Chido-Fajny

Antonina was a Polish writer, author of books such as: Our House at the Zoo, From the History of the Warsaw Zoo, and People and Animals (a personal diary where she recounted the events at the Warsaw Zoo during the war). In 1940, Jan Żabiński decided to create a plant to fatten pigs in the Warsaw Zoo, with the aim of preserving the zoo’s infrastructure, but a few months later there was an epidemic which killed all the pigs and this idea was abandoned. At the same time that this was happening, Jan Żabiński, who was also a member of the Polish Secret Military Organization, kept explosives and chemical materials at the zoo. Because Jan Żabiński cooperated with the Warsaw Horticultural Department, Jan and Antonina were able to have contact with the city’s ghetto.

Same as in Mexico City, I needed a break of my daily life in the Polish capital, I started to look for towns or cities close to Warsaw, in order to explore them and forget about Warsaw at least for a few days. Many times in my social channels, I saw pictures of different places in Poland, and there was always a small town that appeared on my newsfeed: Kazimierz Dolny. I was talking with my friends recently, and I shared with them my idea to travel there, but my friends were quite surprised that I hadn’t visited yet that town, mainly because it’s really popular among Polish people, because it’s quite close to Warsaw, and well because I have a blog about Poland! Close to the main square of the town you can go to the top of the hill of three crosses (Góra Trzech Krzyży in Polish), you will need to climb a lot of stairs, and when you are at the top you will need to pay only 4 PLN (Less than 1 Euro) to enter to the hill.

When I moved to Poland back in 2013, there were some things that were shocking for me (apart from the obvious like the cold winter or the difficulty of the Polish language), but that for a normal Pole were extremely normal. Poles eat these homemade kanapki for breakfast or dinner, but if you are in a hurry you can buy a bigger open sandwich called Zapiekanka (Zapiekanki in plural) which might be considered the Polish pizza. People organize parties or reunions to celebrate the name’s days and watch out if you forget the name’s day of your Polish mother in law, you will have a problem. Apart from all those crazy words to pronounce, and all those seven grammatical cases in Poland that make the life of a foreigner in Poland more difficult, it’s something that is absolutely crazy for me: Polish Last Names change depending on the sex of the person.

I’ve never been a car fan myself, but if I see a Ferrari or Lamborghini parking somewhere in the street, of course, I like to approach and take a look at the inside of the car. At first, the name Maluch didn’t make sense as it said Fiat 126p in the car, but then she explained to me that in Poland people call these cars Limited car supplies, low salaries, and high product prices made almost impossible to even dream of having a brand new car. Maluch popularity doesn’t seem to stop, a few years ago the American actor Tom Hanks posted a picture of a Maluch in his Twitter account saying that he “bought” a new car, but this car was not his, he just posted a random picture on his account because he liked the small car.