#villagelife

Patchy internet connection over the last week or so meant that I had to embrace analogue past times. Cycling, walking, reading a newspaper on the patio, drinking excessive amounts of tea and coffee, thinking about the next year, swimming in the pool and baking cakes.

In the last week, I've become fixated about cows, geese, chickens and horses. I don't see farm animals very often on my little island, so observing the daily moves of a pair of calves was a fascinating experience. I've seen farmers calmly and patiently tending to their land and animals and it reminded me how simple life can be.

But the countryside is not only its flora and fauna, but also all those sleepy little towns and villages where even the butcher's is shut down during summer, where the only people out on the streets are a group of camp children with melting ice cream and some mildly drunk bearded men talking philosophy. Towns and villages with the loveliest women working at a post office and delicious freshly caught fish available at a scruffily looking fishmonger's. 

I'll make a quick visit to Warsaw this week and I'll be interested in the contrast with this idyllic village life and a business of a city. I am not a fan on the Polish capital, not only because it's hard to find such blissful peacefulness over there. But everything is good in moderation. And hopefully I'll get a chance to get a taste of its apparently buzzing vegan culinary scene.