Finals finals finals

The students who did this program in Krakow last year weren't kidding when they told us that all of our work would pile up at the end of the semester!!! I've got to buckle down for the next week and half and tackle my mountain of schoolwork, but when I come out at the other end I'll be taking off for two weeks or so of travel and then back to the States! So I'm currently sitting in my favorite cafe, Les Coleurs on the main market square in Kazimierz, enjoying a near-constant supply of coffee and little sugary cookie-wafers while I do my schoolwork using their wonderfully free wireless internet!

The end of the parents visit went well. We got back from the mountains a day earlier than expected (long story there involving good ol' Polish organization and our professors' failure to realize that Brad, Rachel, and I DID need to go to class on Monday) and Mom and Dad settled back into a hotel room in my building. Monday morning we headed into the center city and Mom and I did some souvenir/gift shopping in the stalls in the Sukiennice, a super old building that's been around since the middle ages and used to be the cloth merchants' hall. Dad found a good seat on the base of Adam Mickiewicz's (famous Polish poet) monument in the main square and buried himself in Michener's Poland. I had to go to class at 12:30 and left them eating their lunches (delicious kebab) in the Planty (the park that encircles the old city and was the defensive moat in the middle ages). I'm not entirely sure what they did while I was in class. I think some wandering around the Planty/outskirts of the old city looking at the monuments and buildings that are highlighted in my Krakow guidebook. We met up after class to catch a tour bus to the Wieliczka salt mine, which I saw in February and thought was a must-see for the parents. They enjoyed it, although Mom got huffy about our tour guide's misrepresentation of Copernicus' contribution to science. The tour guide said that he proved that the sun is the center of the solar system, but as Mom proceeded to explain (at great length) over dinner later, Copernicus only developed a good (not perfectly accurate) model that didn't prove anything. The equipment/knowledge, etc. required to actually prove the heliocentric model wasn't developed until much later. I like having brilliant, nerdy parents, although it does mean that I'm subjected to lectures over dinner. :)

Tuesday was another good day. Mom and Dad were on their own for a lot of it, since I did some homework in the morning and they went to Wawel to see the royal aparments, tickets to which had been sold out when they were at Wawel last week. I had class in the middle of the day while they tried to see the archeological museum...it has a fantastic exhibit on the people who lived in the Krakow area during prehistorical periods. But that museum has the weirdest hours and is only open until 2 on most days so they missed it! After my class and their tour of Wawel, we met in the Planty and went Kopiec Kosciuszko, Kosciuszko's mound. It's a mound of dirt constructed in the 1800s on a hill a little bit to the southwest of the city center to commemorate Kosciuszko for leading the 1794 uprisings against the major powers of Europe. Unfortunately, Kosciuszko's uprising failed and Poland ceased to exist on the maps of Europe in 1795 when it was divided by Prussia, Austria, and Russia, only appearing again after World War I. The mound incorporates dirt from every battlefield where he fought. The mound itself is a well-developed tourist destination with a restaurant and hotel built into the fortifications that the Austrians constructed around it when they had control of Krakow. The main reason for going is the view from the top of the mound, which is a gorgeous panorama of Krakow. We could pick out the main downtown markers: Wawel castle, Kosciol Mariacki on the main market square, the church of Sts. Peter and Paul on Grodzka Street which runs south from the main square to the castle. We could also see my dorm and it was fun to trace out my walking-route to various destinations. It also gave Mom and Dad a great idea of the layout of the city. Oh, and it was cool to see Nova Huta (the giant steelworks that were a huge Communist project in the middle of the 20th century) although it was pretty obscured by smog. I'd learned about Krakow's air being incredibly polluted by industry under Communist rule, but hadn't noticed it on day-to-day basis until I was that high up above the city...it didn't seem to bad, though and is certainly MUCH better than it used to be! Oh, the one other thing that struck me was how green the city is. Again, I'd always heard that Krakow is the greenest city in eastern Europe and one of the greenest in all of Europe, but didn't fully realize what that meant until I was that high. It really looked to me more like a city growing in a forest than trees growing in a city. Yay!

We really didn't have long at the mound, only about a half hour, and then we dashed back to the main square to make a 7 pm Chopin concert in one of the palaces fronting the square. The pianist was a Japanese grad school student studying piano in Krakow and played beautifully. I always forget how difficult Chopin is but when I see it performed I remember how impossible it is! Her performance was incredible. After the concert we ate dinner at a restaurant called Babcia Malina which serves great traditional Polish food.

Wednesday morning was departure morning for Mom and Dad, so we all got up early and went to the airport. I loaded them down with an extra bag that they checked for me, since I'll be going home with much more than I came with!

So it was great to have them here, as I told Dad in an email today...a little taste of home in Krakow.

Now I should probably get back to my schoolwork! Rachel just joined me in the cafe and we're going to reciprocally and strictly enforce study-discipline.