Krakow is such a beautiful city. Cobblestone roads and a big town square filled with dozens of market stalls. The buildings are colourful and the square seems to always have bands playing and people dressed traditionally doing classic Polish folk dances.
On my first day there, I had to find myself a bed for the night, so I went to an internet cafe, only to have the tunes of a marching band come flooding in through the window as I surfed.

Also in Krakow, I met up with one of my friends from Sydney. Now, meeting up with my Aussie friend who also happens to speak Polish in a Polish city was really quite bizarre. Mainly because it didn't feel weird at all. We felt so comfortable around eachother in a completely different location than usual. There's a different local language, but since we both know it, it was just amusing to chat between ourselves in English, drinking the local booze, and have the locals address us in English, only to then confuse them by answering in Polish. :)

Going off to visit my grandmother an hour or so away from Krakow was a fascinating experience, also. She lives in the countryside, and when I stepped off the train (I think only 2 people got off at that station, and I had to open the door manually - it was that sort of train) the first thing I could smell was coal. I wasn't quite sure of the way to the bus station so I had to ask a few locals along the way. I'm telling you now - I looked entirely out of place with my backpack on, trudging up the hill. But it was only when I got off the bus in the tiny town where my grandmother lives, that i really noticed people looking at me.

My grandmother lives in a town where everyone knows eachother and chats in the street, calling across the river to enquire about the other's health. This is a town where tractors roam the dirt roads, pulling trailors filled with freshly harvested wheat. It is a town where the standard car is a tiny little Trabant, which sounds distinctly like a lawnmower going by. And thus this is a place where people looked at me funny because I wasn't a local.

I was informed by my cousin that a lot of changes had occurred in this town since she was last there several months ago. They now had a local chemist (pharmacy for you non-aussies out there reading this) and mini-buses that go directly to Krakow. Can you imagine a chemist being a big deal? I suppose you could also look at my grandmother's house and say that she's only had running water and plumbing for half a dozen years, too. I'm kind of used to that fact since I've been there a handful of times, but for most of you I'm sure peeing in a bucket would be pretty odd in the late 1990s. Unless there's something you want to tell me about....

My grandmother also has a bunch of chickens. So each morning you are awoken by the fun-filled sound of the rooster crowing and the prospect of more eggs than you can poke a stick at. In a fascinating twist of events, her cat gave birth to a litter of kittens the night before I arrived, too, so I got to see the tiny things ambling about blindly in the chicken coop nest that the cat had selected for her offspring. Never seen a kitten that small in my life, let alone five of them. And here they were, squeaking whenever they were awake and lonely, and the mummy cat running towards them whenever they were distressed. Which happened right after I took a flash shot of them sleeping soundly. Apparently the cat didn't think a flash was a natural occurence in the chicken coop for some reason.

But have a look at the cuteness:



Makes me miss my kitty back home and miss having a tiny kitten to play with too. Not that my big hunk of feline isn't adorable, I mean, who could say no to this face?