It's Pączki Day, Were You Aware?

I didn't know that in Poland Fat Tuesday is actually Fat Thursday. Well, needless to say, pastries were involved in my day today. But let's backtrack, shall we? To say, yesterday 1430 Central European Time when little did I know, victory was nigh. We met in front of Ekonomyczna for the Conquer Kraków activity. We didn't actually leave the campus until 1500 and might I say -8˚C is just as cold as it sounds. So, we walked to a tram station and rode to a parking lot south of the river with no historical or scenic value to stand in the cold some more. However, I planned for such weather and layered my underarmour, long sleeved T-shirt, sweatshirt and coat so I was actually relatively cozy. My feet got cold after a while but the boots can only hold off so much cold. After we finally got the map to know where to go (not related to the parking lot, not close to the parking lot, no bloody reason we should have ever been there) we went to Pod Wawelem, the first location on the map. They have a wicked awesome special on schnitzel on Mondays. 15 złoty for schnitzel as big as a pizza and only 6 for a litre of beer. I'm not to keen on Żywiec so it's not that exciting but the schnitzel can easily feed two people so that's always fun. My competitive nature helped drive Srdjan, a guy from Serbia, and me to plot and strategize about the most efficient route. We decided to go to Collegium Novum first but the checkpoint person hadn't even arrived yet. I was not happy at all about that. We were power walking our asses off to get there first but by the time the rep got there another group caught up to us. I was evil and told the other group to move on because they were going to just skip this point since there was no one there. They were about to start moving but then Aga, the rep, showed up. For each point, we had to complete a small task and for this first one, we had to blow up a balloon and make it pop. I volunteered for this one because of my brass player background but as it turns out, gloves make blowing up a balloon to extreme size and pressure rather difficult. However, they never specified the reason for the balloon popping, it was simply implied that it pop from over-inflation. Well, I took advantage of this loophole after struggling with the task and grabbed the cigarette that a guy in our group was smoking and used that to pop the balloon. Our group continued on at a rather frantic pace that involved criminal tram ride theft, a Serbian trying to act out "Shrek" as a charade and scaring random Polish people by asking them the time in Polish and taking pictures with them. It was actually really intense because that group that caught up with us at Collegium Novum was on our tail the entire time so we actually ran as a team for a portion of the way. At 1720, we arrived at Błęndne Koło, the club where I am headed tonight for the Erasmus party, to answer the questions about all of the different locations we had to visit and finally, we were declared the winners. It was awesome! I would have done it even if the prize were the sheer thrill of victory and getting to know my team members but, luckily, that was not our only prize. Tonight, we get 120 shots on the house at the club to divide as we wish. Sorry, Mom, I know you don't want to read this but sobriety and I are not one in the same tonight. On to today. I met Chelsea One and Magda today in front of Ekonomyczna to get my first stipend payment. I was expecting to wait in line and get tossed around by bureaucracy a bit so that's why I planned in an hour for the ordeal before the meeting today as part of our orientaion. Turns out, with Magda's help we were in and out in less than 5 minutes so we had an hour to kill before we had to be anywhere. As we were leaving the University, Magda got a call from her mom, reminding her to eat a pączek (singular of pączki) today. With that in mind, we headed over to Galeria Krakowska to get a coffee and a donut. Not just any donut though. I thought I had tried pączki but I was so incredibly wrong. These were filled with rose jelly (not prunes, so anyone who wants me to eat one of those because it's the traditional filling can shove it) and glazed with bits of candied orange peel. It was amazing! The latte was alright but not great. Yes, I am on the hunt for the best latte in Kraków but there are many, many more cups in my future.
Tonight is the last night for Marius, who studied at UEK last semester and is going back to Germany. He is an excellent cook and tonight, I finally get to try one of his legendary cakes. This should be a meal for the ages and I will try to remember to get pictures. I keep forgetting to take pictures of the food I make while I'm here but I will try harder to get those. I will also make an effort to show more pictures of Krakow's architecture. Seriously, I love this city even though I have only been here 2 weeks.