the bistro curse.

You hate me, because sometimes I love trying new things. We had about 1,5 hr after our Neurology class, and I really really set my mind on visiting that new place in our city, a place we have never been before but often went by, wondering what it might serve us one day. I seriously fail at having breakfast nowadays. We start classes at 8am every day, which gives me about 3-4 hours of sleep. Damn, I am already losing at keeping the word I gave myself earlier this fall. So I don't focus on breakfasts too much. I am not sure whether you remember it or not, but earlier this year another bistro in our town really let me down. Is that a curse or something? I asked A to list things that we found wrong. "You watch all these tv programs, Kitchen Nightmares, Salon Takeover, and so on, and now you can critisize basically anything." A light smile appearing on your face. We're good - I think - and we're getting better at this.

Nienawidzisz mnie, bo czasami kocham spróbować czegoś nowego. Miałyśmy około półtorej godziny po zajęciach z neurologii, a ja tak bardzo nastawiłam się na odwiedzenie tego nowego bistro, gdzie jeszcze nie byłyśmy, ale przechodząc obok, zawsze zastanawiałyśmy się, co tam kiedyś zamówimy. Ostatnio nie udają mi się śniadania. Zaczynamy o ósmej, co daje mi około 3-4 godzin snu. Cholera, już łamię obietnicę daną sobie wcześniej tej jesieni. Tak więc nie skupiam się za bardzo na śniadaniach. Nie jestem pewna, czy pamiętacie, jak pisałam o innym bistro w naszym mieście, które tak strasznie mnie zawiodło. Wyczuwam klątwę. Poprosiłam A, żeby wymieniła mi rzeczy, które według niej były złe. "Oglądasz te wszystkie programy, Kuchenne Rewolucje, Ostre Cięcie, itd, teraz umiesz skrytykować właściwie wszystko." Lekki uśmiech pojawił Ci się na twarzy. Myślę sobie, "Jesteśmy dobre, jesteśmy w tym coraz lepsze."

delicious times in Budapest.

Every time I am travelling, my love for Italian cuisine blossoms. Maybe it is because some pasta is always a safe choice, therefore perhaps I am boring like that. I am so happy that we managed to get away for a little dinner on our first day. "Most" bistro was an accidental found, and only after our return to Poland we actually realized that this place is pretty popular in Budapest. Three course meal for a pretty fair price and the most delicious gazpacho ever. Now I am pretty motivated to finally do a proper gazpacho by myself. Maybe the other meals were nothing too fancy, but I found the amount of food to be perfectly measured to meet my needs at that point. Ferrania Solaris really suprised me and produced some cool, warm colored tones. Too bad I don't seem to be able to find it anywhere online :(
 

We of course made a stop at Starbucks and had a big frappe with whipped cream topping, totally and overwhelmingly sweet. We made stops for coffees and drinks, finding some unique places where the service level varied from nice to awful.

Ferrania Solaris 200

Fuji Pro 400H expired

Another stop that deserved a couple of photographs was Gelateria Lavanda close to St Stephen's basilica. As we visited it on the first day, I was still in the "let's save as much as I can, so I do not end up starving" mode which always leaves me with 50% of my money on the last day of the trip, so my order included only a nice freezing cold coffee.

Fuji Superia 200

And of course, I couldn't forget about our little breakfast at Muvesz, with coffee, orange juice and omelettes with bacon and cheese. Sorry for totally blurring those pictures :)

Fuji Pro 400H

from B, with love.

This is the last post before my departure to Budapest. We are both scared and excited, as travelling always includes both of these emotions. We have arranged everything by ourselves and on Sunday every little detail of our trip, that we had planned, is supposed to "click". Hopefully it will :) Before Budapest I will make a one day stop in my beloved Bialystok to hold some hands and kiss some lips. Then I'm off to new adventures.

Bstok has loads of new places for us to explore: kaffka bistro & a nóż widelec bistro. That's what tiggers like best. Light cuisine and new inspirations.

Walking down the park is easily one of my favourite activities. I do it in winter, when I have to get to another class, I do it in spring for the same reason and also for leisure. More of my winter stories are featured in once upon a jan. Summer is beautiful and I don't want it gone too soon, but I caught myself wondering what it would be like to feel the snowflakes on my cheeks again. One is sure with B, winter will come and once it comes and makes itself cosy around us, it will try to get into our hearts and once again we will have to warm each other up to make it through. 

Tudorcolor XLX200 really suprised me this time. Sun did its job and lightened it up to some beautiful tones this time! I am finally through with my second black & white roll, which was Ilford FP4 125, it was actually the first time that I shot a film with iso that low, so I am curious how it's all going to look. I will show you some photographs once I'm back from B, and then there will be a couple of Budapest posts, like the essence (something like the essence of Prague last year). Of course if my films don't get fried with the X-ray.

Speak soon! 

Kasia

umami tales

Umami /uːˈmɑːmi/, a savory taste, is one of the five basic tastes (together with sweet, sour, bitter and salty).

A loanword from the Japanese (うま味?), umami can be translated as "pleasant savory taste". This particular writing was chosen by Professor Kikunae Ikeda from umai (うまい) "delicious" and mi (味) "taste". The kanji 旨味 are used for a more general sense of a food as delicious.

Not being anything close to a cook, I have always looked at Katie's Randomly Delicious series and considered it a great idea. We often eat in the city, which is pricey and probably not the best idea, yet I just love doing so. My menu often includes sushi, in all forms, lots of pasta, desserts at Bella Vita and good old pizza. Generally, I am a lover of Italian and Japanese cuisine. Quite a mix, but I wouldn't trade them for anything else. On the other hand I love anything that goes with coffee, therefore lunches, brunches and regular breakfasts.

I rarely prepare something at home, but little sandwiches with salmon, arugula and cream cheese quickly became my favourite, after I tried them in one of those local lunch type coffee houses. Everything might be going in the right direction though because yesterday I found a cooking pal in my friend P, with whom we made our first meat patties. And this is how we're going to make it through the next three years. I would love to be cooking with my A, but we are never in the kitchen at the same time, so that might pose an issue :)

learn how to appear on my blog here.

Student life makes you quite familiar with toast bread. Actually, after two years it becomes your best friend. And I more than adore when I get served pancakes with some maple syrup. It's more than delicious and extremely sweet.

I'm back!

Having written the last exam of year two of stomatology and with prospects of passing it, it's time for me to come back to real life. Real life, meaning days of book reading and picture taking. I would love to come back to my routine of lomography. Last year I had approximately one roll to be developed each week, so that was definitely a pretty good time for this blog. This year I'm actually struggling to decide what I want to show you, guys. 

I have an awful lot of plans for summer vacations of 2014. Remember Prague last year? (The essence of Prague in pictures) It was a blast, certainly. So this year we will try to think further and go somewhere else. Which makes me really excited, cause I can only dream of the rolls I could get developed after a trip to Budapest, Barcelona or any other place in our beautiful Europe. I've got dozens ideas in my head on where to go next. 

I am extremely happy to have welcomed some new people in my life, and the way how people bond over both similarities and differences is amazing. I was always afraid of seeing personalites clash, but now I realize that giving people a chance is actually the only way for your life to be a little better, one coffee or meeting at a time. 

The past few weeks were hell. I mean they pretty much sucked the life out of me, so I just need to take some time off from thinking. I want to watch pointless dramas and eat as much pizza as I can. I want to stay home and cook spaghetti, with Thieving Magpie in the background, since it's basically something you'd call a perfect spaghetti cooking melody. Yes, I do take a lot of my thoughts from Murakami. Speaking of which, I hope by that time tomorrow I will have been a happy owner of his newly published first novels. Once I get it and spend some quality 1 on 1 time with it in my bathtub, you will surely have a post about it coming. I read his latest Tsukuru Tazaki book earlier this year and it was something that deserves some comment on here as well. A book actually pretty controversial since you either hate it or you love it. 

Food and coffee were some pretty serious partners of mine the last term. I even thought of making some Randomly delicious post, because Katie got me inspired on that one as well (head over there to see some deeeelicious treats she was having recently). 

Where are you going for your summer holidays? Is it by any chance anywhere near Poland? :) I promise that I will speak to you very very soon. I am not leaving you until the uni starts again in October, so prepare yourself for photography and lots of rambling. Let's settle things this way, what you can expect from dipped in rococo is a new post each 4-5 days. I want to show you how my sister's wedding looked like. There is one final post coming where I'm going to dwell upon how my life changed in that academic year and what I want to do with it next. Oh and in a month's time I will be 21 years old. That's tragic, but there will be post for that occasion as well. Hugs and kisses, your Kasia.

what diet?

H e l l o  J u n e and hopefully hello to the last 4 weeks of studying this academic year. Fingers crossed.

I have always been pretty keen on sweets. Ever since I started studying dentistry, I learned that they're not that bad, as long as you eat a lot, all at once. Ahh, music to my ears. I have always  l o v e d  sweets. And this is why my dating choices look the way they do. I couldn't go any sweeter at this point, truly. Oh sweet goddess of Nutella! :)

It's too obvious to state what Mr Pancake serves. I had wanted to visit them for a couple of months till I finally ended up on Solec, in Warsaw. It was at the end of the day, after a few hours of frying ourselves in Lazienki Park, listening to Chopin (go to the actual post), so sorry for the poor quality of the pictures. I still find myself quite anxious when photographing in a small space like that, with all those judgy eyes.

If you follow me on Instagram, you know it's being flooded with pictures of food. Food, almost the happiest part of my daily routine. I'm spending waaay too much on it, as I was forced to download some finance and budget organising app for my phone. Damn, it's gone too far.

My love says it's too soon to write sum-up posts with the exams still happening and no knowledge on whether I'll pass or not, so I will try my best to avoid that. It's alright to say that I've grown closer with some new people and even fonder of others that were already in my life. Funny to see myself bonding, really. I'd always thought I was not the type. This is why I find it hard to even think of going home. There's some intimacy to this city & I. The way its streets embrace me, the air kisses my cheeks each morning. I will miss anything and everything. That's why staying here for the whole July sounds amazing, it does. I'm coming back home this weekend, for my sister's wedding (first wedding in my life, should be exciting, but I guess I am too tired to cherish this opportunity properly), and then I will be back in Bialystok for Patomorphology exam that takes place on the 10th. Please, keep your fingers crossed for me, will you?

I wouldn't exchange you for anything, ever. Even a box full of Nutella, even though I know if the choice was yours, you'd already have your fingers dipped in chocolate. Thank you for everything.

a little celebration.

The part of my winter break that I actually spent at home seems almost insignificant. I feel somehow torn between two cities. Each of which misses something crucial.This is my first real try shooting black & white film. It feels like exploring a completely different side of lomography. I had chosen some Ilford (XP2 400, to be exact), hoping the results will be enough to convince me and my biggest critics that colorless shooting has at least as much potential as full color.

The day after my arrival, my fam & I decided to celebrate my passed exam and my sister's new job by having dinner in one of the loveliest recently opened restaurants in our town. (Recently opened, duh. I guess it's been around for longer than you may think, but I don't visit home that often and we rarely eat outside, so yeah, definitely new experience for me). And since I always like a little spin in my regular favourite dishes, having a salmon salad with grapefruit, orange and almonds, was a highlight of the day. Casa is a place with cool people, fresh energy and great cuisine, so what's not to love?

Also, using my new 28mm lens gives me a different, fun perspective. Unscrewing and changing lenses does absorb some time, but for now I do have some extra minutes to spare. I was enjoying the last days of sweet, sweet freedom, before I was thrown into university life again. But on the other hand, huuraaay, I'm shooting and posting, how incredible is that??

And every once in awhile I stumble upon something that simple and esthetically pleasing as the video below. Enjoy :) (#12 Forget shit and move on) Oh how much I need number 12 in my life nowadays. Time to flee the scene of this incident, breathe in slowly and move on. There's no use in settling for second best. Not anymore. The truth is, I feel weaker than I've felt in a long time, but on the other hand I am stronger, because I've made the first step towards self preservation. Life has always been about forgetting. And well, I'm going to nail its techniques sooner or later. 

But what if it's not about forgetting but about accomodating? It is about some funny evolution process, which can be achieved only after your heart has been broken some certain number of times. Cutting ties is easy, it's a sharp cut between what we used to be and what we will be from this moment on. I am not proud of always burning my bridges. Not everyone is supposed to stay in your life and in your bed, but you're not the only deciding factor. Keeping your exes might be foolish, and sometimes it might just prolong the bleeding for some significant amount of time. But maybe at some point you will realize that you've grown fonder of having people around. Of having certain people around, not matter in what form. I miss X for our long conversations about music and cinema. I miss Y because of his 'fuck it ' attitude, that was always somehow uplifting and energetic. Z cooked well, and to be quite honest, I just wish I could have someone cook for me the way he did. Q gave me this incredible impression of a relationship, and just the first boost of any confidence in my life. And you, you have given me a bit of everything. A little bit of all that. 

THINGS TO KEEP IN MIND from frohlocke on Vimeo.

mornings

One of the things that stole my heart in January was having breakfasts outside of my apartment. Friday, a day with a few lectures and a philosophy class. Definitely the highlight of the week, long anticipated, finally arriving. I definitely loved January Fridays. One I spent in Gdansk, second, (almost the whole day) in bed, third- started with a little walk in this chilly weather to get my dose of American pancakes and some fresh perspective on what this town has to offer. ;)

collisions.

Don't you ever feel like you're stuck with a certain group of people and you are too lazy to go out and explore? One of a few reasons why I'm glad I picked my major, is that people say that a good dentist is also a good psychologist, or a listener, whatever. I love people. I love love love people. And even though sometimes it's not tough to make me angry, and I'm really a sort of introvertic person, who charges up when being alone, I still find it extremely fun and expanding to be able to talk to other people and see their point of view (see my inner dilemma of ambiversion??). K, even though my major is not particularly the going out and social type, because of the lack of time we always experience, we try our best. At least I want to believe, I do. Me, failing, is another thing though.

Thank you for a lovely afternoon, I. ! I'm looking forward to more to come. So glad I copied your order, because that was honestly the best apple pie I'd ever tasted :)

Why do I feel like November is going to make me even more antisocial than I am now, though? (How is it November already? This blog has been up for 5 months, just wow.) Physiology is such a pain in the ass, I'm telling you! Soon enough, I will be on a joyride to Christmas, filled with sleep deprivation, freezing over and books. Med school keeps pushing us to our limits, I guess. Wish me luck with staying sane! :)