Krakow is windy and raining.  The Polaci are prepared with sturdy functional umbrellas.  What little water evades their cover is sloughed away by the aerodynamic lift streamlined around their sloping noses.  At only around 1/2 Rzeczpospolitan Jew, I got soaked on the way to and from Szpital Miejski Specjalistyczny, where Daniel is draining fluid from the spot where his appendix used to be.

an appendix wrapped around a laparoscope

Water evaporating from the street cools the air.  It has become cold. I can’t sleep.

The tiny dry sauna in our apartment building has a mini electric coil producing adequate heat with poor ventilation.  Dim LED lights in the ceiling change color slowly in the arched blue ceilinged steam room.  The wooden bench in the sauna and the tiles in the steam room have very different feels.  The dry air of the sauna feels cooler than the wet air of the steam room, but the thermometers tell the opposite story.

The wood is warm, and slowly heats up.  The tile is hot, but quickly cools down.  If the thermometer says 98 degrees centigrade, is the wood cooler and the tile hotter?  When you throw water on the rocks, it burns your face, but the thermometer stays stubbornly in place.  What the hell is going on in the banya?

Are there special laws of thermodynamics for Russian baths?

The first law of banya thermodynamics

The first law of banya thermodynamics states:

Throwing water on the rocks creates 100 degree Celsius steam.

This is not to say that steam cannot get hotter, only that it begins its life steaming hot off the rocks at the same temperature as boiling water.

The second law of banya thermodynamics

The second law of banya thermodynamics states:

The banya bench is as hot as the banya air.

It may feel cooler if its wood, or hotter if it’s tile.  But no, it is the same temperature.  It has been sitting there long enough to equilibriate to the same temperature as the air.  However, some materials conduct heat more rapidly than others, so they may feel different temperatures to the touch depending on how quickly they transfer heat to your skin. The quicker a substance transfers heat to your skin, the hotter it feels, and vice versa.

If you can handle the heat and lie on the wooden sauna bench for long enough, your body, which actively works to keep you at a lower temperature than the scorching sauna air (otherwise you would die), will cool down the wood on the bench and the pocket of air immediately around you.  How quickly you are able to cool down the wood or air depends on those substances’ heat retention factors.  In other words, different substances require different amounts of energy changes in order to change temperature.

The third law of banya thermodynamics

The third law of banya thermodynamics states:

Steam heats up your skin when it hits you

Remember, liquid water is a lesser energy state than steam.  Your body is cooler than the air in a Russian bath (otherwise you would die).  So when steam hits your skin, it turns into water.  When a gas turns into a liquid, which requires a lesser energy state, it releases the extra energy onto your face.  That excess energy is felt as an increase of temperature of your skin.  It can be painful to be hit by a wave of steam.

The fourth law of banya thermodynamics

The fourth law of banya thermodynamics states:

Banya air is less dense than restaurant air

When water is thrown on the rocks, the H2O molecules in the ensuing steam wedge themselves in between the usual oxygen and nitrogen molecutes normally in the air.  Basically the steam takes up space that would normally be taken up by regular air.  So less oxygen and nitrogen fit in the sauna’a air.  So it’s important to air out the rooms once in a while to get more oxygen in there.

Krakow is pronounced, kra-kov.  Warsaw is var-sav.  Oświęcim is pronounced osh-vien-chim.  My dad is in the bed behind me, making distinctive dad bedtime preparation noises as his saliva coheres and detaches from his teeth, gums, and dental floss.  Daniel is convalescing in a local hospital after having undergone an emergency appendectomy en route to the Krakov airport Thursday afternoon.  I have a cold.

While in Zakopane, Dad and I managed an easy 11 mile bike ride along the foothold of the Tatry mountains.  Daniel was already feeling ill in the rental apartment, trying to subdue the feverish cold shakes then.  The path along the mountains was relatively flat, but quite rocky and required mountain bikes.

Bicycling at the foothills of the Tatry

All Zakopane sidewalks, paths, bushes and underpasses are populated by crowds of Polacy (pronounced pole-atsi) on vacation.  For future reference, here is the approximate route we took.  The photo above was taken at about mile 9.5:

A nice ride around Zakopane

Krakov is mellow.  The unspoken pride and joy of the local people are the four man-made mounds, not too tall, not too wide.  Modest. About the shape of a pierogi.

A pierogi

Each (mound, not pierogi) is said to encase a memorial for, if not the remains of, one of Krakov’s historically significant personalities: Krak (the founder), Wanda (his stoic daughter; pronounced vanda), Piłsudski (creator of the Polish independence legions), and Kościuszko (a real character, it seems; namesake of the eponymous bridge between Queens and Greenpoint, Brooklyn).

Not a single Polak has mentioned the mounds, and they do not appear in most online or printed tourism guides.  In fact, a Google Map search for Kopiec Krakusa leads one to an incorrect address, as I found out on foot.  The true location is here.

Not the Kopiec Krakusa

I will have more to say tomorrow.  It is 11:10, ten minutes past Dad’s bedtime.

Day #1 – Bois de Vincennes

Bike route to Bois de Vincennes

This route takes you along relatively busy roads, through Place de la Republic, then through Bastille – the site of the initial spark of the French Revolution, and out to Bois de Vincennes, a large park on the eastern edge of the city.   The park has playgrounds and rides for kiddies, as well as crepe and coffee vendors.  A lake in the middle offers a chance to do some leisurely rowing, or be escorted to the island by a professional gondolier.  There seemed to be a smattering of yarmulke-porting Hebrews in the area.

Day #2 – Louvre, Notre Dame, Canal St-Martin, African Slum

Bike tour to Louvre, Notre Dame, Canal St-Martin, and African Slums

This route is an ad-hoc meander through various neighborhoods, some touristy and some not.  First stop is the Louvre, where a visit to the suites of Napoleon III are a must.  It seems to be possible to lock a bike up to just about any object without police interference.  Next is a quick jaunt through the Tuilleries, the nicest gardens in Paris.  And last, but not least on the cultural calendar is Notre Dame, reached by traveling through a winding path in the 6th arrondisement – a  posh little area, and then on to Ile de la cite, where Notre Dame sits.

After the loop through the cathedral, a drink along the Canal St.-Martin is in order.  To ride past the Picasso museum without so much as a glance is less a feat than might be imagined after the burnout from the Louvre and Notre Dame.  At Canal St.-Martin, one can easily find a seat at the Irish pub on Quai de Jemmaps astride the stinking canal and and pity the poor artist types who dwell there over a pint of 1664 talking about their unimagined projects.  Yet, all this time, you will never encounter a black person in all of Paris until you cross over into the neighborhood behind Gare du Nord and reach the open market on the corner of rue Duhesme and rue Ordener, where you will stick out like a sore white thumb in a field of handy Africans and one would be hard-pressed to find a bougie or tourist until returning to the safety of the middle-aged hipsterness that is Montmartre.

Waking up in Brooklyn at 7:37, 7 minutes after the alarm was programmed to go off, I threw my laptop in a laptop bag astride a banana, put the laptop bag inside a travel bag, and traveled the baggage over to the superground subway.  I was not surprised to find a train filled with Chinamen.  Who else is awake, alert, and in relative motion at 8am on a Sunday (station time)?

At 8:47 on the dot, as always, the Hudson Line train pulled out of the station in Grand Central.  The girl in front of me feigned ignorance when the conductor informed her that he did not accept credit cards.  Discrete, as is the way of the MetroNorth breed, he said, “I’ll be back for you later”, and walked down the car, never to return.

At 9:32, I was crossing the Croton River, lauding the few gasping suburban men jogging along the side path of the highway that is usually the reserve of latin americans illegally crossing town borders.  It was starting to get hot.  The Mexicans presumably had the day off.

At 10:10, I had deposited my bags inside Mystic Pointe. and was backing my parents’ car out of the driveway.  At 11:00, I pulled into the parking lot in front of the police station in Stamford, Connecticut, where I spotted Sean sitting in the shade of an oak tree.  I hadn’t been sure whether Sean would be white or black, male or female.  He turned out to be a thin blond white guy, about 6 foot, unemployed since December, with a wry demeanor, eager to get out of Stamford.  I immediately pegged him as a Republican based solely on the tucked in polo shirt and his lack of affectation.  Sean said he had hedged his burgeoning career on a storied Connecticut Congressman who had finally lost his seat last year.  I had been correct.  We drove around in his car for a half an hour, chit-chatting.

By 1pm, I had watered the plants in Mystic Pointe, and was again crossing the Croton River en route to Zeytinia, where I bought a Turkish börek spinach roll of the type normally found only in deep Brooklyn, red cabbage salad (which turned out to include raisins), and brussel sprouts from the salad bar.  It was only a half day earlier that I had been discussing the festering health risk posed by salad bars with guests at Jared & Ilona’s wedding.  After lunch I dozed on the leather couch near the window.

Arousing no later than 2pm, I caught the final half set of Venus Williams’ edging out of the cute funny-looking Carla Suarez Navarro in a rerun from Saturday’s match on t.v. Navarro was great to watch, although she ultimately failed.  Williams, like her post-match interview, was dull, but victorious.  Then came the second half of the USA vs. Brasil soccer match.  USA fared far better than I would have expected, although by the last 20 minutes, they had lost morale, which perpetuated their clockwise downward spiral, whereas the feisty Brasilians were finally coming into their own, feeding on their success with a counter-clockwise alternate-hemispheric forward feedback loop.

To cap off an exciting day, at 7:25, I drove around the old neighborhood, remarking at how short Elmore Avenue is despite its having felt much longer as a kid.  Children were playing outside of the Burn’s old house.  The anti-Semite vibe looked to have been eliminated from the premises, but one can never be sure.  A shiny American car was parked at the top corner of Darby Ave, where there have always been classic American cars.  There were no fences separating properties, and the lawns were cut short, but not heavily manicured.  Healthy white high school girls were jogging the loop.

Finally, at 7:45, I ordered a small pie at Capriccio’s with pepper and onions in person, and passed the prerequisite 15 minutes at the New Croton Dam.  There I encountered a picnic full of Hassids.  A chubby black girl was lying on a blanket directly between a picnic table and the gravel parking lot a mere one foot away.  Clearly not acclimated to suburban life.  The pizza was ready.  I tipped the young girl manning the cash register.  I wondered if she would share with the Mexican who made the pizza.  Anything is possible these days.

The New Croton Dam

How awkward to be staying in a stranger’s house. When booking a Bed & Breakfast, one keeps an eye open for coziness, cleanliness, positive breakfast reviews, and a benevolent portrait of the preferably harmlessly quirky hosts.  But what you don’t think about as you blithely click to sort your B&B search results by price, popularity, and breakfast rating, are the consequences of your actually being a guest in a stranger’s house.

Whenever you visit someone’s house, the unspoken assumption in polite society is that you will more or less abide by the rules of the house, even if they are not exactly your own.  But how can the hosts know that you will be polite, especially when they are often mom-and-pop businesses that do not have resources for online payment processing, let alone background checks?  And how do you, the strange guest, know that the rules of the house will be acceptable to your norms?  There is a big risk involved in this entire transaction that far outweighs the potential cozy cleanly warm breakfast.

And so it came to pass that Nina and I arrived on the doorstep of La Maison Bourlamaque, the Bed & Breakfast we had reserved based upon it’s #14 out of 52 rankings on TripAdvisor.com, the fact that it had a room available for the days surrounding the new year, the rave reviews of its multi-course breakfasts, and not least of all the fact that the proprietor had a Japanese wife.

From the outside, the house was a nicely built believably historic-looking place with no discernible lights on inside.  I rang the doorbell, and after a few moments – just a few more seconds than was comfortable with, to tell you the truth – Stefan, a pale bald heavyset man in his socks and mid-to-late 30s opened the door with a tee-shirt on.  He looked different than I had expected.

Without much fanfare, we were instructed to remove our shoes.  And without making any effort to help with our luggage, he then showed us to our room.  I hauled both suitcases up the stairs, while Nina carried our smaller bags.  Despite having not had a chance to look around yet, the house felt like someone’s house. The room was big, cozy, and clean, which made Nina happy.  The decorations were austere yet tasteful.  After a bit of prodding, Stefan matter-of-factly gave us the minimum amount of information necessary for our comfort: the location of the bathroom (shared with another room) and the wifi passord.  Once Stefan returned to the dimness downstairs, Nina gushed with happiness.  She slammed doors, threw towels around, and claimed her psychological space as an inhabitant of the house.  As all men know, vacations are about making your girls happy, so I was happy too.  It was a cozy, clean room, and breakfast was only a king bed sized night away.  We did a quick test of the bed, left our scents in the toilet, inspected the closets, confirmed that the wifi signal had sufficient power, and finding everything to our satisfaction, we decided to head out for dinner.

Fortunately, Stefan was sitting with his 15″ PowerBook on the couch in the living room, near the door.  Upon questioning, he indicated that there were several restaurants on avenue Cartier, the next street over.  I brought out a map, which he summarily turned upside down, saying that it was better that way, and following some of his rapid pointing, I began to trace what he suggested be our main route to the old city.  While I was still trying to understand how the map could be better understood upside-down, I absentmindedly punched a hole through it with the pen, jabbing it onto his clean and cozy wall.  Afraid to peer behind the map to see the damage, I continued to converse, eliciting the vaguest possible responses, about places Stefan recommended we go. Apparently there were very few, because before I knew it, he had scribbled a single illegible word and a dot on a street near the old city, folded up the map (which I then resumed possession of), and was looking at me expectantly like the quiet kid at the town dance.  Obviously we leave now, I thought.

Avoiding the awkwardness, we re-shoed, gloved, and Chinese fur hatted, and walked over to avenue Cartier, where we had a hearty meal at Café Krieghoff.  Nina informed me that Stefan had quickly scanned the wall for pen marks as we were leaving.  We mangéd on the table d’hotes, enjoying them thoroughly, and Nina noted how many people were eating alone.  I hadn’t noticed, but she was right – there were 4 or 5 solo eaters.  This obviously must be a good sign – no tourists would eat alone, so this must be a local hangout.  We enjoyed the meal even more.  On the way out, I noticed newspaper clippings near the entrance declaring this place good for solo eaters.  Possibly a self-fulfilling prophecy, what do I know?

As a digestif, we carried on walking through the perfectly shoveled sidewalks on the recommended path all the way to the old city, jumping into the local coffee merchant, talking with the proprietor about Obama and hope in franglais (he seemed excited to talk to Americans).  I curtailed my cynicism in face of his aberrant enthusiasm, and we bought the obligatory beans for Nina’s mom, who is said to love coffee, and carried on trotting, ultimately turning back at the old city gates to return to our B&B for the night.

Re-entering the room, Nina found it too cold for her liking.  Suffering gladly, as is the way of her peoples, she stoically stomped downstairs.  I, being hesitant to begin a confrontation with the man over the insulation of his castle, and fearing Nina’s tendency for directness, had assented to her descent on the condition that she please be nice to him for at least the first day.  She returned triumphantly with the story of her defeat.  Not only had he had told her that, despite her being cold, the house was, in fact, already warm, but that she had asked for tea, and he had said that they do not make the guests tea, but tonight he would do it for her, as if he were doing her a favor.

Stefan knocked on the door a few minutes later with a steeping pot of green tea.  Nina avoided eye contact, and put on a pout.  He put down the tea and cups and gently restated his position that the house was warm.  In a self-contradictory turn, he then began to explain that the house was old, and that the heating was centralized, thereby explaining somehow the lack of heat in the room.  Turning the heat up may make one room warm, he said, while another would be a little colder.  I failed to see the logic in this defense, but I sympathized with his plight.  All he had to do was turn the heat up, and even the colder rooms would get warmer, I thought.

He then asked me if I were cold.  At that moment, I was caught red-handed in a tee shirt, and since I generally enjoy cold temperatures and could not possibly have made the case that I was cold, I responded with the diplomatic truth that I was not cold, but that it was not so hot in the room.  Stefan insisted that he was not trying to be cheap by not turning up the heat, and that it was only because the heat was uneven throughout the house.  He repeated this several times.  Nevertheless, it seemed to us that there were no alternate explanations for his resistance to turning up the heat.

Regardless of the temperature of the room, when a guest is cold, you turn up the heat, right? By my reckoning, we were paying the Maison Bourlamaque enough to justify the expectation that a few simple requests would be satisfied.  Stefan should think of himself as our hired hand, should he not?

Stefan did eventually turn up the heat, making this reduntantly known to me the next morning.  And the combination of heat and no-doubt Japanese green tea made us warm and cozy, feeling clean and looking forward to breakfast.  But isn’t it the charm of a Bed & Breakfast that you are obligated, as a house guest, to suffer kindly the failings of the head of the household?  Shouldn’t Stefan have resisted?  Otherwise, wouldn’t we really have done better to stay in a hotel?

And so it came to pass that after a day and a half in Quebec City, Nina and I felt the need to meander. Gourmet fruit cakes and lovely old village landmarks notwithstanding, Quebec is a small place with small things in mind, and we are big-spirited people with square glasses. And so I braved the -20 degree Celsius, and weathered the snow nine blocks (all the way) to the Hertz rental car office on Le Grande-Allée, a relatively wide, beautifully shoveled approach to the center of town, ignoring entirely the historic plains across the street that were once the scene of a decisive battle in the Seven Years’ War that ultimately led to the establishment of Canada as a British colony, despite its French history.

After a minute of conversing in French, the Hertz rental officer and I complicitly completed the rental transaction of a gigantic mini van in heavily accented English. And so it was that on the third day of our restful stay in Quebec City, Nina and I pumped up the heat in the front two of a 7-seated white minivan and departed for an epic twenty minute journey to Île d’Orléans, a large, but sparsely populated island in the St. Lawrence river, where I had arranged for a dog sledding expedition that afternoon.

Just on the mainland side of the bridge to Île d’Orléans lie Montmorency Falls, the largest falls in Quebec Province and taller than Niagra Falls by 30 meters. After a brief sojourn in the visitors’ center restrooms (with the obligatory iPhone email check on the freely accessible wifi – a Quebec standard amenity), we continued the crossing to the island.

Soon after fording the St. Lawrence to the island, Nina decided that it was time to eat. And when Nina says it’s time to eat, we eat. After inquiring in the local boucherie, the only open establishment in the area near the bridge, manned entirely by young girls, the single meaty butcher girl who spoke the “very well English” told us in well broken English that there was a restaurant, La Goéliche, in Sainte-Pétronille, a town down the road. We bought some of the oldest cheese in North America but none of the raw meats, and carried on with hopes high of an impending authentic, rural, Quebecois island meal.

Entering Sainte-Pétronille meant pulling into the parking lot of the tourist chocolate shop, the only establishment in town. There we discovered that we were not the only tourists on the island – a strange older single man and a mainlander-looking couple were loitering inside. We joined them briefly perusing imported Swiss and Belgian chocolates at reasonable prices as if discovering hidden treasures of a long lost island peoples. The cash register was efficiently manned by a small-town goth girl who I don’t think was honestly that depressed. I made the obligatory inspection of the wifi situation in the toilet and we returned to the giant minivan.

Driving a few dozen meters down the road, we came upon La Goéliche, a charming waterfront hotel proudly overlooking its vast separation from the city of Quebec. The hotel was home to the restaurant where the butcher girl had said we could find a meal. After a few moments of purporting to admire the view, in spite of the -20 degree Celsius, I began a lively conversation in French with the hotel manager about the possibility of us working out a mutually-agreeable feeding arrangement. The hotel manager did not for a second make me feel as if my french was less than perfectly fluent, and I at once acknowledged that despite the inconspicuous setting, we had finally found someone who knows how to treat guests.

The hotel manager was clearly very sorry that the kitchen had just closed until later that evening. He began to call the other restaurants on the island in search on our behalf for a nice place to eat. With the formality and courteousness of his telephone demeanor as he pushed forth our case to the other restaurateurs on the island, one would never have supposed that we were on the tip of a desolate island with nary a village with more than ten houses.

As I was fully enamored of the man, perfectly combed hair included, Nina unbeknownst to me, was dangerously eying the fixed-price 9-course gourmet local-celebrity-chef New Years Eve dinner menu advertised by a printout on the front desk. After several moments, the hotel manager succeeded, as did Nina, and we left La Goéliche with a lunch reservation at a restaurant in Saint-Laurent-de-l’Ile-d’Orleans, the next town over, as well as a New Years Eve dinner reservation at La Goéliche.

En route to Saint-Laurent-de-l’Ile-d’Orleans, we passed an open grocery store. Following explicit instructions from my travel companion, I reversed the giant minivan into the parking lot, locking the doors with the wireless keychain out of ingrained paranoia. Based on our delays in finding a meal, in correlation to the imminent dog sledding reservation, we decided to buy some fodder in the grocery shop and skip he restaurant meal. Picking up a mysterious hand-wrapped sandwich for me, some stale bread crackers for Nina, and water for the car, we continued on to the dog sledding site, biting and munching along the way.

At long last, we found the signs for the dog sledding expeditions. The hill up to the expedition location was blocked by an SUV skidding in place. Using city person intimidation techniques, I drove halfway up the hill, and pulled the car behind them, waiting and watching in silence…. Eventually, the driver voluntarily let the SUV slip backwards into the side of the road, thereby giving me room to continue up the hill, and guaranteeing a more difficult time getting himself out of his predicament.

However, by stopping the car halfway up the hill, I had lost momentum. We were also skidding in place. So I backed the giant minivan down the hill, giving enough room for a throttled head-start, and gained enough momentum and traction to get us up the hill, past the looks of desperation from the passengers of the other car, and onward and upwards to a place where motors weren’t necessary and where the transportation mechanism of choice, optimized by generations for such suboptimal conditions, would lick the snow while trotting over it handily.

Discoveries. There are few things to arouse the senses in winter-worn Montreal. As you would expect, it’s cold. But despite its international reputation, there’s really not much here that can’t be found in upstate New York, except on a smaller scale.

However, if one approaches the city with no expectations, there are discoveries to be found. One of the few bright lights in an otherwise hazy town is Paryse, the self-proclaimed snack bar. In layman’s terms, Paryse is more of a haut grunge diner. It was there that we first tried poutine, the pride of Quebec.

Poutine is Quebecois for “cheese fries with gravy”. It’s all too easy for an American to criticise poutine because the fries are soggy, and we all know fries must never be soggy. But as with your general approach to Montreal in regard to holiday destinations, you would be doing yourself a disservice to view poutine in comparison to french fries. Poutine is poutine, a delicately balanced palate of fried potato stewed in an intense chicken-based sauce, topped with melted cheddar cheese curds.

But the gem of Paryse is not its poutine. It’s the namesake Paryse sandwich. The Paryse seamlessly combines toasted dark bread with fried egg, sliced tomato, romaine lettuce, sauteed mushrooms, the mysterious melted cheese curds, pickles, and plenty of mayonnaise. It’s difficult to describe the flavor, and I’m sure it’s almost impossible to replicate. So there is a reason to go to Montreal.