Well, we’re about to start the second week of exams here… The Polish university schedule is October-February and March-June, which is a bit different than it is in the U.S. This means that the breaks are approximately one week at Christmas, a week in February, and a week at Easter. I might be biased towards the U.S. system since that’s what I grew up with, but I must admit that I prefer having a shorter exam period and a longer break between semesters.
Here, the basic structure of exams is that there is one exam scheduled per day. Of course, since people generally do not study outside of their department or programme here, this is possible because there is no worry of exams overlapping. At NYU, the exam schedule was more or less university-wide, lasted about a week, and all exams were scheduled based on the meeting time of the class. Perhaps it does not leave as much time for studying when the exam period is so condensed, but I’d rather sit the exams and get them over with. Those of you who know me know that I’m not really much for doing formal revision (unless it’s the night before/morning of) or panicking about exams, so I find it rather tedious and irksome to have this extended exam period.
Instead, I am looking forward to Madrid/Morocco when it is all over!
It’s been snowing here since November (and it is, in fact, snowing as I write this…), and if you know anything about me, you’ll know that I love snow, so I’m especially happy about that. Here are some pictures that I took around Krakow on December 16 (the Planty and the Rynek, mainly).
Plac MatejkiPlantyChristmas tree on the RynekThe Holiday MarketMore PlantyMore More Planty
Ok, so this isn’t exactly a day trip (although I suppose you could do a day trip to London, if you felt like having the longest day ever…). My university was closed for All Saints and All Souls Days, and then my department was closed for the rest of the week, so I was effectively free from 29 October – 8 November. If you’re flying from Krakow to the UK on the cheap, there are three airline options: EasyJet, RyanAir, and WizzAir. I chose to fly WizzAir because the flights were cheaper than EasyJet, and I’m slightly afraid of RyanAir after hearing horror stories. Unfortunately, this meant that I actually had to fly out of Katowice, which wasn’t bad at all since WizzAir runs a bus from the Krakow main bus station to the Katowice Airport. This worked out quite well, but next time, I would consider trying RyanAir out of Krakow simply for convenience. EasyJet doesn’t fly to as many destinations from Krakow as the other two airlines, although I think its standards of service might be slightly higher (WizzAir was fine, though).
Newcastle
I started off my trip in Newcastle, where I was visiting a friend from home who goes to medical school there. This meant that I flew into Doncaster-Sheffield Airport, since the train from there to Newcastle was a bit shorter and a lot cheaper than from London. By the time I actually arrived in Newcastle, it was about 1AM – too late to actually do much aside from observing the Geordies (wild Newcastle natives) on a Friday night. I must admit, I had heard that the Geordies were a rowdy populace, and my expectations were certainly met.
On Saturday, my friend took me to lunch at a seafood restaurant called Big Mussel. It was great to have real seafood again after so long! The mussels that we had as a starter were really good, as was my crab cake entree, and the portions were large enough that I had leftovers (people who know English restaurants know that the portion sizes can be stingy!). We spent the rest of the day wandering around Newcastle’s shopping area on Northumberland Street, where I noticed that a bit of Poland seemed to have migrated with me to the UK:
What?! I guess the large number of Polish immigrants currently in the UK is starting to have an influence on local cuisine…
We also hit up Marks & Spencer, where I got a Bakewell tart and some custard to introduce the med students to the excellence of British cuisine, and the famous Fenwick department store, which was huge and wonderful. They also had a good food section, and, more importantly, pick ‘n’ mix!!!
I can’t resist pick ‘n’ mix (indeed, I got some later in the trip, as well!), so I got a bit. Ok, I got a lot! What can I say, British sweets are incomparable.
I was initially supposed to go down to London on Sunday night (October 31), but my friend was going to a Halloween party, which seemed like a more fun alternative than taking the train to London for an Apple Genius Bar appointment and spending the night in a hostel. I was able to switch my train ticket to a 7:20am one for Monday morning so that I’d still be able to visit my rather daunting list of favourite places in London. My friend was going to a Newcastle v Sunderland football match on Sunday afternoon, which meant that I had time to go to the Genius Bar in Newcastle and also hit up the AllSaints Spitalfields fall sale (I have a thing for their leather jackets. Now I own one. And it was half the price that I would’ve paid in the U.S.). Unfortunately, the Genius Bar gave me bad news – they had to take my laptop in to replace the entire screen! But they offered some of the best customer service I’ve received from Apple recently. They agreed to ship my laptop to my uncle’s house since I was travelling – a totally out-of-ordinary-policy, kind move. Props to you, Apple Store in Eldon Square.
All ready for the football match, complete with Newcastle Brown Ale!
Well, that doesn’t sound like a very interesting day! Here’s the good part. As we were walking home from dinner near the Eldon Square mall, all of a sudden, there was a stampede of football hooligans in Newcastle gear running towards us! In the distance, I could see police in riot gear chasing after them. I am well aware of the history of stampeding + hooliganism (and the scene in The Lion King with the stampeding gazelles), so I decided the best course of action would be to turn and run away from the riot police and up a side street. Thankfully, I managed to quickly persuade my friends to do the same, and we watched the crowd run by us. When we finally poked our heads out again, we could see the police in full riot gear lined up across the street, blocking the fastest way home. Other bystanders were saying that there wasn’t actually any victory rioting, but the police were just flexing their muscles a bit – I suspect that they were trying to pre-emptively disperse the crowd to prevent things getting out of hand, but I’m not sure forcing a stampede was the way to do it.
London
When I go to London, I typically stay in South Kensington, but I couldn’t find a free hostel in that area. Instead, I stayed in Victoria in Astor Hostels (I would link it but the site seems to be down) in a quad room which was £20 per night. To briefly review the hostel: clean, absolutely no hot water, relatively quiet, super-tiny rooms, and of course, it’s like staying in a hotel run by the Thenardiers – “everything has got a little price”. You don’t get any extras for free (or hot water at all). I’ve only ever stayed in a hostel once before, in Zakopane, and I must say, I think the hostels here are a good deal nicer – but it was only for one night, so whatever.
Note: I don’t have many pictures because I forgot to put the memory card into my camera. Oops.
Churchill War Rooms
The Churchill War Rooms are a division of the Imperial War Museum (there’s the main one in London, and also another at Duxford, a major U.S. Air Force base during World War II, with an emphasis on aviation). I love military history, so I’m a bit biased, but they’re all really well-done museums, and I highly recommend each of them. Anyway, the Churchill War Rooms, originally known as the Cabinet War Rooms, are a large suite of rooms constructed beneath the Office of Works just prior to World War II. The idea was that they would be a secure site where the Prime Minister and his/her Cabinet could continue to conduct business in the event that London was being bombed. Once the Blitz commenced, the War Rooms, which are complete with living quarters, came in handy for the British government. The exhibit shows how Churchill and his Cabinet continued to function during the war, complete with excellent visuals and an audio guide. As of 2003, there is also an exhibition about Churchill’s life – it’s a good display, but some of the more technological audio-visual stuff doesn’t work quite as it should.
Winston Churchill's toy soldiers
National Gallery
The National Gallery is located right on Trafalgar Square, which is known in my family as the place where Jill falls into the fountains. Thankfully, that didn’t happen this trip (although I did dip my hand in, for old time’s sake!). The National Gallery is home to my favourite painting, Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!), by Henri Rousseau. Rousseau was a French customs employee, and since he’d never actually left France, his impressions of jungles and wild animals were derived chiefly from visits to the botanical gardens and picture books. This lends a slightly primitive, naive style to his jungle paintings. However, this is what I love about them. Plus, the simple depictions hide the complexity of the painting. If you look closely, you can see how Rousseau depicts the lush jungle using many shades of green, and how the silver paint on top of the windswept jungle scene creates the impression of rain. Finally, I love the crazed expression on the tiger’s face.
My other must-see at the National Gallery is the 13-15th century religious collection, especially the triptychs. More than anything, the factor that attracts me to a painting is the colour used, and these paintings use incredibly vibrant blues and reds and greens with gold accenting. I always find that I cannot take my eyes off of the gorgeous colours.
British Museum
The British Museum is the kind of place where you could spend a week and still only see a fraction of the collections. They have things from Ancient Egypt, and Rome, and Greece – vast amounts of artefacts. Some of the highlights include the Elgin Marbles (whose ownership is the subject of much debate between the British and Greek governments) and the Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. I like things with interesting stories attached, and so, I always like to pay a visit to the Mildenhall Treasure. The Mildenhall Treasure is a vast Roman hoard of high-quality silver tableware, found in a field by a farmer in 1942. At the time, it was the largest Roman hoard ever found in Britain, and academics were shocked at the quality of workmanship of the tableware, which indicated that Roman society in Britain was much more highly evolved than thought at the time. I initially learned of Treasure through a Roald Dahl story of the same name, originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1946. Unfortunately, I cannot find a copy online, but I highly recommend reading it – it’s captivating.
Fortnum & Mason
Fortnum’s is iconic grocery and tea shop on Picadilly with seriously excellent tea. I make a point of stopping there each time I’m in London to stock up on provisions (namely loose leaf tea). They have the basic stuff, of course, but they also carry more exotic versions as well. I managed to obtain an elderflower green tea this time around (which I’m drinking as I type this, in fact). The bottom level has a wine bar and grocery, the ground floor has the tea, coffee, jams/preserves, and bakery, as well as two restaurants, the first floor has some home goods and an ice cream shop, the second and third floors are more non-edible shopping, and the top level contains the St. James’s Restaurant, which does a famous high tea. I wanted this famous high tea, but I was quite miffed to find that they wouldn’t take me without a reservation. I mean, really, they were at most 30% full, and I was one person. Anyway, I ended up at the The Gallery restaurant on the ground floor for tea. It was good, although not nearly as satisfying as the expansive/expensive one I was looking forward to.
There was also a smoked salmon sandwich, but I ate it before I remembered to take a photo.
Anyway, it was quite good, regardless, although I think the full high tea is a better deal (neither is cheap, and if you’re going to spend the money, you might as well go all out).
After tea, which was really my linner, I did a bit of shopping on the grocery level, mostly for good cheese, something I sorely miss in Poland, and then wandered around Mayfair, where they already had the Christmas decorations up on Regent Street.
I also made a stop at Liberty to look at the wild fabric patterns. It’s like an exhibit of amazing textiles (but you can buy them).
So, that concludes my time in London. Part II on the rest of my trip tomorrow.
While living in New York, I acquired something of a sushi habit. I liked to have it delivered with my Thursday or Sunday evening television. I don’t think there’s delivery here, but I noticed Miyako Sushi when I was wandering through the Galeria Krakowska (there is another location somewhere, I hear). Since it looked clean and nice, I decided to overcome my fear of raw fish in a largely landlocked country and give it a try.
Well, it wasn’t bad at all! I was pleasantly surprised, in fact. The menu was quite expansive, and there was a decent selection of green teas. One thing that I found unusual is that the menu is a sort of create-your-own – you pick the fish and filling. Each table has some wasabi peas as a starter on the house (yay!) – a pleasant surprise for me. I ordered the uramaki special with salmon and avocado, a handroll, and (I think) some sort of rainbow roll. It was all good – not close to the best sushi I’ve ever had, but certainly not the worst, and it definitely relieved my sushi craving. The only major drawback was the prices – not cheap at all, by Krakow standards. In fact, they were comparable to what you’d pay at a suburban sushi place in the U.S. This means that Miyako will be an occasional luxury for me.
Mushrooms are a big deal over here. In the US, most supermarkets sell maybe white or Cremini mushrooms, pre-packaged and, all too frequently, pre-sliced. I think that would be tantamount to sacrilege in Poland. Here, the markets are filled with giant baskets of fresh mushrooms in overwhelming variety (the only thing I have ever seen compare is Whole Foods, and I frequently doubt the freshness of many of their varieties). There is a long-standing tradition of mushroom picking in Slavic culture, with guides being passed down from generation to generation. There’s even a scene in Pan Tadeusz, a 19th-century Polish epic by Adam Mickiewicz all about it:
“Of mushrooms there were plenty: the lads gathered the fair-cheeked fox-mushrooms, so famous in the Lithuanian songs as the emblem of maidenhood, for the worms do not eat them, and, marvellous to say, no insect alights on them; the young ladies hunted for the slender pine-lover, which the song calls the colonel of the mushrooms. All were eager for the this, though of more modest stature and less famous in song, is still the most delicious, whether fresh or salted, whether in autumn or in winter. But the Seneschal gathered the toadstool fly-bane.
The remainder of the mushroom family are despised because they are injurious or of poor flavour, but they are not useless; they give food to beasts and shelter to insects, and are an ornament to the groves. On the green cloth of the meadows they rise up like lines of table dishes: here are the leaf-mushrooms with their rounded borders, silver, yellow, and red, like little glasses filled with various sorts of wine; the kozlak, like the bulging bottom of an upturned cup; the funnels, like slender champagne glasses; the round, white, broad, flat whities, like china coffee-cups filled with milk; and the round puff-ball, filled with a blackish dust, like a pepper-shaker. The names of the others are known only in the language of hares or wolves; by men they have not been christened, but they are innumerable. No one deigns to touch the wolf or hare varieties; but whenever a person bends down to them, he straightway perceives his mistake, grows angry and breaks the mushroom or kicks it with his foot: in thus defiling the grass he acts with great indiscretion.” (Mickiewicz)
Apparently you can even arrange mushroom picking holidays (or so Google tells me). Now, I didn’t pick my mushrooms – I bought them at the Stary Kleparz (right off the Basztowa LOT tram stop), which is supposedly the best place for mushroom-buying and has the added convenience of being on my way home from class. Here are my purchases:
The one on the left is a chanterelle, the middle one is called “kania” (I think – they’re really huge and spongy and would probably make awesome mushroom burgers), and I have no idea what the one on the right is. Here is what became of them:
3-4 cups of mushrooms, chopped into big-ish pieces (fresh ones are the best!)
5 cloves of garlic, minced
1/3 c olive oil
1.5 c uncooked polenta
6 c water
1 chilli pepper, halved and seeded (if you have any functioning nerves in your hands, you may want to wear gloves for that)
1 clove garlic
a sprig of rosemary
3 tbs butter
150 g (5 oz) goat cheese
salt and pepper
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C). Toss the mushrooms with the olive oil and minced garlic and some salt and pepper to taste and spread on a baking sheet. Roast in the oven 15-20 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, make the polenta. Place the chilli pepper, clove of garlic and rosemary in a saucepan with the water, season with salt, and bring to a boil. Strain the solids out and place the water back in the saucepan. When it comes to a boil, stir in the polenta and keep stirring until it is cooked, about 15 minutes for me. Immediately stir in the butter.
3. To serve, stir the goat cheese into the polenta and spoon some mushrooms on top. I threw some goat cheese on top of that for good measure.
Note: I’d recommend keeping your nasal passages or any other membranes as far away from the chilli pepper and steam emitted by the water even after the pepper has been removed. It burns them (2 hours later, I’m still coughing…).
Shopping for anything that you might want to buy in Duane Reade, Walgreens, Boots or the like in the US/UK is a bit more complicated here. Duane Reade has absolutely everything – I mean, I think you could live off the contents of a Duane Reade in the event of nuclear war or a Godzilla attack. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent to that here, so last week, when I ran out of contact lens solution, I ended up going on something of an odyssey.
Option #1 – Rossman: If you’re walking by a Rossman, you might think that it’s exactly like Duane Reade, but this impression is deceptive. The larger ones do have most things you would be looking for (including a selection of pet food and household goods, etc.), but they do not have anything in terms of pharmaceuticals or first aid items – or eye care, as it turns out. So, I proceeded to Option 2.
Option #2 – an apteka: Apteka is the Polish (and Russian) word for pharmacy/drugstore. There is some overlap between Rossman and an apteka, for example, the larger ones have shower products and cosmetics. If you’re looking for anything remotely medicinal, it will be behind the counter, and you’re going to have to request it. I recommend figuring out what you need before you go to and writing it down in Polish. Then when the clerk glowers at you, you can simply show her your paper. However, when I requested my “płyn do kontaktow”, they did not have it, and I went to Option 3.
Option #3 – an optyk: An optyk is an optician, and this is apparently the only place where contact lens solution is to be found. They seemed to have the American brands (at least the one that I use), butt he prices were pretty high, so if you have room in your suitcase, I would advise you to bring extra.
My family travelled abroad quite frequently when I was growing up, and so I figured that I wouldn’t really experience any culture shock when I moved to Poland. For the most part, this has been true. Thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of globalisation, Poland has acquired many similarities to the U.S. However, there are still many, many differences – for example, I feel like every time I step out the door, I’m going up against some form of EU bureaucracy.
But the more time I spend here, the more the list of things I miss grows. Although I haven’t been here all that long, real life has set in at an accelerated pace, what with finding an apartment and getting it furnished and going to class, etc.
Here is that growing list:
My puppy
Silk soy milk (and other products)
cheddar cheese
being able to easily purchase first aid supplies or other over-the-counter meds
having my tchotchkes around
hopstop or Google Maps public transport support
tamari-seaweed rice cakes
Lincoln Center (Nutcracker. And I really wanted to see the new Ring cycle at the Met because the set sounds fabulous.)
fresh saltwater seafood
Whole Foods
decent selections of ethnic/speciality food (especially dim-sum, sushi, vegan, New York-style pizza, and Mexican, which I typically don’t even like)
fro-yo
Clorox products
New York in general
good baking aisles
One of the directors of my programme here had been singing the praises of Cupcake Corner, an American-style cupcake/muffin bakery right here in Krakow. The siren song reached my sweet tooth and my inner baker, and I was sucked in to the vortex of baked goods…
Cupcake Corner’s atmosphere instantly gives away its American roots – it’s the kind of place that would be at home on the LES or Hipsterville America. It’s full of smells of baking and espresso and warm lighting and a menu written on a chalkboard. There is also the ever-important free wifi. (I tried to take a picture of the menu, but it was crowded and I couldn’t get a good viewpoint.) Also, they do coffee to-go, which is still somewhat unusual here. Anyway, the cupcakes are 6 zloty and the jumbo “savoury ‘Texas’ muffins” are 8 zloty. There are also sweet muffins, but this was lunch, so I went with a savoury one.
And here we have the zucchini, tomato and cheese muffin. It was tasty and moist and a very delicious lunch. I would say the consistency was more that of a popover than a typical cakey muffin, and this is probably at least somewhat due to the moisture provided by the zucchini and especially the tomato. I would love to try the spinach, feta and tomato variety. Other muffin varieties include sausage, egg, and cheese, which would probably make a good brekkie.
The cupcakes are, thankfully, normal-sized, not the massive creations of Crumbs or other US companies. Faced with an array of options, from blueberries and cream to grasshopper (there are a few flavours that are available every day, and the rest change), I decided to go with vanilla confetti – vanilla cake, vanilla icing – since I figured vanilla-vanilla is the baseline of any cupcake company. The icing reminded me of the vanilla cream filling of the Dunkin Donuts Vanilla Kreme Filled Donut, but it was less saccharine and more homemade. In fact, the icing (buttercream) had a slight yellow tinge, indicating its from-scratchness. I am a huge icing fan, so I may have preferred a little bit more, but overall, I approved of the icing-to-cake ratio.
And then there was the cake. Oh, the cake. Those of you who know me well may recall that funfetti is my favourite cakemix flavour (especially when it has been turned into ice cream cone cupcakes with cream cheese frosting…but I digress). Well, it turns out that “vanilla confetti” means that the cake is funfetti!!! I was so pleasantly surprised. It was very, very delish and moist, which is just how I like my cupcakes – it wasn’t overly sweet and didn’t taste mass-produced, which can be a problem with store-bought cupcakes.
A few days ago, my roommate came home with a very tasty-smelling sandwich. (Due to our lack of usable kitchen in the dorm here, I have taken to getting very excited every time I see or smell hot food.) Said sandwich turned out to be what is referred to here as a “kebab”, but in the US would either “shawarma” or a “gyro” (but with chicken in stead of lamb). Conveniently, the sandwich had been purchased at a shop about a 5-10 minute walk away from our dorm – a shop that is open 24 hours! I resolved to try it.
I obviously intended to get this “kebab” sandwich, but I arrived at the shop (I don’t know its name and didn’t see one listed), I noticed that there was an item on the menu called “tortilla”, for 10 zloty. It seemed to be a variation on the kebabwich, on a flatbread with more salad-type items. So I got that instead. And I think I might just be addicted now (reviving my similar Chickpea shawafel platter addiction of 2006, before it went rapidly downhill).
First off, when you order the tortilla, do not pronounce it like you would in the US. Everyone knows that it’s “tort-EE-yah”. Well, not here. Here it’s most definitely “tor-TILL-ah”. If you pronounce it like you know Spanish, the person behind the counter will look at you strangely and say “tor-TILL-ah?” really slowly at you. The tortilla contains a mixture of sauces (white, red, and something in-between), and you can pick and choose which you want. I have no idea what is in these sauces, but the red one is the spiciest and looked something like srichacha. Then they throw in some salad items – green cabbage, red cabbage, corn (which is very popular here – odd, in my opinion), cucumbers, pickled cucumber, some sort of marinated peppers, perhaps some olives, a tomato slice or two, onions… it’s kind of a random mix. And the proportions vary depending on who’s doing the preparation. Finally, they throw on some slices of the shawarma and grill the whole thing like it’s a burrito. Then you are left to enjoy your tasty goodness.
One thing to note: this flatbread is most definitely Mexican tortilla-like. I was expecting something more along the lines of lavash, since the sign said “original Turkish bread” or something like that. It is also messy to be in its presence. I inadvertently dribbled red sauce all over myself while transporting it back home.
Kebab Shop
ul. Juliuza Lea between Nowowiejska and Urzednicza
Open 24 hours
All menu items under 15 zloty
