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Back in Poland again…this time for work! We are over for a week, having spent the weekend doing lessons in Legal English at Białystok University (Kasia being the expert on this, I have experience in teaching English, editing, and doing seminars). We gave the students some interesting material - a real case of deception/fraud and got them to do a court session in English - they seemed to really take to it.
We flew from Liverpool, to Warsaw and managed to catch a train to Białystok within an hour of landing, a bit of luck in snowy Poland - our train was running from Wrocław (the other end of Poland) and it arrived on time! Now here is an interesting fact - our British designed locomotive* sped our train through the blowing snow, -10°C, and no problem about the wrong kind of snow!

*Let's have a bit of pride in a design classic - the Polish EU07 or British Rail Class 83 electric locomotive! Built over 40 years ago and still going strong in Poland!

Friday, our first day, we did some business in town, and I was most amused to see a van full of snow, some of its contents being shovelled out in front of the bank we were visiting! Deliveries of snow? What is going on?

Today we went out and about, my second time ever (first for Kasia) cross country skiing or if you want to be hip, Nordic skiing. We went with Kasia’s sister, Barbara. We got the bus to Ogrodniczki and hit the snow. The idea was to ski on the tracks in the Knyszyn Forest. At first our way was hampered by a mini snow plough, which was making a haphazard job of ploughing the cycle track which runs parallel to the main road to Supraśl. Not that many (0) cyclists seem to appreciate the effort.

We had a bit of a problem finding suitable tracks, and then we went up a slope to find we were at the top of a ski lift (Yes, near Białystok, renowned for its -er, very gentle contours!). Not having mastered how to slow down, we opted not to go down the steep bit. We slithered around on some tracks and only infrequently did I assume the horizontal position, to invoke zero velocity.

We managed by chance more than anything else to find ourselves back in Ogrodniczki after about a couple of hours. I blame the map: it only showed one track despite being 1:20 000 scale. The chilliest bit was waiting for the bus back. The wind has picked up in Białystok now, so the -8°C with wind chill feels like -20°C. The ducks by the half frozen River Biała look decidely miserable.

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