April 20

April 20, 2011

Wawel Castle

It's spring in Poland, and I've been making a big effort to get outside more and see the country.  A couple weeks ago Dagmara and I explored a huge park in Katowice—the park gets crazy busy on the weekends, especially now that it's warm.  We also went to the "cultural capital" of Poland, Krakow.  Krakow is a one of those lucky cities that was spared all the devastation during the two world wars, so a lot of its architecture is still intact.  We didn't have a ton of time in the city as we had a late start, but we made good use of our daylight hours.  There is a huge castle in Krakow called Wawel Castle overlooking the Vistula River.  We spent most of our time walking in and around it, taking lots of photos.  I busted out my 

Church inside castle

35mm film camera for the trip, but have yet to develop the pictures, hopefully they turn out well.  After the castle, we started to walk around the Old Town.  I immediately knew that this city was an international tourist destination because I was actually seeing people who weren't white—a rarity in Poland.  A quick fashion side note about the people I saw in Krakow—the warm weather brought out some interesting, quite daring styles, and also a lot of mullets.  Such things one does not see as often in the U.S.

Dagmara in castle courtyard

Cloth Mall

Krakow has countless historical churches and there is no way I can remember all of the names, but I did get a few pictures of them.  Main Market Square was beautiful.  It is home of the Cloth Mall (arguably the oldest mall in the world), the Town Hall Tower (which leans to one side like the one in Italy), the Basilica of the Virgin Mary, and numerous restaurants. 

Basilica

The next weekend, we went to a Polish rock concert.  The artists playing were Dzem (pronounced "gem") and Myslovitz (miss-low-veetz).  The former was more classic rock, the latter was alternative rock.  I couldn't understand the lyrics, but it was pretty fun.  The next day we explored a big forest near our apartment, but it was pretty cold so we didn't go far.

Last weekend, I had my first encounter with the Polish Catholic Church for Palm Sunday.  The church was very crowded, and since we got there late, we had to stand in the back (they had the doors open so some people could listen from outside too).  To be quite honest, it was pretty boring listening for 1.5 hours to something I couldn't understand, plus having to stand up for all of it.  This weekend I hope to arrive early so I can sit down.

Dagmara and I recently joined a fancy gym, and our first day there we went to an "advanced" group excerise with this swinging trapeze bar contraption hung up for each person.  I had been running, doing push-ups, sit-ups, etc. for over a month, so I figured it would be easy.  As I looked around the exercise studio, I noticed I was the only guy, which made me start to worry.  After about 15 minutes of stretching/twirling exercises, I realized my back would not last, but looking over at Dagmara, I just couldn't leave and risk her gloating over me for not finishing the class.  So I finished.  Approximately 10 days later I'm still paying for it.  What I learned from this experience is this: if there is an exercise class with only women in it, I should probably get out of there before it's too late. 

Kozak

My final piece of news is the new addition to my family: Kozak (pronounced "ko-zock"), our new cat we adopted from Dagmara's brother.  He is a very curious creature, and quite hyper at night, waking us up multiple times.  Time will tell if this kitty will have to be locked in the bathroom at bedtime.

Most of the pictures I've taken can be found on Snapfish: http://www5.snapfish.com/snapfish/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=6940530014/a=106547587_106547587/

You may need to register, but it's free and it's a decent site for posting pictures.