Rynias revisited

Every year, when I return to Poland and, too, to Krakow, I consider it: should I go back to Rynias?

It’s a tiny hamlet, nestled in a clearing, just at the foot of Poland’s high Tatra Mountains. There is a brook at the southern edge of the hamlet. If you cross it, you’re in Slovakia.

I wont repeat the story of how I’ve come to know and love the place – it’s all about youthful exuberance: those years when you relish your emergent independence and take excursions with university friends in search of adventure, friendship, courtship. For my friends and myself, the place we found and returned to again and again was Rynias.


In this last decade, when I’ve had the time, I’ve gone back to it. It’s not an easy trip. If you use public transportation from Krakow, you can’t turn around and be back within one day. Brzegi is the nearest village that has a paved road. From Brzegi, you still have to hike on foot to Rynias for an hour each way.

So my Rynias trips have been infrequent. And I never wanted to schedule any Rynias visit in advance. You don’t want to schlep out there if it’s raining or sleeting or snowing. And if it’s overcast or foggy, you can go, but you wont see the Tatra mountains that frame the place so beautifully.

The last time I went, in 2006, I took Ed with me. The highlanders welcomed us into their tiny kitchen hut and as we sat, drank tea and reminisced, I understood that these visits mattered to me. A lot.

But I haven’t gone back since. Isn’t that just so typical – we figure out what’s important and then we proceed to ignore it.

Not this year though. I knew early on that Rynias was on the table for me. And when Diane and Ernest voted a resounding “let’s go!” I called Pani Anna from Madison and told her we were coming.

Pani Anna. She’s alone now. Since my last visit, her husband, Pan Stas, has passed away. More milestones: her nephew, who has helped them farm the land and mind the livestock has married, has had kids and has taken over most of the farming operations.


We hired a car for the trip to Rynias. (It's a two hour drive from Krakow.) And not just a simple rental. We took one with a driver – a fresh graduate from the university who does this now for a living while trying to figure out where his life is really heading. He, too is from the mountains, though he lives in Krakow now because the dancing’s good here. (And he is, at his telling, quite the modern theater dancer.) I am still running on way too little sleep and I did not want to drive with droping eye lids, along curving icy roads.

So, after a hearty breakfast (which ended with another Polish favorite – a doughnut with rose petal jam)...





...we set out.

Ah, the drive south to the mountains!





Wait, before I say another word, understand this: the chance of getting good weather for the Rynias hike in December is pretty small. Indeed, all week long I’ve been staring at the forecast and seeing sleet/wintry mix plastered across the Sunday page.

But in fact, we had the most glorious weather you could imagine.

They had their first snow just a few days ago. True, the path to Rynias became a snow-covered sheet of hard ice, but who could mind – the sun is out, fully, completely, boisterously and everything feels crisp and, well, joyful.

I have trouble in Brzegi finding the path that veers away from the paved road,  up the hill toward the forest and eventually down toward Rynias. I knock on doors and disturb a highlander grandma putting a grandson to sleep to ask why it is so beastly impossible to pick out the trail. I'm glad to find her; all other Brzegi residents appeared to be at church, here:






But this is an insignificant issue. Everyone in Brzegi knows where Rynias is. The grandma type reminded me to count the houses. After the third one up, you’ll see it to your left.

At noon, we set out.





The “road” is traversable if you have an ATV or something that can handle roots, rocks and ice.. Man, it's slippery! But even more important is this – it's a fantastic time to be out in the mountains. This hidden corner of the highlands isn’t just beautiful. It’s stunning.






Truly sublime.





And finally, Rynias.

Pani Anna is in her kitchen hut. The dog barks ferociously at us. That’s what he’s there for – too bark ferociously at visitors. You gotta have a dog with a strong voice.






I knock on the kitchen hut door. The cats scamper at the sight of me.






Pani Anna throws open the door, excited, eyes darting from one to the other and she gives me, gives us, the greeting of a lifetime.






She speak in a mountain dialect, but for me it’s not tough to follow. I think of it as singularly beautiful.

We sit down in her tiny kitchen. Her stove is going strong. She’s boiling stuff and the gurgles and hisses remind you that no matter what the weather out there, this little space will always be warm and welcoming.






We talk. She spends a long time describing how Pan Stas died. It’s been almost four years now, but she is still suffering the loss.

And then she shows Diane and Ernest the big house.






The thick chords provide insulation between the heavy timber. It's an old house -- Pan Stas was born in in it. But she has kept it well and it feels fresh and clean.






To me, the place is a work of superb folk art. There are decorative carvings that are of a time when someone would go to the trouble of giving their own beautiful imprint to a home.






Her nephew uses the rooms upstairs. She sleeps on the first floor. There, among photos of her husband, religious pictures and mementos and bags of kerchiefs and wools.

Pani Anna used to tend sheep with Pan Stas. They made ewe's milk cheeses and this brought some income for them. But she's too old for that now. She keeps a half dozen cows (and there's a wee calf to prove it!)...






...and a few chickens. In the past, too, she used to take in the occasional holiday renter (us!) but her nephew’s wife doesn’t like strangers in the house. So now Pani Anna has this small entrepreneurial thing going: friends of relatives (sometimes from the States!) send her wool kerchiefs – the peasant kind with the large flowers on them – and ask her to do the embroidery for the trim at the edges.






She is nearly eighty, but her eyes must be strong because this is delicate work.

Pani Anna is the kind of person who will never let a friend leave empty handed. Both Diane and I are handed kerchiefs to take home. And she insists on pouring us jars of homemade wild raspberry syrup.





But we cannot leave without eating first. She has been boiling a chicken in anticipation of our visit and now she deftly mashes potatoes...






...and serves us bowls of hot chicken noodle soup, followed by pieces of chicken along with the potatoes and grated beetroot.





The meal ends with sour cherry tea. As we sip, she brings out the few photos that she has of her Rynias life with Pan Stas.






We can't stay long. Already the shadows are stretching across the snow covered hillside. We make use of the outhouse (probably a first for my Minnesota friends), give kisses and hugs and wave to her as we leave.






One last look at the hamlet...








...with a good look at her homestead...





...and we retrace our steps. We take the shortcut from the back of Pani Anna's house, where the sheds are...


 







...then we rejoin the path that'll lead us back to Brzegi and the waiting car.











Diane and Ernest rest, but I want to walk up Brzegi. The village winds sparsely all the way up the hill and at this dusky time of the day it is mellow and quiet. You can see bits of yesterday in homes here.











The walk gives me time to adjust my senses. To give one last nod to a place and time that grow more and more remote, for me, for Poland too.






It's really cold now, but I keep going. The wood burning chimneys are sending up puffs of smoke. Occasionally a dog barks. It is a good walk.










It's nearly dark when we get on the Krakow road again. That moon! It's there tonight as well. I know it can't be full three nights running, but it surely looks round. Orange haloed. Beautiful, even here, on the road leading out of the highlands.






We eat supper in Krakow. We pass the Main Square where street theater gives me pause. How is she doing this? Suspended, with only an impossible connection to the ground? I should know about being suspended between one place and another...





We eat dinner at the Marmolada Restaurant. Polish foods. Herring, perch with mushrooms for me, pierogi and ribs for my friends. Followed the best hot drink on this wintry country day -- the mulled wine. Grzaniec Galicyjski.

from Krakow: pig and Grzaniec

It looks better than it tastes – I hear a British woman say to her friends. She’s referring to the sausages and meats that I am once again admiring at the Christmas Market in Krakow, Poland, this time by daylight and among the heavy crowd you’d expect on a cold but sunny December afternoon.
Don’t tell that to a Pole, I say to her.
But it’s tough meat! -- she defends her comment.

Well yes, that’s what I’d imagine for a pig’s knuckle. Not that I ever had one – it just looks difficult to eat.

We’re waiting for the Grzaniec Galicyjski – Gluhwein in German, Glogg in Swedish.





A drink for the people of cold weather nations.

Before me in line, I have a group of young Poles vocally anticipating the warm wine, laughing at the wait.

I suppose to someone coming from Wisconsin, drinking early and with zest should not shock the sensibilities. I need only to point to our pre-ball game beer sales. But I have to say, used to seeing (as I am) UW students carouse on State Street until 2 a.m. on week-ends, it pales next to the carousing that took place all night long on a cold December Friday night on Florianska  (the street of our hotel). Charming, or annoying, depending how much you expect quiet in the center of a youth-filled city.



Me, I'm still denying the need to sleep. I'm up early. Of course. For a moment I consider going out before breakfast, for that glance at an empty square and a pink toned morning sky. But I tell myself -- it's time to slow down, not rush so much. Take the day as it presents itself.

Linger over the hotel breakfast. Consider the interesting possibilities. And yes,  I know many other cultures heap pickled veggies and mayo salads onto the breakfast tray, but none of them are in Europe. Here, in Poland, you’ll see it all: the veggies, the salads, the fish, the cheeses, the lunchmeats, the cakes, the eggs, the sausages...

My friends love the selection. Me, I munch happily on a soft boiled egg accompanied by a smoked salmon sandwich.





We have a big walk planned for today and we set out fairly promptly. To the cloth halls, to Wawel the castle, to Kazimierz, the old Jewish ghetto. Krako-philes, don’t bug me about missing St Mary’s, or Collegium Maius or the Franciscan Church, please. We have Monday morning to work with still.

I cannot emphasize enough how beautifully blue the sky is on this day. As if mocking me for my grumblings about the classic Polish winter (damp, freezing).






Krakow in the morning. The shop stalls with the kielbasy, sheepskin clothing and ceramics begin to open. The kids feed pigeons, the women are out selling the delicious Krakovian  round pretzels.
















Okay, let me post a few photos from the castle and, too, of the Vistula River from the castle’s ramparts.
















Satisfied? Let’s move on. To Kazimierz. Starting with the weekly food and flea market there.











I say to my friends that even on the approach, the smell is an absolute giveaway as to what we’ll find here – at least at the food section of the market. I give them a hint – Ed would recognize it out here in five seconds and he's not especially noticing of the smells around him. But they’re stumped.

It’s these:





I tell the kind vendor that we’d like to try a couple of the pickles. They cost pennies and they are fantastic (though Ernest tells me they’re not sweet enough... sweet? Eh, what do non-Eastern Europeans know about pickles!). The vendor is pleased at my praise and she tells me I really have to try her sauerkraut. I make it myself -- it really is special. She sticks out a wooden forkful and I look for ways to sample some. Should I just take it? (...as in with my grubby bare hands?) Yes, yes, of course I’m giving it to you.

I eat it, love it, offer to round up my payment for the pickles and the kraut to a whole 50 cents. No! She positively shouts this. Just for the pickles! The sour cabbage is from me.

We continue to the square with the old synagogue, but there, we’re to be disappointed. It is, of course, Saturday and we should expect services. But the place is closed to outsiders. It's reserved for the religious group that's just arriving. Young Jewish people. From Poland, you ask? No, from America.



In places that are sunny, we are warm. In shady spots, we are not, even though it remains just at freezing. I suggest a lunch at an old Jewish Restaurant and we have good soups there – matzo ball, beet root, with a latke on the side.











Ernest leaves us after lunch. Diane and I do the predictable – we’re back on the main square, shopping. Krakow is extravagant in terms of folk art...


 
 

...and the Christmas Market makes this place truly a shopper’s nirvana. You can't be surprised when I tell you that on this afternoon, the Square is packed: with people, with vendors, with horses...






We’re smitten with the ceramics, with the regional foods, with Christmas decorations. And with people watching.
















On a stage to the side, there is live music. Holiday-like, but not altogether familiar. And the language? Russian. I have to say, there is in me, this feeling of the unreal. I am on this square of all squares with my good UW law school days buddy and we are taking in the smell of roasting kielbasas and hearing the happy sounds of Ukrainian holiday singing, in Russian, with a smiling and encouraging Polish crowd. 

No, this isn’t the Poland I grew up with.

My friend Diane, is now fading. The toll of jet lag and of yesterday’s travels. She joins Ernest for a moment of respite. I persevere. As if I can’t get enough of this place. As if I should accept that this may be the last in the stretch of some dozen visits to Krakow. If no one asks to come here with me, will I keep on coming, alone? I have said to Diane that I am only in Krakow because of her (and Ernest). And this is true. I love the city, but it is, for me, a curious mix of tourism and half baked familiarity. I never came to Krakow as a kid. Warsaw was my home base and it offers enough disquieting memories that I know I’ll be pulled back there, if only to make sense of it all. And, of course, I have family in Warsaw. Krakow is Polish, and beautiful, but it’s not mine.

Diane rejoins me in the early evening and we stop at a café just on the main square. Szarlotka -- let’s order this quintessential Polish dessert. Americans claim apple pie is theirs, but szarlotka – apples, cooked in tiny chunks, between two layers of cake dough -- it's so completely Polish. We pre-invented apple pie.






And now it’s late evening and the three of us prepare to set out for dinner.





Quite unexpectedly, there is light hail even as the skies, up to know, have been so very clear. Never mind. The three of us walk to the Dominikanska Restaurant anyway, where we eat nalesniki (crepes) with sheeps' milk cheese and chanterelle mushrooms, there in a simple, honey colored room with old photographs on the wall...





... and for the second course, two types of pierogi (dumplings) – one with cabbage and mushrooms and the other with a peppered cottage cheese, both smothered with butter and pan fried onion.


 


It's wonderful food. The home made pierogi have a dough that is not too thick. The nalesniki, too, are the right thickness and for once, they're not smothered with cream. My glass of Polish beer – as always, perfect.

So the day ends, right? Well yes, true, it does. And on the walk back to the hotel, I encounter the moon again – full for this one last moment, half hiding behind thin clouds.

Hey moon, thank you for coming out tonight. Thank you for clearing the skies and pushing the clouds away. You hide most nights of the winter here, old slick moon that you are.

But for these two nights you’ve been here and I thank you for it.

Poland, now

We are in a cab, crawling through rush hour traffic toward Warsaw Central train station and I notice it – Palac Kultury. The landmark building. Stalin’s 1952 gift. I run through the usual quick spiel on it – the awe-inspiring height (32 stories, but tall stories -- it's the 8th tallest building in all of Europe), the parades that took place on May 1st in front of it, and as I’m rattling this off, I take out my camera, because this is such a symbolic building in Warsaw that it deserves photographic commemoration each first time I come face to face with it during my returns to Poland.





But if I could have seen the eyes of our young taxi driver, I would have probably spotted an eye-roll. He was born just before the great change toward a market economy took place in Poland and his young adult years have been in the Poland of today – the one which feels to him (and to so many others here) very western. No different than, say, America.

He says as much. Why do Americans make us stand in line and pay big money for a visa to visit their country? He demands to know. It’s, for me, the perennial question. I’m asked this each and every time I come to Poland and I have no answer for it.

It’s a communistic style of thinking, he continues (in Polish). Like we still want to grab something from America. Well, we have America here right now! If I go to America, it’s to see it. To find out if it’s like in the movies. Not to grab! We were such fans of your country, but you’re losing us on this one.

Yes, I know.

I also understand that he does not like it when foreigners think of Poland as the “former communist country.” It’s not that to him and I can tell that he dislikes my references to that communist past.


Contrast this with the conversation we have in the compartment of a train that’s speeding... well, no, not really speeding, more like stalling... from Warsaw to Krakow. With us is a young Polish banker, traveling for a week-end in Krakow. He speak in accented but perfect English. As does his wife, who is, at the moment, reading an Alice Munro book.

What an embarrassment, he says as the train comes to another halt and an announcement is made of a fifteen, maybe twenty minute delay. (He does not know that I am, in fact, Polish. Or from Poland.) Our trains are awful. Outdated. The whole infrastructure is completely inadequate. They’re building roads quickly now, because of next year’s World Soccer Tournament, here, in Poland, but still, it’s a disaster if you compare it to roads and rails in western Europe.

He’s impatient with the Poland of today. He’s got a child who is almost ten. Ah, but you can't have it all, not all at once, I want to say. Look at you! You're so well dressed! Especially as compared with me, slouching in the corner in my baggy sweater and ever faithful curds.

I don’t know why we are having these delays, he continues. It’s not as if the weather is terrible, like last year’s snows. (Oh, do I know about last year’s snows!)
Ernest comments – we’re from Minnesota. We understand snow.
Our banker friend asks -- How is it there when the snows come? How does it affect your public transportation?
We have no public transportation, I blurt out.
No, I mean, the network of public trains or buses that you use to get from one town to another. He thinks he’s not explaining himself well.
We don't have a network of trains or buses that connect towns and villages.  
Well, in Minneapolis, there is the light rail now. Ernest comes to at least the city’s defense. Home pride.

It’s limited. To Minneapolis.

We are a car society, Ernest admits. It's interesting that this fact still shocks people here.

The announcement is made that the train is making up its initial delays. Indeed, each time the train stops the conductor announces that we are catching up for a timely arrival.
Our young banker smiles. This is new, this attention to customer satisfaction. You see more and more of it: well dressed, friendly conductors. Trying to please. Very new.


And so we are in Poland. And what an easy journey it was! Tail wind, announces the captain of the flight from Madison to Detroit. We’ll be in early. Tail wind, announces the captain on the flight from Detroit to Paris. We’ll be in a good twenty minutes early. Tail wind, announces the captain on the flight from Paris to Warsaw (I kid you not). We’ll be in early.  And we do arrive early. Ernest is there waiting.





I have to grin at the comparison with last December’s trip to Poland: snowed in and delayed, often for days, at every single leg of the journey. Not now, not this year. The skies are gray, the air is damp from recent rains. You could see it flying in.





...but it’s not wintery yet.

Even as it can seem cold, especially at the Central train station in Warsaw, where it always feels cold.


 


I look around. The waiting hall has been cleaned up some, but there isn't a place to sit and besides, it really is miserably chilly. I envy the scouts that I see sprawled on the floor by the stairs – not for the camping they’ll surely be doing, but for the temperature indifference that young people have, that I once had.






We arrive in Krakow.

Sometime on the train, the tiredness of the incredibly long journey overwhelms my friends. Me, on the other hand,  I want so badly to get there already, so that I can walk, and walk some more and take it all in.

We check into the lovely little Hotel Unicus and make plans to meet in the morning. They retire, I head out.






And I take in this beautiful magical city...


 


...on a full moon night.






The Christmas Market is going strong... it’s homey and less formal than what you’d see in German cities. I eat a grilled smoked ewe's milk cheese with cranberries...






... and I pause to eat a supper of cabbage and potatoes, accompanied with hot mulled wine.






The smoky air is pungent and the potatoes have the fragrance of grilled kielbasa.


 


The woman behind the counter at the grill stand asks me if it’s getting cold.  
No, I tell her, not really. Above freezing at the moment.  
There’s snow where I come from, she answers. 

And where do you come from? 

The mountains. A small village called Istebna.

Is it pretty?

Yes!

I’ll have to see it soon.

And you know, someday I’m sure to do that. A random tip from a cabbage and sausage vendor. Sounds good to me.