny Park: This was the first thing we really saw in Poland, and…
Sopot is a resort town, something I generally dislike for being crowded, overpriced, boring, and loud. But Sopot turns out to be my favorite resort town, at least partially because of its excellent food. U Kucharzy: This was the first place we ventured for dinner, and while it was on the expensive side for Poland, it made me…
We spent one day in Gdansk. Amber Museum: In the words of B, ‘I would have been happy with just that first room, but this thing keeps going!’ In total, it was about 5 floors worth of exhibit, though each was just one room, with a few offshoots. Climbing from floor to floor was also…