My Australian cushy existence hasn't prepared me for the morbidity of a Polish flu. Everyone left, right and centre has been warning me it might lead to pneumonia, heart failure and/or death. Hmm. After coughing all possible fluid out of my lungs (a good thing I have been told), scraping off the last layer of skin from my nose due to non-bleached dunny paper blowing action and a week of watching Brazilian soaps from the couch, I started to think that maybe the overreacting Slavic hordes of Krakow were not exaggerating after all.
But then again this is a land in which people equate walking around the house without slippers on, to an extreme sport. And should you ever open a window on the tram be prepared to have your head eaten alive by a nanna. She's been brought up to believe a draught is actually an illness. Really. People prefer to ride on stinking hot buses, sweating, farting, coughing, sniffling, sneezing and bad-breathing on one another and not open a window. Because a draught can kill you. Fresh air if at all breezy is death. And so my love for the public transport system has been put to a test in these winter months. I think I need to get better thanks. And start riding my bike.
Pity Michal still sounds like a potato harvesting tractor every time he opens his mouth to release another roaring series of coughs. It's been fun being disgusting phlegm buddies.
Slipperland stand at the station