2015-01-08: Planning (plus numbers)

I mentioned my phone has an app which measures how many steps I have taken each day and I aim for 10K/day.

Every morning it starts at 0. And the Geo News is useless. It always says everything is fine.

Today I set a new record! Hooray! 21,359 steps and apparently I ran 93 of them. This brings my average for the month to 11,073. If I do 11,416 tomorrow I think that means I have a whole day in the bank still keeping my average at 10K/day.

We made lamps like this at metalwork when I was 11.

This satisfies me.

A shortcut to Success!

It also means that the slightly circuitous route I led us on to get to the Church was worthwhile. Travelling means seeing the bright side of everything. Ewa got to slide down a snowy slope on her bum. Another bonus, childlike wonder for free!

I am using Old Spice deodorant at the moment.

Tourist Checklist: Church and Pęksowy Brzyzek Cemetary, Zakopane

The church is tiny and has a huge organ.

the shadows make a cool pattern too

I had an economics teacher in 5th form that always gave companies in the examples rude names. One was "Raisey's Organ company" because Kaine Raisey considered himself the owner of large genitalia. I still giggle when I see organs too big for their housing.

A little cluttered

The cemetery features a sitting Jesus motif on quite a few of the graves. I have no idea what this is about. Neither does Ewa. She is not a very good catholic. I can't get the one of him apparently on the toilet at the house museum out of my mind whenever I see it. I am not a very good catholic.

The cemetery has a lot of the famous people from hereabouts interred. Several members of the Polish resistance, the architect who created the local style of building and several poets / story tellers / writers. Including one that Ewa had to read at school and still has a dislike for. She likes the cemetery though.

Rating: 7/10 (cemetery has enough variety and small, church has a big organ)

Talk to the plate.

After the roundabout stroll to the church we headed to the ski slopes / school. This was about 100m further along the circuitous path to the church. I blame my new phone for being a bit trigger happy on GPS changes. 

Meat stuffed with meat, pork lardons and dumplings. Oh and Brussels sprouts in case my mum sees my diet. Plus the meat had a gherkin in it.

Linguistic Skills: Ankidroid

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ichi2.anki&hl=en

There are others. Ewa and I both use this one. It is free and has a wide range of flash card decks. I add 25 cards a day which means I am now doing about 80 words a day, 25 new and 55 revision. I think I might be at around about a 1.5 yr old in language skills now. Most of this has been in the last few weeks but the 2 years at Polish school (Randwick boys high, www.polishschool.org.au) definitely helped.

I got mail from a different language product (babbel) which had a subject "Learning a language burns calories" then didn't mention anything about that topic. This product is better, they don't mail me at all.

Rating: 8/10 (but hearing the language constantly helps a lot)

Baby Ski Slopes

We booked our ski class for tomorrow and then attempted to walk to the nearest lake we could find this morning. This is a test for future longer walks.

Empirical testing results:

• Navigation: Fail. Google claimed there was a road, there was not.
• Stamina: Fail. Where the road wasn't was a steep trail, we got quarter of the way up then it mercifully gave out.
• Equipment: Fail, my boots get cold really fast because they are city boy boots and not waterproof.

Oh Noes! There is no path, we have to go to the bar and make a new plan.

We shall have to rectify these things, the boots is probably the easiest thing to do for now.

I like pictures of places with my name in them. This one is sad though as Sam is Polish for "alone". At first I thought "singles bar". Ewa says "people that want to drink alone bar"

Poles like meat. Sometimes you get meat stuffed with meat. What you don't see so often is steak. Zakopane has quite a few steak places (and two McDonalds, I think all the Mcdonalds must be in the south of the country).

The steak places are pretty

Ewa thinks that this is because many  of the Poles here are people that live in the UK and have come back for their holidays. Living in the UK has accustomed them to steak. We have yet try any of the steak places.

These Mountain Men sure know how to grill pork. Thin slices of almost liquid fat in between the chunks of pork

Mostly because the grilled / braised stuff is usually so damn good. One thing that is not good is Mountain Man Tea.

Half tea. Half vodka

Half crying

I do like Lapsang Souchong but the normal tea? not so much. I normally love vodka.

I do not like the meeting of the two. No I Do Not. I didn't even finish it. I tried hard. 0/10.

Plans:

• Have skiing lessons, master skiing
• Go on sleigh ride in the mountains
• Drink anything to get rid of the flavour of mountain man tea