Krakow

Daily Life

October 22, 2004

Derek and I got harassed by two drunken skinheads at the train station today, but soon enough the police were there and the skinheads left with the cops.

We then got on the train and soon Derek had introduced himself to a girl named Justinka. We started talking and soon realized that she is a mutual friend of our friend, Kasia. We were all on our way to Prague and decided to meet up once we got there (Derek and I were making a stop before then).

Not long after this the ticket lady came around and took our tickets. She then asked for our legitymacja and took a few minutes looking at them until she barked out orders we didn’t understand. Justinka translated and said that we got on the wrong train… but only because this train is fast and we should have been on a slower train, so we had to pay the difference of 10.34zl and a fine of 6zl.

November 6, 2004

Tonight I played monopoly with my roommates, Dan and Magnus. It was the Warsaw version and I really wish they had a Krakow version, but I hear that doesn’t exist yet. I won the game, the first time I’ve ever done that, so I was excited.

November 11, 2004

To finish off the night I cleaned the kitchen, not that this is exciting or worth writing about, but the recycling system here is. I asked Dan what I should do with our empty cans because we typically don’t use products to recycle and when we do he takes care of it. He said that our Polish friend, Kasia told him that the way to take care of recycling is to put the cans/bottles/etc. outside on the sidewalk and homeless people come around and collect them, then turn them in for money. There are recycling centers, but everyone just puts their cans outside and lets the homeless people take them for the money. I guess this makes sense, I just never would have thought about it myself, so I did as I was told and sure enough they were gone the this morning.

November 20, 2004

I decided that I was finally going to get a haircut and so I found a little place around the corner and stopped in. Luckily I looked up how to say hair cut before going, although it helped little. I entered to find two Polish women talking as I tried to ask if they spoke English, I was told no, but they said that wasn’t a problem because I spoke good Polish, an inappropriate compliment.

What stuck me was that next they asked me why I was there and so I used my new word and asked for a haircut. The one woman told me to sit down in the chair and said that she was listening so I told her that I wanted my hair short on top and very short on the sides, as I pointed to the electric razor. She understood I believed and started cutting the sides. She finished, but didn’t touch the top and asked if I liked it. I said it was good, but I wanted the top short too, so she continued cutting, at which point I said very short and again pointed to the razor. She then understood and helped me out; she did a fairly good job as she continued to talk to her friend who was sitting a couple seats away from me. It was a little awkward, but we managed to communicate enough that I got my haircut and I paid her the right amount so all was good.

November 21, 2004

It’s been snowing the last day and a half and it’s awesome, I’m so excited about it. The city looks great draped in a gown of snow.

The city does a surprisingly good job of snow removal and the Rynek is completely free of snow… this perhaps takes something away from the Rynek however.

I saw a grandfather with his grandson having a snowball fight; the grandfather was taking it to him, but both were smiling and laughing. I then went over to Massolit, the English-language bookstore and tried to find a book to read, but they didn’t have anything that interested me too much.

To change subjects, yesterday was the Ukrainian presidential elections and the Russian-supported candidate won, not a big surprise, but the way things went after that were. The western supported candidate was more popular based upon polls and this was a huge surprise seeing as how the opposition almost completely banned him from any and all advertising. Nearly his entire campaign was word of mouth and the people liked him as did the west.

Come election night however there was a mysterious ballot-counting break of two hours and when they came back to counting, the Moscow supported candidate re-gained the lead never to look back. The speculation of what happened won’t be solved, but the effects might be.

The city of L’viv won’t recognize the results and refuse to see Kuchma (the current president who won according to officials) as the president and the city of Kyiv is very pro Yushenko and are also outraged.

Our class today was interrupted by a protest. We realized it was a huge group of students peacefully protesting the election results with candles and flags of Ukraine. They were chanting Yushenko and were holding hands creating a chain. I was kind of surprised to see this kind of support especially considering Ukrainians and Poles historically haven't been known as friends.

October 28, 2004

Moving back a few days, I went to a rally for the democratic elections in Ukraine, it was ok, but I now know why I don’t attend rallies and why I’m not very politically active. There were a number of speeches then the people kept interrupting with chants like “Yushenko,” “Democracy,” and “Putin is an ass,” etc.

It was dull and here it is only a show of support, there is no true influence. I wouldn’t go to another one unless it was to change the course of history. It was nice to see that the students in Krakow support Ukraine and were pro-Ukraine in their chants.

December 2, 2004

We told ourselves (Dan, Magnus, and I) that on December 1 we were going to turn the heat on and we did in a great ceremonial fashion. What we failed to recognize was that turning on three heaters at full blast would blow the fuse and so we would continue on without any heat.

We finally got to bed at about 4:00am after trying to fix the fuse and make sure we could salvage our food. The next morning we got an electrician at about 9:00am and he fixed everything, unfortunately also woke us all up.

Elizabeth bought Cricova wine today - Codru and red champagne, two of the most popular wines in Moldova, where both Elizabeth and I have lived. This was for an Erasmus party near Maly Rynek, which is Europe's student exchange program.

The restaurant/bar we went to was great, it had an open five-floor tall foyer in the middle and had rings of tables around each floor.

June 21, 2004

Brent and I did a street performance tonight and it was fantastic, the crowd loved us and I think I may have a real future as a mime.