FLIGHT
We even had good luck on the airplane--on the way there B.A. had an empty seat beside him up in Row 5 and I had an empty seat on either side of me down in Row 31. On the way back, when we were allocated seats together, there was no-one in the window seat, and I could slide over. Thus, we were as comfortable as you can be on the cheapest airlines.
Well, on the way there, B.A. had to listen to the loud cackling of British women who'd had too much to drink. I, happily, was entertained by the rather limited, and therefore comprehensible, conversations of young Polish families, saying such things (in Polish) as "Look! Look! What is it?", presumably while holding picture books, and (near arrival), "There isn't much snow, but there are Christmas trees" and "We're landing!"
BLIGHT
I exulted in the cold, dry air that greeted us on the train platform, for it reminded me of proper Canadian winters. And we were both pleased by the baroque luxury of our hotel, which we nevertheless left at once to find something to eat. This is easier said than done on Thursday night at 11 PM unless you're willing to go to McDonalds or a kebab shop, and B.A. wasn't. We ended up in a "Carrefour" grocery store on Ul. Grodzka (Grodzka St.) and bought supplies for a hotel room picnic.
There and back we crossed the Old Market Square, advertised as the biggest piazza in Europe, and to our consternation heard a gang of Englishmen howling "When the Saints Come Marching In" and a gang of Scotsmen baying "Flower of Scotland." Kraków is still a favourite destination of stag parties, for which the British are, unfortunately, notorious. For a long moment, I bitterly regretted not having gone to Wrocław instead.
SIGHT
However, joy came on Friday morning when we set off into the cold towards Wawel Hill, via Planty, so as to avoid touristy Ulica Floriańska (Florian Street), but also because the tree-dotted park surrounding the Old Town is so pretty, even in a snowless late January. There were rather sobering posters posted here and there saying, in Polish, that a certain Piotr had disappeared during a night out in Kazimierz, and if anyone had seen him, please call, inform Facebook, etc. Real life was front and centre in Planty.
Benedict Ambrose was much more interested in Wawel Cathedral than in Wawel Castle and pointed out that there is no admission fee to the Cathedral proper. However, I decided to splash out and purchase tickets to visit the massive Sigismund Bell, the Royal Crypts and various Cathedral chapels closed to the non-paying public, plus electronic guides in English (for B.A.) and Polish (for me).
My Polish electronic guide, I later decided, was my Friday penance, for it definitely showed up my inadequacies, not only in Polish, but in the operation of electronic devices. (Climbing the steep steps to the Sigismund Bell was another penance, for I have developed a fear of heights in the past twelve years.) We spent three hours in Wawel Cathedral, with prayers in the curtained-off Chapel of the Most Holy Sacrament, which was my favourite part. But I was very impressed by the sarcophagi of Polish writers, like Adam Mickiewicz, and generals, like Władysław Sikorski. Sikorski's sarcophagus is right beside that of Jan Sobieski III, which rather blew my mind. Everyone who has any interest in Polish history really ought to buy the tickets for Wawel Cathedral and not just toddle in for free.
After a quick and cheap lunch on Ul. Grodzka, we walked across the bridge over the Wisła River to Kazimierz and found the Ethnographic Museum. We had never been before, and I thought it was stupendous. On the ground floor are reconstructions of Polish peasant huts, a 1930s village schoolroom, mills, an oil press, etc. On the next floor are examples of every tool and craft known to local countryfolk up until mass production arrived--cheese moulds, tridents, bear traps, fox traps, bird traps, horse brasses, looms. The exhibit gave the impression the local farmers were still using all that stuff, made by themselves by hand on long winter evenings, until 1967, but this surely cannot be true. At any rate, the latest-looking exhibit was a photo from a village wedding in 1967. Most of these objects were labelled only in Polish, so I greatly enjoyed translating them for B.A.
There were many fascinating photographs of pre- and inter-war village life, and a room lined with folk costumes from all the regions around, plus examples of embroidered jackets that filled me with admiration for the needlewomen who made them. There were also such interesting objects for entertainment and revels as masks and animal heads for New Year's Eve shenanigans, which were obviously pagan and definitely creepy, painted eggs for Easter and "szopki"--elaborate manger scenes--for Christmas.
As traditionalists know, the Christmas season does not definitively end until February 2, and Kraków still had her Christmas decorations--include szopki in many a restaurant window--up. Meanwhile, the Ethnographical Museum had a third floor, but Benedict Ambrose was exhausted, so instead of finding it, we went back to the hotel so he could nap before the BIG EVENT of the day: my birthday dinner.
NIGHT
For, lo, at around 6 PM a little party of beautiful young people, comprised of Polish Pretend Son, Polish Future Pretend Daughter-in-Law and their friend The Giant, appeared in the lobby of our hotel. They bore an enormous globe of red tulips, tied with red and green ribbons, a box of chocolates handmade by PFPDiL, and a hardcover copy of Father Jozef Tischer's Short Handbook for Life, which was highly flattering to my Polish-reading skills. There was some delay as the hotel found me a vase big enough for the bouquet, and then we went out to dinner in a traditional cellar restaurant.
The Giant could not bring himself to eat meat on a Friday, which I thought showed a lot of integrity. The rest of us ate masses of pig, preceded by grilled oscypek cheese served with cranberry sauce. I was delighted to have real Poles to consult about such important cultural question raised by the Ethnographical Museum as to what chocioły (see photo) are or were.
Afterwards we went to a local beer aficionado bar, and then we walked through the bitter cold to Kazimierz, me displaying my vast improvement in conversational Polish to PPS. Our goal was the famously hipster cocktail bar Alchemia, which was full of young people and the more adventurous of foreign tourists. One can smoke in Alchemia, and B.A. complained that it was like being transported back to the 1970s, but PPS and the Giant happily smoked cigars and I happily downed hot chocolate (real, thick drinking chocolate) with bourbon. Then, B.A. feeling weary, we all walked back to the Old Town and said good night to B.A. in the lobby of our hotel.
Then there was a magical hour, I think, in which the four of us wandered up and down the cold mediaeval streets visiting vodka bar after vodka bar. There was a truly festive atmosphere as many other people, mostly young Poles and Ukrainians, were out doing the same thing. With B.A. away, my young companions switched to Polish, switching back to English only when it was clear I couldn't understand. A mysterious and romantic mist hovered over the scene despite the cold. The feeling of otherworldliness I experienced must have been compounded by the vodka, but I didn't feel drunk until that last walk back to my hotel. I suspect the refreshing cold air between shots is the explanation for my wrongful belief I was sober.
TIGHT
Long, long ago, I took it as a life lesson that I must never match Poles shot-for-shot when they are drinking vodka. Unfortunately, I forgot this lesson on Friday night. It was all so merry and companionable that it never once occurred to me that there are consequences to knocking back several shots of vodka within a single hour.
"I am so drunk," Benedict Ambrose (a light sleeper) says I told him. And I definitely was. I fell asleep clutching B.A.'s hand and woke up a few hours later to be violently sick in the loo.
The next morning I was horribly, horribly, horribly ill, and had to cancel a morning coffee meeting with another young Polish friend, the Astrophysicist. Feeling utterly desperate, I asked him over the phone how to cure hangovers, and he sympathetically advised grapefruit juice, tomato juice or, if I was feeling adventurous, the juice from a jar of sauerkraut. Water, he assured me, was useless.
I was already beginning to suspect this, so I put on my coat to go out with B.A. to get some grapefruit juice, but then felt so ill again that I merely collapsed into bed. B.A. bravely went out for the grapefruit juice by himself. Fortunately "grapefruit juice" in Poland is called "nektar grejpfrut", so B.A. found it without any trouble. I got some into my stomach and then slept, facedown, in my coat for an hour, and then woke up and was miraculously able to head out with B.A. to our noon lunch appointment.
To be continued...
No comments:
Post a Comment