12/31 Day 13 NEW YEAR’S EVE
I woke up around 8:00 am and looked into the mirror. I looked most rugged and tired.

After throwing on some smoky clothes, I walked to the elevator. A 50ish woman was there and I said the obligatory “Dzien dobry.” She said “Guten Morgen.” We then had a brief discussion about Kraków, in German. The kind woman said that I would have a fun time in Riga and Vilnius. She had been to these places before. She was intrigued about my plans and that I was traveling alone.

After a pleasant breakfast, I went shopping, trying to rid myself of Zloty and to support the local economy through the trickle down effect. Actually, I found a lot of cool stuff! I bought some stuff for friends back home and some clothes for myself.

To rest my legs, I sat on a park bench and people watched. A small child, the same age as Mats, approached me, smiling fiercely. The father was a bit embarrassed. I smiled back at the kid. I would make a great father.


Krakow’s Market place

iPod in place, I walked to the market square, which is the largest in Europe, if I read correctly. On one side, there is a Christmas market. On the other, they are preparing for live music and/or a DJ for New Year’s Eve. It’s going to be sponsored by one of the Polish TV stations and they are going all out. There is a large stage and there are monitors set up. They even have a mechanical dragon (a dragon being a part of Kraków folklore.) I had attended something similar in Berlin in 1998 and it was a blast. This is probably where I will be at midnight.


Aweful pic. You can see the stage for the band behind me and even the “high platform.”

THE STING: OPERATION “TRUFFLES”


Wawel Castle

I was relaxing at the park near Wawel castle and I thought about it being the holidays. Somehow, the idea sparked to give candy out to the bagel women (i.e. women that stand by a card selling bagels.) To make ends meet, dozens and dozens of these woman, usually elderly woman, sell wide bagels for about $0.25 apiece. They usually look cold and/or bored to me and I thought it would be fun to make their day.

I decided that I would buy some candy for them. I found a delicatessen that sold one of my favorite truffles that would be prohibitively expensive for them.

I ate lunch then I decided to go back to the train station, count heads of all the bagel women there and give each of them a box of truffles. I did so, saying “Dosiego Roku.” (Happy new year!) There were a lot of smiling faces, which warmed me.

Oh. While at the train station, I noticed there was a mass migration into the city. The market square will be full tonight.

A month ago, I had actually picked up a pedometer in Wal*mart and considered buying it. I really should have. I would not be surprised if walking in the last days has exceeded 25 or 30 miles, as that is what I’ve been doing the majority of the time. I literally have walked so much that my Old Navy bag is ripping apart.

NEW YEAR'S EVE

After my nap, I primped and headed to “7,” a friendly bar near my hotel
At the door, the man had a registry and blurted out something in Polish. Thankfully, a man behind me translated what he said, in French. I could go in, but I’d not have a reserved table. OK.

I sat at the bar and nursed a delicious beer.

A quite annoying 20s something man with heavy acne insisted on talking with me. I had made eye contact with a pretty lesbian couple that sat on the other side from me.

“Jak sie mas,” I asked. That broke the ice. After I told them that I was alone, Katrina and her girlfriend told me that they would adopt me for the night. And they did. We talked for hours and hours in German.


My ladies and me

They are lovely people and make a really pretty, romantic couple. Amazingly, they actually met in Tunisia, on vacation. Two women. One with her girlfriend, the other with a husband and kids. They fell in love at first sight. Now, although they live in different cities, they see each other every weekend and traveled to Krakow for the weekend.

We agreed that we would leave around 11:30 to go to the market place to see what was happening.

We left at 11:45 and ran to the plaza. I said to them “fest halten,” hold on tight. The annoying acne man had told me earlier that there would be more than 150,000 people in the square, that it would be one of the largest celebrations in Europe. The place was packed you could barely move.

We made it about 20 feet short of the square when midnight came. They kissed one another, then I kissed them.

The night was clear and fresh. Fireworks and champagne bottles popped everywhere. You could smell the sulphur from the fireworks. The night was mixed with music, the sounds of breaking glass and people screaming happy new year. People embraced one another and danced and drank and celebrated.

The architecture combined with the fireworks and festive mood created an atmosphere that I will treasure. The only way it would have been better if a certain someone were with me.

It was incredibly romantic and beautiful. The couple caught on and kissed several times. I told them that I was their security blanket and they soaked up the moment together and had many tender moments.

My women wanted to get closer to the stage. We grabbed on to each other and their pushed our way through the crowd. They wanted to get closer to the action.

Two stages were set up. One stage was attached to the Cloth Market, high above, on construction stilts. Jutting out from the main stage was catwalk that came out into the crowd.

On each of these long stages, there were professional dancers who, with extreme graciousness danced the night away. The dancers must have been models as all of them were drop dead gorgeous. Fine specimens indeed.

A popular Polish pop singer appeared on the main stage and sang some hits. One song was really popular and we all jumped up and down. Nope. I didn’t know the words to the songs. But the crowd did and loved it. Surprisingly, they did not clap after each song. Pacifist group.

The large TV screen showed the singer, the crowd and the dancers. The production was incredibly sophisticated, hi-tech and well planed out.

Earlier in the day, I had bought a bottle of apple flavored vodka. Really good stuff! My women didn’t take too much of it, but I passed it around to people—mostly students in the crowd,. Don’t worry. The alcohol kills germs and bacteria. Germophobes need not visit Europe. Trust me.

Oh, the 500 ml bottle was a third full this morning.

We returned to “7” and continued to party. After dancing a bit, my women were beat and bid their farewell. I talked with a nice couple from Berlin, who of course, spoke German and not English.

When I got back to my hotel, I looked at my watch. I tapped it, thinking it was wrong. No. It couldn’t have been 6:00 am. I grabbed my useless alarm clock. It said the 6:00 am.

I need to do something unnecessarily drastic to the alarm clock because it is such a **** to me. Ideas? Throw into the Vlatava? Place on train tracks? Burn with my lighter? Hmm. Nothing can describe my distain for this Wal*Mart product and it will go down. Go down bad.
- posted by Matt @ 12:24 PM