Back from the Other Side

Lena, Lena's mom Lyuda, and I just got back from our weekend trip to Krakow, Poland, a thousand-year-old city that escaped Nazi bombing and maintains much of its medieval charm. I had to cross the border because I am not now able to register my visa in Ukraine and have to cross the border to get another 90-day extension. They changed the law this year ( I used to be able to stay six months without registration) which has made these little trips to Poland a necessity. I hope that next year we will be able to register in Kyiv; it's something to pray about.

The train is 20 hours there, 16 back. We had a Polish car going and a brand new Ukrainian car coming back. The Polish conductor kept us awake most of the way there, and the 8,000 cigarettes he smoked. The Ukrainian car was smoke free. Since I had been to Krakow twice, there wasn't much I was personally hoping to accomplish. Lena's mom, though, had never been. In the Ukrainian mind, Poland is sort of shopper's paradise. It gained that reputation during the Soviet Union since the quality of goods there was substantially better than in the Soviet Union. And it's still pretty much true. Or at least most things are still quite a bit cheaper than in Ukraine even though Poland has joined the European Union. I doubt it will remain that way but for now it is sort of a shopper's paradise (at least if you are from Ukraine).

I, of course, was in search of Polish cuisine. In terms of Polish cuisine, I discovered cabbage. Meals are hearty and cholesterol laden. No health craze has hit Poland yet, at least on the popular level. The ubiquitious KFC was not hard to resist with relatively cheap Polish eateries dishing out enormous portions of sauerkraut, cabbage salads, and sausages. Some moments seemed like heaven. I am a huge sauerkraut fan and can't get it in Ukraine. I guess I will make some soon but it takes so long and is hard to store at the right temperature. Anyway, Lena became enamored with the meats that were being cooked in the enormous, medieval square in Krakow as a part of their Christmas market.