Free period

Today was an unstructured day, Dianne and I wandered around old town, did some shopping, only meeting up for meals. For dinner we wound up in Kaszimierz (old Jewish section) at Noah's Ark, one of several restaurants that have a decidedly Jewish theme, complete with live 3-piece Klezmer band. So we spent a good part of the evening arguing the finer points of just how ironic the "Jewish revival" in Krakow is.

At the end of the meal I remembered that my neighbor, Josh who worked for the State Department and lived in Warsaw, told me to definitely try Buffalo Grass vodka. So I asked our waitress, Wiesia (pictured above), if she has something called zubroovka (best as I could remember from Josh's notes) and sure enough she darts out and back with a bottle of vodka that has a label with a buffalo, and a tall stalk of grass inside the bottle (sort of like the worm in Tequila). Unlike in Russia, vodka is not downed in a single swallow here, but savored like a aperitif. It was very smooth, everyone agreed (like all the food we've ordered, this too was shared!). I think I'll get some at the duty-free shop.