Kate and I arrived today in Zakopane, a ski town in the Tatra mountains on the Polish-Slovak border, known as "Poland's winter playground" according to all of the tourist websites we poured over before our departure. Since the Easter holiday has caused basically all of Poland to come to a standstill, we have the week off from classes and Kate and I decided to treat ourselves to a little mini-vacation. Our hostel is a wooden A-frame cabin covered in freshly fallen snow that looks like it belongs in the film Heidi. The town is absolutely adorable- wooden chalets, cobblestone streets, and the most phenomenal views of the majestic Tatra mountains capped in dense fog and covered with pine trees in the background. When we arrived, the entire town was blanketed in at least a foot and a half of freshly fallen snow, and literally everything was closed for Easter Monday. We made the best of it, though. We spent the afternoon milling around town amidst exhausted skiers, stopped at a creperie and had these incredible steak, mushroom and cheese crepes with three different kinds of sauces, found an outdoor marketplace selling everything from bread baked with patterns, souvenir hatchets, and all kinds of handmade wooden tools. We bought plastic sleds for 8 złoty and joined a bunch of little kids who were sledding down one of the many snow-covered hills, which was so much fun! We spent the evening at a small cafe drinking delicious hot spiced wine, watching the snow fall and taking in our new surroundings.
