Different Strokes

For your viewing pleasure this week: a random assortment of notes, photos and errata.  

First, I'm happy to report that we ate some seriously delicious Slovakian Forest Death Pastry and are still alive to tell about it.  

(As a side note, my new favorite thing is making small versions of desserts in two ramekins at a time.  It's far better than eating the same thing for 9 days in a row and/or throwing away half of a slaved-over dessert.)

As I mentioned last week, we came home from Slovakia in the middle of Nijmegen's Vierdaagse event, or Four Days March.  

Prior to this week, I had tried to remain reasonably receptive while our neighbors and other acquaintances raved and raved about this great annual event.  

But here's the line-up: 47,000 people sign up for four days of walking.  It's a substantial undertaking for the participants, since each day's course is 40 to 60 kilometers, depending on the age of the walker.  The walks are on a series of circular routes that start and end in Nijmegen, and at the end, everyone who finishes gets an official medal.  

(Speaking of age-related tracking, I've finally started to look for a job.  This process went from fun to grim in about 45 minutes, so I started poking around on the Albert Heijn grocery store website, just to see what my options were.  

I was horrified — horrified! — to learn that the hourly wages are on a sliding scale based on how old you are.  For example: a 16-year-old earns €4.65/hour doing the same job as a 20-year-old who earns €7.20 an hour as a 24-year-old (or anyone older) who gets €12.90/hour.  Holy Boy Would That Be Illegal In The U.S., Batman!)

For the other 953,000 people who descend upon Nijmegen for the Four Days event, there appear to be three main activities: sitting in bleachers to watch the walkers walk, attending a multitude of live bands in the streets of Nijmegen, and drinking beer.  

I'm sorry, but I just don't understand this.  Watching people walk?  For four days in a row?  

In contrast, it would take a lot of convincing to get me to attend a marathon, but at least there's some drama in a marathon.  What with people nearly killing themselves to run an inhumanly long way, and someone emerging as a winner at the end. 

To be fair, I understand that some people might feel the same way about things we love to do.  Like taking photos of insects.  Or sitting around and watching golf on T.V.   Or traveling to places that require a long list of vaccinations.  Or going out in the rain to find little snails in our neighborhood.  Or clarifying butter to make ghee. 

But seriously: watching a bunch of people walk?  Every year?!

To add insult to injury, we ventured downtown on Friday to get some much-needed groceries, only to discover that pretty much everything was closed because of the march.  

We realized that in addition to forgetting a great deal of Dutch while in Slovakia and Poland, we had forgotten our finely honed paranoia about closures of grocery stores on even the most minor holidays.  

Luckily for us, the streets were instead teeming with carnival-style vendors, so we were able to stock up on essential items. Like California Peanuts. 

But speaking of insect photos, we've posted a selection of photos from our Slovakia trip on our baryon.net website.  Snails, spiders, moths, caterpillars, beetles, bees, and two bigger critters (i.e. the two of us) abound!   

Tatra Melky

We returned to Nijmegen last night after a long and complicated journey back from Slovakia, which included but was not limited to:

• An early morning trip to the Slovakia-Poland border on a local bus; 
  
• A border crossing on foot; 
  
• A mini-bus from the border to Zakopane, Poland, which ended up being a leisurely milk-run-style loop through the greater Zakopane area.  By the end, we had at least 24 tourists and commuters crammed into a van that looked like it was built for 15!
  
• Another bus from Zakopane to Krakow, this one full of tourists bearing souvenir wooden hatchets and white Polish cowboy hats;
  
• A guilty but entirely satisfying lunch in a McDonald's in the mall adjoining the Krakow train station (in our defense, the only other restaurant option was something along the lines of  "Loco Taco Fiesta" which seemed like even less of a good idea);
  
• A nauseating post-McDonald's sprint through the Krakow train station due to my faulty reading of the Polish train schedule (in my defense, said train schedules make IRS forms look like Hop On Pop);
  
• A train to the airport (barely);
  
• A flight to Düsseldorf, Germany on RyanAir, which makes Southwest Airlines seem like those luxury Korean airlines whose soft-focus ads imply that your own personal flight attendant is available to give you a neck massage immediately after the safety video;
  
• An airport shuttle from Düsseldorf back to Nijmegen; and,
  
• A ride from the train station with our luggage bungee-corded to the backs of our bikes, in which we remembered how to ride bikes while dodging revelers, trash, and traffic from Nijmegen's annual Vierdaagse, or Four Days March extravaganza.  (More on that weirdness later.)
  

Whew!  

All of that itineration notwithstanding, we had a lovely, relaxing time in the High Tatras of Slovakia. 

We stayed in a quiet village called Ždiar, which boasts a few small markets, a pair of churches, about 15 small pensions, at least 20 tractors, and a fleet of feral chickens that come bursting out of the bushes to induce heart attacks in unsuspecting tourists.   

 

On our most ambitious day of hiking, we took a local bus to the town of Tatranska Lomnica, then rode a very sketchily attached cable car to a trailhead in the mountains.  

  

From there, we hiked along a bouldery path to a mountain pass at about 6600 feet.  

 

We hoped to see marmots, but the closest we came was a friendly British guy who advised us that he had seen a marmoset on his way up to the pass. 

 

On our less ambitious days of hiking, we explored the ridges and forests close to the village. We had fun taking lots (and lots) of photos of insects, spiders, slugs and snails.  

  

We also picked a half liter of wild huckleberries, which stained our fingers purple.  We smuggled the berries back to the Netherlands in a Nalgene water bottle!

We're reasonably certain that we're going to end up with huckleberry cobbler for dessert tonight, not Slovakian Forest Death Pastry.  

Last but not least, we found two delicious new snacks: first, a (marginally) carbonated drink called Kofola, which was created as a Communist alternative to Coke and Pepsi and is still very popular in Slovakia and the Czech Republic.  

It tastes a little bit like weak root beer mixed with lemon pledge, but it's nevertheless quite tasty and refreshing. 

As an added bonus, it sports the following catchy slogan:  "Když ji miluješ, není co řešit. / Keď ju miluješ, nie je čo riešiť."  

Translation?  "When you love her / There is nothing to think about."   

Nothing to think about, indeed. 

But the crown jewel of our culinary experiences in the Tatras was our discovery of a snack called Tatra Melky.  It has the flavor of a caramel popcorn ball but the consistency of a Rice Krispie treat.  In a word: yum! 

If we do have poison berry cobbler tonight, at least we'll die happy. 

Warsaw Pact

I learned recently through the enlightening power of the Interweb that the Warsaw Pact is officially called the "Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance".  

For the record, I was lost in the Warsaw train system for nearly an hour and a half yesterday, but encountered very little friendship, cooperation or mutual assistance in the process.  Though I acknowledge that I was mostly asking for one-way assistance, and on top of that, rather boorishly expecting it in English. 

Maybe I was feeling a little overconfident.  

The last time I went to Poland was in 1996, when my friend Scott and I traveled by night train from Vienna to Kraków.  We slept through the Kraków stop (note, gentle readers, the lack of any friendship, cooperation, or mutual assistance from the conductors) and ended up quite inadvertently in Warsaw, face to face with a ticket agent who shook her head ruefully when we asked if she spoke any English.

The only reason that we're not still stuck in Warsaw is that Scott was able to trot out enough German to buy us tickets back to Kraków.  

So this time, when I bought a train ticket from Kraków to Łódź via Warsaw, I felt good, at least, about going to Warsaw intentionally.  And even though the train left at 7 a.m., I was reasonably certain that I wouldn't sleep through Warsaw and end up in Minsk.   

But as it turns out, the Poles are not so keen on signage.  Particularly not interactive signage.  On the trains, on the platforms, or anywhere else, for that matter.  The primary source of information in Polish train stations is a series of scratchy announcements, which is fine if one speaks Polish fluently and has dog hearing.  And is not so fine if you have a tight connection and you're me. 

Long story short(er): I took the wrong train into central Warsaw, where a conductor urged me back onto the platform based on the incompatibility between my ticket and the train's destination.  From there, I wandered into a labyrinthine underground station complex and found even less friendship, etc.  

Only through the power of paying €8 for an hour of Internet access in the Warsaw Marriott lobby did I sort my train schedule back out, let John know not to meet me at the train station at 11:20, luxuriate in the non-train station bathrooms and enjoy, somewhat unexpectedly, music from the American Beauty soundtrack piped into the lobby.  

One Snickers bar for lunch and an hour of waving "bye-bye" to the Polish baby in the seat in front of me later, I made it triumphantly to Łódź. 

(And vowed, in a pact between me and me, never to set foot by train in Warsaw.  Ever, Ever Again.) 

As it turns out, Łódź is a pretty interesting city, in the decrepit-and-weird-but-still-architecturally-lovely sense of interesting.  John has already been here for a week, as one of 800 physicists who have descended upon the city for the 2009 International Cosmic Ray Conference.  

And if "International Cosmic Ray Conference in Łódź" doesn't sound like fun, I don't know what does.  

My plan for the week is to be a hotel bunny until the conference is over on Wednesday, then we'll head into the hills of the High Tatras for a few days of hiking in the mountains.  Though I'm pretty sure that "Łódź hotel bunny" is a phrase that has never been uttered.  Ever, Ever Before.