katastrofa narodowa

Krakow afternoon

Old guys playing chess by the Viswa, with Wawel castle in the background. This was literally one minutes walk from our place in Krakow. Kind of a shame. Today we finally move to Wroclaw.

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.