Stary Kleparz

   Back to Kraków for a moment. On our last day there I got this idea into my head that I would buy an old voluntary Socialist militia motorcycle helmet. I saw two pizza delivery guys ride in them. The helmet kinda reminds of the old Italian style dome helmets and thought it would be a perfect Sunday drive retro gear. In front of the hotel was an Army surplus store, which to spite me was opening late that day.
   While waiting for the store I decided to walk around a bit and ended up finding something much more interesting than the helmet a few blocks aways. Located in the area of town known as the Old Kleparz (after a village that used to be there back, back in the day and has been incorporated into city proper) was an outdoor market with all kinds of local products. Some of the stands were in more permanent buildings, or something we would call trailers in the States, but the middle of the market was dominated by wares displayed on tables under more or less roofed walkways. The stands were more or less organized into areas according to the kind of merchandise they were offering. It wasn't unusual then to find a number of stands next to each other selling exactly the same thing at exactly the same price. This applied to merchandise such as vegetables of course, but even to slippers or kitchen wares.
   Here's an example of four tables selling cheese. I was surprised to see that nearly all of the customers had an allegiance to a particular vendor, beelined straight for them - some even had rather personal conversations throughout the transaction. I asked the cheese ladies if I could take a picture of them and while they all agreed, one of them tried to hide under the table - she's the second one from the left, only the top of her head is visible left of a lamp post.
   A stand that surprised me offered sleeping gowns to women. I couldn't think of a less sexy way to display these articles and the color scheme has reminded me "it's a boy" "it's a girl" "it's a (we don't know, let's get a yellow one)" baby clothes.





   Finally on the way out I finally hit the jackpot - old man vests. Phil this one is for you. Now we know where they come from.

Berlin

After giving the final grant presentation in Kraków, I decided to spend the rest of my stint discovering Western Europe. The original plan in its most ambitious form called for travel to Berlin, Terborg, Amsterdam, and Paris, however, due to monetary and time constraints it had to be scaled back to - Berlin with an extra day.
Staying in a friends empty room, at her sister's apartment in a somewhat of a bar area in East Berlin turned out to be a great operations base. Not only was I close to all kinds of public transportation, great Thai and Indian food, and an awesome internet cafe, but also only three short blocks away from the one of the show promenades of the Communist East Berlin. The buildings there were huge in a way that can be exacted only by the Soviets. This picture was taken from across the street (including two very wide walkways, two lanes of trees and grass, two parking lanes, four lanes of traffic, and a two lane divider) and still I couldn't get the whole building in one shot. In fact this particular example of Soviet housing development had two wings sticking out the side, rendering it in practive about twice as long than one could gauge from the picture. A number of similar buildings lines this particular street. I heard a story that one of the inspections by the Party came on the projected date of the East Berlin having build one thousand apartments. Since of course the building development did not exactly stick to schedule, the one thousandth apartment was finished ahead of the other ones and a family was paid to stand at the window framed by flags and wave to the party leaders and camera crews in the streets.
Another icon of the East Berlin is the TV Tower, which can be seen in nearly all postcards in one form of another. Even if the shot is of a landmark in West Berlin, it has to include the tower in some distant perspective. I must say that I found the tower quite pleasant looking and really useful in always knowing which was was my apartment. On top of the tower (I'm assuming in the ball part) is a revolving restaurant. The one thing I keep thinking about is whether the kitchen revolved with the dining room, or whether the waiter always comes out in a different part of the restaurant.




Guarding the people from crossing over to West Berlin across the river Spree is East Side gallery - a section of the Berlin wall made famous after the fall by the artists who painted it. The artists have been asked to redo their work after it had been vandalized or suffered erosion, but unfortunately much of it has been graffitied over since.


The area between the wall and the river has been unused for years, until some developers came up with the idea of importing sand and setting up beach bars on the riverbank. It was interesting to see these imitations with more or less fake palm trees and Berlin signature electronica playing rather than calipso/reggae/California music. Oddly enough though sitting at a river bank, with my feet resting on a tied up boat, looking over at the industrial buildings across the river the slow electronica kinda worked.
One of the ways to get to West Berlin was through the famed and celebrated Checkpoint Charlie. The checkpoint hut itself is a replica of a replica of a replica, with the Russian and America guards charging 1€ per picture. Surrounding the checkpoint are souvenir stands, peddling anything from old East and West Germany flags, through Russian military caps, to American t-shirts.








Today's more common gateway between the unified parts of the city is the awesomely great Berlin subway. With the precision known only to German engineers digital displays above tracks count down the time to train arrival. The subway cars themselves are joined together like a one long articulated bus, offering the riders tv news and connection information in addition to nausea if anyone looks too far down the train during a turn.







A little past the Brandenburg gate is the Berline Dome - a fine example of a Protestant cathedral. While the Catholic churches offer their inside splendor for view free of charge, the spartan interior of the Dome demands and offering. Having only two hours for walking around, and running low on Euros after many a round, I decided to keep moving.
A little further down I was impressed by the effort a construction company has put into not turning their project into an eye sore. As the facade of the building is constructed, the covering of the building frame painted like the facade itself is removed.




However, not all of Berlin's aesthetic shortcomings can be covered up with tarp. A few steps down Unter der Linden I saw this old Turkish woman begging for money as the modern face of German society turns away its beautiful gaze. While Germans seemed very tolerant of alternative lifestyles (including Polish politics), there seemed to be a deep divide between the Germans and the Turkish immigrants. In fact, it seems to take more than two generations for a person to be considered German. Interestingly Germany today doesn't seem to have a strong national identity or patriotism. German's pride of who they are is driven by regional allegiances to culture, foor, and beer - rather than a national or ratial identity. My understanding is that the varying levels of intolerance against the Turks comes from their inability to assimilate to these local German culture, rather than a German culture as a whole.

The Bundestag is pretty much the only place in all of Berlin where one might see a German flag being flown. After years of suppression of national patriotism, Germans are only now becoming to say they are proud to be German, and as I'm told, this has much to do with the Soccer World Cup. The Bundestag was heavily bombed and burned during WW2 and rebuilt since with a brand new glass dome as a vantage point on the city. You can see the line of tourists lined up on the stairs to get in.
One of places I've found most interesting in Berlin was the monument to the murdered Jews of Europe. When you walk up to it, it looks like a bunch of rectangular blocks laid out on a large square - large, but not terribly impressive. As you walk into it, however, you realize there is much more to it than that. The ground sinks gently as the blocks become taller, rising all around you. You realize that what you saw from the outside was just the surface and that the only way to see the monument's enormity is from within. Another feature making the experience of being inside the monument even more interesting is that the blocks that look the same from the outside, are in fact very different from each other. Some of them lean on an angle or become slightly narrower near the top. In fact you realize that probably no two blocks are exactly the same. Looking through the alleys between the blocks, you can see the rest of Berlin, reminding you that even though one is inside this monument, one is also inside Berlin.




In spite of all the serious history tied to the city, Berlin is also a party town. I think the description is "sexy and poor," as the stage for one of the World's largest electronica party scenes, as well as rampant post-unification unemployment.











I ended up briefly checking out this club in Mitte, one of the cheaper and more hip areas of the city. The artists played a mix of electronica music supported by an accoustic guitar, spoken words, and videos projected onto them and a white screen behind. The dance area had room for about thirty people, who added a surprising amount of atmosphere and energy in spite of their small numbers.

After the club I ended up at a house warming party. Hours later, this is what was left of the balcony, which was prolly the cleanest place in the house at that point.








Finishing the night was Till spinning some electornica...











... and making fun of the past. After talking with him the next day, I was glad to discover that young Germans very much look forward to the future and see a unified multinational Europe, built when the older generations, those from the war, those from the Soviet era, and those from the Soviet era opposition finally leave politics.



After staying up the whole night, the next day I went with the people from the party to an electronica festival out in the fields about an hour outside Berlin. I was pretty excited as the drive in the second gen twinkie van took us on the autobahn through beautiful countryside. However, as we were getting close to the place, we kept driving around corn fields on unpaved roads, making me slightly concerned we might get stuck and have to walk back at night to the nearest town. When we finally got there and the guys deployed the VW with an efficiency equal only to the speed with which they've lost their shirts. The area was a huge field surrounded by forest and bordering a small beach and a lake. Before the music started we were hanging around on the beach drinking beers and catching some rays. To my surprise many of the people there were naked. However seeing nude as the law of the land and not having a bathing suit, I followed suit and jumped in the water. :)

Finally on the train pack to Poland I got a shot of these storks, a Polish symbol of homecoming after a long, exhausting journey.

Kraków

The final IIE CESRI debriefing was located in the beautiful ancient city of Krakow. Wawel castle and its church are some of the oldest buildings in the city. At the entrance to the church hang the bones of slain dragon, in reality whale ribs. As the legend goes the city will stand as long as the bones remain chained to the church.


Wawel Cathedral also houses the Zygmunt bell - largest in Poland, and famed throughout Europe for it's clear tone. As the legend goes the tone comes from a silver string donated to the bronze collection for the creation of the bell. The bell is truly massive as can be seen from the giant timbers supporting it. It takes eight men to ring it, which is only done on special occasions and only major religious holidays.

In the main city square is the Cloth Hall, or Sukiennice. Usually in the cities founded under the Magdeburg law, as Krakow was exactly 750 years ago, the center of the city is taken by the city hall. However, because trade was so important to the city, the merchant cloth hall was given that central position. As you can see the square is not completely filled with tourists, as is the case in Prague. The word on the street though is that in the coming years Krakow will be equally as overrun. Indeed much of the old city is dedicated to tourist traps with many of the storefronts being taken over by designer clothing stores.

One of the original attractions was an oscypki stand. Oscypki are smoked ewe's milk cheeses, traditionally made by highlanders in the Tatra mountains. Recently oscypki have been included on the protected regional food list of the EU, meaning that they can be produced only in a specific region. At this stand one could buy a small oscypek from the grill with some cranberry jam for a buck. The smoked skin remained relatively intact, while the inside of the cheese was slighlty melted. Together with the cranberry jam this is one of the best snacks I've ever had.

Jagiellonian University founded in 1346 is the oldest university in Poland. Initially it was set up as a monastery, with professors sleeping in small cells above the lecture halls. They would come down the spiral staircase for meals eaten in silence in the dining hall in the picture.

Girl with a halo

I saw the coolest thing the other day! I know its a little hard to see (I had to pull the camera out in time and shoot from the hip, through a window of moving tram), but there in the distance, across the street is a girl walking with a guy behind her. The guy is holding a logo of a company on a poll above the girl's head. At first tho, you don't see the poll, just the logo bobbing above the girl's head! What a brilliant idea for a promotion!

Ikarus

Some of my fondest memories of Warsaw as a kid, was riding on the public transport system with my grandmother. She taught me how to appreciate the different people that were on the bus (in those days practically everyone since few people had cars), they were they looked, or their conversation. You could really encounter anyone, from all strata of society often making the experience very educational - sort of like traveling to different countries. My favorite is still this guy I once say with a comb over. The trick was that instead of combing over the hair left to right, or right to left, he had it wound in a spiral. And not just a little bit, he must have had at least foot and a half of hair up there. Picture a hair turban. Anyway, I've been trying to get a picture of a one of the buses that used to run back in the day, but most of the buses on the streets are new, and many of the old ones, make Ikarus, have been modernized. I finally got lucky the other day and got a picture of one of the old ones, still with a manual gearbox. I remember being fascinated by this gearbox as a kid. The layout of the gears is completely different, second gear for example is up, and third seems to be, to the right. Apparently, I wasn't the only one that tried to break this gearbox code. Szymon, my flat mate, also spent many a ride as a kid hopelessly trying to discern the method of this shifting madness.

Trzepak

I finally got lucky and was able to get a shot of local kids playing on one of those installations used for cleaning carpets. Although it is not quite the shot I wanted of ten kids hanging off of one, playing valley ball is almost as good.

Plucha

Yesterday (and today actually) it's been raining all day. While Warsaw is beautiful in sunlight, personally, I prefer it in the rain - or at least a good overcast. It's not hot, the car fumes have been washed out out of the air, and there are plenty of cafes to step into for a warming cup of tea and biscuits.




One of the places was this giant bookstore built in a pre-war "kamienica," or tenement. I bought three modern Polish books. Previously relying on libraries or friends to supply me with reading materials I had no idea how expensive books are! No wonder all these literary types are always poor!










Another place encountered along the way was this small cafe called Zakątek. Apparently Krakow has many such places built into the cellars. This particular place was filled to the brim with cigarette smoke. I guess people didn't feel like smoking outside in the rain.






Walking back I couldn't help myself from taking another shot of the the Palace of Culture - it looked really neat in the almost sunset.

Wesele

I have often heard that few people party as long or drink as hard as the Polish at their weddings. To ascertain this claim, I have hoped to have the opportunity to check out such a celebration. This past weekend one of my roommate's friends was going to a wedding in a Southern town Kielce and graciously agreed to take me along.
Of course I've forgotten to bring my camera to the wedding ceremony, but no one else was taking pictures either, so I figured it just as well. Pretty much all the weddings in Poland are a Catholic affair and very traditional. This one was no exception, taking place in a little wooden church, traditionally in the bride's parish. After the ceremony, buses, as old as the Communist roads they drove on, took us to the wedding hall for two days of eating and drinking. Unlike American weddings I've been to, guests in Poland are, as much as the room allows, seated at long tables. While often that leads to place trading and fights for seating closer to the bride and groom, in my opinion it is the key to a more inclusive celebration.
The wedding party begins with food immediately after everyone enters the wedding hall. Soup, a second course and deserts are placed in quick succession. Another set of waiters places an ice cold bottle of vodka is between each four people. The vodka is tapped at regular intervals throughout the night, measuring the long hours with many, many toasts of long life and prosperity to the newlyweds. As the dinner dishes are cleared from the tables what remains are ever more numerous empty vodka bottles, chasers and mixers, and finger food of fish and cold cuts. Of to the side was a "village" table covered with hams, sausages, mushrooms, beacon, pickles, and bread, frequented mostly by men. For the brave there was also a table with "bimber," or 150 proof home made vodka. I would just like to say that after trying that stuff, regular vodka went down like apple juice - and yes, you could even taste some sweetness.
As the party went on and the participation in the numerous toasts began to wane, the band came into the dining room and began singing traditional Polish wedding songs. The young and the old alike joined hands and sang together about the bright future of the newlyweds and, curiously, about lost love. I have observed that many Polish songs, both in the popular culture and the wedding repertoire, are about the good old days long gone and unrequited love.
The party went on alternating between dancing to not to be heard anywhere else Polish wedding songs, games along the lines of musical chairs, and regular breaks announced by the band for either more vodka, or more food. Apparently there is something of a wedding timekeeping system punctuated by different foods. One of the breaks was hot potato noodles with gravy at about midnight and at about 2AM red barszcz, announcing the end of official celebration. After the barszcz it was apparently ok to leave, though the party went on for many more hours, finally ending with the band kicking everyone out at about 6AM.
The next morning, well at about 2PM, started poprawiny, or the second day of partying loosely translated as corrections. More meats, sausages, bigos, soups in bread bowls, deserts, and definitely more vodka, welcomed by everyone's hangovers. While the party started a little more slowly than the night before, it picked up quickly and lasted well into the night. While the young people mostly sat around the tables and talked, a group of 6 couples, I guess in their forties, were living it up. They had a guitar with then and sang many traditional campfire songs, drank more bimber, brought outside specially for them. I bowed out at about 8PM to catch a grimy train full of smokers back to Warsaw, but at that point I was just happy to sit somewhere quietly without someone offering another toast every fifteen minutes.

Zamek Królewski

Yesterday I took a little trip to the Royal Castle. I wanted to see an exposition of Polish and Saracen arms and armor, but (can you believe it) not enough people frequented the show, so its open hours had to be reduced. Of course no one bothered to post the change on the website! Not being interested in their permanent expositions (sorry, the rooms and furnishings of the Polish government in exile after WW2 seemed even lower on the general interest scale than arms and armor) I decided to check out the Castle another time. Nevertheless, I got this pretty cool shot of the Castle and Columna Zygmunta (King Zygmund's Column) in front. I've overheard a tour guide saying that should the King lower his saber the city will fall. I don't really know, but I would place that story's credibility right up there with the architect of the Sechenyi bridge purported suicide over lion tongues.
Instead of the Castle, I checked out this pretty cool cafe in the old town recommended by one of Olga's friends. The place is called Same Fusy, which refers to old tea leaves as well as a slang name for rejects. The cafe is a door front that quickly descends into the cellars, where the tables are located. The atmosphere there was amazing. I tried to capture the feeling of the place. A cool thing that you may be able to see is that the tables are made of some translucent stone and are lit from below.

Bar Mleczny

Grandpa and I went on another one of our walks through Warsaw. This time in to the Southern Centrum and Northern Mokotów. While we were talking about cars and fast women, we passed a number of cool buildings and streets. The first picture is of a very important circular church, which's name I forget. The cool thing about it, besides the circular layout, is that it extends underground to about where the picture was taken from.
A picture of a typical pre WW2 Warsaw street (or its rendition after the post war reconstruction).









A pretty cool restaurant front. The restaurant is called "Under The Giants."










We've also found one of the relics of the Socialist era - a milk bar. In these places you can buy for next to nothing all kinds of dairy based dishes, like pirogies, crepe pancakes with cheese, all kinds of noodles, and creme soups. Students and poor people used to attend these regularly before the dollar menu lowered the bar with grade F meat.
A unique thing is the way one orders. You chose your dishes from the menu and pay at the register, they give you a ticket, which then you carry to the kitchen window. A woman there rudely grabs it and disappears without a word. Some minutes later she appears with a plate of something and yells out the name of the dish. Now, since everyone is waiting for similar things people have to discuss who ordered first, though if you're quick you can simply swipe the dish before other people claim it.