it has been a bit since the last electronic mail. i hope you are doing well, i write, in advance of reading the newest entries.

starting off, i read the reply on my previous fanmail. good intel on the interrail ticket. can come in handy for future expeditions of the holiday variety. so, thanks for that. scouting the espresso machine beforehand saves time wondering if the coffee is instant, or actual "fresh" ground beans. good eyes you need for some stores, i assume. big brain strategy to find the good stores and getting a good coffee.

thanks for adding another to my playlist, transllusion. i have the collection of singles (often called an album) currently playing on youtube. you can uploadthe flac if you have it lying around. headphones at work won't distinguish between youtube and the lossless variant, but for listening at home, it definitely will.

contnueing to the gdansk entry.

the hostel experience continues. indian man sounds like he has it figured out. hope he makes it in life. kelvin-klein-jeans-coat father appeasing for a review... i dislike people asking me to review stuff. if i have something interesting, constructive or destructive to say, you'll get your review; not if you ask me for it.

hous of binici. sounds like a magician's name. good photos on their page; looking better than it sounded from the weblog. maybe also circumstantial due to current (at that time) company. sounded like a good time, even if it as a bit chaotic.

national holidays are great, except for everything apart from the day off work. your experience, peak example. going anywhere at all during one of these days is a nightmare. the general populus no longer has any amount of spatial awareness. slow-walkers, path-blockers, the person in front of you that has a great tempo and created a space to walk, like it was some kind of slipstream, but suddenly stops for any reason and you bump into them, having to apologise and scrambling away... i digress. hope the rest of the day was at least enjoyable. glad you found accommodations.

train ride sounds like a typical train ride. nothing to note there. your description of warsaw as it passes by makes me not want to go there at all. maybe not that part at least, but it sounds like it's like that everywhere.

entering gdansk though, now that interests me. seeing the history in the stones and walkways. the beautiful architecture. makes for the perfect walks, in the category of urban exploratory areas. the crowd, ignored. at first you wouldn't think the land on which the hostel lies was an island. maybe because of all the surroundings, it might not be called an island anyway.

slovenian man is interesting. made something out of a bad situation. drifter, reimagined, working a sweet gig, getting by, no stress (it seems, compared to the receptionist at least).

on to the elblag entry.

this whole backstory of the slovenian man sounds like it deserves an entire weblog of its own. the way it's described, you could place a memo or voice recorder in front of this man, translate it to text and you have a 750-page book. rough calculation, based on no actual facts other than it sounding like a lot. good varieety of conversation topics too. need to pay attention not to get lost. good guy. hope he gets his 5th star.

seeing the car-crash-compilation videos in the country where a lot of the footage actually comes from feels ironic to me. maybe not ironic. i don't know how to explain. it just... feels...

biedronka logo looks... disturbing. weird twitsy-head does it. hope you remembered to restock your coffee, seeing as you were running low this morning.

museum and surroundings sound lovely. but only when there's shade on such a hot (warm) day. funny that the finnish visit gdansk so often.

the train to elblag sounds like the typical train experience of the modern day. not enough wagons for the amount of passengers to comfortably travel to your destination. glad you survived the ordeal.

the hostel you just entered... i would immediately turn around, never look back and neuralyze myself to forget this experience alltogether. indeed, the binici is many times better. i hope your stay is at least comfortable.

great morning thoughts indeed. to give a piece of my mind (which is a very disturbing idea if one would take it literally), a medieval person (not necessarily a peasant) wouldn’t interpret it a “pleasant view” in the modern sense. landscapes weren’t yet framed as aesthetic objects as they are now, to be viewed and admired, often disregarding the origin or the happenings in said landscapes. but a view like that would carry social meaning. proximity to power. opportunity. inequality. it might feel compelling, but also quietly exclusionary, reminding them of a world just out of reach.

beautiful design. your stature? your shirt? shoes? unclear, mysterious, complimentary though.

the description of the buildings is what i'd expect of a place that suffered from a war tremendously and had to rebuild. re-use what you can, and build again. reinforce. replace. good thing they kept the old style. probably had no other choice, if supply-lines were blocked for an indefinite time during-after the war.

funny how you can still "have a conversation" with someone with just 5 words (of which 1 is probably the same in polish as in english (espresso?) and one is probably pronounced and thus sounds like the english conterpart (karta?))

gallery. recurring theme. art seems ai generated, but i have seen this and better from before ai was this accessible, so might be non-ai. 50/50.

this system of conductors scanning people's tickets before boarding; oldskool version of what we now know as "gated platforms". seems to me this is the best way to prevent il-legal travelling by people with no valid travel ticket. then again, depends on the stop. might not have time to check all.

being confronted by another mac-d when exiting the station is indeed discouraging. dang the bathroom code.

i love the alice reference there (grey-brick-road). love all the (subtle) references by the way. masterfully integrated in the flow of the story. kudos. on another note, i love the buildup and lore of the "olifantjepaadje" you encountered (a carved bike path down a hill, next to some stairs). though an olifantjepaadje does not need to adhere to those specifications. it's just a path that's created by the repeated use of cyclists (in order to take a shortcut mostly).

elk. funny name for a place. did it have fur instead of asphalt? antlers instead of trees? did it smell like wet dog (is what most people would describe the smell of wet fur)?

all jokes aside, i see you finally used the "dobre" card. glad it got well received (i'm assuming. text doesn't specify).

glad you found a place that sells hummus. i was starting to wonder if you've given up on it. i see you found a reason not to use self-checkout. better hope the manned registers have a little screen that lists the price to pay. then again, most polish people would gladly help a hand with paying the correct amount and would even try to teach you the words (previous experiences. can't guarantee it though).

lovely encounter with the university-going non-germanic-speaking-english-speaking woman. great church-scene. could be right out of a movie. weird social-pressure system for examinations. wouldn't like it, but then again, was never raised on them, so, what do i know. many ice-cream places, noted. must be really great in the hot weather to be able to cool off on every street corner. sounds like a time spent really well. i bet she enjoyed it too. hope the mole was nothing serious.

would love to have seen the tankd and armored vehicles at the station. these machineries have always sparked interest. train-surfing was once on my mind. it is on my mind now again. might do it someday. destination unknown, unknown, unknown.

sitting and observing (not neccessarily listening per se) is nice. you experience a place, a thing, a time. watching animals in particular is one of my favorite past-times when resting somewhere. a bird, an ant, a snail.

good to hear your right leg is fixed, but sad to hear the pain transported to the left ankle. that seems to be a more annoying spot for pain to be in. hope it's not so bad and you recover good and quick. hope you can visit that nature reserve later on. sounds like a great trip.

pigeons being pigeons. typical. you did a good deed by giving the man some food. thinking he was less-than-home. if not, weird.

video of bathroom seem. finally seen the scale of the backpack. did not expect. i was thinking you were walking around with a standard sized daily backpack. no idea why, but fit your aesthetic. this backpack is better for travel. now the "she asked to try on the backpack and said it was good" from the day before makes sense. also, 100 points for bringing that ela tote bag.

those station buildings... sounds like a great place for urban exploring. maybe even find these sacrificing chambers. maybe a portal to another dimension. so many possibilities. schrödingers -insert whatever here- in that building. neither true nor untrue, until one looks, changing the outcome.

that dinner sounds like a complete meal with all the nutrients you require. the combination sounds not nice, but seperate they are great. that makes me wonder, don't you miss your chicken-carrot-and-black-pepper dish you frequently made?

those books you found on the community center. you don't need to speak the language to want to read those books. even though not knowing the language makes it very difficult to actually read it... unless it's a comic book. but probably not. pegaz especially looks very interesting, with the weird red and black lines.