Pilgrims’ Progress

Krakow, Poland

Apologies about the recurring WhenWeUsedToLiveHere theme, but here goes the next edition…..

The first year we lived here (we arrived in 1990) we did not see ANY Western products at all. The choice was Polish or Russian. That included everything from mattresses (ours were Polish strawfilled ones) to sturdy metal hand-operated mincers (we bought a Russian one for making Christmas mincemeat) to cars (which we did not purchase, and could not have done as there was still an eighteen year waiting list at that stage to be in the running for a car – there was also a lot less congestion on the streets!)
At the market, food was both (or should that be “only”?) local and seasonal. All winter long there were potatoes, cabbages and onions. On a good week, someone brought out a sack of carrots too. We got sick of them all. In the summer we adored cherries and strawberries, and eagerly embraced tomatoes and cucumbers until we got sick of them too. We also, on one domestically unfortunate occasion, in the hopes of augmenting our winter vegetable selection, pickled jars and jars of gherkins, and then went away to summer camp to teach English. While we were gone they all exploded. Every. Single. One.
Obviously more easily deterred by failure at that stage of our lives, we remained too fearful to attempt making sauercraut like everyone we knew, who had bucketsful brewing on their balconies.

Walking through the market today, we could have bought the little ogorki, just the right size for pickling. We could have sampled someone’s homemade sauercraut straight out of a massive tub. It’s autumn, so we expected to see mushrooms, and were not disappointed. All sorts of wild field mushrooms were on offer and we brought home the cheapest we could find. There were also the strings of dried mushrooms, which we never bought in the past. Once I had attempted to buy a string and was surprised, when I asked, to discover they cost “sto” (one hundred). I had been expecting to have to splash out about 20,000 zloty or so. My amazement magnified upon discovering it was one hundred thousand, not one hundred full stop. That was a whole week’s worth of food for us. One hundred bought one stick of chewing gum back then – yes, people bought chuddy by the piece, never a whole packet.
Anyway, the relative price of dried mushrooms has come down, but something else has happened too. Now they are all packaged in plastic bags. When you walk past they do not exude their delicious rich autumnal fragrance; it remains, unfortunately, trapped inside the plastic and removes a little of that feeling of connectedness to your food that the market used to provide.

But there are other smells and sights. Being autumn, there are piles of walnuts on offer. There are bright red cranberries and gigantic orange pumpkins. There’s what must be nearing the last of the dill. There are cabbages, green and red; capsicums, green, red and yellow. There are purple plums and three varieties of apple. You can tell they are local – they have what Grandpa would call “that organic look” ie they are misshapen, perhaps bird-pecked, probably pitted.
Kiwifruit from New Zealand, oranges from Greece and bananas, origin unchecked are the only obviously-non-local products (unless you also count the dried spices now available too). There are a lot of things that I wonder about origin-wise. I’m not sure if they are being grown here now, or if they are imported, but there are enormous heads of broccoli and cauliflower. There are enormous bunches of spinach, which used to be an exclusively springtime vegetable. You don’t, however, see mangoes or pomelos as you might in Western European supermarkets.

Less exotic, you can buy kefir and sauercraut and kasha. All distinctly Polish. But the kasha no longer comes in a brown paper bag. It’s in a box. And inside the box are four little plastic bags, individual portions. I *liked* the lack of packaging in the past. I liked everyone walking round with their wicker baskets – twenty years on I am still using mine – that has got to be better for the environment than plastic bags, don’t you think? Even the reusable ones don’t experience such longevity. Sadly, I’ve only seen one basket here so far:

It’s hard for the children to understand how little food was available when we first arrived. I wonder if today’s Polish children tire of their parents saying, “In our day…”

We were here when the West started to infiltrate. We saw Fanta arrive, although on our salaries we could not afford to buy it. We saw Swiss chocolate make its appearance, but we had even less hope of being able to sample that. One day we went to a big town somewhere (I forget where) with someone (I forget who) and went in to a brand new supermarket. It had big shopping trolleys (surprise number one) you could fill up with exclusively Western goods (surprise number two). Or you could if you earnt more than we did – we might have been earning two million zloty a month (rich eh!), but half of that went on rent….800,000 went on food and the rest paid for letters home and the occasional tram ticket.
So Western goods with their food colourings and additives and ingredients made of numbers and unpronounceable chemical equations started to arrive about the time we went home.

(outside the market, *illegal* sellers still try to make a living selling bunches of flowers or a few bags of walnuts or an armful of women’s underwear or a few old tools or a pair of shoelaces)

Biser, Bulgaria

We have heard murmurings of questions people want to ask, but can’t bring themselves to. So we thought we’d just tell you. If we miss anything, do feel free to ask us outright – we are very hard to offend, and we’ve invited you, so you’ve nothing to lose. There are also some other questions that we get on a fairly regular basis – we’ll answer them here too. You can guess which ones people ask us and which ones they ask others about <wink>

How can you afford it?
This one requires a multi-pronged answer.
Partly, real estate. We bought a cheap flat years ago and then just before we came away (unfortunately AFTER the market had dropped somewhat), we sold it. Fortunately we’d had it for long enough that it made a tidy profit and has financed the trip. We’ve used up the living room, kitchen and bedrooms now and have the bathroom and hallway left to go!
Secondly, we are not signing up with tours that cost $3,000 per person, as you might do if a) you had fewer children and b) you were travelling for a shorter time. In fact, we have only done three “tours” on the whole trip – the trek in Thailand, the trip to Halong Bay and one day we hired a guide and van in Phonsovannh where there was no public transport to use to get to sites ourselves. Everything else we have seen independently.
If we had booked the Trans-Siberian train in New Zealand  the cost for ONE of the children would have been more than what we ended up paying for *all* of us – waiting to purchase seats locally, in our experience, has always been cheaper. (In part due to the fact that overseas agents can only purchase first or second class seats, whereas we travel third class whenever possible). Likewise, a girl who was on the Mekong boat with us had booked and paid for her trip in England – it cost her over two hundred pounds. We didn’t tell her it was only a few dollars if you bought your tickets beside the river!
Accommodation costs have also been skimped on. We have only stayed in one hotel, and that was in Laos and was in a worse state of repair than any of the hostels – it was hotel in name only. In Asia we primarily stayed in guesthouses and hostels, often top-n-tailing on eight or even six beds. We also ventured into the world of couchsurfing, which costs no more than a gift and some cooking-n-cleaning as an expression of thanks.
Once we got the vans our accommodation costs dropped significantly. In Greece we paid not one euro cent. In England we stayed in one campground in five weeks, and only a few times needed to put a couple of pounds in a parking metre. Similarly, France was almost free, Italy not much more.
Foodwise, we are frugal at home, and we continue to be on the road. Sometimes this means not buying local delicacies that most tourists might, but we certainly do not feel deprived. With our bulk purchasing power we can buy a box of icecreams from a supermarket for the cost of one cone on the street. And remember, food in Asia is dirt cheap. A feast of mountains of rice with two different heaped platters of vegetables for breakfast cost only a couple of dollars. We could share half a dozen dollar plates of food for lunch. In Cambodia (and again in Italy and Greece) in season inexpensive local fresh fruit became a staple.
Tourist destinations are identical in that they are overflowing with everything from nick-nacks to enormous items tempting you to take them home. Having to carry everything on our backs for the first six months was a great motivator to NOT BUY. By the time we had the vans we were in the habit. Our souvenirs have been as frugal as our eating, and many have come from not-souvenir-shops…..a decorated tin full of oregano was bought in Greece – the oregano we ate, and the tin will go home stuffed full of undies. Chopsticks. A handmade cloth elephant. A rattan ball, which will probably not make it home, it’s been used so much. A scarf. A communist flag. Journals. A sticky rice basket (which was not so much a souvenir as an essential piece of cooking equipment while we were in Laos, and we I cannot bear to part with it).
The children have bought things too, but that’s their money, not ours! A flute, a crossbow, a chess set and Carcassonne game, a couple of hammocks, a patchwork backpack, wooden dominoes, soapstone signature stamps and rubber band guns (for clearing the farm-we-don’t-yet-have of unwanted rabbits when we finally get it).
We have seen big Turkish rugs and Italian pizza ovens and a whole library of books, all of which would have cost a pretty packet, but even if we could have carried them, we would have had to cut the trip short to be able to afford them, and we preferred to save our money for experience.

How do you stay sane?
Who ever said we were sane?

 

How do you do your pictures?
We use a freebie collage creator that is quick and easy to use. It is very limited in its application and reduces the quality of photos, but we haven’t had time to come to terms with Photoshop, so we make do with the highly-originally-named “Arcsoft Collage Creator Version One”

I can’t see the pictures in your posts – is there some other way to view them?
If you look at the Captured on Camera page (either click on it here or in the right-hand sidebar), you will see an album for each country and then a few more too. Clicking the country name will take you to the album. You might have more luck seeing them this way – but be warned, some of the albums have A LOT of photos in them!

Is Rach pregnant?
No!

Would you do it again?
We wouldn’t hesitate for even one moment. We could be packed within a day. We might do one thing differently though….it would be much easier to follow the sun to eliminate the need to lug thermals and woollens all round the world. But if someone wanted to send us to the snow, we’d go. In fact, we’d go anywhere.

Meteora, Greece

 

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