Poles have interesting ideas about what goes on a pizza.

Would you like another slice of ham bacon tuna tomato onion chive asparagus?

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This post could alternatively have started out called "partial dance failure." I spoke with the dance instructor today. He used to dance swing himself (I think now he does everything). To his knowledge, and the knowledge of some of the girls in the class, there are not any opportunities to dance swing in Łódź. He has also not had enough interest to start up a class of his own; he won't start with fewer than 6 and has had no more then 3 interested. He might do some swing movements in our modern class, but it would be singles and not couples as a result of the outrageous gender asymmetry.
I am glad to have found this modern class, since at least it will let me do some dancing until I get back.

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Dear Alyssa,

I'm pretty sure you don't even know that this blog exists. But if you did, you would be entertained to know that, somehow, we got to talking about punching horses while in Krakow.

The first thing we did this weekend was miss our train. There were some navigational mishaps on the way to the station, and we ended up almost making it. But the woman at the counter luckily would not sell us tickets at 6:12 for a train that left at... 6:11. We took a bus instead. It ended up being no trouble, since the stations are joined and the cost and time involved are similar. We arrived in Krakow and left almost immediately. We hopped a train to Oświęcim. If you know how to read Polish, you may notice that Oświęc sounds about like Auschwitz.

Oświęcim was sunny for most of the day. Between the brightness and the mass of tourists, this infamous gate looks unimpressive. This sign is particularly morbid, so hopefully it's a little too reduced for you to read it.

The sign at the entrance to Auschwitz was translated into probably twenty different languages, including several I could not identify even from the flag. The signs around the camp were typically in Polish, English and Hebrew.

Some of the barracks were all locked up, but a series of them had been converted into museum segments. They had a whole street dedicated to the nations from which people had been deported to Auschwitz.

We returned to Krakow and went to bed. In the morning we went to the museum. I don't recall what the name of te museum was, but it was the big art one. National museum maybe. They had a statue out front. We arrived at about 9:15. The museum opened at 10. So we wandered around some. The other guys wanted to fund a coffee shop, but they had no luck. In Poland there isn't much open on Sundays. However, we did find a cool sculpture of the sun, earth and moon in front of a library (there was a coffee shop in the basement of the library, though it was closed for the summer).

After the museum we went to see the castle. There were tourists all over trying to find a tour to take them around. The statue of a horseman looked down on them all. We found the ticket counter to be so mobbed that we could not even get on a tour ourselves. It was hot out (over 30C for one of few times so far this summer), so we just browsed what was visible. We got a few pictures and noted that the castle was very old.

The castle is on a hill, which means looking out from it provides a pretty nice view. Additionally, the castle campus (for lack of a better word) is enormous. Note the picture on the right. Imagine that you are at the center of a circle, and that there are buildings all around you, each as far away as that one is. That was the inner courtyard.

We headed to the Jewish quarter. There were an awful lot of synagogues there. The Jewish Cemetery was supposed to be worth seeing, though we could not locate it. The place where our map claimed it existed held only a construction site. We stopped at the Temple Synagogue.

It was pretty dark inside, which made it difficult to get good pictures. However, it was beautifully constructed. We also stopped into a large church on the main square of Krakow. This one was also enormous, and the blue ceiling made me think of Boe Chapel a little bit. Photos were not allowed inside, though I almost took one outside with the human statues. I got a nice wide picture of the main square itself. You may notice the blue rock and roll stage tent and the Hancock poster.

We ate lunch across the street from the Temple Synagogue at a place called Bagel Mama. It was run by a guy from New York. It was nice to hear some American English and his bagel sandwiches were very tasty. Twenty years ago he moved to Holland from NY. Twelve years after that he visited Poland. He met a girl. They visited back and forth across the continent for a few years (since you can get away with the in Europe), then he moved to Poland. At this point he still knew no Polish. Apparently Polish girls have a reputation for being irresistible. From what we have heard, Germans often come to Poland to find a wife. Our Polish friends also predicted that at least one of us would meet a girl here and not go back to the states. I think the culture in that respect is quite a bit different here (I see many people our age wheeling around strollers). I don't anticipate anyone staying here.

On the morning before we left I got some szarlotka, apple pie. It was not as good as the pie at pi coffee in Gdansk. However, they did do some silly bird thing in chocolate on the plate. We stayed our night there at Mama's.

In the future I will have to find somewhere else to put pictures. I have actually filled my St Olaf web space already using pictures from this trip.