Prepare at least three days before needed!
Preferably make a huge portion and leave it sitting on your balcony all winter long.

1kg fresh white cabbage, shredded finely
1t salt
   Place in a heavy pot with water to cover and bring to the boil
   Cook uncovered over a medium heat for about 30 minutes or until tender

1kg sauercraut, rinsed and well drained
1/2kg pre-cooked or smoked pork and/or ham, chopped into bite-size pieces
1/2kg kielbasa, chopped into bite-size pieces
1 large onion, chopped finely
1T minced garlic
50g dried mushrooms
8 prunes, pitted and cut into small pieces
1T peppercorns
1-2 bay leaves
1/2-1T allspice
   Add to the fresh cabbage and stir well

250g bacon, chopped
   Saute until crisp, drain off excess fat and add to the above
   Cook uncovered for 20 minutes on a medium heat, then cover and simmer over a   
   low heat for at least one hour
   Remove and discard bay leaves
   Set aside in a cool place

The following day…..

50ml vodka or 1/2C dark red wine
   Add, taste and add seasoning as needed
   Then cover and cook over a low heat for at least an hour

Repeat the following day, and also before serving. (it really is worth the daily cooking – every day it gets darker and darker, and tastes stronger and stronger).
Serve with boiled potatoes or dark rye bread.
Any leftovers can be reheated. Although, when we make it again we’ll need to at least double the recipe, because we gobbled it all up in one sitting. (Actually, our family version is likely to have a greatly increased amount of cabbage with no change being made to the meat quantity. Additionally, we’ll use red wine rather than vodka, because it adds a great deal to the appearance, which, as you can see, could not be classed as one of its finer features as is.)

* cubed venison steak and/or a ham hock can also be used (it was, after all,
   traditionally a hunter’s stew)
* in times past every home in Eastern Europe had a barrel of pickled cabbage, which
   was prepared in the autumn and used through the winter – we have been
   fortunate enough to be able to buy this home-prepared brew at the market.

And while we’re writing about pickled veges, here’s The World’s Best Pickling Recipe according to Janette Blackwell, who I don’t know from a bar of soap, but to whom I was introduced by Mr Google. Of all the pickle recipes I read, I enjoyed hers the most, and even though it’s Bulgarian and not Polish, I’m sure Polski pickles wouldn’t be too dissimilar. I wonder if hers explode!

The World’s Best Pickles - Author: Janette Blackwell

I knew they were the world’s best pickles the moment I tasted one. That first taste took place around 1950, and I’ve tasted a lot of pickles since, am a pickle hound in fact, but I’ve never come across anything else as good.
They came to us by way of my Uncle Ronald Smith, who was an electrician in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana where I grew up. One day he was doing electrical work for a Bulgarian family, and they rewarded him with a sample pickle. He liked it so much he got the recipe and gave it to his wife Gladys, who gave it to Grandma Glidewell, who made it and gave some to me, and I thought I’d died and gone to pickle heaven.
And thus, although they became an old Glidewell family recipe, they are really an old Bulgarian family recipe. The Bulgarian family, whose name I do not know, told Uncle Ronald that in Bulgaria, when the first heavy frost kills the tomato vines, they put all their end-of-garden vegetables — including those green tomatoes — into a barrel, fill the barrel with pickling brine, and eat the best pickles in the world all winter. It turns out, though, that the pickles’ travel from Bulgaria to the U.S. was only one leg of a more ancient journey. Because I mentioned them to an Iranian woman, and she said, “My family has always made pickles like that! Exactly like that, except we add tarragon.”
Iran being the new name for the ancient kingdom of Persia, who knows how many centuries these pickles go back?
There’s more: I later lost the recipe’s brine proportions. Gave some thought to its travels between Persia and Bulgaria, looked in an Armenian-American cookbook (Treasured Armenian Recipes, published in 1949 by the Armenian General Benevolent Union) and there they were, under “Mixed Pickles No. 2.” Turns out the world’s best Armenian pickles are just like the world’s best Bulgarian and Persian and American pickles, except they include dill, and sometimes green beans and coriander seed.
So this is an old, old recipe belonging to the whole human family.

END-OF-GARDEN PICKLES RECIPE

Vegetables:
Green tomatoes, cut in half or quartered if large 
   The green tomatoes for this recipe should be at least thinking of getting ripe.
   A tomato demonstrates its thoughts along this line by getting a white overlay
   on top of the green.
Carrots, peeled and cut into strips
Cauliflower, separated into small florets
Baby onions, peeled, or larger onions halved
Quartered green peppers, cut into broad lengthwise slices
Garlic, two peeled cloves per quart jar
Medium-hot peppers, two small whole peppers per quart
You can also add unpeeled and unwaxed small cucumbers, zucchini, or lightly cooked green beans, though we never did. The hot peppers add adventure and zest, but if you prefer to save your tears for really sad occasions, why not?
Amounts and proportions depend on what vegetables you have and how many quarts you plan to make. You don’t have to have the green tomatoes, and the other things can be bought in a grocery store. But you do need a variety of vegetables, and you have to have the onions and garlic, or you won’t have the world’s best pickles. You will have the world’s so-so pickles, and that would be a shame.

Armenian-Persian-Bulgarian Brine
To one quart of water add 1/4 cup pickling salt (salt that isn’t iodized), and one cup of white distilled vinegar. Bring the mixture to a boil. This is enough brine to cover two quarts of mixed pickles, with a little left over.

Processing
Follow the canning instructions in a good, standard cookbook. Or, if you plan to eat them right away, pack the vegetables into clean quart jars, pour over them the hot brine, and keep the pickles covered in the refrigerator. Some of the more impressionable vegetables, like zucchini, will be ready to eat in only two or three days.

We peered in through the fogged up windows.
Yes! There were a few little tables with wooden chairs, yes there were coathooks on the wall, yes, there was the tiled hatch to put dirty dishes through, but more importantly, yes, everyone was eating pierogi. It was just as we remembered. We’d *have to* come back one day when we hadn’t already eaten.

Today was the day. Into the dimness of a big wooden-doored building we tripped and clattered on up the stone steps, past a small pizzeria and the entrance to the apartments upstairs, and right through to an outdoor courtyard. At the other side of the courtyard was “u Stasi” (directly translatable as “At Stasi’s”, perhaps more eloquently translated as “Stasi’s Place”)

A few things surprised us.

1. That we found it.
   We were told about this little Polish home cooking restaurant just before we returned to New Zealand twenty years ago and we went to it only once.
2. That it is still there.
   It is not even a block from the most touristified centre of Krakow. You’d have thought it might have been bought out by some bigger establishment by now.
3. That it still serves only Polish food.
   Two sorts of soup, half a dozen pierogi varieties, stuffed cabbage, pork cutlet, compote and tea.
4. That it is still cheap (despite being in tourist town).
   The pierogi portions were the largest of any we have seen advertised as we have walked around, and about half the cost.
5. That we all got to eat at the same time.
   Our historical experience was that a large queue formed outside (and when we were there the other day it was the same) and as a seat or two became free inside, one or two people would be admitted. We all got in at the same time, although not at tables near each other!
6. That when we sat down, ERgirl3 said, “I’d like rice please” – you can tell her restaurant experience is limited to Asia, where invariably the choice was either rice or noodles!

And so we checked off another of our like-to-do items for Krakow.
We also strolled round town, took lots of photos and chose some artwork to take home (a few months back Rob suggested we should have one picture for each overseas trip we have taken – when we were in Malaysia eight years ago we bought a painting for our wedding anniversary; that covered that trip. This time we are going to create our own art from our photos – somehow. But we didn’t have anything from our first two years away, and as we spent most of that time in Krakow, it seemed appropriate to find a Krakow painting – actually, we ended up with three little ones to mount together. Hopefully this means we will finally mount the Malaysia one too!!)

And when we look at them, we’ll remember eating pierogi for lunch.

Pierogi z miesem.
Ruskie pierogi.
Pierogi ze serem.

Pierogi with meat.
Russian pierogi (filled with potato).
Pierogi stuffed with white cheese, sprinkled with sugar and drowning in butter.

“We should take a picture for Grandpa!”
”And one of the sticker too”
”I know! Why don’t you put it on your ear?!”

It all started in Mongolia. We stayed in gers, and gers are not renowned for having very high doorways. Even though he cognitively knew this, poor ol’ Grandpa would knock his head almost every time he came out of his ger, something you do fairly frequently due to the fact that there is not a lot to do inside one of those tents other than keep the fire stoked. Unfortunately for Grandpa, he does not have the protective covering on his head, called hair, and in its place ended up with both a large lump (making him effectively taller than usual and so even more prone to knocking his noggin) and a nasty graze, that turned the stomachs of anyone, who saw it uncovered. Whenever Martin, the big burly ranch owner, saw Grandpa, he called out “Duck duck rubber duck!” – but deep down I’m sure he respected the almost-eighty-year-old man for actually managing to swing himself up on a horse. More than once.

(I *could* insert a picture here as proof of the horse mounting, but it ain’t all that elegant)

That was the beginning. After that, any surface that *could* be used to graze the head, was. Bunks on trains. A suitcase lid. A kitchen bench.
Then there was the motorhome. Again, there was a slightly lower than usual doorway. Donk. And there was a bed in the canopy, which was at just the right height for knocking your head on as you went from the living area through to the cab. Donk donk.
Grandpa looked like he would not be scarred for life, but permanently grazed.

There was not too much to be done about the doorway, but the alcove donking-ground lent itself to some solutions by kind-hearted grandchildren. First of all a piece of foam was fastened to the fairly sharp edge. But it didn’t last. Neither did it work – graze number who-knows-what was scraped in spite of the foam.
Next the kids studiously coloured a danger warning strip black and yellow. Failed.
Daughter-in-law found a pinecone and hung that, embellished with some heather to make it look like an intentional decoration, a bit lower than the edge. It got knocked about a lot, but at least it didn’t leave a graze. No-one knows where it disappeared to or when, but one day Grandpa found himself grazed again.

In desperation he went to Canada, where he was certain he would be immune from such experiences. Turns out it wasn’t to be, but the funniest episode of all happened en route.
In an email Grandpa described the scene succinctly, never one to exaggerate:
“BTW I munted my cell phone - cracked the screen so I have to look for a new one tomorrow.”
Rob’s sister, who was travelling with him, filled in the hilarious details:

You’ll laugh when you hear how he damaged his phone.  We were walking around town taking  photos and had found a quaint medieval street called The Shambles.  The buildings lean over the street toward each other and Dad leant up against a building to get a better angle when he was clonked by a large sign that fell off the wall as he leaned against it.  He quickly stopped it from falling onto the ground and hooked it back up though it was a precarious hold.  He then leant against the same wall to get the same photo as he had been unable to previously and the sign not only fell off the wall it clonked him on the head and fell to the ground.  I turned around just as he was picking it up and putting it back up for the second time!!  As he did a bit of a shuffle when he got clonked he must have leaned against the wall and the hire car key must have pressed hard up against the screen of the phone which broke the LCD display.  It looks like a picture of a shattered window!! :( 

After two weeks Grandpa returned to us, still grazed.
More of the same (and we visited some cool castles and mountains).
But in the end he went home! Where he fell off his bike three times in a month, his account of which brought much laughter to our hostel room across the other side of the world.

And so when we were at the Wieliczka salt mine with its reasonably frequent red and white danger stripes on low ceilings and some without any warning whatsoever, our thoughts did not have to move far to turn to Grandpa. He’d have loved it!

But what about the sticker?
That story goes back even further.
In 2001, we were in Malaysia for a family wedding.
We also went to a butterfly park, where we were issued with a little tag on a rubber band for attaching to our cameras to prove we had paid the camera fee. Grandpa had missed that part of the entrance instructions, and so when Rob told him he had to hang it over his ear, he did. Unquestioningly. We saw a good many butterflies, scorpions, lizards and other miscellaneous wildlife samples before he realised he was the source of our out-of-proportion enjoyment at this particular attraction!
We had almost as much fun with the Wieliczka sticker - aren’t memories grand?

Now you know.

Look how nippy it was this morning:

And last night it was –11*C in Brasov, where we are soon headed, so everyone is hoping the forecast snow will be a biggie!

Anyway, I digress, before I even begin.

Boys need their daddies.
Where did that come from?

We have a boy (not the youngest and not the eldest, which is saying little enough to ensure anonymity for the offending party, and he also happened to be the taker of the above photograph, which adds nothing further to his identity), who was sent down to the street yesterday to check the temperature on the display outside one of the shops (yes, the same one as in the picture above). It was warmer yesterday. 4 degrees C. You really can’t tell just how cold it is by simply looking out the window, and as our window does not have an outdoor thermometer like most other windows around town, we rely on the one up the road. We know to believe the thermometer. We learnt that lesson twenty years ago. One day in the middle of winter, a clear blue day greeted us, and we did not, for a moment, believe it could possibly be the minus twenty-something that our thermometer claimed it was. After weeks of murky grey, when we had needed the lights on all day long, the sun was now shining brightly.  It *had* to be warmer than that. In fact, we decided it must be over zero and so just donned jackets and headed out. It took less than a millisecond for us to be racing back up the stairs to find thermal underwear, an extra pair of socks, thick hats, long scarves, woollen coats and our sheepskin mittens to put on top of our standard gloves. Believe the thermometer.
Today I told everyone they would need hats and gloves. Said boy suggested *he* would be fine. I informed him no-one would be going out without a hat.
”Are YOU going to wear a hat?” he enquired of his Dadda.
I don’t recall if the Dadda merely grunted an affirmative or declared enthusiastically, “I’m definitely wearing one” – but that is irrelevant. The matter for the boy was now settled. His Daddy would be wearing a hat, and so he would too.

Boys also need daddies to teach them to be strong. To arm wrestle and promise that the day a child beats the adult in such an activity, there will be a celebratory dinner. That was the day before yesterday. The promise, not the beating.

Boys need daddies to teach them to be gentle. Gentlemen even. They need to watch someone, who will open the door for the girls, who will stand back and let the girls go first, who will carry the heavy load. It’s just not the same if it’s the mother always harping on at the boys to give preference to the girls – mainly, because then the little girls start demanding, “I’m a lady, you need to give way to me”, but also because the boys seem to learn so much more quickly if it’s their revered Daddy teaching the lesson. I’m not sure if this is normal behaviour, and I *do* know that it’s not desirable, but it’s the way it is in our family, and so the task of teaching the boys in particular to respect and honour their mother, to listen to her and accept she knows a thing or two that they don’t (like when it’s four degrees you need a hat, for example)  falls mainly to the Daddy.

Boys need Daddies.

Time for one more story.
Once upon a time about twenty years ago there was a young man, who lived on the seventh floor of an apartment block. One day in the middle of winter he pulled on his socks, fastened his hat under his chin, buttoned his long woollen coat, wrapped his scarf around his neck, ready to pull up over his nose before opening the front door….and out he went. This particular day the lift was a) working and b) on his floor, so he took it to ground level. As he emerged, he noticed it was cold, and he pulled his scarf up almost to his eyeballs. He opened the door that led from the stairwell to the little heat saving foyer, and closed it behind him, before opening the very front door. Even by now he was aware of something happening to him, but it would not be until he stepped out into the snow that he realised he was still wearing his slippers and his toes were snap-freezing.
Boys need daddies, who have funny stories to tell, daddies, who are not perfect, but can admit their failings and laugh at their mistakes.

I’m glad our boys are blessed with such a dadda.

As for the story behind this picture, you’ll have to wait til tomorrow to read that!

There’s an object lesson in today’s expedition. A Scripture or two to reflect on. But we haven’t yet. We were too busy writing a story. Jgirl15 came up with the outline and then frantically scribbled the main ideas and some sample sentences onto paper. Together we fleshed it out.

CLANG CLANG CLANG
The operator rang a bell and the lift I shared with eight other miners descended, plunging into instant darkness, rattling its way into the depths of the earth.
”Times have changed,” I murmured with ever-present relief. We do not have to fear a slow and insecure ride to the bottom of the shaft in a hemp swing-like seat hanging off a rope as fat as my growing son’s arm. So fearful of falling to the bottom and certain death, were the miners before us, that all the way down, prayers and hymns for safety echoed, bouncing off the walls before being consumed by the darkness. Even with their flickering candles, they couldn’t push away that close darkness surrounding them.
The creaking lift and helmets fitted with torches we are using now have put an end to that. The lift, what a fine piece of technology. It always threatens to drive us occupants into the rock at high speed, but, thankfully, it hasn’t yet. It IS safer.
Down down down……..some 327 metres underground. In earlier times the miners did not go so deeply, but we have dug down to a third level now.  

I start my work at 8am, using the original hundreds-of-years-old method used for mining salt. My companions and I hammer tar coated wedges into the rock. It’s hard sweaty work, but after much banging there’s an ear-splitting crack and a ten tonne block of salt escapes. It lies still, waiting to be chiselled into three or four blocks and then further chiselled into cylinders. It’s much easier to move a “log” of salt than a block – blocks don’t roll.
Despite being hard work, we proceed with enthusiasm; our wealth is in salt!
Four hundred years ago when this mine was just beginning, salt was being used as a currency. One log of salt could buy a small village – forty houses.
Before extensive mining, the white powder had been extracted from a large saltwater lake, pottery containers of water being boiled over fires to evaporate the water, leaving the precious trade-able commodity behind. But when the lake dried up, the residents of the region began digging, presumably looking for more water. What they found, instead, was salt. A Lot Of Salt. For five hundred years the area will provide both salt and work for many – over 300 kilometres of tunnels will eventually be excavated, a labyrinth extending under the whole town of Wieliczka. There’s wealth in salt alright.

Our work comes to a halt at midday. We’re Polish. We’re Catholic. Most of us walk to the big chapel of our patron saint, Kinga. You could be forgiven for thinking the floor is polished black marble, but, just like the steps we descend, the statues of the saints, the carvings depicting the life of Jesus….they are all made of salt. Of course, perhaps. Salt gives riches not merely measured in monetary terms.
The chapel itself used to be a very large mining chamber until it was transformed into this highly decorated place of worship – actually, it’s not even finished yet. The last carving will not be completed for another half a century, until 1963. People will stand in awe under its shining chandeliers, amazed that even they are made of salt. Pure salt is white or transparent, and special pieces have been taken to create these magnificent lights. They really do sparkle against the blackness of the rest of the salt, salt coloured by being mixed with other stones, rocks and metals.

Before heading back to work I enjoy a small jelly filled with fish and vegetables. I’m rich to have a caring wife, who after years of marriage, still shows her love, making special treats to eat. It’s not that I’d mind gnawing on a poppy seed bread stick like the rest of the crew, but these little delicacies do brighten the darkness.
Strolling through the different chambers, there’s always something new to see. Today I took a different tunnel and found an old unused winch. It had points for coupling horses to, and a seat. Round and round and round the horses used to plod, hour after hour after hour. Someone had to steady their pace and initially this person, too,  with the animals, would plod hour after hour after hour, round and round and round. That was before The Seat. It doesn’t look like much, but it was as desired as a throne. Everyone wanted this job – instead of having to walk at the horses’ side, they could sit, almost at leisure, a rich man.
Nearby was a feedbox, undoubtedly used by the working horses. You know what? When my Great-Grandfather worked as a miner, he helped to transport the horses. With the wealth of stories passed on from one generation to the next, I have heard how the horses were fitted into hemp harnesses and lowered into the darkness, just like the miners themselves. Unsurprisingly, plenty took fright. My predecessor, with a lifetime of handling these beasts, still had trouble calming them as they arrived at their destination. Occasionally, a horse arrived calm; usually it meant it had died of fear on the way down. Needless to say, this was no easy job. Eventually, my great-grandfather, yes one of my very own ancestors, came up with the bright idea in the midst of this darkness to build underground stables, to end the  necessity of daily hoisting. From that time on, once the horses were down, they were destined to live the rest of their lives deep underground. I can imagine hearing the hooves clip-clopping along the salt floors. I prefer not to think of the smell, the heat generated by so many men and animals in such confined spaces.
These days all that is left of those times are the impressive chapels, enormous old winches, crystal-encrusted ladders and tools, some of which are still in use. My favourite would have to be the wooden cart on wheels that is run along a track up and down the inclines – to prevent too many chunks of salt falling out, the front was designed higher than the back. It’s amazing to think that you’ll still be able to see these carts with their original wooden boards in another hundred years’ time. You could even say salt preserves memories.

I return to the chamber, where I’ve worked all my time. In the entire history of the mine, every single miner has worked in the very same chamber that they started off in, never changing to another one. Why would you leave a job undone? Sometimes even a few generations work the same chamber. It was – and is – a long slow task. Some say it must be tiring to always be working hard, monotonous to always be doing the same thing day after day, but it’s a special job, and seeing the cavern emerge out of solid wall makes it all worthwhile. Watching the carvers create birds clinging to the ceiling or monks kneeling at a cross or beautiful angels brings me a satisfaction I could not find anywhere else.
Besides, it’s a safe job. I could be mining coal or iron – in unhealthy dangerous conditions. At least I’m not breathing substances that can kill me. I can lick the walls here and it does me no harm! One could even argue it’s beneficial – I mean, we do use salt for preserving our meat and vegetables, and we gargle it whenever anything ails us. It’s funny to think of licking the walls, but I’ll tell you something. In a hundred years’ time people will be descending the same shafts, walking through these tunnels, these chambers, and clambering up the stairs, escorted by tour guides, who will inform them they may lick the walls, but not the carvings. And they’ll do it! Good thing salt kills germs, I say.

I work the afternoon.
I don’t lick the walls.
I take the lift back up again, hurtling through the darkness, towards the outside darkness which blankets our town by mid-afternoon in the winter.
CLANG CLANG CLANG

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SOME RANDOM FACTS, WHICH DID NOT MAKE IT INTO THE STORY:

• the mine is kept at 14 degrees celsius year round – which makes it much warmer than the outside temperature for most of the year, and cooler in summer
• every miner is (and has been from the beginning of the mine’s existence) issued with a special uniform. In times past they were also given decorated ceremonial axes; now they are given something else instead, which the tour guide told us, but which none of us can remember the details of!
• way back at the beginning of the mine being dug, hooded men would crawl through the tunnels carrying long poles with a fire on the end of them. It is believed the fire would burn up pockets of methane, ensuring the tunnel would then be safe for other miners to proceed into. Of course, this was a dangerous – or even deadly – job when a large amount of methane was encountered.
• when the miners had tallow lights, it made the black salt appear green, and so the salt was called, for quite some time, green salt.
• some of the salt crystals are perfect cubes.
• there’s a museum to visit at the end of the mine tour, but it was not mentioned by our particular guide. Like the mine tour, you are required to go through with a guide, and although they do hurry you through the exhibits, we would highly recommend the museum to anyone, who happens to go there. It was a pricey day (although a lot cheaper than taking a tour from Krakow – we caught the bus out to Wieliczka ourselves), but money well spent. We had heard the mine itself was awe-inspiring, and indeed it was. But no-one had mentioned the 380 steps down a mineshaft, the three kilometre circuit you end up walking, the hunks of salt that a miner will rip from the walls and ceilings to give children to take home, the underground lakes, the pre-recorded “performances” by statues, the light shows, the winches, the whole forest of tree trunks supporting walls, the paintings, the statues of famous visitors like Copernicus and Goethe, the dioramas….it was so much more than we expected.

“When we get back” conversations emerge occasionally now, and on one particular occasion turned to chores. I was most excited to discover that my workforce has now reached such proportions that I find myself almost entirely in a supervisory role.
I’ll have a three-year-old setting the table, filing breakfast dishes in the dishwasher and taking the compost out. There’ll be a bunch of five-to-nine-year-olds to do the dusting, clean the downstairs toilet, prepare the  lunch and tidy up the dishes, keep on top of vacuuming and sweeping, and maintain toy cupboard and bookshelf order.
The older four (by then aged 11-15) are going to try something new. For a week at a time they will take complete responsibility for a job or two. They will be able to call on me (or bribe siblings) if they’d like some assistance, but it’ll be *their* job to make sure things stay under control. The “areas of expertise” they will be working on are:

1) bake bread and cook dinner 
2) prepare breakfast and do dinner dishes (includes shining the sink!)
3) washing (get it sorted, washed, hung out, brought in, folded, put away)
4) clean upstairs bathroom and supervise littlies’ bathing (this is a cushy number!!)
 
See? There’s really not a lot left for me to do – although, as anyone with children will know, CONSISTENTLY CHECKING UP is probably the most important job! And while cleaning the bathroom sounds simple enough for the big kids, I intend to use the opportunity to proactively work with older ones about how they talk to their smaller siblings, how to gently encourage, how to give instructions politely and respectfully (who would’ve thought that Parenting 101 could be held in the bathroom?!!)

With this new style of responsibilities in mind, the biggies spent this afternoon working on their first week’s menu. (Shopping lists yet to be completed).
Dreams of croissants for breakfast and dumpling dinners disappeared quickly when they realised how much work was involved in cooking Every Single Day for a week! I’m sure we’ll learn how to bake croissants some day, but for the moment, they are wisely keeping things simple. A few “trip foods” have made it on to the menus – egg in broth for breakfast, zapiekanki, steamed pau, noodle soup, moussaka, kremowka, fried rice with lots of mint….and even the homemade baked beans that allowed us to save money to take this trip have made a comeback.

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They are following such guidelines as “we’ll make whatever we can from scratch” and “use produce that’s in season” and “we haven’t set the budget yet, but you can know for certain it will not be extravagant” and “if you’re going to heat the oven, make sure you make good use of it”.
They have already hatched co-operative plans:
“If you help me make a double batch of muesli when it’s my turn, you can use half it on your week”
”Let’s just do the same breakfast each week, so it’s quicker to plan”
”You’re making lasagne the week before me, so I’ll do moussaka instead”

Looks like we’re ready to hit the ground running.
I wonder if we’ll be in time to bottle peaches and make plum jam, not that I know where our preserving jars are any more! We have one experimental jar of tomato chutney hiding in a corner of Grandpa’s attic – hopefully, after two years it will still be edible. Everyone hopes so, coz they know there’s to be no buying what we could make ourselves. And they know when Mama makes such decrees, there’s no point creating a storm in a teacup over it <wink>

foodie picture of the day:
aaaagh we chopped it up before photographing – it was a 9kg pumpkin
that is one ENORMOUS pumpkin
it totally filled our GIGANTIC pot we are carrying with us!
and we’ll be eating it for two more days yet

To be Polish is almost certainly to be Catholic.
To be Catholic means, among other things, following church traditions and one that happens every year on the first of November is honouring the deceased.
We took a chilly walk this morning and noticed that, despite it being Sunday, all the busses and trams were packed full of people clinging on to plastic bags crammed with chrysanthemums and candles. They were all on their way to the cemetery.
Yesterday everyone had been buying…

We waited until after dark to take our own walk across town to see the lights in the cemetery, bundled up against the temperature dropping below zero for the first time since Moscow in the spring.

The biggest collection of candles was by the memorial for the victims of communism.
The heat from them was enough to warm our freezing fingertips!

Jgirl15 is developing an eye for a good picture…. as well as the top couple above, the following are all hers - not bad without a tripod in the dim light and shivering with cold:

PS Our personal saint today was Kboy12, who for the first time cooked the entire dinner on his own (chicken curry, rice and tomato salad). He was chiding himself that his older brother had been the family’s Curry King for three years by the same age, but I reminded him that some people in their twenties, who we have met recently, confided they do not know how to cook and are just now learning how to clean!

From ulica Batorego we used to walk to the Stary Kleparz (the old market you’ve seen in previous posts). This time we are staying virtually at the market and we walked back to Batorego, home to the second flat we lived in.

Due to the installation of domofones, we were initially unable to enter, but someone came out so I muttered a quick, “Dzien dobry, dziekuje” and walked in confidently. Everyone followed close on my heels, eager to see INSIDE where we used to live.

Considering we must have gone up the steps a thousand times, it seems surprising that at first we could not even remember which of the two staircases was “ours”. And not just that – are our memories failing us? – have we forgotten or did we never notice the beautifully tiled floors? Sure, they are grubby, and probably were back then too, covered in dust and grime, but the painted tiles and mosaics add a touch of art to everyday surroundings. Then we remembered. Up the rickety old wooden steps we clattered, running our hands along the wooden banisters, long ago rubbed smooth. Up to our doorway. Perhaps I was secretly hoping the current resident would just happen to step out on to their balcony and I could thrust my “we used to live here twenty years ago speech” onto them and invite ourselves all in for a peek. But it was not to be. The balcony was barely clinging to the building twenty years ago, and it appears it may now not be used at all; the doorway was blocked off completely, shelves inserted in the doorframe. Dream over. Back downstairs and out to the street, where the very same vege shop is still in operation. The bakery has been transformed into a pharmacy, the butcher into……well, we can’t say – we couldn’t quite work out which little shop was the one that used to be a butcher, the very butcher from which we first sampled horse meat sausages.

From ulica Batorego we used to make a Saturday evening pilgrimage every week to ulica Wyspianskiego, where we would look after the young son of an American couple. In this house we celebrated Christmas and Easter, we made bagels and froze cauliflower for the winter, we played UNO and made many good memories. In the church building next door, the four of us did the nineties aerobics thing, bouncing ourselves into fitness in the early morning a few days each week.

(our friends lived at the very top in the attic)

As we walked we remembered. At the end of the street there used to be a hand-operated pump where we’d queue to get our drinking water. We shot along the road – would it still be there? I guess it would have been more pertinent to wonder if people still get their water there – not much chance the pump will have moved. It’s surrounded by a fence now, gated and locked. Looks like they don’t.

We wandered back through “the park on the corner” towards another larger park just up the street. No wonder it was a pleasure to live here. There are trees everywhere, and not just trees, but big open spaces too. Wide paths run through these natural areas right in the centre of town. At the edge of the big-old-villa section, apartments rise – but they are not overpowering – largely due to the abundance of flora and generous spaces between them all.

As we cross the road, Rob says exactly what I’m thinking, “The doctor was up here.”
The no-English-speaking doctor, who operated on me with no assistants other than Rob. And even then, this MALE husband of mine was only allowed in when we bolshily INSISTED he would not stay out of the room (He’d been forbidden entry at the hospital, where I had been whisked away for a scan, and we were not about to let it happen again, figuring we’d make more of the Polskiego with two of us deciphering). I’m not sure what Pan Doktor would have done without him as the medically untrained Rob ended up as Pan Doktor’s Assistant, adjusting the drip rate of the anaesthetic, hoping he had understood the Polish medical terminology correctly, while I writhed about semi-conscious calling out, “Boli, boli” (it hurts, it hurts) Actually, nothing hurt; all I remember is desperately trying to speak, to inform them I was still alert, only to be told it was all over and when I could stand on one leg with my eyes closed for a few seconds I’d be allowed to go home. I remember too the hallucinations, the debilitating feeling of falling, Rob’s out-of-proportion enormous face lunging at me from across the room – but that was all after we had walked home and laid me down on the couch, minus our first baby that had not lived.

Sidetrack: sometimes we make collages that just don’t work.
                   Take this one, for example. Just a wee bit busy.
                   And some other obvious issues!

Ah the memories.

But this was not our first place in Krakow. We had started out in the suburbs.
So we went back there too. Today.

The tram ride was a bit disorienting – it used to wriggle along narrow streets; now it passes underneath big overpasses, between big modern buildings and an excavated building of some historical significance (well, there were big information boards beside it, and the road has been directed around the site, so we think it’s important).
A few stops from the centre and things looked more familiar; the changes in the suburbs are not as dramatic as in town. Arriving at our stop earlier than we expected, we thought we still had a few stops to go. But it *looked* right. A quick questioning of a fellow passenger assured us that indeed we were at ulica Ulanow and we jumped off as the bell clanged.
What used to be grey apartment blocks, are now gaily painted. But the paths were the same and the “supermarket” in the same place (and now it is truly a supermarket, not a few shelves supporting only a scrawny chicken, a few sausages, nondescript brown paper bags full of flour or sugar, strawberry or gooseberry jam, and a few bags of milk).

The bakery was in the same place (yes, we sampled more delicacies - and not just what’s in the picture! We had the Best Ever Yet kremowka as well as half a kilo of biscuits you used to be able to buy in only that bakery - we haven’t seen them anywhere else this time either, so we just *had* to get some….and the kremowka looked SOOOOO good….and it was….mmmmm), and the vege stall in the same place, although now it is a metal building instead of a wooden one.

We found our way to *our* apartment, set on top of a small hill, where we used to slide down an ice slide late at night after the neighbourhood kids had gone home in winter.

The next-door-to-us playground has been significantly upgraded and our kids enjoyed a good long play after a few weeks stuck in the inner city! Meanwhile, we tried to find old friends. Unfortunately all the flats now have domofones so we couldn’t just barge in and up the stairs. Even more unfortunately, most of them only have numbers and not people’s names on them, so our vision of picking out familiar surnames vanished. We approached anyone who came out buildings and asked about particular people – but it’s hard when one lady you used to visit regularly was only known to you as “Pani” (polite title for any lady), or Pani Redhead as we called her between ourselves. She was an artist, and so I stood by her block, wondering which one of the four stairwells was hers, and asking residents, who came out if they knew of an artist living there! Not surprisingly, this was singularly unsuccessful. Even when we remembered her son’s name (he ended up being our boss – through our contact with Pani Redhead we walked into good jobs working in his language school) and realised that she would share the same surname, and asked for her in person, we were no more successful.
Same story for every other block around.   
Except one. There was one apartment that Rob spent almost as much time in as our own. He got on really well with a couple’s same-age-as-us son and they hung out together, Rob improving his Polish, Krzysiek improving his English. I only met the couple once, at a farewell party for Krzysiek, who was moving to Australia, and although I could not remember what they looked like I did remember folk dancing with the father in the hallway! Rob assures me they look exactly the same today. And their hospitality has not changed. They welcomed us all with open arms, amazed at how many guests had descended so unexpectedly upon them. The offer of a cup of tea turned into a bowlful of soup and bread for everyone (except the hosts, who insisted they would eat later), followed by tea and cakes – all accompanied by profuse apologies at not providing enough food, and friendly admonitions that we should have told them we were coming!

Realising it was 10pm in Australia, they put through a call to Krzysiek and handed the phone to Rob! He could hardly believe his Kiwi mate from the now distant past was at that moment sitting in his parents’ apartment across the other side of the world.
Being our first conversation beyond marketplace pleasantries or our other standard exchange (yes, they are all our children, yes, there are eight of them, yes I gave birth to them myself, thank you for saying I’m so young, I don’t know how many more we’ll have, yes, that’s the youngest, she’s three years old, the eldest? she’s fifteen…), we found our brains struggling to pry out words that used to slip off the tongue effortlessly. Fortunately *understanding* was much easier – I think we caught 80% of their stories. Not bad after two decades.

Kazimierz, now a district of Krakow, used to be a separate entity, a region self-governed by the Jews, who were sent there for the first time in 1495. For hundreds of years it remained a Jewish enclave – right through to World War II when the word ghetto became more appropriate.
Today it is just another part of the city, filled with cafes and shops on the lower floor, residential apartments on upper floors, synagogues sprinkled through the streets, but nowhere near the 120 that were here in 1930.

We took a walk (as we do).

Highlight would have to be the cemetery. Large yellow leaves constantly fluttered down from the tall ancient trees, accumulating in massive piles on the ground, partly obscuring the tombstones inscribed in either Hebrew, Polish or both. Locals gave us directions to this cemetery, which turned out to the “new” one, opened in 1800. But we were looking for the old one, in operation from 1551 to 1800, and did manage to find it, although the steep entrance fee and the fact that we had already taken cemetery photos, meant we just looked from the outside.

All interesting enough, but probably most memorable would be either the pierogi we picked up for dinner or the fact that it was colder than we anticipated and being one layer underdressed, we all froze!

Well, my dear boy, speak for yourself! YOU may have done nothing, but someone went to the market this morning to buy our food for the day.
So I could write about the things I saw, the conversations I had (people are so friendly and now that we’ve been here a week, and do our shopping on a daily basis, some of them are starting to recognise me and stop for a chat), I could write that I saw pineapples (last week I was saying there is nothing exotic like pineapple here), I could write about the secondhand clothes shops I pass along the way (the interesting factor to me is that they sell the clothes by weight).
But I’ll skip all that and just leave two photos of things I bought at the market before I write about what I had planned to.

fruity sernik on a chocolate base ~ m.mmmmmm

and smoked mountain cheese, an incredibly dense flavour-packed experience

Being a day spent mostly indoors at our hostel planning the Turkey leg (which, by the way, was far more satisfying than organising the Romania transport – possibly because we are ending up in what looks like a reasonable hostel in a great location in Istanbul, and partly because we have decided to hire a car and trip around for a few days and so now we have the excitement of choosing what to purge from a possible itinerary – Gallipoli, Troy, Assos, Pergamon, Ephesus, Helikarnossos, Aphrodisias,  Hierapolis, The Lake District, Konya, Cappadoccia, Ankara…..)…..as I was saying, having spent the day at the hostel, it seemed an appropriate day to take you on a hostel tour.

Here’s the view if you’re standing at the front door:

Here’s the front door itself underneath the yellow sign – and yes, the building does curve around that corner:

But we’re not staying in that exact building. We walk through that one, past a fancy staircase and the letterboxes, through a courtyard, and then into our building:

We’re up on the first floor in a very spacious room. The couch pulls out into a double bed, but it’s so short that we take down two mattresses each night for the adults and leave a small child on the couch.

There is plenty of storage – as well as this cabinet filled with our food and toiletries and shoes and books and wok, there’s another wardrobe (unphotographed) and the “laundry” you can see hanging on the heater. An altogether comfortable set-up.

Right next door is a kitchen and dining area with computer as well. Yes, it is that sickly shade of green. A contrast to the yellow walls and pink ceiling in our bedroom!

There’s bathroom, too, and toilet as well. Sharing with half a dozen other people, we’d have thought there might be queues, but we have been surprised to find it is perfectly adequate and only rarely does anyone need to wait. No picture!

So that’s where we are. It’s fantastic to be so close to the centre of town, and just a couple of minutes away from the market, tramstop on the doorstep, parks nearby.
What’s not so fantastic, something we had forgotten about, is that it is dark by 4:30. Yes, pitch black well before dinner. After eating later and later through the summer, we now find ourselves finished and tidied up and kids ready for bed far too long before seven to consider tucking them in for the night!
But it gives them time to do our homemade puzzles, draw their own maps, design houses and furniture, play games they’ve made up, write letters to me and even decorate paper for me to reply on. It also gave Kgirl10 time to hatch a cunning plan. It came in the form of a voucher, valid in any country in the world, for special food. However, it only works if she is given some of the bounty, and just in case I might be short on ideas of what to buy, she suggested sernik, kremowka or lollies would all make her very happy!

What did YOU do today Kboy12?
What did you find to write about?