Wreaking havoc on the little kids

The beautiful, colorful architecture in the town square of Wroclaw, Poland. Emily and Paul in front of a Pope John Paul II statue in the Wieliczka Salt Mine.

I made my way north of Slovakia into Poland, spending a night in the mountain town of Zakopane before heading to Krakow. Poland is the birthplace of my favorite composer, Chopin, so I caught a concert of Chopin piano music on my first night there. It was advertised as being performed by a very talented pianist who has won several awards over the past 9 years in Poland. When the pianist walked out, he looked no older than 20 years old, but that didn't matter, he was amazing, I almost cried at how beautifully he played. You get a wider range of sound and emotions from hearing the music live versus through the CD or MP3 player.

After two days of wandering and sightseeing in the heat, I was hanging out with a brother and sister from England, Emily and Paul. They have a strong nautical/sailing background and both are in the British Military. Emily had mentioned there was a really nice water park in Krakow that she heard about. Since my only alternative was to sleep through the heat, I decided to go with Emily and Paul. The water park was full of little kids and families. It had huge slides, climbing walls in pools, tight ropes, water polo, basketball, and our favorite, a figure 8 current pool. This pool had strong jets all in one direction, so you didn't have to try and you were whisked around the big figure 8. Our game of choice in this pool was much like a "kill the man with the ball" game. Whomever possesed the ball, was attacked, smothered, thrown into walls, thrown into other people, tackled, and held under water by the others until someone else had the ball. We were ruthless. Both Paul and Emily know how to kill people, and I very much enjoy not being killed, so we were appropriately squared off against one another. There were several people in this pool, all of whom were only obstacles in our way of getting the ball. I know that I felt my body climbing over others while we played this game, and people knew to get out of our way, or they became a casualty.

When we got out of the pool, we looked back and saw young kids, some very young with floatation devices and their parents. "Were all of these people just in the pool with us?" I asked..

"I don't know, I wasn't paying attention." Paul said..

We didn't see any blood or crying kids, so we moved on to the tightrope. Only slightly above water and very loose, it had a rope "handrail" on each side. 10 people would be on this tightrope at once, holding on to the rails, swinging them back and forth and bouncing on the tightrope, trying to make other people lose their balance and fall off. This was our kind of place. It might seem that we tried to swing the ropes to knock off little kids. That isn't the case. We tried to knock big kids off too. It just so happens that little kids don't have the reach and strength that helps them hold on when, say, a big kid like me, pushes both railings in opposite directions with his legs and arms so that they can't possibly touch both at once. Call it cruel, I call it balance training. I wish there was one of these water parks in my hometown.