more of the regional trip

Our second day in Bratislava, I went to the Bratislava castle, which is not very attractive (it was mostly reconstructed in the 1950s, actually), but there was beautiful weather, and I got to witness the Slovak national dish, halusky--it's gnocchi covered in sheep cheese and bacon. Intense, no? But the Slovaks love it. That night I got to see a wonderful modern dance performance at A4 involving witch-like costumes, pseudo-strangulation, and blips and beeps. (Modern dance is always a little hard to describe. I should probably post my review here sometime.)

The next day we got on a five hour bus ride to Krakow in Poland, where we got to stay in a pretty swanky hotel. I ate traditional Polish barley soup, but really, traditional eastern and central European cuisine, let me tell ya, they are all about the potatoes and the bread and the meat and the onions...yes. We went to Nowa Huta the next morning to see the community theater. What is Nowa Huta, you may ask? It was a "Socialist paradise" suburb of Krakow built in the 1950s, which means that it's a huge group of massive concrete panelak. A neighborhood of identical apartment buildings, if you will. Now it's pretty run-down and considered a sort of "bad neighborhood," which it really isn't, just kind of unattractive and industrial-looking. Anyways, this community theater is objectively trying to bring the people of Nowa Huta together--old and young, Roma and Polish. (Speaking of Roma, we have been learning a lot about them. More on that later, I think.)

I learned that everything in Krakow closes really early. The only thing that was open after our late lunch was a Japanese museum, which turned out not to be a Japanese museum because it was apparently getting repossessed by the Polish government or something. So instead, they had a display of art from Java. Hmmm.

So, feeling a little confused, Tom and I went to see Wawel Castle, the big castle in Krakow. Of course, everything there was closed, but the castle was very beautiful and provided some great views of the city. There is a legend in Wawel Castle that a dragon called Smok lived there and ate young maidens till some brave Polish warrior slaughtered him and everybody celebrated. I mean, who doesn't love a dragon story? Krakow is really into Smok. You can buy stuffed dragons everywhere there. Afterwards we got Indian food, which is always really funny in central Europe because all the waitresses are obviously very Slavic but wear saris and bindis as if they are Indian. I also went to some interesting pubs, including one called the "Tram Bar," where the menu is the tram line of Krakow and every stop on the tram line is a different beverage. A thing I find hilarious about many pubs in this part of the world is they tend to play American music, but the weirdest variety imaginable. They'll start playing Celine Dion and then a grunge song and then a rap song and then suddenly a central European techno song. It's a little crazy, but you just have to go with the flow. After visiting the pubs we wandered the streets of the old town and found a weird cathedral that looked like Haunted Mansion from Disneyland. (Maybe an inspiration?)

Don't worry. More to come soon, yet again.