Hey D, Haha, I’m great, just taking some time away from Tokyo sightseeing to reply to your class’s letters! How’s it going on your end? My wife (N, who writes most of the blog posts) and I loved Poland! We were there in the summer, and the weather was very nice. N is from Russia, so…
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…