[I feel by now that Jeremy and Madeline are dazed beyond belief; the airport, the road tie up, the old buildings, the new, where are we and what are we doing here?????]

Okay, eventually we make it to the train station. We’re not talking about some fancy train station in the style of the renovated Grand Central. We are talking about the Central Station in Warsaw, where trains come and pick up additional passengers before heading out to wherever. In my case, Krakow. It’s a gray, somber building and if the country were under a different political system at the moment, people would shake their heads and say: it would not be so gray if only we had a different political system going.

Put two bloggers and Madeline in an old-fashioned compartment with two Poles and you have a remarkable combination of the friendly and the tired and wired.

Out in Krakow: wheeling the suitcases across cobbled streets that I last slipped on in a frozen drizzle last December.

It’s late. Dinner’s late. Hungry, tired. Hit the bread before the pierogi. What’s that in the dish beside the bread? Farmers’ cheese and chives? And in the other? Did you say lard??