Elbląg - Day 2 - The 2nd Lude

Today was a fairly lazy day, which is fine. That's what holidays are for. In the morning we went to the local Market. It was not very busy, and quite miserable, but I think that had more to do with the rain than anything else. A lot of the stallholders had gone home by the time we arrived at 10:00. But there are still quite a few there, so I got a good idea of what's available at Elbląg market.

You can get 5 different kinds of preserved cabbage (not just any old sauerkraut) from the little van that sells only this. You can get any seasonal vegetable you like - mostly celeriac, parsnip, carrots, beetroot etc, and most standard fruits. No summer fruits, obviously, but plenty of apples and oranges and the like.

I was quite impressed with the quality - as long as you didn't want anything too exotic - and the price! Fresh eggs (probably free range from small market farm) Zł 0,60 - which is about 10p each. We bought three parsnips for Zł 0,70 and Agata tried to get them to keep the change from Zł 1, but they wouldn't hear of it!

My two favourites were the chap selling super-fresh dairy products, and the honey stalls. Milk in 2L soft drink bottles, and cream in jam jars. Poor bloke had 3 bottles of milk and 4 jars of cream left, and we could tell he really just wanted to sell the lot and go home. We ended up buying a small jar of cream, so he was a bit disappointed, but I'm definitely going back on Friday to get some to bring home! There were a few stalls selling honey, often paired with eggs. We found some we liked, but it was only available in huge jars - about half a kilo for Zł 12, so we found another place and were given full details of the contents of every jar, and the benefits of blends rather than single source batches etc etc. We left with a small jar of blended honey; I forget from which trees and bees. (more on honey later!)

Apart from the food section, there's the flea-market section. Here you will find all sorts of random stuff (as you might expect) Agata's Grandfather has a small stall in this part. He'd given up and gone home when we went, but he'll be there when we go on Friday! I'm quite looking forward to that.

When we got home it was time for 2nd Breakfast. The day is divided into four or five meals here: Breakfast, 2nd Breakfast, Obiad, and Supper. Sometimes you can fit another one in between Obiad and Supper. Obiad is usually the main meal of the day and is eaten around 17:00. Breakfast and 2nd Breakfast are basically the same - bread, cheese, meat, pickles etc. 2nd Breakfast is not like Morning Tea. Supper can be whatever you want it to be.

We had skipped breakfast to get to the market before 10, so 2nd Breakfast was really First Breakfast. After my excitement at the honey stall, Agata had promised to give me some of the honey they have at home. This comes in an enormous clay pot, a bit like the ones Pooh eats from. The honey itself is unrefined and simply delicious. It reminded me of the honey my Pop used to get from his bees at Wattle Park. With fresh crusty bread and butter - YUM!
I was also given a choice of three different kinds of home-made pickles! Kiszone, Konserwowe, and Pikle. Konserwowe dill pickles most people back home are familiar with, the one's you get in jars labelled Polski Ogorki. Kiszone are basically the same, but in salt water instead of vinegar, so taste quite different. Pikle are cut up into chunks with onion, mustard seeds and carrots in white-wine vinegar. They have quite a strong flavour and were easily my favourite.

Later in the day Lila was talking to the neighbour who had given her the various pickles. Upon hearing how much the Australian visitor liked the Pikle, she insisted Lila take two more enormous jars home. I do like them, but I hope I don't have to eat the whole lot in the next 3 days.

It rained most of the day, so we abandoned our plans to walk around the park and stayed inside instead. Agata went through her mother's wardrobe, trying on all the old 80's clothes. Some spectacular garments in there. Agata was most excited about a pair of dungerees. Unfortunately they were a bit small - ouch!

Around Obiad time, Agata's maternal grandfather (dziadek) came over. He's quite a character! He greeted me with Good Morning and I replied with cześć, causing much hilarity. He regaled us with various stories, none of which I understood, but he was great to watch and listen to. Apparently most of his stories are 40% truth and 60% embellishment, but everybody knows that, so it's become irrelevant. A collection of his somewhat dubious memoirs can be found in his book: Wschodnie Opowieści (Eastern Tales) published by Mer publishing and available on Amazon. It is in Polish, though, so I guess that counts most of you out.

Maria's sister Ella also came over with Agata's cousin Olek (Alex). He's only 11, and not very chatty. I wish we could have played football or something to break down the language barrier, but the darkness, rain, absence of a football, and lack of open space made that one a non-starter.

Everyone stayed for Obiad (more Bigos and salad) before more Good Morning/cześć fun followed by peace and quiet.

But the night was still young and Lila had a plan. She suggested that maybe I might like to learn to be a technician (ie: denture technician), and that now is as good a time as any to start. Being the nerd that I am, I was actually quite excited about this, so after donning a white coat I was led to the basement, where part of the workshop is. As you might expect, there were sets of teeth in various stages of preparation. The dentist provides Lila with a mould of the patient's mouth. Lila then makes a plaster likeness of the teeth & gums. This plaster mould is then covered with yellow stuff. This is to stop the wax in the next process from sticking to the plaster. It's a very thin layer, but it can get a bit lumpy, or at least pool in certain areas, so my first task was to use a variety of scraping tools to smooth out a plaster mould and make sure there were no unwanted yellow lumps. It's pretty fiddly work, and you need to have a good idea of what is likely to be weird bump on a patient's gums, and what is just a lump of yellow stuff.

The one I was working on was the upper jaw of a patient. From what I'd seen of other sets, this patient was doing quite well with at least half a dozen teeth still in place. Then I found out it was for a young woman, which I found a bit depressing. I don't know the background, but I kind of hope she had a horrible accident (from which she is otherwise unharmed) rather than it being simple neglect. Not sure why.
After a short time Lila left me to my own devices, assuring me I was a natural and that I was doing an excellent job. While she was out of the room I did my very best to prove her wrong by breaking off one of this poor girl's few remaining teeth! Agata found this completely hilarious, but I was mortified. I had visions of Lila having to start all over again and the patient being told that she's have to wait an extra week for her plate all because some idiot foreigner had broken off one of her plaster teeth. Supa-glue (in Polish: Supaglue) came to the rescue. Crisis over! Phew!

The next step (on a different set) was to put the new teeth into a way mould of the gums. The wax is moulded over the plaster mould in two layers: a smooth, rounded layer, and a square layer on top. Because the squared layer is put on afterwards, it is easy to remove, leaving the layer below ready to receive the new teeth. The two main tools here are a tiny pen-sized cylindrical drill for getting the shape of the root right, and a heated knife, which looks just like a soldering iron, but operates at a lower temperature. Put simply, it's a process of melting the wax, putting the tooth on, checking to make sure it's straight, then going on to the next one. In reality it's very fiddly and a bit of trial and error. You sometimes even have to remove ones you've already done if they lead to misalignment further down. One needs the patience of a saint!

I was itching to try this part myself, but I suspect it would have been way too much hassle to correct if I'd stuffed it up (track record not good on this front). So after a while we left Lila to it and headed upstairs to watch a video - yes, a video, not a DVD! Men in Black. Never seen it before. Loved it. Fortunately no Lektor this time. Phew!

Another late night, but that's also what holidays are for.