Krakow
Trip Start
Sep 19, 2007
1
9
12
Trip End
Dec 01, 2007
I may backtrack a bit, but only to make a point. We cut our visit to Romania short by a day. The sidewalks in Brasov were mostly rubble, making it difficult to push a stroller. And there were many stray dogs, making it necessary to push a stroller quickly. But there was obvious wealth in the area, and the main strip was very chic. The people shared this disparity as well. There were some absoultely beautiful Romanians, while many others have yet to adopt the dual eyebrow system. Our hasty departure meant that we had to think about our next destination quickly. It was either gonna be Istanbul, where we have heard nothing but amazing things (and a claim that it was still bathing suit weather), or north to Vienna, and eventually, winter. We chose to make things harder on ourselves. Fast forward a few days to Bratislava. We get off the bus and soak in pleasant sunshine. Fast foward two minutes later, and we are being pelted by hail and sleet. We jump on a streetcar, and the sun comes out again. We disembark 20 minutes later, and it bombs rain on us. Our 2 dollar umbrella literally snaps in half, and the spokes threaten all eyeballs within a six foot radius. We run inside. The sun is out again. There are no diapers left, and so I make my first official "diaper run." I go twenty-five minutes in one direction, water pouring down on me and no grocery store in sight. Finally I decided to head the other way and so I walk another 25 minutes back only to realize that the grocery store was about one step in the opposite direction from where I departed. Even if I had turned my neck slightly to the left I would've seen it. I'm only pointing this out now because I've noticed a pattern emerge of: adventure-brief nightmare-turning back into adventure.// A few days ago we went into the mountains in Slovakia, and I had booked us a place above the snow line in a tiny little village called Zdair, with the address 478 Zdair and directions "take a bus." But when we got to Zdair, there were no street signs and the numbers didn't follow any kind of sequence. They would go 342, 343, 562, 4, 327. We walked for a while in the freezing rain. Rachel requested we asked for help in a restaurant. They told us it was 5km in the opposite direction, and a man offered to drive us. Getting into his car, I noticed the restaurant's address was 666, but I figured I had visited enough churches in the last month to afford me one ride with the devil. So, we were safe. The woman that ran the pension spoke no English, but poured us (mostly me) many shots of homemade raspberry schnapps. I only know it was raspberry because she pointed to the word in her English-Slovak dictionary (I believe my taste buds were burnt off by the liquor on its way down). Rachel kept saying "how could you drink that stuff?" And I just shrugged my shoulders and swayed. //Now onto today's journey to Krakow. We sat in the rain waiting for a bus to take us to the border, only to find out that it wasn't going to come for another hour. The pension owner convinced two lodgers to give us a lift and then we walked across to Poland where we were to find a bus to take us to Zakopane, where we would find a bus to take us to Krakow. A mini-bus pulled up and we were the only passengers. This old guy just grabbed a handful of my money and told me to shut the door. As we hurdled down foggy, curvaceous "roads", the guy tried to cater the drop-off point to our needs. Being in the country only a scant few minutes, my Polish was not where I would have liked it to have been. The guy had a cigarette going in one hand, a pen and paper in the other hand, and the steering wheel in neither. His eyes were also apparently averse to watching the road, as he kept yapping at me in Polish. At one point, to stave off a collision with oncoming traffic, I alerted him by saying something like "yiyiyiyi!" And he casually nudged the wheel to avoid our deaths.//But, we're here, and I can see my breathe in a mirror and I can't walk through walls so I assume I'm alive. We've been to McDonald's a lot, because they are clean and warm and usually have changing tables. I'm proud to say we haven't bought a single thing in them, so we are screwing Ronald over royally! We usually just change the baby, and then escape like bandits. Although in Bratislava, while Rachel was changing the baby, this old British guy approached me and asked me what the "specialty was here." I just stood there stunned, and was close to saying "a Big Mac" when I realized he was talking about Bratislava (which he later pronounced "Bra'i'slarvar." Also in Bratislava, I paid for a coffee and the clerk looked at me really annoyed and started getting my change. I then realized I accidentally paid him with a combination Slovakian crown and a 50 Euro bill. I guess I apologized a little too exhuberantly because he told me to "quit crying!" Ok. I'm done. From Tim.
