Monday 9/28: Bicycles and Sunflowers

If I don't have an alarm clock, my body will sleep until the end of time. Even if I want to get up at noon, I still have to set an alarm. A very frustrating way to function. I love sleeping in, but I hate wasting the day. So when I woke up Monday morning at 8am without an alarm and feeling fully rested, it was a fantastic surprise. I tiptoed out of the hostel dorm room and into the kitchen to eat the (free!) breakfast they provide. This is when it hit me that I was in Poland. The breakfast/kitchen area was bathed with bright morning sunlight, fresh and cool. A wooden picnic table occupied most of the space, covered in a pale blue, hand-embroidered tablecloth. Polish music gargled from a dying radio on the windowsill. A bouquet of wildflowers sat in a jar in the middle of the table, and the second-story window opened into a courtyard of beautiful old apartments. Breakfast was laid out on the table--hard boiled eggs, cereal, bread, cottage cheese, and an assortment of fruit spreads. The whole scene was incredibly fresh, bright, clean, and comforting.

We spent the morning exploring the neighborhood on foot. We had a map of the area that showed how to get to the river, but a map is no good if you have no idea which way is north. So we ended up slightly lost and completely disoriented. We meandered through markets and thrift shops, hiding in phone booths and playing on playgrounds. We found a dewy green walkway/park down the middle of a divided road, so we stopped to play a few games of ping-pong. Ping-pong is a lot easier when no paddles or balls are involved.

There was a market-place in front of our hostel, so we found the wrinkliest old woman in the whole place and bought fresh fruit from her for lunch. We had a fresh-fruit and not-so-fresh-bread feast in the hostel's backyard. I don't know if it was just my happiness oozing into the fruit, but the apple I ate that day was the best I have ever had. It was about the size of my face, perfectly crisp, and sweet as sugar. The four of us each bit into our apples, then had a moment where we looked at each other and understood: Eve did the right thing. I don't think I will ever be able to eat an apple again without comparing it to the ones we had that day.

The hostel had two free bikes to use, so we snagged those and rented two more. We got better directions to the river and headed down to check it out. First of all, the weather report for the day said that it was supposed to be cold and rainy. It was anything but. The sky was clear and blue, and a warm (but not too warm) breeze brushed against my face as I pedaled. The city opened up to a wide, lazy river bordered by green lawns on both sides. A small hill rolled from the upper lawn down to the the river and a paved bike path. This place was the city's heartbeat. The path was busy with bicycles, scooters, roller-skaters, runners, walkers, and mosey-ers. The lawn was covered with people sitting, reading, kissing, and laughing. The big castle (and tourist favorite) Wawel watched over the river and its people from it's perch on top of the hill.

We pedaled through the town, trying to avoid hitting pedestrians or getting hit by cars. Not a bike-friendly city. The main square was a hive of people and street vendors, surrounded by a wall of tall buildings. We bought each other sunflowers from the market, and checked out an open-air photography exhibit in the middle of the square.

On the way back, I was the designated sunflower carrier, since I brought the only backpack. Pedaling through Krakow with the breeze tousling my hair and sunflowers poking out of my backpack, I could only think of one thing that could possibly make the day more perfect: the clouds could have been playing music from the sky.

After a nap, Jess and I headed down to the river to watch the sunset and read our books. We ended up just talking love and photography until our bottoms were freezing on the lawn. We left after dark, but the grass was still covered with people. At the front door of the hostel, we ran into Jessica, Camille, and three other hostel guests writing us a note with directions to dinner. We went to a Polish restaurant to try pierogi. We ate in the restaurant's backyard, surrounded by plants and lit by white lights and candles. The evening was still warm, and the company we shared was even warmer. We ate, talked, and laughed until the waitress told us that she needed to close.

At the hostel, the owner, 24-year-old Anna, showed us the downstairs den. She plans on making it into a common room, but for now it looks more like a cave. I think it was originally a wine cellar. The four of us, Anna, the hostel guests, and the workers (Anna's friends and brother), sat around in the den and talked until people fell asleep on the floor. The hostel property belongs to Anna's father, and it used to be a homeless shelter. It's located in the old Jewish quarter of Krakow, called Kazimierz. I'm really glad we ended up in Kazimierz instead of downtown tourist central. Everything about it seems more sincere, from the people to the architecture. Anna opened the "Balloon Hostel" on the fourth of July, themed from the classic "Around the World in 80 Days" movie (Jules Verne, anyone?). Each room is decorated like a different place visited in the movie, with a colorful hot-air balloon painted in the hall.

Anna runs the place with two of her friends, Barbara and Karolina. All three girls are in their twenties, and are incredibly cool. They run the place like a hang-out for friends, while still remaining hostesses. There is a couch by the front desk, and if one of them needs to run out for a bit, they will ask whoever is sitting on the couch to watch the desk for a while. They make running a hostel seems less like a job and more like a lifestyle. Karolina paints in the hall during her shift, and Anna sits and talks with the guests, often ending up with them at the pub. On the first night, we met an Australian guy named Tom. He is an astrophysicist, but his job lets him take time off for extended periods of time (he's been travelling for a year, I think). He intended to stay at the Balloon for a just a night or two, but he's been here a week, hanging out with Anna and just doing nothing. I think they're in love. That's the kind of place this is, though--reserve a bed for a night, make good friends, and stay for a week.

Sunday 9/27: The Travel-Gods Smile Down Upon Us

An awkward way to start a vacation is when you're packing your bags, getting ready to leave for the airport in twenty minutes, and your host sister walks into the room and asks, "Where are you going?" There really isn't much you can say to that except "Uh...Poland," and hope for only a minimal freak-out on her part. I know all this because I am lacking in the "Communication Skills" department, apparently, and it happened to me last week. I swear I tried to tell my host family days earlier about my vacation, but somewhere along the line the signal was lost, resulting in the above scene last Sunday afternoon. My host sister frantically shoved food down my throat and tossed me out the door, still shaking her head at my miserable communication skills.

Let me rewind. ILP teachers get two 9-day vacations during our four months abroad. This was our first vacation, and they organized a week-long bus tour through Ukraine, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Dresden. Sounds nice, right? Read between the lines: 60+ hours on a bus with more than 15 girls (and one guy...poor Austin), tour guides telling you where to look, scheduling nightmares, and less time in each city than the time it took to get there by bus. At first I was excited to have the opportunity to cover so many places in one go (my list of "Countries I've Visited" would look quite nice), but then I realized I wouldn't actually be seeing any of those places. Five countries in one week? Ouch. Eight hours in a country does not let you say that you've been there, and I mean really been there. No chance to see beyond the outside of the bus, and definitely not enough time to get a feel for the place--the streets, the language, the food, the people. A few hours would be like a few raindrops brushing your skin; you need days, maybe even years, to get soaked to the bone and say, "Yes, I have been to Dresden. I know the city." So four of us broke away from the bus tour to get soaked to the bone. Or at least try. We settled on Poland, reserving beds in a hostel for the first three nights, and leaving the rest up to the wind/travel-gods.

I would like to make a disclaimer at this point, mostly for my mom and dad: Some of the things I'm going to write about might sound really foolish and/or worrisome. But this is my journal, and not an appropriate place for you to get fuel for your parent-fires. Please just relax and remember that you taught me good things, I'm reasonably smart, I know how to listen to my instincts, and I'm also nearly 5'11" and more than commonly fierce.

So my host sister tossed me on a marshrutka, and I met my three other traveling companions across the city at a bus/train station. The group: Camille, Alena, Jessica, and Jess. We each had one carry on, and all together we checked in two bags between the four of us. Go ahead and be amazed at our packing skills. We climbed right onto a bus and got dumped at the airport with only one hitch--we arrived at the airport 40 minutes before check-in even opened for our flight. We sat on a curb and shoved our faces with peanut butter and knock-off Ritz crackers (PB is worth it's weight in gold over here. Nobody sells it, so a few teachers brought some from America and hid it for worthy occasions. This was a worthy occasion.).

We were pretty worried that our baggage would either be too large or too heavy. There was a 15kilogram limit on checked bags, and a very strict size limit for carry-ons. Checked bags were an extra fee, so we didn't have a full bag for each person. We didn't have any sort of scale to weigh our bags on either, so we stood with palms sweating at the check-in counter as the lady weighed the first bag: 6.5 kilograms. We almost cried from relief and laughter at our excessive anxiety. On the flight, three of us sat together and Jess sat behind us. She was sitting next to a pretty hot father (a "hot father" is basically any good-looking man over the age of 30) and they chatted the whole 1.5hr flight, but we couldn't catch much of what they were saying. When we landed at the Krakow-Katowice airport, Jess introduced us to Michael. It is a very good thing that Jess likes to talk, because their conversation on the flight went something like this:
M: So where are you guys staying?
J: At a hostel in Krakow.
M: Oh, that sounds nice. How are you getting there?
J: We're just going to take a shuttle bus or a taxi or something.
M: Hmm. Do you realize that there are no shuttles this late at night? And that a taxi will cost about $300?
J: What!?
M: Don't worry, I can take you guys there. My car is in the airport parking lot.
At this point, the other three of us got to meet him and form a decision. Getting in a car at night with a strange (hot) man in a foreign country went against everything our mothers ever taught us. We all silently evaluated Michael and the situation, and came to a unanimous decision: Let's do it. (Are you freaking out yet, Mom?) We stood there waiting for our bags, and Michael showed us pictures of his wife and children. We waited on the curb while he brought his car around, then he tossed our bags into the trunk, and helped us pile in. This was not a hippie hitch-hiking ride, this was a brand new, black leather-interior Audi. Possibly the nicest car I've ever been in, and possibly the perfect kidnapping mobile. We started driving, and he plugged our hostel's address into the car's GPS, which gave verbal directions and showed the distance on-screen: 112 kilometers. Wait, one-hundred and twelve kilometers!? Our hostel was in Krakow, and we booked our flight into the Krakow-Katowice airport, assuming that Katowice was just a region in Krakow (Like Berryessa, San Jose or something). Michael looked at the distance, looked at us, laughed, and said, "That's called getting your foot in the door, ladies." We felt terrible, but we did tell him that we were staying in Krakow. We offered to get out and call ourselves a taxi, but Michael insisted on driving us all the way there. It turns out that he is the president of his own company, but his first job was as an ice-cream truck driver in America. Now he has a $2million house, paid for in cash, and just works in an office all day. He made us comfortable, joking around, asking about the strange habits of Mormons, and telling us about his climb from ice-cream truck driver to CEO. He gave us all his business card, and offered to let us crash in his vacant company apartment in Warsaw. For free. Michael drove us all the way to the front door of our hostel, more than an hour away from the airport and completely out of his way, adding an extra two hours to his drive home. We asked him why he would be so nice to four stupid American girls. He shrugged and replied, "You needed help. And it'll make a good story to tell the guys at work on Monday."

An incredibly kind guy, but painfully bored with working in an office. I think he restored some of my faith in humanity.

We walked into the hostel and everything turned into a blur of warm lights, colorful clothes, various accents, and "What the World Needs Now is Love" coming from an old record player. The first person we met was Kate, a loud, plumpy girl from England. She introduced herself with, "Hi I'm Kate and this is my tiger!" and flashed us a red-glitter tiger tattoo on her breast. Nice to meet all of you, Kate. We sat up late talking to the hostel owner and the other guests from all over the world. We ate more peanut butter and a loaf of bread from Ukraine and talked late into the night, swapping stories and comparing accents. Ours were deemed "Decidedly American, and not very pretty--sorry." Oh well. We felt incredibly lucky to have gotten to the hostel so easily and safely, and were still blown away by Michael's kindness. We spent that evening and the next couple days randomly saying to each other, "Hey. Remember the time we got in the car with a strange man in a foreign country?" and laughing at our luck/stupidity.

We went to bed glowing.

Radio Silence Apologies

When I turned eight years old, my mom gave me a really beautiful journal to write in. Unfortunately, keeping a journal has always been guilt-induced more than anything else, and has never lasted more than a week or two. I spent last week, Sunday to Sunday, in Poland and Slovakia. I had internet access, but not in a quiet, private environment where I could sit down and sort my thoughts into words. I truly missed keeping track of the little things that happened to me, and recording the small thoughts that crawled around in my head. The whole week I was worried that I would forget what happened. Not the major daily events, but the defining realizations that crept in when I had a moment to myself, the comfortable silences shared with friends who don't feel pressured to constantly fill the lulls with laughter.

So here I am, back in the land of internet and privacy, making the grand effort to process everything that happened last week. I kept a list of things that happened each day, but looking back, the list seems threadbare at best. I've been on a lot of vacations, excursions, and adventures, but this one seems to have shaped me more than the others. I don't want to say that I feel like a different person, but I definitely do not feel the same as when I left. Something slightly soul-shifting.

The Pains and Joys of Mon/Wed/Fri.

The school is on the second floor of this apartment building, with the front desk guarded by fierce babushkas twenty-four hours a day. Please note the yellow marshrutka. That's the kind of bus where the horrible embarrassment occurred (see earlier post).  

View from the teachers' room.

Yaroslav, Vlada, Maxim, Polina, Yeva, and Nicole. This is the Basic Reading class. Vlada is super-smart and eager to please. We call her Hermione Granger. I see a lot of elementry-school-Alena in her, which feels strange. Polina and Yeva are sisters. Yeva is a Barbie-doll. The girls are absolutely nasty to each other. What are little girls made of? Sugar and spice and sharp elbows, that's what.

Nastia, Katya, Olesia, Miss Alena, Yegor, Oles. Sasha B, Sasha H, Nicolas.

Ok, I need to gush a little bit about the kid with the juice-box, Yegor. He is the funniest kid I have ever met, America and Ukraine included. We call him Charlie Chaplin. He's only been learning English for about two weeks, so he basically mimes everything he needs to communicate. Every day during class, he comes up to me and taps me on the arm until I bend down to his level. Then he makes a big smile, pulls his hand down over his face, revealing a frown. Then he pulls his hand up, showing a smile again, back and forth. During break time yesterday, we were sitting at the table eating our snacks, and he tapped my arm again to get my attention. He proceeded to "unscrew" his thumb from his hand, badly hiding his thumb behind his palm, popped his thumb into his mouth, spit it out, and reattatched it. Bravo! So I showed him one where I stuck my finger in my ear, pretended that it went all the way through to my mouth, pressing my tongue against the inside of my cheek (Will Hoggan style). He got such a kick out if it, and tried to one-up me by doing another silent hand illusion. We went back and forth, trying to outdo each other with badly-performed tricks. Right as school ended today, he tapped me on the arm again. I bent down and he cupped his hands around his mouth as if to whisper "Toilet?" in my ear like he usually does. Instead, he kissed me on the cheek, smiled, and ran away. Haha, what a cute kid. Charlie Chaplin silent comedy, and a tricked kiss. Ukraine, we have a winner!