Summer

Am I the only one who hates the summer holidays? No work, combined with potentially long periods of confinement indoors due to terrible weather, plus lack of company as everyone else flies off to fairer climes.

I know I should enjoy it, and consequently feel guilty when I don't. There's nothing like that creeping feeling of dread at the start of July when people start disappearing and 'closed for holidays' signs start to pop up on shop windows everywhere. I love hot weather, don't get me wrong. But as a British woman living in Belgium, chance'd be a fine thing.

For years now, the summer holidays have been a long, tedious stretch of socially-barren thumb-twiddling.
They almost always involve separation from someone I don't want to be separated from, often with a significant body of water and a frustratingly slow internet connection standing solidly between us.

Summer holidays also belie their name by being a traditional period of hard labour: for students, stuck behind the checkout at Sainsbury's, and for interpreters, at Polish language schools.

Almost all your friends will go on holiday at the same time and then on language courses, and by the time everybody's back it will be September again and time to go back to work (with a sigh of relief). The consoling charms of retail therapy and comfort eating are rendered virtually inaccessible by the lack of shops and restaurants actually open in Brussels in July and August.

Why not go on holiday? I hear you cry. You must be joking. There are two options here - no, three. One: you holiday with your nearest and dearest, resulting in bickering, tears and cries of 'I'm not a fucking GPS!', not to mention the unknown quantity of the acoustics in the hotel bathroom. Two: go away with friends... actually this isn't such a bad option, except that it's hard to find single friends of a similar age to go away with - plus any kind of girly holiday inevitably leads to excruciating hangovers and embarrassing sunburn. Perhaps best avoided. Three: go away with your parents...

Ideally, I'd like to kidnap several of my favourite people in the world and hole up in a converted farmhouse in Tuscany (so very home counties), spending daylight hours reading by the (tastefully designed) swimming pool and evenings chugging Chianti in the cool of a hilltop terrace.

In reality, I'm in Kraków, mainlining Tok FM podcasts and trying not to get into trouble with the police (long story). At least the sun is shining. For now.

Wszystko gra

I went to meet New Boy off the night train at Warsaw Central. We decided to spend the day in Warsaw and leave his bags at the station.
The przechowalnia was run by a rotund, middle-aged Polish man, who persisted in staring into the middle distance somewhere past my right shoulder so that I couldn't tell whether he was talking to me or to the guy behind me.

Pino: Dzień dobry proszę Pana, czy możemy zostawić bagaż tu?
Man (speaking to somewhere vaguely beyond P's shoulder): Ile sztuk?
Pino: dwa
Man (realising P is not Polish): Ah. Two!
Pino: tak, dwa.  
Man: yes! Two!
Pino: (takes out purse) Ile to będzie?
Man: No! Pay after. After!
Pino: ok, dziękuję bardzo
Man: Please! Thank you.

New Boy (casually): Wszystko gra?
Man: (with broad smile of manly recognition): Taaak, wszystko gra!

Pino: Fine. From now on you can do the talking.

Sempre chiuso

I did mean to post a couple more Italy photos.
This lot starts halfway through the week in Bologna. Last time I went to visit Bologna was in between my exams when I was studying as an Erasmus student in Trento. It was afternoon, exam season in a student city, and all I remember are empty arcades, closed facades, and an all-pervading dusty orange-red haze.
I don't know anyone in Bologna, so I wrote to a very nice chap on Couchsurfing who agreed to host me, and I hoped that I would finally get to know the city a bit. I've heard good things.

I got a lovely air-conditioned intercity train from Florence at lunchtime.

On arrival in Bologna, all quiet and red. No reply from my couchsurfer, but then it was siesta hour.

I left my backpack at the station and set to wandering the streets aimlessly and waiting for gelato time. Most of the shop fronts were masked by heavy metal blinds, paper notes fluttering, bearing variations on 'Closed for the holidays'. I took some pictures of the deserted arcades and settled down with my giallo to wait for the bookstores to re-open.

No word from couchsurfer guy.

At around six, having successfully raided the bookshop and gelateria and picked up my bag from the station, and after continued silence from Couchsurfer Guy, I decided to check into the youth hostel. There is only one youth hostel in Bologna, and you have to take the 94 bus from Via Marconi.

Guess what? It turns out that the Via Marconi bus stop is podwójny. Actually there were about six different bus stops labelled Via Marconi, and only two of them were actually on the street in question.
Two bus drivers were leaning on an empty parked bus, smoking. I approached them and asked for the youth hostel.

Frowning and scratching of heads.

In August, in Italy, the buses run at one an hour. At least I think that's how it works. According to the timetable, services marked with a letter 'a' run as Saturday service, those marked with an 's' run as on Sunday, those marked with a 'z' run as if on a bank holiday and anything else apparently doesn't run at all.

- Can't I just walk there? I asked.

Snorts of laughter.

Eventually they advised me to get number 20 from the stop two streets up.
I started walking, saw the bus overtake me, and started to run, backpack, Italian August heat and all.

Ahead of me I saw my one bus an hour start to pull away from the stop.... and then halt at the traffic lights.

I gained the front doors and banged on them furiously. They opened and I leapt on, gasping like a fish out of water.

- To the youth hostel?? I spluttered.
- First say thank you.
Said the bus driver.
- What?!
- Say thank you! For stopping the bus for you!
- Oh. Sure! Thanks, grazie mille! Now about that youth hostel...

Unfortunately the youth hostel was one of those wholesome International Hostelling Association ones. You know the type: capacity for at least 700 scouts, board games in the common room, table tennis outside, complete and utter lack of alcoholic beverages.
In the middle of absolutely nowhere.
The bus stopped three stops before and I had to walk the rest of the way, along the main road, in the heat and dust, with my backpack. No-one offered me a lift.

- Is there anywhere I can get something to eat here? I asked the girl at reception.
- Well... she said ... there's a supermarket three bus stops away, but you've just missed the bus. You could walk...
Seeing my dark look she moved swiftly on.
- Unfortunately the restaurant next door is closed for the holidays. But you could always order pizza.
I took the menu.
- Do you want me to call for you from here? she asked.
- Don't worry about it.
- No, really, I want to ask them something too.
I listened to her on the telephone:
- ... and... I don't suppose there's a tobacconist near you? There is?! Oh... closed for the holidays. I see. Never mind.
Poor woman, stuck in the middle of nowhere, not even a cigarette break in sight...

At 10.30pm, Couchsurfer Guy called...

Not a soul...

Where is everybody?

Gets about a bit, this Mickiewicz chap

Wait! Is that... a pedestrian?!

No-one for lunch today

Chiuso per ferie

My first proper holiday in quite a while and I really don't know where to start.

Let's do it in two parts, shall we?

The trouble with Italy is that it's not simply one country but rather a cluster of separate little universes, each with its own distinctive character and culture.
Italians - most unhelpfully - don't even actually speak Italian. They speak Fiorentino, or Romano, or Napoletano, or Siciliano, or Nonès, or Sardo, e cosi via. Some of them even speak German, just to keep us guessing. According to Lepschy and Lepschy, the only word they can all agree on is espresso.
I tend to be easily bored, so perhaps that's why I love visiting Italy so much.

I only had a week to spare so I made a whistle-stop tour of some old haunts in the central and northern regions of the country. We'll start with the centre and then I'll post the other half domani, domani...

Pisa:

Plenty of other things to see in Pisa

Look, it's all kind of wonky

Tower? No towers here...

Florence:

Rooftop terraces

The Duomo, playing hide and seek

The Porcellino protects his merchandise

A quiet moment in a side street

Ponte Vecchio

Sunset from Piazzale Michelangelo

Florence by night