Child's play

Several of my friends here have small children. So sometimes I do things like eat lunch in cafes with play areas.



Luckily I find primary colours soothing.

More reading material

I've got yet another cold. Yes, the last one was 3 months ago, but that seems like too short a time between colds, particularly when you are feeling sorry for yourself between sneezes.

And, I am starting to believe that perhaps Polish viruses are stronger than Canadian ones, as I don't recall getting sick this often in Canada. Maybe I just need to build up my Polish immune system.

When I expressed this idea to my manager today, he called me a Canadian lightweight. I should have coughed on him.

Anyway, I am zapped for inspiration, so here are a few new blogs to check out. Maybe they'll have more interesting things to say than I do this week:

Apropos of Nothing
Stuff in the Attic

Paintings

S is finally painting again, or at least posting her paintings online. You can see her latest effort at the Small Canvases link on this page. It's another one of Cosimo, who looks so peaceful and cuddly in repose. Don't let that fool you . . .

I am not sure what has happened to many of my other favourite bloggers. They seem to be taking a long hiatus.

Red Rockets

Yeah, I know this blog is called the Krakow Files, and these trams are clearly not in Krakow, but I haven't got around to taking any pictures of the city I live in with my new camera yet.

So, for a brief interlude, more pictures of my Toronto visit in December/January.

Trilingual

One of my colleagues and his partner are expecting a baby any day now. He's German, she's Polish, and they speak English to each other.

So I realized the baby will grow up speaking English, Polish, and most likely German.

I'm envious of the language skills of a baby that hasn't even been born yet.

No where near Krakow

Someone needs a good cookbook (or the internet)

Whenever I have a cooking question, I call my mom in Alberta. Or my grandma in Toronto.

I am making dinner right now in Krakow, and I had a question (apparently my first culinary question in the last 8 months) but I realized I probably shouldn't call my mom who lives halfway around the world just to ask her if I can eat a potato that is sprouting.

So I cut off the sprouts and cooked it anyway. If that's not the right thing to do, I don't want to know . . .

100 zloties

is how much it costs to have a wheel lock removed from your car when you (inadvertently) park illegally in Krakow.

Luckily a Polish-speaking friend was with me when I discovered my indiscretion. She was parked directly behind me, just out of the no-parking zone.

The police were very friendly and had relatives in Canada. But that didn't get me out of paying the 100 zloties.

I wish I had had my camera with me.

Skiing

I grew up skiing in the Canadian Rockies, but all but gave it up when I lived in Ontario.

Thus, when I first visited Krakow, one of the many things I was excited about was its proximity to the mountains and the popularity of downhill skiing.

Today I took my first ski runs outside of North America. And just like everything else in Poland, skiing here introduced me to several new things.



This is a picture of the main, and only, run at the small ski hill we were at today. Although it seemed odd to me (and a little boring) to have only one run at a hill, apparently it is quite common here.

Yet for such a small operation, the ticketing technology is far advanced of the North American slopes. Instead of buying a paper lift ticket to attach to your jacket, here you purchase a magnetic card, and load it with the number of hours you plan to ski. You can purchase anything from a single run to an hour to 8 hours of skiing. In order to enter the lift line, you swipe the card at a turnstile.

And, nearby, a larger hill contains a 6 person chair lift, on which you entry through some sort of conveyor belt. I can hardly wait to try that out sometime in the next few weeks!

Happy Birthday big brother

Today's my older brother's birthday. And I am planning on calling him to wish him a happy birthday, but I just realized it is only 8 am there (a 9 hour time difference makes calling a bit tricky). The odds are he is up (sleeplessness seems to run in my family), but is it really polite to call someone at 8 am on a Saturday to wish them happy birthday?

Probably not. So I am going to wait a bit. But I plan to have a nap myself, and I might forget later. And if I do, I have proof that I was thinking about him (and this post might remind my little brother that he's forgotten another birthday).

So happy birthday big brother. Hope you have a great day!

Mimi on the beach

My friend S and I spent part of New Year's Day on the beach in Toronto.


There's just something about a snow covered beach and a snow fence that is quintessentially Canadian.

Night 4

of jetlagged-induced insomnia. Or maybe it is now just insomnia.

Whatever it is, work later today will not be pretty. My alarm is set to go off in 2 hours. Sigh.

Oh well, perhaps if I am exhausted I will sleep through night 5.

On the plus side, I am catching up on my reading. I've read two novels in the past 30 hours or so.

Psst

I finally updated the Recent Pics link on this page. Okay, there are only 8 new pictures tonight, but I hope to add more regularly.

I got a snazzy new digital SLR for Christmas and have been playing with it. But the latest pictures posted here were taken with my old camera.

Rinks

Krakow may have castles, cathedrals, and ruins, but Canada wins hands down in the number of hockey rinks.

People here are amazed when I tell them that most schools in Canada have ice rinks attached to them (every school I attended did, but that may just be an Alberta thing).

Here's the rink at my old junior high school. The day we visited my brother had to help push the mini zamboni over the snow built up around the pleasure skating rink. When I went to school some poor sod cleaned the ice by pushing around a big shovel.

Jetlag

It's 4:39 am in Krakow, but my body doesn't seem to know it. This is my second night of jetlag-induced insomnia. You know the kind - you are dead tired and fall asleep quickly, but then just as suddenly are wide awake a few hours later.

And why am I hungry at 4 am? It is not meal time anywhere I've been recently.

So instead of lying awake for hours, writing stuff in my head (which is what I did last night), I figured I should get up and write for real. And have breakfast.