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Poland po polsku

Today I discovered that while skating at the Tor Stegny is quite economical, it has been even more economical because I have somehow been slipping in without paying the entrance fee...

We went again this evening and both children skated with me. Sessions start on weekdays at 5:30 p.m., so we strapped on our (admittedly rather uncomfortable plastic) rented skates and slid out onto the fresh ice just as the session began. The sky was blue and it was still light, but over the course of an hour we watched the light disappear and the skies turn dark. Gorgeous.

Even though the skating rink is located in a part of town that is still developing... surrounded by mud and parking lots and highrises and hospitals, some of which seem to have lost their financing in the middle of construction.

We could still smell the circus that had unexpectedly arrived and set up a bigtop last week, complete with animals and RVs for the performers. By today the scent and some sand from under the bigtop were all that remained. I guess it pulled in for the weekend only.

The visit was bookended by the guy collecting receipts at the door (I still don't know what he said to me, but I eventually figured out that the Kassa was open and that I needed to pay to get in) and a couple of girls who asked me "która godzina?" I answered in a mix of Russian and Polish -- half past six -- and they guessed what I meant. Between the bookends -- mostly horrible pop music in English, though the girl band cover of Rod Stewart's "Do you think I'm sexy?" was matched by the theme from "Saturday Night Fever," La Bamba by Los Lobos, and the theme from the movie "Kinky Boots."

Those songs made me dance, on ice, and made the children skate away from me as quickly as they could!!


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