I have arrived, and to prove it…
Got a taxi to the airport, mostly because I needed someone to help me lift my suitcase. I remember a great episode of Blake’s Seven in which someone had hidden a speck of neutron star no bigger than a dust mote but weighing hundreds of kilos aboard a space shuttle thereby rendering it too heavy to reach orbit. There was a hilarious climactic scene in which our heroes try to push the offending neutron speck, handily encased in a small block of perspex, out of the shuttle door. There was a lot of mimed heaving and hauling involved. Anyway, my luggage reminded me of this scene. It looked like it would be easy to shift, but it wasn’t.
Arrived at the airport far too early and was brusquely repelled by the check-in bod. Queued again, just for something to do, and amused myself by observing the way in which my suitcase was perturbing the velocities of less massive objects, such as airbus A380s. Small children passing by clung desperately to their teddy bears as the fearsome gravity well exerted it’s hold. Perhaps unsurprisingly I was charged excess baggage, which involved waiting again in a similar, but slightly more petulant, queue of people who all had one arm longer than the other.
Landed in Krakow at 4.30ish and employed my years of experience of Krakow airport transit buses to secure first position at the passport control desk. I was in and out like a breeze. The authorities are in the middle of constructing a brand spanking new terminal which will no doubt make the whole process much more shiny and far less convenient, but I suppose they’ve got to do something with the mountains of cash that the EU keeps shoveling in their direction.
A couple of shots of the new place; the view from my window and a fascinating close-up of my trendy decor.
As is usually the case with lush open spaces in Poland, a lot of these gardens seem to belong to the church around the corner. Nuns are perpetually scurrying about out there pruning roses, tending vegetables and slipping behind the potting shed for a crafty pull from a hip flask. Some of it also seems to be privately owned, but I’ve yet to figure who it belongs to and whether they would be willing to invite me round for a barbeque.
It really is a lovely flat. The setting is amazingly peaceful and secluded although it is literally five minutes walk from the Stary Miasto (Old Town). I even have a mysterious cobwebbed attic space that would be ideal for hiding from SS raids, should the need ever arise.
This person http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1040180 seems to live in the building next to mine and has posted some nice pics of the gardens.
