Krakow

My trip had an inauspicious start. When I got to Dulles, it turned out I had no e-ticket. No e-ticket, no paper ticket. Well, I did have a paper ticket, but it's probably still sitting in a travel office somewhere, and nobody had bothered to tell me. A call to my travel agent squared all that away and got my e-tickets issued, but I was nervous about further ticket fiascoes for the rest of the trip. During my Paris connection, the woman at the counter didn't help my mental state. She would ask me for information, respond by frowning at her computer screen, ask me for more information, and then frown even more exaggeratedly at her screen. Every time she did this, I thought "Oh my God, I don't have a ticket! I'm stuck here!" It worked out, though.

Once I got to Krakow and checked into my hotel on Sunday, it was already dark, so no sightseeing for me! Too bad, because I had a list of places to see and things to buy. It was such a short trip that I almost didn't get any pictures at all. We had a driver/van rented all week to take us to meetings and such, and he was under contract for a full 12 hours each day. We only used him in the morning on Wednesday, so at lunch another teammate and I borrowed him to drive us over to the Wawel Castle to take some pictures. He didn't understand English, but I used my Pictionary skills to show him that I wanted to go across the river to take some pictures of the castle. I'm not fluent in anything but English, but damn if my universal pantomime skills aren't getting good! My attempts at Polish were never acknowledged, for reasons I can't explain. I would say thank you ("Dzinkuje"), and nobody ever said "you're welcome". People just pretended like I didn't say anything at all. Was I accidentally saying "your mother's a whore"? Maybe they were just embarrassed for me and my mild mental retardation.

The food was the highlight of the trip. I ate pierogies a couple times, some great vegetarian couscous, and a latke (a lot more like hash browns that I'd remembered). The latke was supposed to come with cheese and "game". I asked the waiter what kind of "game" it was, and he said bacon. So I guess pigs are considered game in Poland! I also ate chicken livers and used lard as a spread for the first time. My weight-loss regimen is completely screwed, by the way. The restaurant with latkes had a "rustic" theme going on, meaning everything was covered in animal hides. The rough-hewn benches we sat on were covered in pelts. I noticed toward the end of dinner that the texture and color of the pelt I was sitting on looked exactly like Stampy's hair. I asked the waiter what kind of pelts they were, and he said "either wolf or dog"! I guess it's possible it WAS an old english sheepdog.

On the flight home, a coworker and I connected through Vienna. While we were waiting, an elderly woman walked up to Mo (my coworker) and started prattling on in German. Mo didn't initiate this conversation, so I could see that her patience was wearing thinner each time she had to say, "I only speak English". Finally, a younger woman came up and pulled the old woman away, apologizing that she was confused, and that Mo "looks like someone she knows". Mo looked at me and said, "I look like someone she knows?!?!" Mo is a large, gruff-looking black woman who has dreadlocks and was wearing a do-rag. Even in America, Mo doesn't look like anyone else I know!

My small collection of pictures is here. Also note that I modified the lists to the left of the blog, so there's now a link to my Flickr sets. Do widzenia!