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Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

I made it home to Chicago okay. This is thanks to the Polish tradition of skipping the 13th row in airplanes. Though I was in the 13th row from the front, the number on the seat was #14.

There’s another Polish city that’s much further from Warsaw than Kraków or Gdańsk, and I happen to live in it. Often over the past years, I have often walked by a shop with a threatening display of processed meat hanging from above a counter. This time I went inside, and I was back exactly where I was yesterday- in Poland. All the same brands were there- Tymbark’s natural juices (brzoskwinia), kupiec rice cakes (wafle ryżowe), wonderfully fresh bread and dill pickles, Knorr powdered soups (ogórkowa and barszcz czerwony). I could have walked past this place a hundred times more and never known the world within.

There was only one difference. They wouldn’t take my Polish money.

Polish Food

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007

Tessa

To be honest, I had dreaded having to face three weeks of Polish food. Like most other travelers, I found pierogies to be the most accessible cuisine, and borscht (barszcz) to be tolerable, but was expecting a bland meat- and potato- heavy diet. Turns out I was very wrong.

Żurek, a rye-based soup with sausage and whole hardboiled egg, turned out to be one of my favorites. This is certainly not for vegetarians, but I did discover another soup, ogórek, based on sour pickles, dill, and potatoes, that was wonderful. One place in Płock featured naleśnik, a pancake filled with just about anything and covered with your choice of tomato or garlic sauce. The tomato sauce was excellent, including basil and other Italian spices. The Polish are crazy about mushrooms, and typically distinguish between several different kinds of mushrooms (including pieczarka, a favorite). Polish pizza can be very good, although interestingly, the sauce often comes in a teapot and you have to add it yourself. One of my favorite restaurants in Kraków served only pierogies, but about 30 variations. The “Mexican” pierogi was the best, though I’m still not exactly sure what all was inside it. In Warsaw, food was about as eclectic and good as anywhere else in the world.

In short, this is a perfect diet for a genealogist, student, or tourist.

Evidence

Sunday, December 2nd, 2007
My last day in Płock, I returned to the state archives one last time, looking for absolute evidence that I was in fact related to the strangers from Piączyn. The archivist seemed happy to see me back and tried ... [Continue reading this entry]

You Must Always Pay for Breakfast, Even If You Already Did

Monday, November 26th, 2007
Weary-eyed from a night of not sleeping all that well and flipping through channels of Polish-language A-Team and a Wheel of Fortune episode with an obvious answer like "a jednak sie kieci", I made my way to my breakfast. Everything was ... [Continue reading this entry]

Happy Pig Tastes Better

Monday, November 12th, 2007
During my break from the Nationalist Karaoke, I found just the restaurant I must have been looking for. Chlopski Jadlo. Not sure what this meant, other than that it sounded pretty authentically Polish, whatever that meant. Well, it at ... [Continue reading this entry]