A Normal Day In The Life- Nowy Targ, Poland

I recently came back from Poland after staying with family for over a month. While I was in Poland, I got to see all sorts of different cities and eat lots of good Polish food. For a majority of the time that I was there, I stayed in Nowy Targ, which is a small city near Zakopane and Krakow. To explain why I was staying there, let me give a little background.

Hola everyone, it is yo girl emilia and I am going to be telling you what a normal day in the life for me was while I was staying in Nowy Targ, Poland! Before I tell you about my daily routine there, I am going to tell you about my Polish roots.

Both of my parents were born in Poland and were raised there. (They met in the US, not in Poland) Them and their families moved different times to the US, met each other, got married, and had me! My mother is from Nowy Targ, she was born there and lots of her aunts, cousins, and friends live there. I traveled to Poland with my grandmother on my mom's side, so it made sense if we stayed in Nowy Targ with one of her sisters (one of my great aunts).

In case you are wondering, my father was born and raised outside of Krakow. To make the world seem super small, my grandfather on my fathers side is actually also from Nowy Targ. So I had family members from both sides living in Nowy Targ and it was so amazing to see them all.

This was my 5th trip to Poland in my life, the only difference was that this was the first time I went without my mom. My mom always talks about the city where she is from, and she was so happy that I was there. Before I left for Poland, she was constantly telling me, "OH! You need to see this! Try this! Etc;" It was very touching when I was walking around all of these places that my mother told me to go to and remember the stories she told me from her childhood when she was there.

Nevertheless, let's get started with how I lived a normal day in Nowy Targ, Poland.

 Morning

I would usually wake up around 8, depending on when I went to bed the night before. Because I was 7 hours ahead from Houston, I would normally look what my family was posting on social media and see what my friends were doing during their summer. In the beginning of my trip, my instinct was to call my family when I woke up, but because of the time difference I had to wait until it was 7-8 am in Houston. 

Food is very cheap in Poland, and one of those food products being bread. Freshly made bread was constantly being made in every store and bakery in

town. You could walk to the store in the morning to get a fresh loaf of bread for less than a dollar. (Around 2 zloty) When I woke up, my aunt had already bought new, delicious, fresh bread for breakfast. 

For breakfast I normally ate the same thing, I had a whole grain/wheat bread (it wasn't a white bread and it was freaking delicious) cut into 3 slices, smeared butter on it, placed ham on top, made myself fresh black tea, and either had a banana or strawberry yogurt as a side. 

The different way that Polish meals work is that instead of dinner or breakfast being big meals like it is in the US, lunch is huge, There is even a term that there is no English translation for. It is called "obiad" and it is basically a late big lunch. Because of this new way of eating, I normally ate this small meal for breakfast and dinner.

After breakfast, there would be times when I would already be getting ready to go swim. I was gone from my swim team for over a month, so in order to stay in shape and to stay fast, I had to find a pool in Nowy Targ that I would try to go to every day and train at. Luckily, I did and I would swim there alone and then walk back.

Many days throughout the month, I was so busy visiting family and seeing things that I just did NOT have time to go swimming everyday. But it was alright though because so many cities in Poland are so easy to walk around. Nowy Targ is small, so I was able to walk every where that I needed to. After I went swimming, I would normally walk to the best place in the world. That my friends, is the ice cream shop.

Nowy Targ has an ice cream store that is so famous in Poland that there are constantly lines whenever you go. It depends when you go, I usually went in the morning or evening when there wasn't a ton of people. The ice cream was so cheap too. The smallest size equaling about 0.50 US cents. Crazy right?

The reason why this ice cream shop (called Nowotarskie Lody Tradycyjne) is so popular is because of the awesome flavors they had to offer. Most shops in the US have all sorts of sugary flavors like chocolate, vanilla, mint chocolate chip, cookies n cream, etc; In this little shop, they are known for one specific flavor: blueberry. Okay hear me out, this ice cream is so light and not too heavy, I feel like I could eat gallons of it. It is not too sugary and it is perfectly tart and sweet at the same time.

My favorite flavors included the following, ranked:

1. Jagoda (Blueberry)
2. Smietanka (Vanilla)
3. Ciastko (Cookie)
4. Truskawka (Strawberry)
5. Czekolade (Chocolate)

Every single day there were new flavors! There was green apple one day, with pieces of apple, another day was cappuccino, then another day was banana. It was really fun to go every single day and walking inside and say to myself, I
wonder what flavor is available today!

Every single day I would work on my Polish Travel journal. The only problem is that I love writing (as you can tell by this long blog post) and I have been writing so much in my notebook. Because I have so much to say, I would spend time writing while I waited for lunch.

Afternoon

LUNCH! A.K.A Obiad. I love Polish food, it's so good and a lot healthier than a lot of American meals. One of the main staples in a Polish meal are boiled potatoes. The way that my aunt made the potatoes and seasoned them, mmmmmm, so good. Obiad would mainly be served 1-3 pm in the afternoon. It was a pretty big meal and it was a meal that a lot of people would come together to eat, and socialize.

In the U.S., Dinner is basically the main meal that people come together and have a lot of food. I really like Obiad because it was in the afternoon and you had a lot more left of the day to walk off the food and of course, have ice cream.

My afternoon normally consisted of visiting family around the town and drinking tea. I visited my aunt, who lives in Paris, and we would sit and talk about how life was in America and France. It was so nice, we would sit in a garden that a family friend owned and drink tea.

Night

Sometimes, I would turn on the TV to watch the World Cup to see how countries are doing in the tournament. Poland, did not do well, and I was extremely disappointed that they didn't get passed the group stage. When there wasn't a game, I would flip through the channels and see if I could find anything interesting. One night, I found a French romance WWII movie that had English subtitles. I started when it was in it's last hour and I ended up liking it? I don't know, it was cute. 

As I said before, dinner was very similar to breakfast and it was pretty late. I would always call my parents at night to see how they were doing and to let them know how my day was. My mom would always laugh when I told her all of the crazy things that I had been up to and she would tell me all of the things my

younger siblings would be doing. 

I would eventually pass out, after having a cup of tea, and sleep pretty well. I was not in Nowy Targ for a lot of the month, I was visiting family all throughout the country and just being incredibly busy. This is what a CALM day looked like, and I had a crazy trip, but it was an awesome one :)

Hope you enjoyed reading this, I had fun writing it. Let me know if you want me to write about crazy stories from Poland and even other blog posts in general! 

Thank you so much for reading, I will be writing a lot more now that I am back in the U.S., so stay tuned ;)

Love,

yo girl emilia

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