Krakow doppleganger theory

I've been thinking a lot recently about second chances. Does fortune favor the brave or does it favor the rational?

Rather than spending endless weeks pondering philosophical dilemmas, I decided it was a much better idea to take off for Scotland for a long Halloween weekend. It was a chance to reconnect with my past in the form of UNC roommate Miss Katie Burns and besides, I couldn't deal with the depressing thought of Halloween with no trick or treaters. Krakow may have a dragon for a mascot, yet ghouls and ghosts roam its streets in other manifestations...

In Poland, All Saint's Day is celebrated in a way much closer to the actual roots of the holiday: lit candles are placed on ancestors' tombstones as a token of remembrance. It makes for an eerie yet beautiful sight and is taken quite seriously.

As I scarfed down haggis and staged Loch Ness photos involving sea-monster-shaped logs, being serious was the last thing on my mind. Nonetheless, Scotland helped me remember and appreciate forgotten small pleasures such as eavesdropping, speaking in slang, inside jokes, and friendly conversations with shopkeepers. Even getting lost, which should have been an inconvenience, became a pleasure in finding more and more perfect Scottish vistas and hiking trails.

By the time I returned to Krakow, bravery had won: I was moving into a new place in the city centre. Rationality helped: I would be saving 300 PLN per month. Coincidence was there too: as I returned from visiting my old roommate with my same name, I moved in with another one with my same first and middle names (in Polish, Katarzyna Anna). My favorite benefit, though, was one I hadn't expected:

I get to experience Krakow's most beautiful moment: the main market square misty and deserted at 7:00 a.m. as my heels click on the cobblestones, making my way to the train station every morning. I have even started waking up five minutes earlier every day just so I don't have to rush through it. And I'm a girl who eats breakfast at work to save even ten minutes of precious sleep time.


The almost comically consonant-filled name of my new street?

Wszystkich Swietych.

All Saints.

Do widzenia to summer

There have been some frightening rumors going around recently, and I'm not just talking about those related to the future of unstable financial markets.

Somehow, I'm not considered a newbie in Krakow anymore. I'm even showing other people around, and some Polish people have admitted that I actually understand some of their language. Once a gringa, always a gringa? I'm doing my best to avoid it, but you know what, sometimes I like to cook my pierogis with extra hot tabasco sauce. Maybe I can live with being the eternal American if it means not needing a reason to smile and enjoying heavily spiced cuisine.

In any case, I have bigger fish to fry. Such as buying my first pair of snow boots as well as an outer layer that looks more like a sleeping bag than an actual item of clothing. That's right, there will be no more jaunts through the wooded mountains of the Tatras to pick fresh raspberries straight off the bush, because Zakopane has already had their first snowfall. The good news is, Krakow has plenty of activities to do indoors, and here are some of my favorites of the past few weeks:

- A sea shanty concert at a bar called Stary Port, with corresponding nautical theme (stuffed parrot included). It sounded exactly like Irish folk music, including a Polish version of "Whiskey in the Jar." But my favorite act was the opener, where two small Polish boys dressed in matching nautical striped shirts sung a raucous song where the chorus went (in Polish) "I am a little Pirate!"
- Drinking hot chocolate at Nowy Prowincia that is actually a melted Hershey bar. You eat it with a spoon.
- A random jazz concert at Alchemia, a very bohemian bar complete with a Johnny Depp lookalike as bartender. I felt like I was in Paris circa 1900. Needless to say I'll be going back.
- A conversation with a taxi driver in which my pronounciation was good enough to fool him for the first 30 seconds of the conversation. Then he told me my Polish wasn't that bad, and I actually don't think he was saying it out of pity. He told me to keep learning, and that he wished he had learned more English.

In order to make it through a week straight of 46 degrees rain (8 Celsius if you are Euro), it's all about the small victories.

But mostly the melted chocolate.

I cannot be dictated by a watch

Time in Krakow rushes by like it's on amphetamines... it's hard to believe that I've already been here for a month. But the big picture eludes me.

Does it feel like home? Will it ever?

Having a network is not the same as belonging, as I'm finding out. It doesn't help that the nine hour work days and my attempts to go to as many activities possible - or an inability to say no to said activities - have meant that I've fallen asleep in front of BBC World News more times than I would like.

There have been some ups - Polish style barbecues, impromptu concerts, fireworks festivals....and some downs - a full train to Gdansk (meaning I can't go on my long weekend coming up), a language even some Poles tell me not to bother with, and that fact that I've somehow managed not to travel at all during my time here. Luckily I can work around most of those. Case in point: this week I had my first Polish language lesson - with a woman who doesn't speak English, a blessing in disguise for me because my native tongue is like a crutch around here. I feel like one of my former Thai students, only with a slightly less sponge-like brain.

Time in Krakow always seems to move too fast or too slow. I can only hope the saying is true that an ounce of patience is worth more than a pound of brains...

Engineering the human soul

I have a new favorite place in Krakow. Nowa Huta was ordered by Stalin to be built as a model communist town, unsurprisingly built around a steel mill. It was to serve as an example to bourgeois Krakow, former home of Polish royalty. Today, it's home to milk bars, skinheads, and bangin' thrift shops. The grey communist block buildings are now occupied by Stylish Restaurants, and the lake where steel mill chemicals used to be dumped now has a fishing club...but no word about how edible the catch really is. The one major church in Nowa Huta is shaped like Noah's ark, which symbolizes carrying the masses out of the oppression of communism. Hometown hero John Paul II gave a moonrock brought back from Neil Armstrong to the church as a special blessing.

Space, chemicals, subcultures, propaganda, perception...it takes time really to know a place and a people. But I've learned that having your eyes wide open is not enough. I've been asking more and more questions that previously I was afraid to ask, thinking it would make me look like an ignorant American. Here are some things I have learned:

- The deal with packs of young guys walking around town in capes singing the Polish version of "Guantanamera" is that they have just left the compulsory military service. They are now free to party whenever they want. That's what the lyrics of the song are about - freedom.
- The goofy Polish rapper on TV is their version of Stephen Colbert, not their version of 50 cent.
- "W" and "Z" are actual words in Poland, not letters or abbreviations (they mean "in" and "from").
- Nobody understands me when I use idioms like "sticking around" or "what the dilly yo?"

Just like the Nowa Huta builders, I have to take it one brick at a time.

Curiouser and curiouser

Blinking in the sunlight at 6:30 a.m. this morning, I had a revelation. Other than being an all-too-obvious sign of my indoctrination as a former English major, it really did seem as if I had crossed a threshold.

All too literally, I had emerged from the innermost cave.

The Bochnia salt mines are compacted by the shifting of continents by one centimeter a month. They have been doing this since their creation in the 13th century. Some people could have sworn it was difficult to breathe down there...and yet a cold wind constantly blew down the corridors. Where does the wind come from at 200 meters under the earth?

My sinus cavities throbbed because of the pressure change, but I could have sworn the whole time that if I opened some sort of locked mine shaft door, I would have found out we had been on ground level the whole time. Or I would have found myself having to choose between two vials, sitting at a tea party with the March Hare.

I'm not sure how, but I have begun to accept my life here. In other words, I'm not going to try so hard to find soy milk, nor am I going to expect bureaucracy to be easy in a former communist country. I am trying to break my bad habit of constant comparisons between here and home - a tall order because unlike during my previous travels, this time feels like it's for real.

That feeling has nothing to do with Poland, or even the fact that I will be here for a year. It's because whether I like it or not, my running off to Europe doesn't change the fact that I'm technically an adult now, whatever that means.


So then, if I'm not the same, the next question is "Who in the world am I?"

Ah, that's the great puzzle!