I awoke at exactly 6:04 AM, paranoid that because it was daylight I had somehow missed my stop in Krakow. Never fear, we weren't due in to Krakow until 6:30 AM. SO early! I roused myself and got my few belongings together. Pavel (pronunciation as best I can understand = Paveau, kind of like French in my mind though he claims it's not) told us to not move from the platform. So we got off the train and stood on the platform....for literally 5 seconds before Pavel came up to us and said hi! A fantastically smooth CouchSurfing transition, given that it was SO early in the morning and Laura was quite delirious from not sleeping (among some other things, perhaps).
Pavel took us to a bus station where he bought us tickets, since we have no Polish Zloties yet, and we bused to his neighborhood. On the way to his flat he stopped by a bakery to get us some breakfast, which we later found out were breads with poppy seed chunks in them. Once at his flat, we ate our breads while he served us tea. Pavel is 19 and a university student, thus you can imagine the heroic feat of him waking up so early to pick us up at the train station!!! It was extremely kind.
After that, Laura went to bed and I stayed up to try and finish blogging. This took a while due to the fact that Pavel is perhaps one of the most conversational hosts we've had yet! And I mean this in the best way possible. That is what CouchSurfing is all about, talking, learning, and sharing. It is really very endearing how eager he is to learn about us and to communicate with us. He lives with four other university boys but everybody knows he has the best English; He works so hard at this language. He also really wants us to help him by correcting grammar and pronunciation, which we are more than happy to do. Usually I feel badly, like I am offending somebody, if I correct their English. This is because A) I can understand 99% of what they say, even if it's not perfect, and B) Their English is INFINITY times better than my knowledge of their language!
Anyway, I got into many interesting discussions with Pawel which were lots of fun. Eventually Laura woke up and we were hungry. At this point it felt like we had been up forever, but really it was only around 1 PM. We set out with Jacek (pronunciation: Yaht-sikh) who is Pawel's roommate who is also involved in CouchSurfing. Jacek is funny because his English is quite good he is just self-conscious of his speaking to the point of being terrified to speak to native speakers! But really, Laura and I are so easy going, and even if we couldn't speak the same language we would find a way to communicate with body language and pictures. Anyway, we understand Jacek just fine and I think throughout the week he will become more comfortable.
He first took us to a milk bar which is something Poland is known for. They started when Poles were not allowed to drink alcohol, I think, as a place to eat and drink (non-alcoholic beverages) and gather. Now, they are seen more as fast, cheap, good, traditional food suitable for people of all ages. It was lunch time so the place we went to appeared to be quite popular. We got fried pork with potatoes and cabbage. I also got some fruit juice...no idea what fruit was actually in it (in chunks at the bottom) but it was sweet and delicious. So Polish!!!
I keep getting comments about being like a Japanese photographer - which is embarrassing because Asians in general are made fun of SO much for incessantly taking pictures!! I'm not like that, I promise!!
Also, before I forget, we are the first native American English speakers these boys have heard! I think that is so cool. They know what we sound like from movies and TV shows, and they know English from studying and meeting British people, but they had never heard our 'accent' before. I thought that was pretty cool to be the first. And, they are pretty knew to CouchSurfing. Pawel only joined 5 of 6 weeks ago and already he has been hosting people every week. I am so happy to see more9 people get involved and begin hosting people so often and be so engaged in the wonderful CS project.
After food, Jacek took us all around the old city, through the main square, to the oldest university, past the town hall, to the church where the Polish president's funeral was just a short while ago, to the place where the president is buried, and to the old Wawel castle. It was quite a lot of sight seeing for one afternoon! We may have seen some other things too that I am forgetting, especially because pronunciation is so difficult for me here.
Pawel and Jacek essentially traded places as Pawel was done with classes at University at 4 PM and Jacek had class soon after that. Pawel then took us to a great brewery where we had some good Polish beer. We sat there and chatted with each other for about an hour and a half. It is always such a pleasure for me to get to know knew hosts.
Then we went grocery shopping for dinner. Pawel was nice enough to actually make dinner for us! All we had to do was sit around and talk to his roommates...Before dinner happened though I helped Pawel correct grammar etc. on his CouchSurfing profile which was lots of fun. I only feel badly that I can't explain why some things are right and some things are wrong, I just know it since I'm a native speaker. While we sat around, I used Laura's language mini-dictionary and practiced Polish sounds/words/phrases. Even though it seems impossible I really do like to try. The boys laugh at me every time I say anything though :) One of this roommates was playing 'DJ' and was taking song requests. I had him look up Death Cab for Cutie (a great Seattle band) to share some of our wonderful music culture with them!
Dinner was not traditional Polish, but fantastic nonetheless. After that, we were all kind of exhausted from not sleeping, sleeping very little, waking up early, walking around town all day, etc. The boys helped us plan out our next few days in Krakow, but I will tell you all of those things as they happen...
Accomplishments:
Made it to Poland.
Travel Tip:
I think a mini language dictionary is very helpful so that you can get to know key words and phrases in the native language of the country you are visiting. I am excited to keep practicing! Trading English lessons for Polish lessons sounds good to me :)
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