Another good dinner

Today we meet Larissa, a friend of a friend. Elegant and pretty lady, our age, speaks enough English to have a basic conversation. She is obviously interested in making our acquaintance.

Dinner at the Canaletto restaurant. We finally get to try their famed Chateaubriand steak (we had asked for it a few times but it was never available) and red Italian wine, Grignolino d'Asti. With dessert, it come to 500 zloty per person. About five dollars. So cheap, for us.

Fusilli alla carbonara

Uneventful day of classes and reading.

In the evening I go to the girls' dorm to cook pasta. For the occasion I invested in a 30-zloty pot of sufficient capacity. I also bought Polish pasta (fusilli to be precise), not without serious reservations (will be be made of durum wheat?) about its quality.

I also bought eggs and bacon (the closest I could find to Italian pancetta or guanciale) to make carbonara.

The end result is actually pretty close to the real thing, and the girls like it quite a lot!

Credit, Beethoven and bear steak

Usual classes in the morning.

Rudolf Buchbinder

At 5:00 pm we listen to a lecture by a Polish professor on "East-West Trade". He says nothing unpredictable: we need to increase East-West trade, we need to raise the volume of exchanges. He also asks for "cheap credit" from the West to finance it. Right. Well not surprising: Poland is running out of cash. During the 1970s Gierek's government has been splurging to keep people happy but the coffers are empty. Lacking market reforms cheap credit is the only way forward. I ask him how Poland could increase productivity and thus afford international credit but he is rather evasive. Poland, like other Comecon countries, is getting subsidies from the USSR in the form of cheap energy but it's not enough.

In the evening great concert by the Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder. The three of us manage to get good seats (second row for only 60 zlotys).  All-Beethoven program, including the "Appassionata", one of my favorites.

After the concert we go for dinner at the Canaletto restaurant of the Victoria hotel and for the first time in my life I eat a steak of bear meat! Delicious. Only 1500 zlotys (about 13 dollars) for the three of us and this is the most expensive restaurant in the city. This can't work. Something has to give. The day ends with a long talk in the car with Ann, until 3:00am.

Chinese restaurant

After an uneventful day we decide to try the Shanghai restaurant, on the Marszalkowska.

We try to order sevaral meat dishes but after repeated kind denials we are told that there is no meat today because it is Wednesday.

At the time we did not understand, but later on our Polish friends told us that, for some reason that we still do not understand, there is no meat in any restaurant on Wednesdays... I might have understood if Catholic Poland did not serve meat on Fridays, but why Wednesdays?

No amatriciana today

Full day at school and homework then out again for dinner at Ewa's.

I had planned to cook my famed "Amatriciana", which I execute following the traditional recipe very strictly, but none of us was able to find anything resembling guanciale. Not even bacon, nothing. Not even Ewa with all her black market connections.

Anyway we cook some spaghetti and have a good time, eating away while engaging in another interminable conversation on the "real" Polish economy.

Duck and wine

Easy Sunday. We get up late and drive to the Stare Miasto in search for food.

After some walking around we run into a pleasant small restaurant and take our seats. Using what little Polish we know (Ann actually gets by OK) we ask for the menu, but there isn't any. We then ask what is available, and the answer is clear: duck.

OK so we order a delicious duck and not as delicious red wine. Apparently duck is a pretty popular dish in Poland, it seems it's going to become a regular presence on our table. For the three of us the bill is 750 zloty (less than seven dollars).

Before heading home I saw some painters in the square and bought two water colors of the Stare Miasto.

Back in the dorm we learned that Marta has come looking for us...