One of the fantastic things about Slow Travel is that we get to live a (semi-normal) life in whatever city we're calling home at the moment. Brenna mentioned, in a recent post, how our current Krakow apartment has started to feel like home. What our family does at home is cook, and this morning Eleanor and I finally got around to baking the lemon cake mix in our cupboard. We bought it several days ago and then realized we didn't have a pan. Brenna brought one back from the mall yesterday. I had to work for a while on translating the directions on the cake package, even though it included pictures of the important bits -- a mixer... three eggs... Nevertheless, I'm pretty proud of my effort. I have found that online Polish to English translators are spotty at best, and I also had to use an online virtual Polish keyboard, since my keyboard doesn't have all the cool little curls and swoops for some of the Polish letters. Here's what I finally got for step two:
"REARRANGE READY MASS FOR OILED FAT and about DIMENSION (MEASUREMENTS) DUMPED (SPILLED OUT) OK MAK PODŁUŻNEJ FOREMKI."
Of course it's obvious that this means, "Pour the dough into a greased and sprinkled with flour long baking pan." Well, it was obvious after I noticed the directions written in English posted on the side of the package. Hey! - They were tucked in a fold!
So now, about the Gummy Bear song. When we moved into the apartment I found one of those god-awful-annoying McDonald's Happy Meal Gummy Bear song toys. Evidently the previous inhabitants left it behind. I WONDER WHY??? When I saw it, I tossed in the very back of a very high shelf -- I should have known my kids would sense its presence. Now I'm baking lemon cake for breakfast and listening to the Gummy Bear song for the 27th 28th time. It's home -- noisy, noisy home.