Travelling within Poland

Last weekend we got out of town. Over the course of 3+ days we managed to use every kind of transportation possible:

bus to the train station in the morning;
train to Krakow -- 2nd class, but a rather nice compartment with six seats -- we had the window, which gave wonderful views;
the Polskibus (as in Polskibus.com -- we think someone must have seen the Megabus model in Chicago!) from Krakow to Zakopane -- an essential change of transportation mode, as the train from Krakow to Zakopane takes 5 hours, and the bus takes just over two...)
on foot much of the time within Zakopane:

Except:

minibuses to the ski hills
two kinds of ski lift, including a butt lift that defeated me more than once...

and a KULIG -- a horse-drawn evening sleigh ride with torches AND a kielbasa roast.

We reversed the trip (Polskibus, train) and even took a taxi home, since we returned fairly late on Sunday night.

The mountains were awesome, the air was fantastic, and we finally went to a waterpark. (I have been avoiding waterparks in the U.S., since my impression is that they are loud and not very clean and so chlorinated that it becomes difficult to breathe... but in Zakopane the Aquapark is very clean and quite lovely -- not only does it have 3 story floor-to-ceiling views of the mountains, the longest slide goes outside into a geo-thermally heated pool, and the air out there felt great in my lungs.)

Comments

Cringeworthy? Really??

It's so sad. I've gotten my first reaction to my new book. Well, second reaction. My sweet husband was brought to tears reading the introduction (possibly because he remembered just how many drafts of each section of the book, and of all the sections left on the cutting room floor, that he had read, and read, and read before). But now I've heard from a potential reader that his Russian friend-in-exile (and more importantly that friend's teenage son) think the title is кринжовый. Ouch. That hurts. Why do we need Russian literature? Do we? My Polish friend wrote to encourage me when she saw my linked in post about the publication and assured me that SHE and all her friends still love Russian literature ... even and despite the fact that Russians sometimes misbehave. (Some Russians more than others, and sometimes not just misbehaving--the world's reaction to the murder of Alexey Navalny in prison is noteworthy and important. We need to hold those responsible in contem

Personal Sanctions. Second Reactions

On Thursday I fled Denver in the face of what was promising to be an epic snowstorm. (My AirBnB host, who grew up in Michigan, advised that Denver is quick to hit the panic button, but I didn't dare stick around to find out. I needed to be home before Monday!) In the plane, waiting for de-icing, I checked my e-mail and learned that I had been added to a so-called "stop-list" of U.S. citizens who are being personally sanctioned for our attitudes toward the Russian government and its internal and foreign affairs. It's not often that you end up on a list with the head of Lockheed Martin--certainly nothing I ever expected. But then, I also had never thought of myself as a Russophobe, and now that's the label that has been affixed to me by the Russian Federation. I had just been upgraded to first class--apparently not a lot of people were fleeing Denver that morning!--so I did what any Russophobe would do: I ordered a vodka from the flight attendant. An American vodka,

RIP Randy Nolde

In everyone's life there is a teacher who motivated her to try harder, strive for more, reach beyond. Or in my case, a teacher who teased, goaded, poked, pried, laughed, lampooned, and somehow created an atmosphere where I was ready to work my tail off to make him proud. Randy Nolde, we will miss you. Mr. Nolde was my Russian teacher in high school. I first got to know him as a younger person -- the Russian Club Banquet was quite the event in my home town, and my grandmother used to take us regularly even before my sister enrolled in Russian language class. Every year, the high school cafeteria underwent a magical metamorphosis. Huge murals of scenes from Russia -- fantastic, colorful onion-domed churches, and young peasants reaping wheat, and Armenian maidens with long braids and colorful costumes -- hung all around the edges of the room. On the menu: chicken Kiev made by the cafeteria ladies, supplemented with cafeteria salad, but also khachapuri and piroshki made by the

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