Parejko in Poland, the Sequel

No pictures, yet. I left my camera-computer cable at home, and til I beg, borrow or buy another, they'll stay in the camera.

Flight out of Chicago was supposed to leave Thursday 10 p.m., didn't get off til 1 a.m. Otherwise the trip was uneventful. Getting used to the new time. 2 p.m. Saturday here, which means it's 1 a.m. Saturday, your time (I'm 7 hours ahead.)

On the plane (LOT, Polish airlines) sitting across the aisle from me was Janusc Majewski, wearing a Boston Marathon t-shirt. I asked him if he was a marathoner. He said, yes. I think he was returning from the Chicago marathon...we got to talking. His first marathon was when he was 40. He's my age, now (64.) LOT & other companies sponsor his runs. He's from Gdansk, up on the Baltic, and is a trainer for the Polish Navy. He said he's run 1400 marathons, all over the world. I'm pretty sure I heard him right, about the 1400. That works out to about one a week for the last 25 years...He did say his knees are going. I commisserated with him. The plane was pretty full, and LOT gave him a whole row of center seats so he could sleep lying down. I told him about Jim running his second marathon earlier this year, in Calgary. He said it takes 6 or 7 marathons before you get a real sense of what your body can do.

The first thing that drew my attention to him was hearing a black man speaking Polish...

On the 3-hour bus ride up here from Warsaw, watched a beautiful sunset over the Polish countryside, the sun setting just a big later than back home (we're farther north here...)

It's great to be back here. Feels like home, in a way. Andrzej has found some money somehow to fix the place up. The bathroom on our floor is brand new, a big improvement. They had been embarassingly substandard.

After a 10 o'clock supper last night, in the school cafeteria, several of us went out for a beer, at our favorite watering hole the Krajina Piva. As buddy Jim & I walked in, the bartender's eyes lit up, he smiled, and reached out a hand, welcoming us back, in English. Pints of really good mostly Polish beers run about $1.50 to $2.00. That's after paying $5.50 for a pint of Smithwicks or Guiness, in New Haven. My first pint back on Polish soil was a Svyturys Ekstra, a light Lithuanian lager that was great, and rates very highly on the internet.

I got up early this morning & went out to the farmer's market & bought some nice sweet cherries (ceresnia) and at a small grocery some kefir, kind of like yoghurt but drinkable, and this one had beets, dill, cucumbers & radishes in it -- it was labeled as chlodnik kefir; chlodnik is beet soup. Really very good.

More, later!
Love,
Ken