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(Travel Story in 3 Tales)

Poland. A land of bitter diversities, nice hospitality, good food and polite people.

I would never thought…, or to be more precise: I assumed a totally different picture. I thought it will be a country of man with mustaches, cheap shops, bad roads and strange food. I was wrong. I just might be right with few assumptions, if we were talking about Poland before 10 or 20 years. But nowadays, Poland is something really pleasant.

We were invited to a wedding in Ołsztyn, Poland. – One of our dearest friends got married (a Polish girl and a Hungarian guy), and this was their second (read: third) wedding, as they had one here in Hungary. – We were curious about Poland, and we like to travel, so we decided, we’ll go. But not only to the wedding, we wanted to see a bit more.

As we wanted to stay mobile, we decided that we’ll go by car. We checked the route by google maps:

and when I saw that it is more than 1000 km, I said “no way”. – Once we had a 1200km trip without a stop, and I know that’s an overkill.  – But to go by plane were a bad idea too, as the nearest airport is about 250 km from Ołsztyn, and we loose mobility as well. So the solution was: go by car and have an extra stop. We decided that the extra stop should be Krakow, as it was recommended by few of our friends and as it is about at the middle.

Our trip started, – as usually – early in the morning. We were warned to be papered for the worst, as there are road reconstructions in the whole country because of the 2012 football cup. Actually the most of the road was just fine. Acceptable quality with light traffic. But just before Krakow we ran into a lot of roadblocks, so we only managed to get to Krakow at dusk.

Krakow

Unfortunately we stood only half day in Krakow, but we were lucky to have an apartment in the center, so we took a night walk. The first surprise was, that the whole center was really nice, without a single ruin or badly maintained building. Or it just hide from our eyes. The streets were full of people, you just could smell the good mood in the air…

As we had only a limited amount of time, we were just wondering around the center. We had no idea about the history, or the present meaning (or functionality) of the buildings or events.

At the main square fire-acrobats had an impressive demonstration. Few steps forward a young band played melancholic melodies. A part of the square was occupied with florists. Spot-lights on the buildings and neon lights lightened the buildings and the streets. Charming. (Disclaimer: “No drugs were taken during the trip, nor at the time of writing of this article.” ;-) )

At the middle of the walk we had a dinner. Charmed yes, but not convinced yet, I’ve ordered a pizza as I needed something solid as the next day I was about to drive  500km more. The pizza was a first class pizza, but we were surprised with the price. It looked like Krakow is more expensive than Budapest. Anyhow I’ve get enthusiastic about the food, what get us into trouble later on.

Next day, we made another short walk, and about 10h  we started towards Ołsztyn, planning a 6-7h length drive.

Not that was a funny trip. I own a GPS navigation system, about a year and a half old at that time. I tried to update the maps before start, but there was no update. I assumed, that there are no new main roads, so I followed the instructions of the navigation system. And it was like in a movies. We were wondering through “deserted” villages on narrow, bad roads. Okay, it was nice, we enjoyed it, but that made our 500km trip an about 10 hours long.

At about 2pm we got really hungry (as Hungarians should be), so we ware hunting for a restaurant. Navigation System was of no help at all. We could find only POIs for gas stations. So after one hour of hunting, we got nervous and we decided that anything would do. As the meal from yesterday was really great, we thought that it could not be that bad anything we get here.

We found a truck-stop with an hand drawn advertisement: “hot meal” – or at least my mind translated that. That would do, I thought. We stopped, and went in.

A truck-stop

Man should try one during his lifetime.

Nobody was speaking English. My Serbo-Croatian knowledge helped me some, but not too much. We ordered something, for what we thought, that would be eatable. We got the meal in relatively short time. And even it looked acceptable, but unfortunately, the taste was, well strange. Really strange. We eat just a bit, but the hunger was just “not enough strong”…

Meanwhile, waitress’s fat kids were playing among the truck drivers, drinking exorbitant quantity of Coke, and eating sweets like pigs: “An American dream”. We were feeling like aliens, and I think that was what all of them – waitress, kids, truck drivers – were thinking of us. Probably they’ve never seen a foreigner, or at least not a not-truck-driver one. Thank you Navigation System!

We started to feel uncomfortable, so we payed and hit the road that fast, that I think they were feeling like flash-out mind peoples from Man in Black: “You’ve never seen an alien…”

Of course we hurl our selfs onto the nibbles we had, – not a hot meal, but hell, at least it does not have a strange taste.

Afterwards we figured out, that the meal was probably beside the toxic against moth… huh.

And after 10h of driving we arrived at evening to a small village beside Ołsztyn.

A short “note” on Navigation Systems: I’m getting really angry. I feel like wasting a big sack of money for nothing. Spending about 300-400 EUR on a Navigation System that have no support for upgrade at all is just unfair. Oups, sorry, it have a support for upgrade, but there is no upgrade “at this time”… blah. I had one minor upgrade possibility since I bought the device, but that one was really a minor one, as no new roads or one-way street changes were recorded, or at least not in the part of Budapest I used to drive… You are talking about fairness?! – I guess I do not even need to say, that there were guests that made almost a full road (Budapest-Ołsztyn) in about 11h.

The wedding

I do not want to get into each gory details of the wedding, although I’ll reveal few general facts about Polish weddings, and I just must write down few memorable moments.

Usually Polish weddings last two days. They say: first day is for the guests, and the second day is for the young couple, or the first day the groom must behave, and the second day is for getting drunk.

The basic alcoholic drink is vodka. But, unlike in Hungarian, no nagging, no forcing. If you fill like not drinking at all, or having enough, no one would try to “convince” you.

On this wedding I was just a guest. Intentionally I left my camera in our hotel room. I just focused on the people around me and to feel good. And I felt good. At one point too good: Getting from outside to inside, at about 3am, I almost walked though the closed door. Well, I must tell you, they just know how to clean glasses… :-)

At the dawn the weather was chill. The arrival of September could be felt. The  groom had a wish. He wanted to have a swim in the nearby lake. Each peace of my body was against any swimming in these conditions. – At the wedding in Hungary, we did it, but this was just too much.

The groom insisted, so I agreed to companion him, but I had no intention to swim, and I doubt that he will . We went to the lake, and to my greatest perplex, he did took a swim. And not only took a swim, but he did it, on the private coast of some fisherman’s. – We felt like bad teenagers… strange, but sweet feelings.

The next day – second day of wedding – the party started at about 11am. And the party last until about 6pm. But believe it or not this day more vodka “evaporated” than the day before. Afterwards I’ve been told that that is general.

To be continued…

Photos could be found here.