Tempus fugit...

Yes - I know. I promised to be more attentive to this blog, but somehow time just runs away here. It's not that I am overworked!!!! It's not that I am overly busy!! But!! We are discovering the joys of living without a car!

Example: We want to go shopping and so we set off.... first we walk to the bus stop; next we wait......... the bus comes and we go to the tram stop. we hop on the tram. Now, if we go to Tesco, the number 19 is terrific - but it is a 25 minute ride. So far then we have taken about an hour on a bad day. We shop! That takes maybe 45 minutes. We are now professional shoppers in Polish!

But wait! There's more. We now have to ... pay! We queue up and may wait as long as 20 minutes just to get to the stage of paying. But even then it's just not simple. We know that at least one item won't register. Oh Boze!!! That means a l-o-n-g wait till they find the price. sometimes we just give up on the item. OK. So we've paid. Now to get home. With no car we have fine tuned our needs to only buy what we need. I prefer the backpack but Dave is happy to use the IKEA giant bag and the Tesco bag. We have really cut down on plastic bags as they don't last the journey home! We are NOT boring old greenies!!

Right - if the free Tesco bus isn't on it's a walk to the tram stop, then wait...you get the picture. In a nutshell, it can take us up to 3 hours to do a simple shop!! I HATE shopping!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apart from that. We went to Tarnow one Friday. Another pretty town which had a huge Jewish population till the Nazis decided to get rid of them. There's also a Romany museum with caravans. We went by train which was fun and very relaxing.

And of course we had Easter -this time in Lodz. We had a great day on Sunday with my family. So much wonderful food and just managing to communicate this time in Polish was very satisfying. But it snowed and was very very cold.

We ate one night in a Jewish restaurant. It was wonderful. The ambiance was great, the food was sooo tasty and there was a fiddler - on the roof - so to speak. The young man in question climbed up a sort of ladder and sat there playing. Then the chef came out with a bottle of kosher vodka - no! we don't know how it was kosher. Anyway, he had lots of glasses in his pocket and gave them out and then filled them up. And after a suitable interval.... he came round and did it again. What an evening.

Lodz is improving very much. They are renovating lots of old factories. Our hotel Focus was a textile factory and the rooms are really big with high ceilings etc. The staff are very friendly, and speak good English - so much for trying out our Polish!

Wet Monday, when boys try to throw water over girls was a literal washout! Padal sneg! It was snowing! So we left Lodz and went to see our good friends in Godzanow. We had yet another great day and overnighter and we have now been given an invitation to their elder daughter's wedding in June! How wonderful. That'll be such a good day and our first Polish wedding.

And that brings me up to date. Our next holiday is in 4 weeks - this time to Lille and Mons. We'll be doing WW1 battlefields with old army buddies -and catching up on 16 years gossip!!! And eating Belgian choccies, French cuisine.... Mmmmmmmnnn!!!