This Is the Very End

I'm leaving Cracow today.

After nine months of living here it feels difiicult to go away, especially if I consider that I won't return in the near future – I'll study in Hungary from September. As a farewell, I decided to try to sum up what it is like to live in Cracow.

Cracow's coat of arms

Cought Up in the Internet

This post will have a slightly different subject from the previous ones, but eventually it more or less fits into the what's-new-about-me topic, so I won't bother. Don't worry, I'll write more about Cracow later.

Yesterday I finished reading a book.

forrás: klett-cotta.de

Little Impressions

Last week, a friend of mine visited me – she is the first of my friends (apart from relatives) who fulfilled the promise almost everyone made when I moved abroad. She deserves at least a laurel wreath for that.

One night, we were walking towards the tram stop when she said: 'How cute!' When I saw what she meant I had to smile too:

For me, one of the most important characteristics of Cracow is that it can surprise me. And no matter how much ill I have spoken of the city in my post about cultural shock (http://notsimplylooking.blogspot.com/2015/03/culture-shock.html), the majority of these surprises is positive. Or to be precise, they make me smile.

Culture (?) Shock

A few weeks ago Linka, the Cracow-based reporter of globspot.hu started the following topic in the 'Cracovian Hungarians' group on Facebook: 'I would like to write my next article about culture shock, to which I would like to collect your ideas. What came as the biggest surprise when you moved to Cracow?' Scores of people commented on the post, new observations were arriving for days about the strange or unpleasant customs of the Poles – as if the accumulated impressions had suddenly started flowing from everyone.

A couple of days ago Linka's article was published on the internet: http://globspot.hu/muvelodj/kultursokk-a-lengyelek-furcsasagairol/ with the scientific background of cultural sock, the explanation of some typically Polish phenomena and, of course, a few samples from the data collection on Facebook. ('S.' means me.) On this occasion I decided to gather my own shocking experiences too. (This one will be a post of quite negative mood, but I promise that the next one will be about flowers and little lambs.)