Yes, I left that trail of sauerkraut on the floor.

My wallet smells like sauerkraut. I blame the Biedronka supermarket, which is basically for Polish Lidl,*except everything is hard to find and the lines are always over ten minutes long, because the cashiers stink-eye you into paying with exact change. (Why even bother issuing 100 zloty** or even 50 zloty notes if you’re treated like a criminal when you try to pay with them, anywhere?) Also, why are the eggs sitting next to the pickles?

More than once I observed shoppers dumping their pocket contents onto the counter and simply letting the disgruntled Biedronka employee count out what they want. It doesn’t help that Polish 1 cent coins look like toy money from a Lego set. More often than not, they go rolling onto the dirty floor, or in my case, fell to the bottom of a flat of peaches at the farmers’ market in Krakow.

This odd-smelling discount grocery is certainly to blame, because I needed 1 kilogram of sauerkraut to make bigos, “The national dish of Poland.” One kilo is, meh, two pounds. It’s a lot of kraut, and it came in a bucket with a cute little handle, vacuum sealed under the lid. I chose dill flavor, because of course. But to Biedronka, vacuum sealed means...partially open. The leak probably began immediately, but I was blinded by my recipe ambition.

I strolled down the aisle to the meat section. The recipe said 500 grams of spicy sausage. The Polish supermarket carries about 50 different types of kielbasa, none of which I can clearly understand by the label. So by the time I had exhausted my offline Google Translate and visited three different stores to complete my list, it was only one more thing to deal with when I noticed I was dripping on my pants, and the ground, and my shoes.

I managed to rescue my phone, and the bread, and the deck of cards I accidentally left in my cloth bag. My wallet did not escape. I carried the bucket home by its handle all the way back to our large and under-kitchen-equipped apartment.

Making the bigos was the delightful part. It’s a 4 hour process that involves melting down sauerkraut and cabbage (because who doesn’t love cabbage?), sausage, pork, onions, prunes and bacon. The apartment smelled divine. My wallet sat by the open window, still smelly, but less wet. It was a fine afternoon, all things considered.

My wallet got wet in Wroclaw. Wroclaw is a city that I would love to give you a history lesson on, but maybe later, perhaps in person, as we sip a beer and I show you a travel slideshow. Wroclaw is where I made bigos and we ate it for 4 days. Wroclaw is where the World Games took place. Wroclaw has loud trams that don’t really take you where you want to go. Wroclaw is pronounced vrots-wahv.

Wroclaw is where I watched a lot of floorball. I got to watch the Kim Nilsson play floorball, and let me tell you, he is a big deal. Wroclaw is where we look for little bronze dwarves everywhere. No really, you do. Wroclaw is where a bar serves focaccia sticks and dip as a late night snack. Why is no one else serving foccacia bread sticks with dip?

Perhaps I will tell you more about Wroclaw later, but for now, be careful what you put in your shopping bag. You might kraut yourself.

*Lidl is my favorite international grocery store. It’s a wide aisle heaven of items stored in an easily reachable way on packing pallets. These items are cheap. They almost always have what you want. It might not be ethically cheap, but I will be looking into this.

**At the time of writing, 100 zloty is nearly $30 USD.