blogging into the void

hello out there! as you can see it rained today, all day. and it may still be raining right now for all i know. nevertheless (a favorite compound word of mine these days it seems, along with moreover which i hardly get to use but nonetheless...) we walked all day in it. and yes that's a fish. it's part of a playground closer to this apartment. 

to be honest, Poznań is an extremely difficult act to follow, and as cute as that fish is and as interesting as the places we visited today are, this city does not even come close to Poznań's amazingness. i know that sounds weird but it's true so I just don't understand what all the fuss is about this town. Maybe that just proves my bumpkinness or my inability to enjoy the finer things in life...we did wander into some fascinating things though. 

the old town was very bustling, mostly with tourist groups. a and i ducked into a little cozy cafe to grab a bite before checking out a couple of museums. this was a kind of "milk cafe" like the one in Warsaw but older. the food was very good, so good i forgot to take pictures plus it was very dark in there:

next we went in search of the only kaltine in all of Poland. i think there's another one in Kaunas (Lithuania) but we didn't have enough time to go there. if you don't know what a kaltine is you will have to wait until we get home to ask me. i hesitate to put the photo on here so you will just have to have a little patience. sadly the people running the tiny museum couldn't answer my few questions: did they know how the kaltine was removed? was it done by folk medicine or conventional? etc. they did know it had been a woman's and they knew a little bit about the folk beliefs surrounding it but nothing else, so that was a little disappointing. there were a couple of disturbing things in that museum that i won't mention here but honestly, they really should treat the subject with more decency.

this is a first edition of symon syrenius's herbal. he is referenced constantly by sophie knab, our english language source for polish herbalism:

next stop, the ethnographic museum. this was super overwhelming. here's a video of a school room that a confirmed with the docent was probably a lot like the one my grandmother would have gone to, complete with two portraits of the first president of Poland at the front of the classroom, a traditional stove, decoratuve cut paper curtains and so much more:

this museum had so many interesting exhibits. i'll just add a couple photos i took. the cut paper window coverings:

bahnkis (glass cups for cupping):

berry pickers... my mom told me her parents used to go into the forest to pick berries. she didn't tell me what kind of berries, so i'm guessing there were many to choose from:

a special implement for collecting bilberries which are European blueberries:

marth, look at that second to last blanket and tell me if that isn't the same pattern as your blanket?!

there was just too much stuff in that place to take it all in... all kinds of displays on baskets, weaving, block printing that looked so much like the kind done in india and it may have been brought to poland from there but there was no explanation just these displays:

we were in there for almost three hours and afterwards were exhausted so we walked back over the river and found a restaurant called "goose" not realizing until we sat down that all they served there is goose, well almost every dish. i wasnt going to tell you but we ordered their sample appetizer that had mostly goose dishes on bread. i didn't take a picture because well because i want going to tell you. it was interesting but i don't know that i would eat goose again to be honest. i did take a picture of our main dishes which were much less carnivorous. a placki (?) or potato pancake with a mushroom sauce and also these totally not sweet blueberry dumplings with sour cream:

i told our waiter we had never eaten goose before and he said it's not commonly eaten in Poland anymore, just on holidays and special occasions

i forgot to mention a couple of very important things. the first is that this may be a place that embraces one of my favorite advertising devices: boxen! these were noted almost as soon as we first crossed the river into the old town while we were trying to find a sheltered spot to consult my phone:

also extremely remarkable is that just about every bench has its personal trash receptacle. these ones even have their own umbrella-like structures attached to prevent detritus from becoming sodden. in the fish playground park we stopped counting trashcans (and benches) at a dozen. what the hector, Davis, CA, City Council?!

looking in one direction:

and the opposite direction. benches with umbrellaed trash receptacles as far as the eye can see: