Day 10

Jenna:

Update: Apparently the internet card is not 209 kl, it’s 29, making it about $15 instead of $100 like I though. I went down there to ask her how much it cost 2 different times, so I am not really sure how I could have been so confused 2 times in a row. I am thinking this is definitely not a good sign for the future for me?

We woke up feeling much better this morning after a good long rest at our hotel, ready for Zu and her boyfriend to pick us up for the day. I am going to call him Cam on this blog because I have no idea how to spell his name, although you do pronounce his full name Kah-meal. Phonetic English spelling of Polish words always makes me laugh, when I first met TH I spelled his name Sua-veck, because that is how I spelled it phonetically in my head. It wasn’t until after 2 months or so this his best friend one day said “You know that isn’t how you spell his name right?” But I digress…

Cam instantly had us laughing, and combined with Zu’s adorable little personality I think we were pretty much guaranteed a great day. Our first stop was the Ruda museum. Ruda is considered to be rather small, or at least TH always made me think it was very small, but I think that having a museum is a pretty big deal. We saw the works of a local artist, lots of newspaper articles and war medals, and a huge collection of books that a famous Ruda historian had compiled about the town. My favorite rooms were the ones set up in the style of old time Polish homes with examples of clothing, washing machines, bedroom and bathroom/kitchen. Yes, the bathroom used to be located in the kitchen, which I guess is true for old time American cabins as well, it was just kind of strange to see it set up in person. I think that I would prefer a little more privacy than those little homes could provide. I loved the little dish in the kitchen that said “Warm Sausage” on it. If you were going to make a dish for some type of specific American food what would it be? Maybe old french fries?

Up next was another mine tour, but I was starting to get a little hungry after skipping breakfast (I think $14 is ridiculously expensive) and so Zu ran in to this little shop to get what she called the typical “student snack”. A hard roll, a sausage, and a very large sweet roll with cheese and poppyseed (the American equivalent of a donut I think, and see what I said about the poppyseed being all over the place?) After tasting it, I decided that TH was right, Polish sausage is better than anything I have ever tasted in America. I was pretty hungry so it didn’t take me long to gulp my bread and sausage down before we started on our tour.

I am a big fan of anything that involves some kind of a costume, so this tour was off to a good start when they gave us long blue jackets, hard hats, and some kind of an emergency breathing machine. You will see that in all the pictures with my outfit on, I am still holding onto my bread and sausage, I was so hungry I didn’t want to put it down! On all of the tours we have taken, you have to purchase a “foto pass”, which is kind of a smart little way to make money off of tourists who want to take pictures of everything they see. I think that tour guide pretty much hated us, as we were worse than some of the children on the tour, whispering to each other and wandering away whenever there was something different to look at, but this tour was entirely in Polish so we were pretty lost the whole time. Zu and Cam did a great job of trying to translate for us, but you would have to have a pretty impressive Polish-English vocabulary to be able to keep up with the mining language I am sure he was using. As with any situation, we made the best of it by taking lots and lots of pictures. Cam definitely got a kick out of the amount of self portraits I was taking. Inside the mine we saw a ghost, no dwarves (unfortunately), some sad little horse replicas, and a few exciting explosions. I had my little emergency canteen ready by my side at all times in case the explosions got out of hand. Not to be worried though, I think they were just to get the group excited again.

The tour went back to the main room to turn in our gear and take a small break before continuing on and while there I went into the bathroom to wash my coal covered hands and fix my hair. Apparently I took a little too long because the group left us! We wandered around for a few minutes and then decided to just move on with our own little Ruda tour. I think we saw every single school that TH ever attended, and the church that he grew up attending. We visited the cemetery where his grandparents are buried, and on the way out we saw the most adorable little hedgehog ever! I was thisclose to picking it up and putting it in my pocket and trying to sneak it through customs.

Lunch/Second Breakast/Dinner (I can’t remember what they call it here), was again amazing, with this clear soup with vegetables and chicken (called “Cottage Soup”) that had me wanting to lick the bowl. The main course was two different types of meat, with these cute little squishy potato noodles. I tried so hard, but I couldn’t even finish it all, I was stuffed! I was a little confused visiting the bathroom because instead of a man and a woman symbol there was an upside down triangle and a circle. I chose the circle, and I think I was right.

Next up was the mall, where things started to get exciting. The mall has a Sephora, which made me very happy, and basically sealed the deal in my mind. I call any country civilized if it has a Sephora within its boundaries. The guard was not happy with the pictures I was taking, and asked me to please stop. We walked a loop around the mall, stopping in a pet shop along the way to see if the Parrots spoke in Polish (they never did talk for me), and where I fell in love with a Chinchilla. Has anyone ever seen a Chinchilla in the US?

In Poland the mall has a grocery store inside, which is basically the greatest idea ever because you can get all of your shopping done in one store. It’s really much better than Wal-Mart. I can pick up some new fun mascara and lip gloss from Sephora and some milk all at one place. I don’t have any pictures of the grocery store because apparently taking pictures in any store is not allowed in Poland. I took a picture when I first walked in and this normal looking shopper turned me around and started talking to me in Polish. I smiled apologetically because she could have been speaking Tongan for all I understood, and she went away. Apparently she left to go tell on me because a few minutes later the security guard stopped me and told me not to take pictures. Now in America, this would mean don’t take pictures so flamboyantly, so when we saw the onion display I snuck a few shots of what the Polish onions look like so my dad could see. Either the regular shopper lady spy was following me, or they have some pretty killer cameras because it didn’t take long for the same guard to hurry over and tell me that if I didn’t delete all of the pictures in his presence they would have to confiscate my camera, or maybe he said there would be trouble. Either way, I decided that a few illicit photos of onions wasn’t worth the confiscation of my little baby camera so I gave in. Good thing I had a translator there or I think the was angry enough to grab the camera out of my hands and take off with it. Apparently the Polish store owners are very protective of their merchandise. After we stopped breaking the rules, we went through the candy aisles looking for all kinds of fun Polish chocolate to try. We walked out of the store with 2 full bags of good things to try, and it only took us a few moments to rip the bags open and start sampling.

Zu is great because she always wants to eat something sweet (which I love!) and so we stopped at an ice cream stand to give some Polish gelato a try. They had the best yogurt with cherry I have had in Europe so far, and the dark chocolate with orange ice cream wasn’t bad either. I think I am going to have to go through an ice cream detox program when I get back.

Both Zu and Cam really love the outdoors, so they took us out to the countryside to go for a walk. It smelled so beautiful, I instantly began scheming ways to bottle it up and take it home for everyone else to experience. We went out into a field of yellow flowers (canola my Dad says), and I taught Zu to play the “Make the Face You Would Make” game that my roommates and I love to play. It basically consists of the person behind the camera telling the people in front of the camera to make the face they would make if they were in a certain situation. I’ll let you guess what we were acting out when you see the photos. A walk in the forest near Cam’s house yielded pictures of escargot (which apparently people hunt and send off to France for people to eat) and a trip into the bushes for my Mom. There is a serious shortage of public bathrooms in this country. On the way back to our hotel we saw a geese farm, another thing I have never seen in the US, probably because we don’t really eat a lot of geese there. Or at least, I don’t.

I would say our second day in Poland was just as successful as our first, and it was so fun to spend the day with 2 people my age. Mom is so young and fun she fit right in with all of us in our 20’s. Thank you Cam and Zu for such a wonderful tour!

Today is going to be a little bit more depressing, with a trip to Auschwitz planned, and I am not sure what else. I am glad we are going to do it though. Until tomorrow!