Poland Day 1 & 2

Getting to Poland is quite easy. You get on a single flight to Warsaw, it arrives at your destination. Only problem I had was as soon as I arrived in Warsaw, I immediately got brought over to a small (I can't state the smallness enough) Cessina called "Seneca II" to bring me to Krakow. Apparently I wasn't good enough for the first Seneca, I had to settle for a more mediocre moon. Every wind gust forced the plane to dive about 5 feet or so. Usually I fly so smoothly, so this jarred me. Anything I experienced in my entire life, any song, TV show, piece of History, friend, came to mind as I tried not to freak out in this mere shell of a plane. Thankfully it lasted only an hour, and as the trip had a meaningful purpose, rather than being some pseudo-bohemian messing around Southeast Asia for no reason. That purpose did actually get fulfilled, so I'm glad that my suffering helped ease the suffering of another. Ying and Yang, I guess.

Poland felt wonderful. In only one other country have I been mistaken as a native resident (England), so every time I did anything people spoke to me in Polish first. My location lie in the center of town, I could basically wander wherever and never get lost. Whoever set up the city over the past several hundred years did an excellent job. Completely clean and comfortable weather, with so few of the communist traces that Tajikistan had in abundance. Also, the US dollar still wielded a small edge there, unlike almost everywhere else on Earth (though again, Tajikistan was much cheaper).

My favorite part of the beautiful location had to be everyone out at all hours. No one ever seemed to be inside at any time. So many cyclists flying around, I almost got hit about 8 times walking around the riverside. Never before did I feel so comfortable, excluding my complete inability to speak Polish. I could walk around in Manhattan for hours, no one would ever ask me for directions. Within a two hour period, about 4 different people did. Including the English.

Now normally, I love the English. However, Krakow must be their Cancun. The jackasses that abounded must have been deported there, that's how bad they acted. An example: "If that cunt ever got pregnant, I'd have to punch her in the twat" referring to his girlfriend. Very nice, jerk. The beer there also ran quite strong, and by about 1 or 2 I was quite cheerful. People still sat around the main square, which just spread out over an unreasonable amount of space. You know Union Square? Guess what, that's not a real square. Krakow's got a real square, go see for yourself. An enormous amount of history everywhere, and unfortunately I did not have enough time to explore it all. Even the castles within the city, I continually missed seeing them.

Thankfully I was close to several major universities, and seeing nuns with their habit threw me back a couple of decades. Krakow stayed modern, yet had some of these random throwbacks to a much, much earlier time. Hopefully next time I'll get to spend more time with it.