8 February 2010 9:53 pm

the burgeoning fever of yesterday seems to have morphed into a full-blown seasonal allergy attack which, considering it is the middle of winter and there are no plants alive to make me feel this way, i can only assume is caused by something else.  there is something here that i am allergic to.

but, i tell you, there is nothing to make you really wake the hell up at 6 am, as you are groggily preparing for your early-morning-death class, than believing you have lost your wallet.  i stopped into the tesco on the walk home from the café yesterday, where i was forced to go when i realized staying in the house all day, sick or no, was going to make me insane.   i needed cookies.  not just any cookies, but the biscuits with the chocolate and the jelly inside that the british apparently call jaffa cakes.  i’m used to the polish variety, and in fact have spent all my life thinking these were something that just emanated from the cupboards of polish relatives, so i was surprised, last week, to find them in the tesco, home of things british, and that the name, which i had heard before, matched these things, my conception of which had them marked as something entirely not-british.

i decided last night, on the way home, that i needed them.  then i decided, on the way home, that i prefer the polish variety and will make sure to wait til i get to biedronka from now on.

with all of this battling of cookie loyalty in my head, i forgot to notice where i had put my wallet, or if in fact i had accidentally dropped it on the frozen ground in front of the empik.

heart racing, i contemplated the intricacies of trying to get a California driver’s license with motorcycle endorsement replaced from the wilds of southeastern Poland.  then i thought of all the things in there that are irreplaceable, photos and bits of paper and the like.  my expired membership card to the world war II club in Northampton.  my NOBAWC card, which is also expired, now, but sort of a good luck charm.  wheels’ business card from five years ago.  that picture of me and phil.  then i thought of the wallet itself, which i made only a few weeks ago.  only then did i think of the 70 złotych in there.  coat pockets, empty, bag emptied, no wallet, pants, hoodie, what the fuck!  panicked, i looked through  all my drawers, for some reason i couldn’t really completely understand.  finally i moved the pile of socks that seem to have congregated at the foot of my bed in this week of recuperation, when i have gotten little done aside from work and listening to some guy talk.

there, wallet, underneath the socks that have been there for days.  mystery solved, yet by creating more mystery.

i don’t believe i’ve ever kissed my wallet before.

still, it woke me up for the morning class, which meant i was the only one awake in there.  we were talking about conflict resolution, and mediation.  there was a little quiz in their book, designed to introduce them to the vocabulary of conflict while supposedly telling them how good they are with managing it.  as they were taking the quiz, i did also.  result?  i’m good with “some certain forms of conflict,” though it wasn’t smart enough to specify which, but not so hot with conflict in general.  all the students, provided they were truthful, kicked my ass with conflict resolution skills.

not a total surprise.

then i fell asleep between classes, which means i am still a groggy mess, but a groggy mess who has had waaay too much caffeine and feels like her head is heavier than the rest of her body put together.

lovely.

davis reality co. thank you google street view + printscreen function

been thinking all day about how when i first moved to san francisco, i was exploring out in the avenues on my motorcycle and i passed the intersection of geary and park presidio (well, technically 14th ave).  there, on the corner, is a realtor with a huge sign that reads, simply, DAVIS REALTY.  perhaps it was the fog in my helmet, or the fog out in the world, or the amount of phillip k. dick i was reading as i was setting up home in his former stomping grounds, but i swore that sign said DAVIS REALITY.  i thought, whoah.  reality store.

i was really disappointed when i was heading back by there and saw that it had all been a trick of the mind, or perhaps a trick of the font.

i was reminded of this, again, though while in prague because the best thing about the Czech language is that their word for REALTY is REALITY!  everywhere you wander in that city you are met with such wonders of nomenclature as MAXIMA REALITY and GREAT REALITY and, my personal favorite for so many reasons, OMEGA REALITY.

the first time i saw this i was on an escalator, back during my schooling days.  they put ads between the up and down escalators, which are impossible to read so i just assumed i had imagined it, again.  the return of DAVIS REALITY.  but, no, it is true.

thank you, Czech language, for validation.

in other news, the Polish word for “realty” is nieruchomości, which, beautifully, is derived from nieruchomy, which means “unconscious or unmoving.”

awesome.

10:24 pm

7 February 2010  11:57 am

jesus, i haven’t written in almost a week.  in that time i have been attempting to recover from the trip to prague, resettle into a full work week, and avoid the non-stop talk of the guy who’s staying in my living room.

two of those i’ve been quite successful at.  the other seems to have given me an illness.

i’m kind of burning up a little as i write this.  not a heavy fever, just a bit of a raised temperature, the kind that makes your eyeballs feel warm but doesn’t feel like full-on sick yet.  and then there’s the dizziness.  and the fact that my head feels like it’s full of brick.

all of these things were helpful in avoiding being dragged to kraków to sightsee today.

or maybe i should start at the beginning of the week.  for the back story as to why he is even here, see this.

i got back from prague and he was already in my house, which was a little awkward but ok, mostly because he seemed really respectful about my house and my space, and had barely moved waiting for me to get back.  he did keep me talking longer than i would have liked, though, which seems to be the case no matter what.  eventually i extracted myself and got some much needed sleep for my 7 am class the next day.

he’s been going off for teacher-training classes with ewa, the director of my school, every other day.  how he is learning anything about teaching in that time, i don’t know, but i only have a four-week intensive to compare it to.  the other days he observes rafał teaching and discusses the concepts he’s witnessed firsthand afterwards.  this means he is in the house all day, until about when i go to teach as well.  this has been where we have run into some problems.

well, we were getting along great, and i hadn’t really noticed the inability to stop talking, until he observed the first class, two kids who are siblings.  that was when he said, “those two kids, they’re cute.  they’re not very good, though, at english, are they?”

what the hell?  they’re kids, and beginners, so by definition they aren’t very good.  he mentioned this again, yesterday.  then he commented on the weight of another student, “he’s a big guy, isn’t he?”  yesterday he told me that Europe is such a small continent, but there is such diversity between “for example, greece and germany. if you look at south america, everyone looks and sounds the same, don’t they?”

answer:  “um, not really.”

he is absolutely dripping with question tags.

perhaps a public blog is not the place to air such grievances, but i have to get them out of my head somehow.

any interaction leads to an incredibly long conversation and an inability to retreat to the safety of my room.  the amount of classes i’ve been preparing for has helped incredibly, but every “see you later” requires even more conversation before it can be executed efficiently.

argh.

yesterday he taught my troublemaker saturday class, and i kept hearing laughter through the door into my classroom.  so i thought, great, it can’t be going too horribly.  but when i asked about it, he said they were laughing at him, not with him.  oops.

so it’s nice to have my house back, today, and it’s nice to not have to talk all day about all the details of another city.  another week of this.  maybe if i remain kind of sick i can avoid the constant requests that we go out for dinner.  that’s kind of fucked up.

we did go out for dinner one night, and then to the café for a beer, and to show him where to go for internet.  rafał and renata both treated this suspiciously, as if it were a date.  renata even asked, the next day, “how is your roommate?” in that sing-songy taunting voice so popular in schoolyards.

it was NOT a date.

aside from avoiding non-stop talk i’ve spent a lot of time trying to get my Polish back.  how can a week in prague, in which i barely spoke the little Czech that i know, have so badly ungrounded my ability to speak Polish?  on the train, when i had the trouble with the conductor, i tried to explain in broken Polish and nothing came out, not even words that i know very well.  which is strange, because when i was trying to talk to zuzanna’s boyfriend, who speaks only French and Czech, he was trying French out on me, and Polish was coming out of my mouth.  somewhere in my brain my language centers have some wires crossed.

yesterday, though, when i told the woman in the convenience store that i only had a 100 zloty bill, it came out correctly and she was very proud of me.  she has been keeping informal tabs on my progress, and has recently realized that she doesn’t have to mime as much as she used to for my understanding.

in other news, my mom and brother sent me a package full of DVDs and entertainment weekly magazines, both of which will be incredibly useful in class, and for keeping my sanity.  the magazines were a little jarring, as i haven’t seen anything like them in four months and they are so … american.  i showed them off in class yesterday, because we were talking about Hollywood, and one of the girls said, half-joking as she glanced through, “where are the Polish movies?”  i said, perhaps too truthfully, it’s Hollywood, they only care about themselves.  and she nodded like a wise old woman, not the 16 year old girl she is.

they also sent me a little nose stud, which i have been wearing in my nose for half the week, with no comments.  good.

there is some sort of crazy knocking going on all around my house.  this morning i thought someone was trying to get into the house, but it was in the walls, or upstairs, and i was a little feverish.  friday brought the return of the loud-ass drill, which i could feel in my floors as i walked around, getting ready to go.  it felt like it was coming from below, not above, and i would have thought they were done remodeling the apartment above by now.  who knows.  mysterious knockings, mysterious drills, all part of the experience.

don’t feel so witty today.  gonna go lie down.

12:54 pm

1 February 2010 10:36pm

got distracted on the train ride home by feeling moody, and by being pissed at the guy sitting across the compartment who smirked at me when the second conductor came by to check our tickets, so i never got to finish the story about the party.  or start any of the other stories i still haven’t told.  so, then, whatever.  i stared out the window and tried not to fall asleep, which was good because otherwise i would have missed tarnów.  as it was the train was going so fast that i missed my usual landmarks, grabbed my suitcase and slammed it into the knee of a guy trying to sleep, said “sorry!” in english and ran off the train before smirky could smirk anymore. i wasn’t even positive that i was in tarnów until i got a minute to look around and see the sign on the station, though it is a very distinctive station.   i forgot to say “do widzenia” to the two guys in the compartment who weren’t smirking at me, but one i had just mortally wounded with my suitcase, the other was looking at naked girls in a magazine, so i think that this is a justified oversight.

what is it with the trains in this country and porn?

all of this served to erase the good feeling i had last time i was taking a train into tarnów, and was so excited that i could tell we were there, from the landmarks and just generally getting to know the area.  i was in germany twice as long as i was in prague, but it feels like i have been gone for months, and getting back from germany almost felt like i hadn’t been gone.

weird.

so, yeah, party.

i guess what i was building up to was this feeling of community that i got from most everyone at the party, that they knew each other and yet they embraced me, that i was … welcome.  it’s a feeling i’ve been missing in my life, a feeling that used to be provided by san francisco, but that hasn’t been there for a long time.  not that i want to move to prague, nor would i necessarily find that feeling sustained there if i did.  i hadn’t found it in other ways there, so i was glad for the epiphany that reminded me that sometimes you should look just in front of your face and , y’know, be open to the possibilities.  (hippie.)

and, of course, up the punx.

anyway, at one point we all ended up outside talking about the house, and about the wonderfulness of our gracious host, and oskar kept yelling, “we are not all Czechs here!” whenever someone would forget and stop speaking english.  this is difficult for me, to feel ok about basically changing the arena of the conversation, because i was one of two english speakers at the party yet twenty people were forced to speak in their second (or third or fourth) language for my benefit.  it just felt strange because of the discrepancy in populations.  still, some of them were speaking better english than i was at that time, so there you go.

there was some awkwardness near the end, when one of the gentlemen at the party whose name i forget turned out to be much more conservative than his friends and surroundings would perhaps let on.  i can’t entirely recall everything he said, though i know that he was grumbling about the openness of the people at the party, and the sorts of things they believe.  then, as i was adjusting my goddamn long johns that i haven’t taken off for goddamn months he caught a glimpse of my legs.

good advice

“are you a fan of the girl from the Dresden dolls?”

what the fuck, i thought, does that have to do with anything.

best response for 4 am drunk:  “uh, sure.”

“are you her follower?  (long pause, no response from me).  because you have her legs.”

follower?  i didn’t know the Dresden dolls had “followers.”  having been through this sort of discussion about a thousand times since i stopped shaving my legs early in my high school career (including with a cheerleader during gym class, who took my sarcastic reply of “because i don’t know how” to her absolutely unique question to heart and tried to teach me), i caught on pretty quickly to what he was getting at.  if i had been clever i would have replied that no, i have MY legs, but apparently all my cleverness was drowning in hours and hours of wine consumption, so all i said was “huh.”

“is it a lifestyle choice?  or something else?”

“lifestyle choice” has to be my favorite euphemism for “fucking queer.”  it’s just so … newspeak.

i believe i responded with something like, “look, they’re just my legs.”  yes, incredibly witty.  razor sharp.

and then he pulled out my favorite concern of bigot-y jerks world round, “what do your lovers think?”  what the fuck does it matter what my apparent army of lovers think?  isn’t this my fucking body, huh?  men who are shocked or dismayed by my body hair also seem the most concerned with the opinion of people who might sleep with me.  whether or not they are checking to see if ANYone would sleep with me, or if they are trying to figure out what kind of people might sleep with me, or they have their own unrealized fetishes, or what the fuck, i don’t know, it is truly a preoccupation with them.  i was pretty proud of myself when i dropped all fuzziness and looked him in the eye as i replied, “they like it, or they don’t get to be with me.”

because i am a fucking prize, let me tell you.

that shut him up pretty quickly.

later he insisted that he walk me to the metro so i could go one stop to the train station, even though it is an incredibly short walk.  everyone telling him that it is an incredibly short walk to the train station did no good, he kept insisting, and even told me that it was time to go and grabbed my suitcase.  i was getting incredibly pissed with him, and wanted to kick him, until i yelled, “why do i have to go to the damn metro?” and he admitted that, in fact, he did not like to walk alone, that he was scared.

well, dude, why didn’t you say so?  so i walked him to the metro and he helped me carry my suitcase, and then immediately, when we got to the platform, said, “i have to wait over there for my train that goes that way.  so, good to meet you.” and disappeared to the other side of the platform, into the surprisingly large crowd for sunday morning  5 am.

fucking weirdo.

but before that, as we were leaving, i pressed my keys into matýsek’s hand and he seemed absolutely shocked that i was returning the keys to his house.  “but you are coming back, yes?”  i hoped he knew i was getting on a train to Poland, and then i realized that he did.  i think.  i said, “yes, but in the meantime …”  and he laughed and said, “in the meantime!”  then we clung to each other in the street and kissed each other frantically goodbye like separating siblings, not like people who hadn’t really know each other the week before.

awesome.

now i am sitting in my apartment and there is a strange british man in the other room, which is a story for another day, just like all the stories, apparently.  and who knows when i will get this shit all typed up and online.  but for now my arms are hurty and i still have not recovered from no sleep then no sleep then ten hours on the train then no sleep again.  argh.

11:27 pm

31 january 2010  2:52 pm

talk about fucking depressing … i present to you, katowice!  i discovered it’s much much cheaper to get a train to somewhere closer than kraków to the border, and buy the ticket home within Poland.  tickets within Poland are cheap.  international prices are a crime.

so, katowice.  i still have to go through kraków, and the train was a half hour late so my feet are frozen, smelly icicles.

i have to write more about the whole trip, but right now i just want to write about last night.

passing through mysłowice.  it’s kind of pretty.

so i’ve been staying in this punk house with matýsek and marek and suzannah.  the two boys are Czech, and suzannah is teaching english, like a thousand other people in prague.  since my train was ungodly early this morning, my plan was to stay up all night and make my drunken way to the train station before the sun could come up.  the boys were throwing a party in the house, so there wasn’t much choice about it anyway.  i intended to stay at the party for a while and then meet up with CR and Amanda and see them one last time before going.  that continued to be the plan for a while, though i don’t know if Amanda never called or if marek didn’t hear it, because her call was supposed to be the catalyst for me leaving the party.

when the catalyst is missing, things just don’t happen.

at first it was me and suzannah on one side of the table, the american contingent, as a slew of people spoke Czech around us.  then, either because of the alcohol, or because there was more of an awareness that we didn’t speak Czech, more and more people started speaking to us in english.  i ended up talking to oskar (i am guessing that that is how to spell his name based on absolutely no evidence) most of the night.  he told me why the Czechs love david lynch.  he was also obsessed with how much better US universities must be because people want to learn there.  “they spend free time in libraries!” he exclaimed.  i tried to school him about rich kids treating universities like debauchery summer camp, which confused and befuddled, but i had to give it to him, yes, some people go to university to learn.  “in Czech republic it is not like this,” he said somberly.

intense academic conversation in the wee hours

since most everyone at the party was a student of some sort, and often their conversations were translated for me, if not already in english, i don’t know if i agree.  who talks about architecture and the philosophy of critique drunk at 3 in the morning?  people who wanna learn stuff, that’s who.

matýsek decided (during the party, about two hours into the party) that the party should be focused around repainting the squat-looking graffiti in the hallway with different squat-looking graffiti, since it is all going to be painted over on tuesday with some fancy-pants mural graffiti.  this meant our drunken consumption of all the wine in the world was elevated to a new level of tipsy by brain-killing paint fumes.  it also meant matýsek spent a great deal of the night clambering all over the bars they have installed in the hallway (“the gym”), painting the ceiling, or the upper parts of the walls, or just hanging upside down.  show-off.  it also meant everyone’s jackets and shoes were thrown in a heap in marek’s room, and the rest of the furniture in matýsek’s.  i had been staying on a mattress on his floor, so he came up to me, worried, after moving everything and said, “i am sorry!  our room is filled with things!”

so somewhere around the time i had originally planned to leave (i’m only guessing, here, because time had no meaning by that point) things started getting really good.  i found myself having amazing conversations with so many different people, mostly about the US and the english language, and what it is like to live in prague.  oskar was in and out of my face.  once, when we were outside, he announced that “i am going back in for my wine.  the more wine i drink, the smarter i am.  you see, in an hour we will talk about all the universe!”

so we talked about all the universe.

then his girlfriend would walk by and he’d grab her and start making out mid-sentence.

the Czech dedication to public displays of affection is something i have been meaning to write about, though really there is not much to say about it.  they make out everywhere.  poles do, too, to a certain extent.   but the amount of making out (and, equally, public urination) on display in prague is fascinating.  and somewhat irritating.

especially when you’re in the middle of a sentence.

drunk guys put dogs on their heads.

but, yeah, oskar.  he was startlingly drunk, and continued to drink, and continued to talk.  then i would get into a conversation with someone else, and he would approach me again and ask about lars von trier.  or google maps.

or where, actually, is Massachusetts.

just had an embarrassing exchange with the conductor and everyone in the compartment with me.  apparently the woman at the ticket booth sold me the wrong ticket for this train, but it was the right ticket for a later train, but this was the one she told me she was selling me a ticket for.  it was late, though, so i only had to wait ten more minutes to get on what turned out to be the right train, but i was talking to a girl from Norway about her studies in Slovakia and just got on the train with her, thinking this was the right train.  i had a feeling, though, that it wasn’t, but after almost an hour on a frozen platform i didn’t want to risk that the “right train” would be late, as well.

but this is the train she told me to get on.

because there are different types of trains, and the tickets are all different, i just had to buy a new ticket.  the conductor scribbled something on the back of my old ticket and a woman with a plastic Barbie-doll face translated that i should hand that to teller in tarnów and they will give me my money back for the first ticket.

my pride wouldn’t let me just shut up and nod, though, as they all kept telling me that i must have fucked up because this train was late.  and i say, “nie, ona mowilam … mowi …”  and try to explain to the plastic Barbie woman that the teller handed me the wrong ticket, but i was on the right train, the train i was told to get on.  she just said, “this train was late.  you got on the wrong train.”  and i say, “no, she told me the wrong train, i was waiting for this late train,” and try desperately to find the piece of paper with the time and train number on it, and everyone mutters in polish and waves their arms at me until i give up.

i was right, though, dammit.  (though, to be fair, i did have a feeling …)

and then, as i was putting my new and old ticket in the pocket at the back of this notebook i am writing in, i accidentally flashed the page of Polish swears that i was teaching to CR the other day at the old man sitting across from me.

good job.

anyway, back to the party.  somewhere in the night i was outside talking to a girl about how expensive san francisco is, compared to London and prague, and some people came walking up the balcony to the front door.  the girl i was talking to turned and said hi to them in Czech, and then, turning back to me, said, “do you know that girl?” indicating one of the silhouettes that comprised the new arrivals.  it was impossible to see them, but i said, “no.”  then the silhouette said, “yes you do!  where is your mom?” in perfect english.  it was hana, who works in the office at my TEFL school in prague.  when i said i hadn’t recognized her, she said “that is because i am wearing a coat and a hat!”  which i suppose is true – i never saw her outside of the office.

we talked about the school for a while, later in the night, and she asked about my mom and what i was doing now.  i’ve been getting way too much behind-the-scenes dirt on that school this trip.

i just realized that i feel kinda crap about the run-in with the train conductor and that it was the exact opposite of how awesome i made myself feel when leaving for prague.  just when i thought i was getting some things down.  this does not bode well for my triumphant return to tarnów.

grrrr…

4:38 pm

30 january 2010   1:45 pm

not having a phone while traveling makes trying to get in touch with phone-centered people feel very much like stalking.  so i sit about and try to replenish the water in my body and wait for folks to write me back.  there’s a hobby and game shop in the bottom floor of this building, and they have a sort of clubhouse directly across from the door to the house. you can see right in the windows when the lights are on.  last night as we went by there was a solitary guy, sitting up on a cabinet, running an electric car around and around a track.

it was the saddest goddamn thing i’ve ever seen.

dark central windows = hobby clubhouse.

mcdonald’s at midnight on a friday.

“we built this city on rock’n’roll” playing loud.

no fucking way.

i miss you, san francisco.

29 January, 2010

i dunno, 4:30?

kinda feeling the pain of yesterday’s beer binge, i stayed in the house all morning staring at the computer.  unlike all of the other trips i’ve had recently, that hasn’t been a big part of this vacation so far – staring at the computer like it’s life blood – despite the fact that it seems to be the only way for anyone to get in touch with me.  technology fails me, or maybe it just wants me the hell out of prague, because my phone and facebook and email and pay phones (yes!  pay phones rebel against me here!) work everywhere else i have been in Europe.

so suzannah had to drag me out of the house as she was on her way to teach her afternoon classes.  (i’m staying in an awesome punk house with two Czech guys and suzannah, an english teacher from southern California.  so, we talk teaching).  anyway, she got me out of the house and i decided to just wander … randomly walk the sreets around the streets that i already know, which was a good plan, even if it brought me to more even more bookstores with english language sections where i, currently, can’t afford to buy anything.

the amount of bookstores in this city, alone, makes me want to move here and force one of them to hire me.

outdoor market indeed

anyway.  first i walked suzannah to the metro stop, then turned and took a little detour through the outdoor market.  how they are able to keep the thaw off the merchandise i have no idea, because it was practically raining in there, familiar-looking stuff piled around mounds of snow with water just spilling all around.  what it was thawing off of, i’m not sure.

i didn’t need anything, and the open-air market resembled the ones in Poland, though without enough of the mish-mash of cheap junk stalls that make the whole thing worthwhile (and without the religious-candles stalls, as well).  so i left, and walked right into a group of tourists loading their luggage into the belly of a tour bus.  the name on the side of the tour bus?  Rubes.

seems like a bad choice of name for a tourist company, if you ask me.

despite the two cameras on my person, i neglected to get a picture of this delightful scene.

i brought my film SLR because i’m annoyed with how little film photography i’ve done since i no longer work in a photo lab and no longer have a developing hook-up.  i mean, it’s been over three years and i’ve barely shot a roll of TRI-X.  well, i did when i stayed at my sister’s house in LA last year, and the last trip to Poland two years ago.  where is that film?  oh, yeah, undeveloped in a box in my mom’s house.

idiot.

i can barely wait for the experience of trying to get a roll of b & w film developed in tarnów.

anyway, i did some street photography, wandered kafka’s old neighborhood, tried to sneak a peak at the jewish cemetery, wondered at the number of churches in the historical jewish quarter of the capitol city of an overwhelmingly atheist country.  i was kicking myself that i didn’t bring the directions for the kafka walking tour – all the places he lived and went to school and worked.  then i realized that i think i don’t care to have that level of detail.  i prefer not knowing, and wandering those streets he wandered, taking it all in as a whole.

nerd.

now i’m in a restaurant i’ve been to before, but i knew they had fried camembert with cranberry and i’ve been craving it.

there’s a Czech version of “hey mr. bass man” playing, but since the Czech “a” sounds like “u” and they apparently drop the “man” part, the woman is singing “hey mr. bus” over and over again.

the rest of the words are in Czech.

28 January 2010  11 pm.

supposed to be meeting up with CR and his friends at the what seems to be an incredible bar/community space called the blind eye but everything broke down about a ½ hour ago and now i can’t move and can barely write.  needed to get some things out of my head, though, so i try.  it’s been an amazing whirlwind so far, with adorable dogs and flipping stomachs and amazing tensions.  coffee with CR yesterday, then we stopped by the school to say hi to terry – so strange to be surrounded by people going through what i went through not too long ago.  and we were our own island in the middle of that.  then dinner.  then crashing.

today – drinks with zuzanna & her boyfriend.  write about that later.  guess i can’t drink for 7 hours in the middle of the day anymore & stay up to tell the tale & then go out for more.

old lady.

careless whispers haunts me.  it just came on in the café bar fenix, which is the café/bar in the mall where we spent the last weeks of the course.

this picture's actually from november.

26 January 2010 8:48 am

i was interrupted last night by the train conductor, who came in and started babbling at me about something, too fast to understand, and then seemed overly frustrated when he had to speak english.  as if i wasn’t trying.  he said they were consolidating everyone in the next car down, so that we wouldn’t all freeze to death.  or, what he actually said was, “this car is cold.  next car, not cold.”

but he lied.  it was cold.

so i ended up with a couple of kids, one from hungary though she’s lived in kraków for six years for some reason, and a guy from turkey who is traveling around Europe on an interrail pass for a month.  i had seen them get on the train together and had assumed they were a couple, but apparently they had just met in kraków, possibly at the train station.

she was absolutely … jerky about the fact that maybe someone might want to live elsewhere in Poland that kraków.  “i mean, i have never been to tarnów, but … what is there to do!?!  it’s not even that close to the mountains!”

it is pretty close to the mountains, but what the hell do i care?  you won’t catch me on skis.

when i told her i lived in tarnów, at first she didn’t register, or refused to accept it, because she immediately asked me how long i have been living in kraków.

i said, “i don’t live in kraków.”

later she said she really loved it there because, “i am a student and it’s like the city is built for students!”

which is exactly my problem with the place.  thanks for reminding me.