Post office and Pigeons

This morning my first stop was the Poczta Poslka, or Polish post office, in order to ship some items home.  Let me explain a little.  When I came to Kraków, I brought two suitcases.  Basically, one was for work clothes and one for non-work clothes.  There were also other items, of course, and some of those are now consumed while I've picked up other items along the way.  Next week finishes up my assignment here, and I'm going on a tour of the British island.  Rather than take two suitcases and a backpack all around Britain, it seems much easier to me to just send my stuff back ahead of me.

I was fortunate to have a cashier that spoke a few words of English.  I had already obtained the forms needed and gotten some of my coworkers to help me fill them out, so most of the process was just weighing the things, sealing them up, and getting them on their way.  One slight oddity was that I was shipping a suitcase home and she was insistent on putting tape over all of the zippers.  Not just the zipper-pull part, but the entire zipper around the suitcase.  I think that's unlikely to survive the journey, but is also unnecessary.

The box I shipped economy and the suitcase priority.  We'll see how long they take.  Laurel's box that was shipped home priority arrived in 8 days, where they promised 6.  That's not too bad, and I'd be happy if my suitcase beats me to the office in 16 days.  The economy package, on the other hand, may be more of a gamble.  There's nothing too time-sensitive in there (mostly Christmas gifts), but it will be interesting to see how long it actually takes.

After going to the post office, I decided to run.  Normally I would go and lift today instead of running, but with a race about a week out I decided to focus on cardio.  It was about 45F and cloudy when I left, and about halfway into my run it started raining.  Not great weather, but I pressed on calling it training for Scotland.

After lunch, I went to see the town hall tower in the main square.  Laurel has already posted about this landmark, but I hadn't had a chance to see it yet.  Since my time in Kraków is wearing thin, I thought I should go ahead and see it while I had time.  Here are some photos, remarkably similar to Laurel's.  I did manage to get a picture of the stairway to the town hall tower, though, which was steep to go up but scary to go down.

After crossing the town hall tower off of my to do list, I decided to work with another goal of mine: catch a pigeon.  OK, maybe not fully catch it, but at least have it land on me.  I had seen some other Poles doing this in the main square, so I bought a pretzel and followed their model.  I think this is the most fun I've had with 50 cents since childhood.  The pigeon in the first photo was very confused as to what the camera was.

Yes, I immediately went home and washed my hands.  I got only lightly pooped on, so the jacket just needed a light cleaning.

At 4:00 PM today, I met my friend, coworker, and replacement here in Poland, John.  I spared him the photos because he had just flown in from the US, and it seemed like a bad time for pictures.  Still, we were able to get him some items he needed and I got to show him the apartment.  Tomorrow we'll hang out more and I'll see if I can get a picture or two at that time.