Poland, Warts and All?

Original text:
I'm sat in a 24 hour internet cafe in Katowice train station having 'missed' the train that decided never to turn up and left a set of passengers, with a distinct British minority, rather stranded. That means that the connection I had between the planned Intercity train and its partner of 9 minutes at Breclav is going to be rather difficult. Budapest will have to be on Europe #2.
I'm laughing. The ashen cloud from the Icelandic Vocano has made everything very exciting lately. But with a rail pass that expires at the stroke of midnight, and with no way to easily extend it from form-filling, stamp-happy Poland, its time to return. Stansted, parents, the prodigal son returns in the morning (fingers crossed) :-).

The architecture of Poland is uninspiring. It's buildings fullfil function not flare. Grey blocks tower over slightly less tall grey blocks which are surrounded by more grey blocks. Even the colourful painting of the odd few buildings doesn't break up the aesthetic misery of Communist architecture. It's a good job the weather wasn't cold or I would have been critical about this backdrop. But this holiday within a holiday was never about break-neck tours of city centres; it was about the people I was meeting and that is what I shall judge it on.

Krakow

It was a sombre time to arrive here, with preparations for the President's funeral taking hold of Poland, let alone this city where he was to be buried. All partying and organised celebration had been banned as a mark of respect. And both the market (Stare Miasto) and the Church of St Mary (Mariacki Church) were filled with people paying tribute to the President, and a mass of memorial candles.
I met my ex-pat friend AJ after successfully meandering my way out of the confusing train station and we headed to the nearby hostel. Tom and Gregg's is nothing remarkable in decor, but it was still remarkable. We walked through the door and someone thrust cheesecake and a spoon into my hand before I'd reached the desk. We were all treated (as standard) to traditional Polish dinner, with traditional-sized portions. And the staff passed round shot after shot of free vodka (flavoured) to get everyone talking and feeling like an international family once food had settled. Everyone knows the way to my heart is through food, so I fell in love.

Being here for the night meant both AJ and I were keen to explore the culture (he'd never been here either). We asked at reception and found ourselves heading to an old synagogue down a narrow cobbled street. I welled with pride as I succumbed, finally, to my religious curiosity. We approached the door, nearing a  crowd of bearded Jewish men. And then we turned left and stepped into the bar next door.
Here, we were transported into the stereotypical bar of Poland. Cosy, warm and so dimmly lit you need to allow your eyes to adjust before risking walking to the bar. Dotted around the rustic wooden tables and chairs were men with moustaches drinking beer, and the occassional bowl of soup.
A couple of honey-beers here (better than the mango beer of Berlin) and we moved on, settling in a sparsely decorated vodka bar that boasted 50 different vodkas. We opted not to try all 50 as the portions of drink are as generous as the food. 4 40ml vodka shots later and the journey back to hostel was a slightly merry one.

Poznan

The following day we headed to Posnan. A casual 400 km journey of 7 hours on archaic trains that can't go above certain speeds as the train tracks will crack otherwise. Isa joined us along the route, and so now I had the veritable company of both the individuals I had come all this way to meet.
In Poznan I was treated to yet another night of Polish generosity. Isa's quirky friend Marak gave us a place to stay for the night in the heart of the city, and was entertaining and lively with his talk of everything Polish, in particular his fascination of trains.The highlight was attending an English-speaking couch surfer's meeting, with about 30 different ex-pats and their Polish partners all crowded round one very large table in the centre of a local bar. Strangely, given the venue could only hold about 50 comfortably, there was a very very large projector just behind the table, churning out, at the request of the ex-pat organiser, a Phil Collins concert DVD. I was glad, for the standard measure in the bar to be 100ml even if I did baulk at the sight of it initially...

I can't say much about the beauty and splendour of Poznan because the following day Mikey (the Phil Collins obsessed organiser) took us on a tour of the sites. It started in a graveyard, followed on to a dodgy canvas-roofed market, and ended in the ruins of what was once a football stadium. I reiterate; buildings here are not to be looked at. But the graveyard was interesting. First, it was the burial site of the real officers of The Great Escape, and second it demonstrated a worrying eagerness of the Polish people to makeout on and around tombstones. In fact, we saw some VERY dodgy photographing of a girl with a very short skirt and a smile ontop of one of the tombstones. I am convinced there's some popular graveyard fetish mainstream around this part of the world.

Anyway, Mikey turned out to be an affable tour guide and I am glad that, even if the pickings of Poznan were slender, we were shown them by him. In  the couch-surfing / TEFL community around there he seems to be 'The Don' and it was a pleasure to be shown around by a big fish of the Poznan pond.

Additional text:
Glogow

A return to the residence of AJ and Isa brought even more honours being bestowed upon me in terms of hospitality. For those of you unaware of Glogow (I'm sure that will be most of us) it is a small town of some 60,000 residents that was flattened literally, by the War. Its not unusual in that respect. Its claim to architectural fame is the 3rd tallest town hall in Poland. It has a pleasant mix of shops and quirky Polish supermarkets, and the obvious sign of regeneration, a bloody Tesco.
On my first night here AJ and Isa cooked up some Pierogi me in their flat and took me to their local. Because I hadn't seen enough of trains over the last month I was pleasantly surprised to find their local is a train-themed bar called InterCity. In retrospect there's an irony to this which extends beyond my personal irony: why is there a bar dressed to look like the inside of a train when a train is practically the ONLY place in Poland where it is illegal to drink? Nevertheless, as a bar, with its mock train-scape windows (paintings of people on station platforms), its ticket machine by the entrance, and its smiling barman Pawel who knows AJ and Isa well enough to allow me to leave a tab for them as a gift (practically unheard of in Poland), Intercity is a decent place to end up.

Day two of Glogow

Today saw me have my most authentic experience of the tour! I was invited for dinner at Isa's parent's house, where I met my new Polish family! I sat down in the lounge around a dark wooden table laid with the best-Sunday-set with mum, dad, brother and sister, two crazy crazy dogs (one of which loves, the other of which loves to bite) and the state funeral on the TV in the background.
Isa's mother is the well known English teacher of Glogow and was delighted to have the opportunity to check out her syntaxes against a native speaker. She beamed as I walked through the door, and rightly so as she made a delicious meal of lentil soup followed by kotlets (similar to schnitzels), potatoes, cabbage, mushrooms, and cake and tea. She has that incredible desire to religiously pile more food onto your plate; a trait I previously reserved for Jewish mothers. Isa's father is Polish Mario; one hell of a moustache, a big smile and broad shoulders. He LIKES a drink, and spent all his time trying to insist AJ and I went drinking with him down his local (a fate, if accepted, I was told we'd never return from). Isa's sister (Magda) and brother (Adash) are fluent in English (although Adash hardly speaks) and did the translating for me as Isa's dad seems to think that English is a mixture of Polish and German that being British, I should obviously understand... I loved my meal here. I've never felt so warmly welcomed by people that knew so little about me. The food was good, the conversation was fun, and I've been invited around for meal #2 the next time I return to Poland..

The mountain

My travels wouldn't have been travels if they hadn't involved trekking up yet another moutain, and the following day brought a journey in a rickety Polish car (complete with manual choke) to the mountains that border the Czech Republic - Karkonoski National Park. Here, AJ, Isa and I expected a pleasant hike to the top akin to a nice ramble. We were greeted with a black walking route and endless, difficult to navigate snow to the summit. The mock 'Bear Grills Survival' commentary we started at the foot of the mountain looked uncomfortably appropriate halfway through, especially as we walked off the tracks (breaking rule 1 of the hiking guidelines) and over the section that read 'Warning, Avalnaches Likely. Do Not Cross' (breaking rules 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 etc of any hiking guideline). It did NOT make for an easy walk given the lack of snow boots and the fact as we were walking over frozen lakes, with their undulating rises and falls, you were unable to tell if the next step was going to bring a sink of 2 inches of snow or 10. For AJ you had a pretty certain rule; if he could end up up to his waist in it, he did. Our trip to the top was a little breathless and they saw the end to a good pair of hiking boots destroyed by the blanket of freezing, wet, snow, but the views of the alpine trees, snow, and lakes once there were breathtaking. I even managed to take some photos for once...
The decline brought with it a delicious wooden hut on one of the easier walking routes and yet another Polish tradditional cuisine; Bigos - a very salty beef and cabbage stew served with bread which was well deserved given our exertions. Hats off the the Poles in this regard; we found and passed a shak at the top of the mountain, and though there must have been less than 10 people trekking that day both venues were open for any business.I pity the workers the ardous slog through the boredom.

The complications

Obviously, like the rest of the 'European World', I was due to leave Poland sooner than I actually did. I was cut off from a return to Blighty by the spoutings of a volcano over Iceland, dormant for the last century. I was NOT phased by this, and wouldn't have had the beautiful mountain exertion if it hadn't been for this fact. AJ and Isa were incredible hosts, and put my enjoyment ahead of their routines. I'll hapily return the favour. They gave me free reign of their beautiful Polish-style flat complete with ex-pat trimmings; massive uber TV, colourful walls and comfy sofa-bed. I could not have asked for anything more from them and I am so incredibly grateful. But two days later than planned and after 2 re-scheduled, then cancelled flights I tried to make a dash for it over to Budapest, to enjoy the last of my rail travel. As you may have gathered from the start of this article, the Polish trains did not want to give me this icing on the cake, so one of my last sitings of Poland is the 5 hours I had to spend in Katowice. It was while stranded I had my final interview with STA Travel for the World Internship, and although unsuccessful that ray of light in the otherwise unfriendly Katowice train station will always be with me. It was a beautifully comic moment to be asked by interviewer Alex 'Where are you now' and to reply, having just found the train had not arrived 'I don't know, you tell me', 'I'm stranded but smiling'. And that sums up Poland for me. In part I felt stranded here because it was such a different experience to the whilwind tour preceding it. But, I never felt fazed or unwelcome, so was always, always smiling. x

One final postscript on Poland: I eventually returned to Krakow to take a 10 o'clock flight to the UK the following day. It is here, post funeral, that I realised I have to visit Poland again. I need to give Krakow a 2nd chance. The difference in this city was astounding. Although I had fun first time round, seeing the place bursting with people, music and life, it really felt like a capital. One where the fun had been switched back on...I saw, even if only briefly, why this place is so popular with stags and hens because despite its beautiful traditional backdrop, Krakow has one hell of a vibe to it. Plus, AJ and Isa, I need to see just how good your snowboarding is :-) x x x