It really dawned on me on Saturday morning while standing in the men’s toilet with three British men that it had been an extremely odd week. There really was nothing about the week that could be deemed anything besides just plain weird. I suppose for it to make sense, I should start somewhere near the Rynek Glowny, the main square here in Krakow.

Most of my days are really quite simple. I get up, drink some tea, and read the news. Generally, at this point, I find it a good idea to get dressed and head off to the museum to make myself useful. However, on various days of the week, I must trek my way from Kazimierz to the main square for any number of reasons. Saturday and Sunday are usually the strangest of days to be in the center; maybe it’s the freedom of being off work or maybe its madness, I can’t really say for sure. All I do know is that I see some of the oddness people. I’ve become accustomed to the little old lady and little old man dressed in Polish Folk costumes playing the bass and accordion (respectively), besides the fact that this is just a bit odd anyway, it is multiplied by the 5’2” woman playing the bass. So, I walk by them every time I come through the Rynek without much thought these days. Well, it just so happened as I was passing by one day that one of the “I cover myself in plaster and pretend to be a statue guys” was arguing animatedly with the accordion player. I envisioned something cartoon like transpiring as accordions would be busted over someone’s head and thus the little old bass player would chase down statue man and beat him with her bow. Unfortunately, this never transpired and the plaster prat huffed off toting his soapbox (literally). He then resumed statuing (is that a verb?) at another location. Well, the statue guys don’t really shock me anymore either, I see them often, some just standing on soapboxes and being all statuey (is that an adverb? Adjective?). However, as I was passing through the Rynek one day, I was taken aback by a dark figure looming in from of me. He seemed distressed, dirty, and perhaps a little intimidating. It took me a few minutes to actually realize that he had covered himself completely in mud for some reason that I cannot even begin to fathom. I stared at him for a moment, perplexed, thinking ‘why would you cover yourself in mud and stand in the middle of the city?’ Could it be a political statement? Perhaps he was just exfoliating? At any rate, I never found out the reason he needed to be dressed in mud as I could not ask him and I almost got run over by 20 German tourists in golf carts. I hurried on, startled by mud men and German tourists in dragon golf carts, moving on silently, unaware.

I’m sure at this point, you’re probably thinking, ‘doesn’t seem all that odd,’ but I can assure that I am convinced Krakow entered into the Twilight Zone last week and remained for about 10 days. The weather in itself has been enough to drive me mad. I fear I am turning into an old person as I constantly think about or talk about the climatic conditions. The fluctuation has gone from about 10 F to 60 F, sometimes daily. Which prompted the next odd thing that transpired. Being warm at night, infrequent as it may be, is a blessing. No flannel pajama pants, no heavy sweatshirts, just typical nightclothes. At any rate, whilst my flatmate was gone last week, I was awakened by the tweeting of our door bird (not door bell). I stumbled out of my bed, scantily clad and not thinking (was about 8am) and I opened the door to find a very shocked man holding a clipboard. I thought he was startled by my extremely large and disheveled hair. He kind of looked to the side and mumbled a bit, I announced proudly that I don’t speak Polish. He then straightened and shouted ‘Gaz! Gaz!’ (Gas, gas) and I wondered why he needed to inform me of this. Instead of explaining further, he just stormed into the flat and into the kitchen. Did he want tea? I asked myself, this was certainly not the way one should go about it. I stood in the foyer waiting for him to make breakfast or whatever he planned to do in the kitchen. All I could think was ‘I hope he doesn’t make a mess, I just cleaned in there last night.’ He finally comes out, points to a little thing in the kitchen and says slowly and clearly ‘To jest gaz.’ (That is gas) which I reply stupidly, ‘Tak, to jest gaz.’ (yes, that IS gas.) Sigh. Perhaps one day I’ll figure this country out.

One of the things that I cannot come to terms with however much I try is the trousers/slacks/jeans of Krakow. Now, when I was in Hong Kong I constantly lamented about the lack of trousers for ladies such as myself, aka ones with hips. They just didn’t exist. I figured moving to Poland would be easier for me, and I, of course, was wrong. It would seem from the trousers here that all Polish women should be about 5’10” and weigh no more than about 120 pounds. When I find trousers to fit in the hips, they are (no joking) about 8 inches too long. You cannot hem 8 inches off of trousers. In confusion, I decided to figure out if it was just me or if it was the pants of Krakow. So, I sat myself in a café in the Rynek, and watched Polish women as they walked by. After an hour of tea and observation, I have concluded the following about Polish women: they are beautiful, have thin legs, but are not 5’10”. They may weigh 120 pounds but they are really only a little taller than I. I’ll be generous and say that they are about 3 inches taller than I at my towering 5’4”. However, with the given, there are still approximately 5 inches of extra material which I cannot figure out what is done. I see that jeans are rolled up, which I can understand, but all slacks hit the shoe, leaving me to wonder where they shop, why I can’t find the stores, and what happens to the other five inches of material. I am still researching this fascinating topic which may become my Fulbright research.

Last time I gave you a virtual tour of our flat, and I’m sure you’re all just itching to know about Stalin’s wellbeing. You’ll be happy to know that he is still fully functional but still makes that really scary sound. That withstanding, our kitchen has become kitchen, dining room, and two offices. This is bad for many reasons, one being my proximity to cheesecake and ice cream whilst trying to study, read, or write long boring emails to all of you. So, let me take a minute to make a confession… I’m tired of sugar. Everything in Poland has sugar in it, it doesn’t matter what really. There is so much sweet that I feel sticky. What’s truly odd is what things sugar is put into. Cakes, cookies, and tea make perfect sense to be sweet, and I cannot turn down a good cake. However, everything with tomato including, but not limited to, spaghetti sauce, soup, and ketchup is loaded with sugar. I can’t eat the ketchup, its just too sweet so I’ve taken to putting HP brown sauce on everything instead. (I owe the people at Casa Batman for that introduction). There are also other things that are oddly sweet like mustard. I had big plans for egg salad, deviled eggs, and cheese sandwiches with mustard. But upon trying it one day, I was shocked to discover that it was not only not yellow but it was sweet. I’m sure that is some international law some where that demands mustard not be sweet. Alas, that’s for someone else’s Fulbright project. As I’ve brought up eggs, and you’re probably wondering why this is called ‘the yolks of Chernobyl,’ I feel I can safely move on to our crazy eggs. It seems that in the one dozen eggs we purchased from Tesco, 9 of them had double yolks and 1 had a triple yolk. I find this disturbing. What kinds of chickens are these? I imagine Russian chickens, injecting each other with steroids, pumping iron in the chicken gym whilst snow blows all round the hen house. I’m not even sure what more to say about that…. I cannot understand why it costs me less than $2 for more vegetables than I can eat or about $1 for a gigantic bottle of honey while syrup runs about $7. Neither can I figure out why it is that the Poles have something against yellow cheese. All cheese seems to be white, doesn’t matter what kind it is, its all white. I suppose it’s the same reason that there is close to 400 types of ham and sausage. Some things were never meant to be understood.

The apex of the weirdness could be said to be that Saturday morning in the men’s toilet discussing feng shui, then again it could be the day the SS invaded Krakow. Seems preposterous doesn’t it? Well, I can attest that this did occur, in a way. There I was, walking down the street on my way to the museum, minding my own business, thinking about world domination or the mystery of the yellow cheese, as you do, when I hear the soft clicking of what sounds like boots hitting cobblestones. I had just had a conversation with the woman in the foreign students office of the university in German (apparently they don’t speak that obscure English language in that office). I was still trying to remember the word for ‘like’ in German, and by the time I made my return to reality, the sound had become louder and there were what appeared to be 10 or 20 men running down the street in SS uniforms. Naturally, I just stood there trying to figure out what was going on. At about the point where one would panic upon seeing such a sight, they all just stopped, turned back around, walked back a few paces, and started again. I was confused. 1940s-esque trucks were parked on the sidewalks, some with ‘officers’ in them, some without. A quick glance to the right, a man in an SS uniform smoking a cigarette propped beside a wall, his jacket open to reveal a t-shirt saying something in Polish. Unable to contain my curiosity, I walked down the road a bit to see members of the Policja (Polish police) taking turns getting in the trucks and taking photos of one another, a little further down, props, costumes, film equipment. The Germans hadn’t decided to reinvade Poland, I simply walked onto a movie set. This was quite the relief actually.

The clock in our kitchen now says its 3:40. Of course, it always says its 3:40. So, as I sit here on the internet, I’m trying to figure out why it is that certain web pages simply won’t open. I’m not sure what our ISP has against Hotmail, all of the Eckerd pages, idealist.org, and the recipe page. It really makes no sense. Of course, I assume if things made sense all the time they would be so much less entertaining. I’m off in search of more Krakovian curiosities. If you haven’t heard from me in a week or so, things didn’t go so well in my endeavor to unravel the great trouser mystery. Hope to hear from you all soon!

My Bits:

Cups of tea drunk this week- 26
Domestic disturbances- 4
Number of times I’m asked directions per week- about 6
Number of yolks in a dozen eggs- 24
Number of men covered in mud- 1, but 4 covered in plaster
Pigeons wearing bread necklaces- 1 (that’s plenty)

LINKS:

Blog Site
http://blogs.bootsnall.com/april/

HP Sauce Homepage
http://www.hpfoods.com/brands/hpsauce/

Accordions
http://www.accordions.com/

Quote for the week: (in honor of pigeons and oddity)

“Whosover loveth wisdom is righteous, but he that keepeth company with fowl is weird.” -Woody Allen