Away to Poland Again

An adventure tomorrow: Benedict Ambrose and I are going to Kraków for a long weekend. I hope the trip doesn't exhaust him, and I can't remember what was going on when I optimistically bought our airline tickets.

I do remember asking myself what I wanted to do for my birthday, and at that moment what I wanted to do was go to Poland, and hear Polish all around me, and see Polish friends if possible. I picked Kraków because it was the one Polish city I knew that Benedict Ambrose actually enjoys. It turns out that he also enjoys Wrocław, which would have been my first choice (in winter), so that it what I get for not consulting him properly.

In case you are Polish and wondering what my first choice would be in summer, it would be Sopot. There is more to see in neighbouring Gdańsk, but occasionally I like to sit on a beach, and Sopot also has forests and impossibly rustic restaurants and poetry festivals.

The surprising element in Benedict Ambrose's relationship with Poland is that he went there when he was a seventeen-year-old Anglican, not long after the Berlin Wall collapsed. He was there for four weeks, the beneficiary of a student (or choirboy) exchange program, and was shepherded all around by a pair of Polish university professors. Poland was much poorer, dirtier and stranger then. The relatively (to British) volcanic Polish character oppressed B.A., and he was disappointed when his host parents vehemently discouraged him from attempting to learn Polish.

B.A. was only seventeen, and I don't think he had ever met any Poles before, so he hadn't learned the correct way to respond to Poles who tell you with brutal honesty that they don't think you can learn Polish, that it is too hard, and that it is too impractical, and it is, in fact, stupid to want to learn it.

The correct way to respond to this is to give birth in your heart to a little tiny interior Pole who says, "***** Mac, I will learn Polish anyway." Then, when you are faithful to this intention,  Poles will cheer and help you along and think you are marvellous for complicated ethno-psychological reasons best not commented upon.

I should point out here that neither I nor any of my Polish friends have ever uttered the very bad word indicated by the asterisks. Except Artur Sebastian Rosman, naturally, and he emigrated to the USA. To Detroit. In the 1980s. No wonder he swears.

But tomorrow B.A. and I will go to Kraków, and hopefully I will get us from the airport to Kraków Główny railway station without embarrassing us, and even more hopefully B.A. will not suddenly fall ill, and I do not end up carrying both him and our luggage to the nearest bench, as happened one sad night in Florence. (I am still not sure how I did it, but I did.)

That reminds me that I must look up where the hospital nearest our hotel is.

Our plans involve Wawel Cathedral, which B.A. remembers you can visit for free, but I want to see the Crypt this time, for which one must pay; the Ethnographical Museum; and, if there is time, and it is still open, the Jan Matejko house. On Friday evening we are meeting Polish Pretend Son and the Future Polish Pretend Daughter-in-Law and having dinner with them in a romantic cellar full of roasted meats. Then we shall go to the Kazimierz  district and drink and drink and drink and perhaps I will dance on the bar, as my youngest sister allegedly did on her school trip to Greece, and afterwards I will sing "Płynie, Wisła płynie" to the Wisła River.

The next day will (we hope) involve more eating and drinking and a castle. On Sunday (we hope) there will be Mass and a mad dash to the railway station, so as to catch our plane on time.

I am qualifying all this with hope because my Polish travel plans have a sad habit of becoming so altered as to be unrecognisable. The last time I was in Poland I landed in the hospital with a galloping eye infection. (On the bright side, my Polish professor and I collaborated on a lesson plan devoted to vocabulary actually necessary to coping with such an emergency.)

In case you are wondering, I know how to say "My husband has had five brain operations" and "My husband has a tube in his brain." My poor Polish tutor, who is perhaps 23, listened to me talk about this for weeks.