In Zawiercia, arrived a few days ago. A soggy day, after a few brilliantly sunny days.

Staying at Ewa's parents place. It's nice here, I feel very welcome, despite barely being able to communicate with them. Ewa's dad has found a solution: to just talk to me in Polish anyway, whether I understand or not. Sometimes it's like a bad theatre rehearsal or something, he'll ask a question, I'll forget my line, he'll give me the answer. Like jak jest? *blank expression* dobrze. dobrze, dobrze!

Heading back to Krakow to start packing for our move tomorrow. Looking forward to the next month and getting back into some routines, working again, whenever my carta pobytu finally arrives.

The church on the hill behind Zawiercie. When I got lost yesterday wondering around, it was my reference point, my beacon on the hill. There are a lot of churches in Poland, perhaps unsurprisingly. Ewa sometimes comments that despite there never being much money, especially with older people, whenever a new church is going up there's never any shortage of it.

bricks for utopia

Came across this massive pile of bricks, wondering around Zawiercie yesterday. It seems self-explanatory enough, until you realise that it's been there for over 20 years and dates to the communist era. Some guy probably bought them simply because he could, not trusting in the flippancy of a brick market controlled by the government. His reasoning might've gone, "there are bricks available, I don't know when more bricks will be available - I should buy these bricks!" this thus might be an unassuming monument to the perversity of communism.

Out n' about in Krakow. The top one is just near the Copernicus Hotel, where Bush stayed when he was in Poland a few years ago, and looming at the end of the street is Wawel castle.

On the Planty :)

This was from a ceremony we came across commemorating the victims of the Katyn massacre, which occurred in 1940 when Beria ordered the NKVD to execute approximately 22 thousand Polish prisoners of war, including 8000 military officers, and many policemen and public intellectuals. Lots of things to commemorate in Poland from the 20th century.

Polish radical nationalists

Approaching the market square today we heard this ruckus, people chanting "Polska cała zawsze biała," whole Poland always white! and lots of other stuff I couldn't understand. I looked at Ewa and she was trying to make sense of it. Rounding the corner it all became clear. They were members of the NOP, or 'National Revival of Poland,' basically skinheads, chanting about Poland staying white and Catholic and non-Jewish and robustly heterosexual. Another one was "unia europejska to banda złodziejska," the EU is a group of thieves! At one point someone confronted the guy who was leading them, the guy in gray with the loud speaker, and he spat on him.





It's not as big as it seems, those in the photos are about the extent it. So it wasn't a huge demonstration. Ewa was quick to tell me this is unusual in Krakow. In the 2005 federal elections the NOP got something like 0.05 percent of the vote, so it's not like Poland's on the brink of revolution. Maybe that's why they're so angry, they sense their own irrelevance.