Guest Post by Adam - Zakopane

Hello All,

It is mini Debowski writing as a guest on Mon's blog... Hi! We are currently embarking on our third night in Zakopane, and are full of beer and perogies and pancakes. I thought that since I'm around for this part of Mon's journey and I love Zakopane sooooooo very much that I would make an appearance for my fans and let you know how this wonderful town is doing with us in it.
We got here Wednesday afternoon after a 6 hour train ride from Warsaw. Other than the ridiculously early wake-up (not used to the time yet) , getting on the train was easy and Grandpa (a.k.a. Dziadek) made sure we got on no problem. We were pretty worn out the whole way and had a nice adrenaline rush for about 8 minutes, until one of us pondered: "ARE WE THERE YET?!" After some philosphical talks and frequenting of mp3 player use, we arrived.

We got here to 30-degree weather and a million people asking us if we needed a room. We ended up taking a few wrong turns and winded up at this beautiful renovated house with a room for two for relatively cheap. The woman was a Grade A Bitch, but once we got her out of our hair we liked the place. That night we hit the town and took a train up this light hill and had a beer. We got our first breathtaking view of the place, something like this picture.


The next day we were champs! We climbed up an ashphalt-ish type road to get to Morskie Oko - a big lake in the middle of the mountains. It took us about 1h40min (40 minutes faster than average ;) to get there. After that we booked it up a much harder slope for another hour to get to Czarny Staw ("Black Pond"). Since we were going pretty fast for about 3 hours, we felt very accomplished. The place we got to looks like the picture below.

I don't know how to describe this place except for absolute heaven. Despite the huge difference in culture (almost every aspect) and looks we got for speaking english (constant throughout so far), I felt immediately at home like I've never done before and did not want to leave. We took many pictures here and have lots to show. I immediately took a pic with my phone and set it as my background, and something tells me it will be there for a while. Although Canada is great and you can't deny how good of a place it is to live, here is where I feel I belong. It seems as though I'm going back to Canada to work with the eventual goal of ending up here, swimming in that water (which you weren't allowed to do... booooooo). It was quite an emotional experience for me... as much as the walk down was a physical one.

We really gave-her on the way up but were slooooow on the way down and chose the more scenic (meaning the exact same way but slower with more pictures and people-watching) route for the way home. We got back to our room, took a hot shower, and went out for traditional Polish food and a beer. They serve beer here with a shot of concentrated raspberry juice which is awesome. Mon had tea with a shot of liquer and we proceeded to walk down the strip with a buzz and appreciation for where we were.

Today's wake-up was a little later, and we got rained out of everything. A real curse (and blessing in disguise) pointed us back to perogies and beer.

It's hard to convey how great this place really is. It seems that I've inherited the thirst-for-thin-air gene from my male ancestors (Marek and Stasio as far as I know) because leaving here is going to be painful. Although other parts of Poland (Krakow and Auschwitz), Vienna, and Budapest will surely be great, I will always be a visitor everywhere but here and feel that this is a place to spend later days. Despite totally sticking out (people look at us speaking English, and then Polish like it's never been done before) , we feel very belonging.

I also feel belonging amonst the legions of ridiculously attractive Polish women. OH MATKO!!! There are beautiful, well dressed, and conveniently liberal women EVERYWHERE and I can't help but talk about them all the time, even though I'm here with Mon. Even the older women are fabulous, and seem to maintain themselves very well. Let me assure you that seeing them in short shorts climbing up a slope faster than I can has NOTHING to do with my love of Tatry... It seems this is further proof that I am in fact my father's son. =)

Tomorrow we are off to Krakow and will surely have more great things to say! Auschwitz will no doubt be an emotional experience that I'm looking forward to as well. Travelling with Monika is great... and that's not me being diplomatic as she reads what I write. =) Needless to say, we are laughing all the time.

See everyone soon!
Adam