brief report from Krakow

[swan_tower]

1) Learn from my error, chilluns. If you're going to a foreign country, turn off 2-step verification on your Google accounts for the duration, unless you can actually get text messages on your phone while overseas. Otherwise, if your laptop refuses to talk to the hotel wireless, you'll have to go to great lengths to get internet access long enough to turn verification off so you can check your Gmail on other computers as needed.

2) Things Krakow does very well: street musicians, fall color, street performers of the non-musical kind, hot chocolate, music not on the streets, sausage (so saith the kniedzw), and RIDICULOUSLY monumental altars/shrines in its churches. Also, veneration of Pope John Paul II (shocker, I know).

3) Things I do not do well: sleep on planes, these days. I don't know where my ability to do so went, but it is gone.

4) I wish I could have come here two years ago, when I could pretend to the IRS that this was research for A Natural History of Dragons. Thanks to folklore (which I will report on in more detail later), there are dragons ALL OVER the place. Including one whose picture I will try to post later, because he's awesome.

5) Off to Auschwitz tomorrow. Not exactly happy fun vacation time, but it's one of those things you kind of have to do.

P.S. My folkloric and musical heart is kind of in love with the Heynał mariacki.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Possibly Lady Trent will have to return late in life, when she is elderly, so it is all research for a sequel. Stranger things have happened.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Heh. I could try . . . .

[desperance.livejournal.com]

This. It is so totally research. Ongoing series, damnit!

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Heh. Well, the books at least I should be able to deduct; that kind of stuff is always useful.

[ckd]

If you have a smartphone (or even a non-smartphone device that can run the app, like an iPod touch) I highly recommend the Google Authenticator app. It doesn't need SMS or an Internet connection to generate your 2-step verification codes.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

That is VERY good to know. I'll download that for the future (probably on both my phone and my iPod).

[kleenestar.livejournal.com]

There's also a print-your-codes option, which is handy for a second backup system.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

That, however, also probably requires me to remember to do it before the trip (as does turning off verification). :-) The app, I only have to remember once.

Still, more backup options = good.

[kleenestar.livejournal.com]

I printed a set and tucked them with my emergency cash in my wallet. Obviously you can't do it before this trip, but now I know I have codes with me even if my phone doesn't work.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay. I had assumed the printed codes would expire the way the text message ones do.

[ckd]

IIRC you'll only be able to use one device at a time as the code generator, but you can use the printed backup codes as a way to enable a new device if the main one is lost/stolen/immolated/dropped into the Wisła.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Gotcha. I'll look into that.

[starlady38.livejournal.com]

Or, as I did on my way to Argentina, you can frantically copy down your burner codes before you board your flight and then bind the cookie to the code for 30 days, which exceeds the duration of your trip. Regardless, that sucks.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yeah, any way you slice it, it gets complicated.