Krakow, Tuesday 9th September; futzing around..

I've been trying to work out some improvements to my blog, like how to put a 'fold' into each post; and how to add photos, and that. Not very successfully as you can see!

I guess I could investigate the blogspot list of goodies and see if I understands it a bit betterer.. anyone who cares to write in with suggestions for brain-dead travelling blog-dags is most welcome.

So, what we up to? M is still suffering ennui and self-shoulda/coulda/oughta wrangles. I am not so down, but SO tired.. we got up for brekkie after I'd had a good 9 hours of sleep, and afterwards I lay down and went out like a light for another 2 hours.. weird. Even for me this is kinda long. Cuts into the day of prospective touristing too.

We both have a strong sense of relief that tomorrow we travel (by train) to Berlin. A return to Western life! M speaks fluent German, so negotiating the city, the usual shopping/banking/posting/Netting details, and making our eccentric way through the days, should be much easier. I know that lotsa lotsa people don't speak English, but I'm getting a bit distressed by the 'blank face/don't wanna know' reaction from most people here. It's too much like Beijing, 10 years ago, especially the 'don't wanna know' part. In shopkeepers, waiters and the service industry in general, I don't understand the hostility - don't they want the money to keep in business? Me no get it. Me want peoples to be NICE to me. Foolish moi.

Two days ago we leapt up at the crack of breakfast and joined a group of about 10 people for a bus and walking tour of Krakow, the Old City. Our guide, the glamorous Caterina, was very good, explaining the significance and historical value of the places we visited - I particularly enjoyed seeing the remaining one synagogue still operating, and the old cemetary next door. Of course the two World Wars have had a huge influence on the city, both visually and culturally, and the markers are plain. As we saw in Riga (yes, yes, the Riga walking tour blog entry is coming) there are bullet holes, walls built from the rubble of previous structures, and restored and over-built sites of all kinds. One part of Krakow which I particularly enjoy is the parkland which encircles the Old City - it used to be the moat with a huge stone wall. Now the walls are largely gone, and the moat has become a park. This green belt around the city is a strong reminder of dear old Adelaide, the home town of your faithful correspondent.

After our tour finished (as we walked through the street where one John Paul II was once the parish priest) our legs were gone boom. We retired for a siesta, before going out to a short concert in a nearby stone church - the church of St Giles. The performance was a collection of pieces for organ and soprano. It was a strange concert - the soprano had a beautiful coloratura and was clearly experienced in stagecraft and presentation. The organist complemented her performance by playing as if he'd never seen the music before that morning. I was speculating about whether his right hand could play faster than his left, and the numerous times when he and the soprano seemed to disagree about which piece they were actually playing. He performed a couple of solos, not very well at all. He chose speed over accuracy, and his lack of musicianship was stunning. I took a couple of sound recordings on Le Camera, but I think they aren't worth keeping. The clash!

Yesterday was fairly quiet, we rested and read for ages in the morning. In the afternoon we went out to see a concert at the cathedral of St Peter and St Paul, but it wasn't on for some reason. I've written about this in a piece which I hope to upload very soon.. I had a good shopping opportunity after this, making my luggage to Berlin look kinda complicated. Oh well, that's nothing new.

Today my favourite thing has been the time I spent sitting in a cafe in the Market Square, having lattes and super-fresh raspberries, oh NOM, and watching the world go by. And what did I see? Firstly, a bloody lot of smokers. So many people busy inhaling themselves to death. Then, a lot of icecream eating, hand-holding, strolling, pigeon-feeding, busking, eating and laughing. It's a lovely day today. Every day we've been here, we've heard at some point the piercing top notes of a counter-tenor who aspires to the type of musical interpretation we experienced with that organist at St Giles - this fellow means well, but his approach to pitch is to belt out a high note and hope for the best. Agonising! He sings Schubert's 'Ave Maria' with all the delicacy of a hippo burping after dinner. Today he began 'performing' on the church steps (another church) just as I finished my second latte. That was enough to send me on my way to this Net cafe!

Shortly we'll be off for an early dinner, and then our final Krakow concert - back to the Bonerowsky Palace for a piano recital of Brahms and Chopin. And I need to do some feverish packing as we'll be up at 5:45 am, ouch ouch, to get on the 7am train. Which I most decidedly do NOT want to miss.

Better go, then. Today brought to you by 'Enjoy', those delicious raspberries, and a sigh of relief.

NOT in Estonia, Saturday 23 August

eYesterday M was fine at breakfast, but tired. Both of us needed more sleep .. he was suddenly rushing to the bathroom, then shaking violently and in a cold sweat. We layer him with every warm thing we have, stuff him into bed and hold hands. In half an hour or so the shaking has stopped and he is not so pale. I take his temperature, not good at 37.5.

Little by little, we try a few sips of water, a cracker or two, then two disprin. After about an hour I take his temp again, and it’s gone up to 38.2. Ok, we’ll need a doctor. The women in reception give me a flyer for the American Medical Clinic, which is not far away. I call and politely refuse to go away until they give me an appointment almost immediately. They first said 7pm but I am not prepared to wait with M’s temp possibly shooting up even higher, and him maybe not even well enough to get in a cab. I shudder to think what it might take to get an ambulance, even thru the American clinic (whose staff are incredibly helpful).

Meantime I start ringing our Russian travel agents and try to see what might happen if we can’t get on the bus to Tallin, which was booked for an 11am Saturday departure. No good with the phone calls; I can’t get through. There’s no time to pursue this, we go off to the clinic in a taxi [getting a lecture from the driver when we get there - something has got up his nose about the way we asked or what we said or something. ‘There are million taxi driver in here city; only one or two I know where you are meaning’. Ok. Huh?].

We are sent to a consultation room very quickly, and in comes the doctor (whose name I have got spectacularly wrong, calling her Doctorovsky, which is the masculine form. Ooops.. ).. Her diagnosis is that M has a ‘tyoxick infyektion’ and should stay overnight to have a drip for rehydration. She’s taken blood and the initial results show a high white blood cell count - sure sign of bacteria at work.

He has a room to himself (and we think he is perhaps the only customer, it’s very quiet in the corridors). The doc comes back with a bit more news: he is to have a rehydrating drip with potassium and some antibiotic. The first bag runs through very quickly, and he has I think three of them before 10pm. I go back to the hotel to get him some clothes and such, and start to sort out the change of plans.

The hotel people are wonderful; they assure me that they have a room for Saturday night; they are very concerned for me as well as M, and offer to help in any way they can. They fluff around me a bit, giving me coffee and clean towels and we have a talk about how people are just people wherever you go; this is so true.

I get onto the travel agent and she too is very concerned for us and keen to offer help. She can’t guarantee reservations on the bus, and the very clear inference is that we aint going nowhere until Monday - it’s going to be very difficult to leave on Sunday, if that’s how it works out; no offices open on ze weekend of course... Then I try to ring the Tallinn hotel to tell them of the delay, but no dice with the phone number. But, aha!, I have a Tourist Helpline flyer, so I ring them and very quickly Zhjenny sorts out my problem - I need more dialling codes (a country code and then a city code, to add to my area code and local number). I get through after that, no worries.

The travel agent rings me back with a solemn message - we know that M can have his visa extended via a letter from the doctor. But MY visa is also expiring and I must be very careful to make sure I too am certified as having to stay longer. She says a few dire things about “pyenalties at ze border” and I see myself hauled off the bus and left whimpering in the guard house while M sails off to Estonia...

Back to the clinic with M’s supplies, and to see what administrative progress we can make. The nurse (Olga) says we’ll have to talk to the doctor in the morning. I check with their reception staff and they say ‘We do this all the time; don’t worry; can we help you with a hotel room or would you like to stay here?” etc etc. I can’t fault the generosity of everyone I’ve spoken to, if I need any assistance all I have to do is blink and I will be overwhelmed.

And now it’s 10.30 pm and I haven’t really eaten since breakfast; a quick stop at a cafe earlier was only partially helpful because all their savoury food was sold out. Except for some rather oily-looking slices of pizza sitting in an unchilled cabinet. Nyet for me. I charge down to Nevsky (a quick charge down the canal, which is looking very pretty in the night lights). Suddenly, the revolution is upon me, I can hear loud bangs and crowds roaring. What?? I never!.... but then my brain starts working again and I remember that M told me it’s Russian Federation Flag Day, and what I can hear is fireworks. Phew, though.

At Nevsky the cafe I want is closed, so I give up and go to Maccas. There is a time and place for it, I know this from life in Beijing.. sometimes you just have to know exactly what you’re going to get. The queue is long and unmoving, and it’s HOT. After about 15 minutes, a woman in the crowd yells out - seems pretty obvious to me she’s saying ‘Why isn’t anyone serving??’. It’s certainly the slowest and least efficient Macca’s I’ve ever been in... a bloke pushes through the crowd to join his mate and no-one objects - that’s because he’s nearly 7 feet tall and looks EXACTLY like a Mongolian warlord - the arched brows, the slightly Asiatic facial features, not to mention the shoulders about five feet wide! He seems a nice enough bloke for a warlord...

Eventually, eventually, after at least 30 minutes, I get served. I order enough for two people, because I find Maccas doesn’t ‘stick’ very well, and because I’m exhausted and half-dead from worry and responsibility and thinking hard about what to do. And if ever a woman DESERVED a soft serve icecream with hot chocolate fudge sauce....NOM.

Back at the hotel I deliver another report to the reception women; retrieve my tin of gin and tonic, snarf down my fabbo junk fix, and begin packing. Because, at this stage, the doctor is saying if M’s tests look alright in the morning, we can shake a leg or three and leap onto the bus to Estonia. It takes me two hours to wash out some stuff we need and pack all our stuff, going more and more slowly because I’m soooo tired. I’m helped along by having the ‘lympix on, and I see the big Aussie redhead win the men’s pole vault, yay! And I see a bit more of the diving, thank you whichever goddess sent that .. I finally fall into a cool shower at 2am, kick a towel over the puddle which forms under the wardrobe if I run the shower for more than 30 seconds, and fall into bed.

I don’t care any more if there’s a revolution.

~~~~~~~~~

I’m at the clinic at 8.45am on Saturday, at the very second the doctor (a different one) arrives brandishing test results for M. There’s a lot of mulling over of possibilities and explanation of what the tests show .. high white blood cell count; very low potassium; liver function all over the place. On the good side (!) M’s temp is down, and he feels ok - there’s been no cough, pain, tummy trouble or headaches. The doctor says we can go if we like, sign off here and resume medical treatment in Tallinn. Which means finding a doctor there on a Sunday. He’s not very keen on this choice; he wants to give M quite a lot more treatment, so we assure him we’re prepared to stay until Monday. We mention the visa issue again; he says ‘It’s not my chob but ze attministrayshn will hyelpp’. Okay...

M is to have another blood test to see what has changed. And while that’s cooking, he will have four more bags of rehydrating fluid, with masses of potassium added (low potassium levels are dangerous for people who have heart problems), antibiotics, and several doses of ‘a soll-yution” to clear toxins from the digestive system. [This is charcoal - he said it was disgusting, chalky grey stuff. As long as it WORKS!]

As I write, at 7pm on Saturday evening, he’s had his buckets of fluids, several light meals, and his temp and bp are steady - temp down but not all the way to normal I don’t think. He’ll be in the clinic until Monday morning, when Plan B will be formed. We hope this might be ‘leap onto the bus to Tallinn’, but the travel agency has given me a weekend contact number which isn’t connected, so I have no idea if they can sort out the tickets. We may have to stay another night, and go on Tuesday... what is it with the karmic forces keeping me away from Tallinn? Is there something I don’t know????

I just hope we get there by Wednesday, cos that’s my birthday, and that’s where I want to be! Even if Arvo (Paert) doesn’t make it to meet me at the bus station, I can cope with the rejection, but sheesh.. I just wanna have a look.

Next post I’ll tell you about Thursday, which started off kinda low, but improved to quite something. I’m at a cafe which proudly advertises “WiFi” but nyet, not working. Ditto the wireless webs at the hotel, I have passwords and stuff but the connection won’t .. well .. connect. I may trot down past the three canals which cross Nevsky, to the dear old smoky Cafe Max, to let youse know what’s happening, but first I must trot over to see my dear M for some husband therapy.

Today brought to you by ‘Enjoy’, because I need to remember to do a bit of this.

[PS For the first time in this city, I saw a cat this morning as I charged off to see M - it was a little short-haired grey with a few white splodges, including one big milky one splashed across its moosh. It didn’t speak, but gazed at me in Russian to hint mutely of depravations, denials, poor service and a general downturn in the standard of living. How come all cats say this, every time,every language, everywhere? Skivers, the lot of them AND it wouldn’t have a pat... ]

GAWjuss!

I gots me some wonderful new trousers!! Thank you Mr. Tailor. They are worth every kilometre of nerve-endings shredded in the process. Ppls, you will be delighted to know that I can now swan off around the world in colour coordinated, long enough, wide enough, pocketed, placketed and elastic-waisteded daks, fit for a queen, or better still, a woman thrice-crowned. Yippee!

I even got a discount of nearly a fifth of the price cos two things I specifically ordered didn't get done - the wool trousers weren't lined, and the other wool trousers didn't have the silverfish holes in the bum mended. Mr Tailor offered to fix them on the spot for a mere !!!! $35 dollars, but dorter and I exchanged swift glances and I said no. She/I/we can mend them for about 30 cents, if we get to it, or as my ever-practical darling girl said "just wear black undies and no-one will notice". True. Cos they are dark grey daks. So that part of the precision-packing process is in my opinion finito. Phew.

I also decided that trying to find time to go to pick up ultrasound films of both my hips, for future reference, was fairly low in the pecking order. The radiology business which made them neither delivers to my gp, nor agrees to post anything. So they can have the pleasure of being able to look at my ball-joints for the next three months, til I return and make the effort to give a stuff about retrieving them. And, for the record, the jury is still out on the overall effectiveness of the shots of steroid. I am not perhaps as stiff or sore in the hips, but as my daily routine is highly disordered atm, it's not a level data-recording playing field. I think the real test will be how easy it is to walk/manage luggage when we get off the plane in Bangkok after 8 or so hours of high-altitude sardinery.

We had a big family dinner tonight, several branches of us converging on an unsuspecting Italian restaurant. Parents, two sibs plus offspring, plus husband's sis and her husband. It went well in spite of the rather slow production of food from the kitchen. The youngest member of the party was was getting a bit crunchy, but the waitress spotted the restless girl and came over to reassure her that tucker was only minutes away. Unfortunately the gwown-ups had to wait a bit longer.

This makes me wonder (a lot) about rituals - the farewells. It seems to me that we all need to touch base with important people to say our farewells, and the bigger the reason for the absence, and the longer period it covers, the greater the need to invest the farewell with meaning. Meaning which is often (somehow) gathered through sharing a meal, exchanging gifts, pressing messages of goodwill and hope onto the leaver and the leavee, elaborate assurances of the possibility of communication upheld, and a sort of 'final requests' conversation about items, deeds, events and plans. All in all, as if one were about to die.

I'm not very good at farewells, especially when combined with airports. Too many occasions of real wrenchings of the heart, like when my kids were flying off to their interstate home... and once, knifing into my heart, my son point-blank refusing to get on the plane and sobbing as if HE were about to die. Such a dilemma, and going totally against my instinct, which was to say 'of course you can stay with me darling'. I won't forget that. He did agree to fly, but walked down the hallway to the plane with the flight attendant, his little back shuddering with sobs.. no amount of gin and tonics or chocolate fixed me after that experience. Since then I've been even more hopeless at airports. I start getting homesick for myself before I get into the carpark! Meeting ppl at airports is marginally less worrying, altho the mind can always summon up a quick cartwheeling aircraft hitting a cow on the runway, a mis-timed bolt of lightening, or a missing-the-plane disaster at the other end. Sigh. An imagination is a terrible burden sometimes isn't it?

Getting myself onto a plane, with so many good wishes and heartfelt farewells and promises of things to come - it all makes me uneasy. It CAN'T be so simple!!! I don't think I have a death wish, or any kind of determination to be pessimistic about the trip. I just hate all the noting of my departure. The absoluteness of it. Too much like 'here ya go, just wiggle ya hips and the coffin will fit nicely. Now, can I get you a neck pillow or a pre-flight champagne???'. Nup. I want to creep away, waving a very little wave at my cats, and leave my natural orders happily, quietly, naturally ordering themselves around in their informal way without me, so it's all just waiting here for me when I return. So that the BIGNESS of it stops feeling so bloody big! So that rather than carrying the burdensome 'my gosh aren't you lucky WHAT a huge trip how will your health stand up where will you be for your birthday did you have a typhoid shot as well you WILL send photos and cards to us all did you remember the iPod" thoughts of the umpteen ppl I leave behind, I can just sort of be around on email; be just as impossible to ring up before lunchtime; and can ease my way back into physical contact with as little fanfare as possible. Why, ppls go away all the time. They do. And do we spend months worrying about their welfare and being aware of their physical absence and thinking what a hole they leave behind and goodness won't their hair have grown? Well, I hope not. I know that the more you care for the ppls, the more you think of them and want them to be here for hugs and such. And I do like it that ppls care for me, really I do.

I think I just want the uber-crazy fare-thee-well take care HERE I AM HAMMERING IT IN THAT YOU WILL BE GONE stuff to stop. I know I'll be gone. But I has a secret - I know I'll be BACK. I pwomised the cats.

Today brought to you by a strong feeling that the catbox needs changing, a good application of Prada shower gel, and for tonight, a two-generational wrist and cleavage-ful of Enjoy. Yes, dorter and I wearing matching purrfume. Dags R Us!

.... speechless exhaustion ....

... brought to you, late in the day, by a squirt of 'Enjoy'. This after it was pointed out to me by numbers of ppl that I should be EXCITED about going away. I'm too tired to be excited ferfuxake. A squirt of purrfume with an encouraging name is the best I can manage.

Someone please send me awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy....

The Week That Was...

... was busy.  An understatement.

... was full of many small but important achievements - fittings for walking shoes; anti-blister socks; after 3 tries, managing to get to the tailor with the right fabrics AND the right trousers to be copied (and suffer the brutal honesty of measurements); further consultations with the travel agent; a loooooooong consultation with the doc to get a three-month supply of the eleventy meds I need to keep body and soul together on a daily basis; physio; M to the dentist (it's my turn for that tomorrow); cleaners; path-making/paving person initial consultation (doesn't EVERYone decide to re-pave and beautify their entire garden 13 days before leaving on a three-month trip??); some craft-work; some cooking; cat-walking; two visits to the gym, and more.... (creak, pant, whimper..) ... lunch with sainted parents (and yes I managed to forget to bring their present.  Mum, otoh, presented me with some amazingly dubious summer pedal-pushers, white with large hot pink blobs, I think I'll frighten the horses in those - what on earth was she channelling when she bought them I wonder??? ... purrhaps best not to know, if my mother has suddenly developed a penchant for disco-daks I think I'd rather not know).

... was icy cold after the beauty of a week in Cairns.

... was strangely bereft of purrfume, especially over the last two days.  But I have a cold or purrhaps a small throat lurgy, so my sense of smell is gone again.  It's ephemeral at best, dammit.  I do recall trying Dolce and Gabbana "Ice Blue" on Friday and wondering if in fact it has any smell.  Didn't put two and two together and get' dodgy nose attack imminent'.  All these years and I am still naive about it.  That is either wonderful, or kinda sad...

... required me to fall into a large heap as of last night and have an uber-sleep followed by a Sunday afternoon of lolling about with newspapers, cups of coffee, phone calls to friends, a spot of Netting (check my blog list for a wonderfully-named new craft site), and a firm decision to stay inside.  Checking the breeze at the front door was enough to make that decision very easy. M got to be the Mr. Goody-FourPaws and take Maccy for his walk.  Maccy wasn't very obliging, he sauntered over to say howdy to the neighbours, did a bit of desultory tree-scratching, and then firmly sat down on the job and had to be carried home.  Hopeless.  Otoh on Saturday we managed to go all around the block, with him purring (and dwibbling) all the way, awwwww.. 

I have applied some 'Enjoy' to get me through the night.  This, combined with a nearly maximum quantity of pain-relievers, should do the trick.  Any kind of stress on my respiratory system, especially a virus, means almost instant umpty-fold pain in the left sinus.  That poxy left sinus which demands so much attention and which refuses to lie down and be quiet, even thougt the professorial uber-doc has pronounced it 'patent and healthy'.  Hear that, oh troublesome one??

Nup.

Am wafting off to the bedroom raspberry wall leaning against which are the purple, sage green and cerise pillows.  Pillows lying about on the sage and maroon covers keeping a slumbering M warm, and providing colour-contrast for one fuzz-buzz black scruff-bucket.  Enjoy, I say.  Enjoy, I smell.  

Sort of.