A spur of the moment visit in Poland

After Bangladesh, we flew to Singapore, and there we parted our ways: Jon went to Papua New Guinea, which is not a good place for hanging out, so I had over a week to fill. I could have stayed in Singapore, or gone somewhere more exotic, but I remembered that LOT now flies directly to Warsaw from Singapore, so I got myself a ticket on one of those. What luxury: you get on the plane in Singapore, and get off in Warsaw, no changing planes three times, just 11 or so hours, and you're there, looking at wildflowers by my parents' house:

It had been over four years since my last visit, and I was again blown away with how much has changed, and how modern the country has become. I spent my time between Radom, where I'm from, and Warsaw, where my sister and a lot of my friends live.

Cool mural in Warsaw.

I spent the weekend with my best friend, who took me and her two kids to a 14th century castle in Czersk, just south of Warsaw. I'd never been there, but it's a neat place to spend a few hours on a nice day. They had people dressed in medieval costumes, hanging around tents with old-looking tools and decorations. You could climb up the two towers and look at the panorama from there.

My parents operate through food, and did I ever eat a lot! They cooked all my favourite dishes, and I just stuffed my face every day. A lot of Polish recipes are quite time consuming, so I hardly ever cook them at home. Some of them are weird if I look at them from a New Zealand perspective, but they are still as delicious as I remember them.

Ground beef/pork cutlets with potatoes, hot grated beetroot, and mizeria (cucumbers with sour cream).

Bread with smalec (lardons spread), two kinds of kiełbasa, and half-pickled cucumbers.

Krupnik: barley and fresh spring vegetables soup.

Perfect for eating outside, with heaps of parsley for garnish.

Beef in mushroom sauce with potatoes, beetroot, and half-pickled cucumbers. And drinking buttermilk on the side.

Chicken livers and onions with potatoes and sauerkraut salad

This was just the savoury stuff, and here are some sweet dishes. First, knedle - stuffed dough made with quark, filled with plums. You can have them boiled with sour cream and sugar, or boiled and then fried in butter with breadcrumbs and sprinkled with sugar.

Oh, and you eat them for obiad, which is the main meal of the day, eaten around 3pm. I think things might be changing now, but the traditional meal times in Poland are:

- breakfast, whenever you wake up

- second breakfast, around 11am-12pm - a small sandwich or a piece of cake

- obiad, around 3-4pm - main meal of the day

- kolacja, around 7pm - a light supper

I've gotten used to the NZ meal times over the years, with lunch around 12-1pm, and dinner, the main meal of the day, being in the evening, but I have to say I prefer the Polish timings a lot more, as they feel a bit more healthy. Not very compatible with working till 6pm, though.

Polish bakeries are out of this world! I just simply couldn't decide each time we walked in to one of them.

And then there was this cake, sękacz, a specialty from north-east Poland that my dad got from someone at work and brought it home:

It's a tower looking like a tree with very short branches.

It's hollow inside.

And that's what it looks like on a plate.

The real reason for this whirlwind visit was meeting my little niece, Laura, who was born in January. She is the most gorgeous baby I've ever seen, and the first one I've encountered that I wasn't uncomfortable to be around :-)