I was hardly expecting anyone to be there, and yet the healthy bustle of the Krakow’s streets told of no mad exodus from Poland that I had imagined. As the plane had descended that morning, I gazed at the stripped fields and bright red rooftops and had imagined a post apocalyptic cityscape, with nothing but perhaps a few Triffids, mutants, or those yokes from 28 Days Later roaming around. Yet the city was one built for a heavy throng of people, kiosks stuffed with the contents of a tescos lined the streets, buses and trams had people crammed tetris-style into the limited space.
As we passed through customs and the Arrival gates, my travelling companion Aga turned to me and began a extensive conversation in Polish. Ah sh*te! (thought I to myself) - that’s it then is it? No more English for the next five days? Am I to be linguistically imprisoned through some bizarre Polish language-usage custom that I knew nothing about? Was I going to spend the remainder of my holiday being asked if I want to see the dessert menu in a loud voice? Thankfully, though, she clocked my look of sheer horror, giggled, apologised, and continued on in English.
When I was in Rome, I had giggled that the bus that took us from the plane to the terminal took the same amount of time as it took to say “how far?” In Krakow it was exactly the same. Not only that, but the bus that waited outside to take us to the train station, took the same amount of time as it took to clear your throat before saying anything at all.
My body was telling me it was the night before, and through my crusty-eyed early morning fumble through the town I yearned for a bed. Upon reaching our apartment, I realised that finding a bed was only half the battle. Somewhere in the complex, builders were shouting at other builders because they were working too loudly and drowning out their own let’s-see-who-can-smash-rocks-the-loudest competition. This surprised me because I thought all the Polish builders were in Ireland finishing off the M50. After a few restless hours we got up and had a late lunch; I religiously took down the name of all the delicious stuff I ate for this blog, but I lost wherever I wrote it, which is probably a good thing since I can’t be khacked trying to write all those quare letters that the Poles like to write. Polish writing is like latin script that has weeds growing from it.
Walking down the main street towards the square, I saw outside one cafe a big group of English stags, and felt that primal urge momentarily well up in me (See “The Haystag”), I felt for a second that looking at all these lovely Poles my own would stiffen, but that feeling switched to a type of pious awe when I saw the giant Cathedral in the main square, silhouetted birds swooping bat-like around it’s turrets, with the ominous dramatic thump of Bach being pounded out by a troupe of accordionists. With a lump in my throat I remembered that I was dangerously close to Vampire country, but then my nerves were calmed by the players switching to a lovely segment of Vivaldi’s Winter, as the sun gently set on Krakow.
When Aga suggested that we go visit a Salt Mine, I had a fleeting vision of being enslaved in some communist gulag, being forced to scratch pure salt bare-handed from a cave wall with the hope that I might get some ceremonial commendation from my comrades for having worked so hard that I no longer possessed fingertips – however satisfying that would’ve been I’m glad that the Wieliczka salt mine was no longer in use. There, one of the oldest mines in Europe, first dug out in the 14th century (using nothing but fingertips, of course), where obviously ultra-bored miners carved out exquisite works of art from the cave walls. Jaysus, the Poles are even industrious about their skiving off. I had all sorts of Hieronymous Bosch visions when was down these, helped in no small part by the eerie orange lighting, never-ending staircase, and the punitive whipping from the large bare-breasted demoness. That last bit did seem an odd part of the tour.
When I was young, we would go out to my Grand-Aunt’s home in Clash, which is flat, almost featureless stretch of the Kerry countryside, with all the fun of a day out in a parked car with a packet of crisps. In many ways, at first glance at least, Aga’s home village Czerkiesy was a lot like Clash. When I first saw a photo of the place, my first words were “um.... where IS everything?” It had all sorts of hidden treasures though; We drank around a pond-side fire-pit looking at the stars and fireflies, within throwing distance of a large unspoilt wood. We picked strawberries and wild strawberries, both planted and wild, and walked through forest and cornfields wrapped around the horizon. We went cycling through forest paths and waded through fresh clean rivers. It was all like a Steinbeckian dream, if it wasn’t for the fact that I managed to mangle my bike on the unkempt steinbeckian mud-road, and scuff my knee on the glass-like Steinbeckian grit. That aside, one cool thing I got to do was drive around a bona-fide communist tractor. It had the robustness of a Soviet tank and all the colour of a mis-matched any-thing-will-do scrap metal. I was delighted, Aga was terrified. Mind you, she was following behind in the suspension-less mis-matched Soviet trailer. After the tractor and bicycle incidents, I was not permitted to upgrade my mode of transport from bi-pedal. I’ve more or less mastered that whole one foot in front of the other thing. You should see me, I’m deadly.
Aga in a field
Flash the Frog
Communist Tractor!
Communist cycling!
By the way that's a sausage above
Communist Strawberry picking!
