Today has been another lazy, sleep in til past noon kind of day. After rolling out of bed at about 1, I lolled around on my computer, did some sketching, finally mustered the energy to take a shower, and decided it was time to go eat lunch before the cafeteria closed. The weather's a little gloomy again and I was feeling a bit pensive; getting out of the room for a little bit, even if it was just downstairs, would probably help me feel slightly more energetic. I grabbed my meal ticket, locked the door to the room and opened the door to the hall.
You know how sometimes random things happen that make you wonder if you're actually living real life, that you haven't somehow stepped into a scripted performance?
That's how I felt when I heard the fluid resonance of a cello coming from somewhere across the corridor. I stood there for a long moment, a bit spellbound. There's almost nothing more beautiful than a beautifully played cello, at least in my opinion. Even though my neighbour was only playing warm-ups, the almost tactile sound was gorgeous.
I left reluctantly to go downstairs, where, for the first time, I ordered something other than soup and salad to eat. It's kind of hard to order food when you've no idea what anything is called, less yet how to pronounce it, and even less yet to ask if they have any that day. 'Zupa' is easy to say, and the various kinds of salads (all shredded vegetables of some sort - cabbage, beets, carrots, or a combination) are set out to take. Today my good fortune was in the person ahead of me asking for something that looked vaguely like the cabbage rolls I'd tried at a Polish place in Ireland. I just pointed to his plate and asked for the same thing. As it turns out, this was a stuffed pork roll with some kind of mushroom filling (a little Googling tells me that this is called 'kruchenyky' and is actually of Ukrainian origin). Oh, and an added bonus was the gravy that topped it and the mashed potatoes on the side. Those starchy, bland mashed potatoes are a lot tastier with a little gravy. I actually ate everything on my plate for once.
Feeling quite satisfied with my new lunch option, I returned to my room. When I reached the third floor I wondered if the cellist would still be playing. The answer was yes. In fact, I've been sitting at my desk with both doors open, listening to this private recital for the past 40 minutes. It makes me miss my instruments at home, and wish I had devoted more time to learning how to play my violin, and especially wish that I had the money to go to the Krakow Philharmonic concert two nights ago. It also makes me wonder who is playing, whether or not they're a student who will be here all semester, where they're from, what their name is...
A mystery to be solved with time.
