I took a couple of pictures on that holiday. Mostly of the nicer one of their two dogs. Two pictures of the family. In both pictures at least one of them is obscured by a plant or a dog or something getting in the way. There were some pictures, not taken by me of a day-trip to some reconstructed mediaeval buildings and stuff, but they're not representative of the holiday as a whole.
material
This is all a true account of what happened, just in case anyone thinks this is fiction. However, writing is selective - there has to be a certain amount of my own imagination. Not imaginary things that didn't happen, but an imaginitive way of describing them. I used my imagination. You use yours.
Marcin's car was a Ford Fiesta. 'Made in England' he told me. For the type, size and quality of the car, I imagined it may have once come with a sticker annoucing its country of origin rather like a toy car might carry a label 'Made in Hong Kong'. We went for a drive early in the evening. He enjoyed pratting about, and he wasn't going to make an exception to this when sat behind the wheel. Pulling away from his house, he attempted a wheelspin that failed. The car jolted forwards. The kids playing nearby seemed to give an 'Even we're more grown up than that' look.
Bartek and I stopped to buy a couple of bottles of beer each. We got back into the car. Bartek opened our bottles with his lighter. I remembered all the times I had attempted to open bottles with street furniture and failed. If it wasn't made to be a bottle-opener, I tend not to be able to open bottles with it. 'Marcin uses his teeth!' he cheekily told me as he passed my bottle over his shoulder.
We were back near 'their shop' - the derelict concrete building amongst the trees overlooking the old factories. They were both still having fun with trying to speak English. Marcin kept saying phrases he'd seen on computer games. His favourite was a humourously mispronounced 'Game Over'. I offered 'Hig-h Stsores.' We polished off our beers and got back into the car. I was grateful that Marcin had the sense not to drink and drive because sense was not his strong point.
We hit some uneven farm tracks, Marcin deliberately aiming for the potholes and wheel-ruts. I couldn't help finding it funny - maybe it was really the sense of danger. And stupidity. Being in a car with such a madman is not the kind of thing I normally do. More and more I understood why the others took the mick out of Marcin. He loved it and it only encouraged him. He had a glint in his eye. He wound his window right down.
Still driving, he started climbing out of the window. There was laughter, accompanied by lots of the bad language I recognised, and a certain upping in the level of fear! He sat on the window ledge, his head and body right outside the car, still driving along the track, still aiming for every lump and bump in the road. I was almost crying with laughter. 'He's trying to kill us all.'
I almost said a prayer when he climbed back into his seat with a little help from Bartek holding the steering wheel.
We didn't go to any bars that evening like I thought we would. We picked up Karol and sat overlooking a stream with the lights of houses in the distance and had just one more bottle of beer. 'Chcę krzaki.' I said so that Marcin might let me out of the car.
'Chceś krzaki?' he giggled. 'Potrzebuję!' I demanded to more laughter.
I got the sense they were all good mates, but all very different to eachother. Bartek liked to think of himself as quite tough. Marcin liked everyone to think of him as a clown. Karol seemed more serious and artistic. He told me he liked films. With help from Bartek's better English, he started talking about Roman Polanski, and I about Krzystof Kieslowski, whom he admired. 'Wolę... Kurwa! I prefer Polanski!'
I asked if any of them had ever smoked dope. 'I used to, but don't any more.' I told them, carefully avoiding the words 'when I was your age!' They liked to give the impression that only the lowest of the low in Poland did such things.
'No. We drink. Hash is for losers.'
Then Karol admitted to having smoked some when he was on some summer camp. I think Bartek didn't want a friend of his father's to think he was too much more disreputable than his father! I wasn't looking for dirt on anyone - I like to find out who people are, what they do. Find out what experiences make them similar and what experiences make them differnt to me. I could picture the same thing happening somewhere back in England, only I wouldn't have been there.
The conversation rapidly descended into impressions of characters from South Park. Night was setting in and we drove back home. It was to be my last night in £omża.
Part 13 - The Shortest Chapter: Unlucky For Some
We were driving back from the reconstructed mediaeval village. I think it was at a place (seemingly ironically) called Nowogród. It was hot and it was good to have the window open. Sebastian was driving, Ewelina was sat in the front, and I was in the back next to Dana, Ewelina's mother. It had made a nice change spending most of the day being polite and well-behaved.
We were not far from the main road back to £omża, just passing some farm buildings. I have said before and I will say again, that there is something idiosyncratic, dare I say it, quaint, about Polish buildings. In any country, buildings in the countryside tend to be built according to local ways and as they were designed for particular needs, they do tend to be unique. This seems particularly true in Poland.
I sat looking out of the window at the world going by. Sebastian wasn't driving too fast this time.
Suddenly, through the windscreen, we saw an old man on a bicycle pedalling slowly on the other side of the road, and he was holding a rope, on the other end of which was a cow, slowly dawdling her way along in the shade of the hedge by the roadside. If I could have reached my camera and if Sebastian's 'not so fast' driving had been a little more like scenic-route Sunday driving!
All faces in the car looked round at the spectacle. There were amused gasps and giggles. I remembered some of the comments from Bartek and his mates about 'village people', so the amused gasping may have been more from me and the giggling from the others. I peered through the back window at the man, the bicycle and the cow disappearing behind a turn in the road.
Polish farm buildings. Perhaps there are even cow-sheds complete with bicycle racks! I wasn't too annoyed about not managing to take a picture - I knew this image would be something I would remember for ever.
That wasn't actually all that short, was it? Hmmm! It still might be the shortest so far.
Wera / Werka / Werunia is a lovely dog. Slighlty mad, but well behaved. I spent a lot of time running round the garden trying, and usually failing, to get that stick off her. When I did finally win the stick, it was a bit unpleasant so I'd always have to give it back to her. Well, throw it to the bushes on the other side of the garden.
edit: On the last visit, there was a suggestion that she might be a mother-to-be. Father: unknown!
edit edit: Father: another dog.
edit edit edit: I have a strange feeling the name is spelt Werónia. Help please!
It has been a while. It had been a while since I posted. It has been a while since this:
December 1999
"Do you want to go to Warsaw at New Year?" "It's not one of those Christian things, is it?" "Yeah, but come along anyway. You'll enjoy it." "Well, I suppose there's not much else on. Alright then."
It was a long, unfomfortable coach journey, So I shall spare the boring details. France became Belgium. Belgium became the Netherlands, the Netherlands became Germany, and gradually I started to notice patches of snow through the window. Sometimes even in England I don't know my Kettering from my Kidderminster, my Huntingdon from my Humberside, but I still like to see the signs on the motorway go by. Trapped on a coach where I could only see darkness through my window, obscured by the reflection of the dim light inside. I didn't know where we were.
Is this Germany? Eastern Germany? It was about four o'clock. The lights from the coach made the smoke on our cigarettes glow whiter than the dark blue of the snow our achy feet were kicking in as the driver told us to get back in.
The Polish border involved a long wait. I couldn't sleep, so I just stared at the nothingness out of the window. The coach kept on moving. Cold dawn started to slowly bring light to the forest. It was still dark, but the whiteness of the mist in the air and the snow on the ground and hanging on the branches of the endless pine forest seemed to all merge into one. A dark glowing whiteness.
It was still not light when the engine of the coach ground to a halt. There was a large roadside restaurant. Everybody began to stir. I don't remember the building very well. I vaguely remember a lot of wood and brick giving the appearance of warmth, and the tiled floor and the rigid expression of the waitress were cold. She looked like a Russian in an old propaganda film, but not one where everyone has a jovial smile to show off how wonderful their lives are, but one where the seriousness of belief and the cold efficiency of work is everything. It might have just been a combination of too much make up, too early in the morning.
One of the coach drivers came round to our table to tell us what one or two things on the menu were. When I ordered, I just pointed at a jumble of odd consonants. A while later I was tucking in to two fat sausages and some slightly watery scrambled egg.
Hours passed. Countryside passed.
The air lightened still as we rumbled on through the countryside. I watched the pine forest roll by, like tray after tray of seedlings, blown up to huge size, with scrawny birch trees twisting their way through like weeds. As I realised the day was as light as it was going to get, the forest seemed to have faded into the dawn and we rolled past fields and farmhouses, snow-covered hedges and small villages. We rolled past little Fiats that hugged the side of the road, whilst occasional BMWs shot past us when the oncoming traffic gave even the slightest opportunity.
Hours passed. Countryside passed.
We arrived in Warsaw. The pavement was made of ice. We stood around like penguins. So this is the palace of culture? An imposing name and an imposing building. We stood amongst all the other penguins. I glimpsed a blonde girl with a swastika key-fob. I felt uneasy. A big girl with a loud, posh-end-of-Yorkshire accent had started clinging to my brother, telloing him he shouldn't smoke. I spoke to a bloke near me. It was almost the first time I had heard my voice since breakfast all those hours ago. I don't think I made very much sense. Punctuating my long train of thought with some occasional words spoken aloud in broken bursts of non-sequiturous observations.
Soon we were directed to board a bus with an address in our hands. The packed bus threw us around the corners. We clung to old peeling paint of the metal bars that seemed to have been placed randomly throughout the bus in an attempt to hold the thing together. We finally made it to a house. Steps led up to a front door on a long terrace. Inside was a warm yellowy glow, and a middle aged couple, she with a smile on a face that looked like it had been through a lot, he with a long beard like that of a Russian old-believer. Dogs barked and three of all different sizes came rushing up to greet the four of us.
you do not need to drink a vodka or any alcohol drink
On my first visit to Poland, as mentioned in my latest post on here, I drank a total of a glass and a half of wine with a dinner, and two bottles of Okocim whilst waiting for the coach and whilst on the coach on the way home.
