Na Wsi

To the country this past weekend, to Lubień, a nice little town about an hour south of Kraków, though much less if you drive like a real Pole and not like a Dr. hab. Professor Banaś has a light foot, a careful, scholarly manner, and almost no use for her fifth gear. The moving violation she’s most likely to incur is not speeding, a forgivable enough transgression in the pretty foothills of the Tatras. We stayed an overnight, twenty-four hours, in a little house she and her brother inherited from some aunts, one that takes forty-eight hours to properly heat up. We managed to get it to 20°C in the main room by burning the remains of an old fence in a small, central wood stove. Eventually not uncomfortable, and certainly not without charm, though it will be some years before the house is fully refurbished—a shortage of skilled crafts people in Poland persists owing to their emigration to Germany, England, Italy and Ireland for better opportunities and better pay. Perhaps I should take up a trade.

We hit the church on Sunday morning, Palm Sunday, and its glittering cementery. I’m now 10 for 10 going into Easter, Wielkanoc, (“Great Night”). For my efforts, I expect to burn half a degree cooler in Hell for a few seconds. I’m off to the northern countryside tomorrow night, by bus, the red-eye to Bytow, then on to Sulęczyno.