5: ...and sleet was blowing in all directions!

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So, finally I got a glimpse of what it's all about. Following my nose...the smell of multiple outdoor food outlets all busy grilling meat is quite unmistakeble....I found the main "market" area. It's like a giant craft market, with hand ( and machine) knitted goods in "local" wool, leather goods, sheepskinwares, embroidered goods, traditional felt slippers, local style shoes, and lots and lots of tat. Cheek by jowl with these stalls are all sorts of bars, cafe's, restaurants and entertainments and offers of carriage rides driven by men in traditional Tatra costume.

Once through all of this I found the base station for one of the area's funicular railways. It rises up to a ridge about 1100 metres above sea level, and only costs £4.00 return!

At the top there's a road along the ridge that rivals Blackpool's seafront! Souveniers including "have your photo taken with a "bear" or a mountain dog (the local version of a Saint Bernard)", try your skill at any number of adventurous pursuits....

....eat as much grilled meat as you can manage, buy whatever you like so long as it has "Zakopane" written on it, or (if your tastes don't run to the entertainment on offer) sit on a terrace and sip, beer or coffee, or tea (they drink more tea here than coffee) and look out over the valley and the panorama of the Tatra mountains in the distance.

As it was much clearer than it had been the previous day, I also took advantage of the opportunity to walk off the main road and into the forest a little, whre I found (and ,of course, ate) wild raspberries! Talking of eating, I saw wild mushrooms for sale again, and some very strange looking loaves and cakes (many of them grilled in little stalls, which I soon gathered was a type of local ewes milk cheese. It's grilled/smoked to preserve it and tasted very good (and it's cheap). Apparantly it's a favoured snack locally and you'll see people buying it by the bag full, or wandering around eating it hot with cranberry sauce (cranberries are also local, growing in the peaty soil on the slopes around the pine forests)

I thought I knew better than the guide book when it said "buy your tickets at the tourist office because there are often long queues" so I didn't bother.....big mistake. One and a half hours (apparantly that's a short wait, on really busy days the wait can be up to two and a half hours) queueing for the cable car to take me to the top of one of the nearby peaks. Kasparowy Wierch is at 1900 plus metres above sea level (about one fifth the height of Everest).

It takes two rides in a large capacity cable car to get there, but when you get there it's worth it. The views are breathtaking.

But it was cold (0 degrees, as opposed to 12 degrees at the base), and after just a very short while the clouds started to close in ....

.....and before I knew what was happening it was white out and sleet was blowing in all directions and I retreated back to the cable car station, and back down to the relative warmth (and heavy rain) at the base station, cursing all the while because if I had just paid attention to the guide book I'd have had a good hour of clear skies and good light.

In spite of the weather, however, and because it's a lot warmer further down, I decided to take advantage of the sign I noticed to one side of the cable car station..."Tatra National Park...entrance".

4. Mountain air...mountain dew (well, rain actually)

I've decided that I'll write about Krakow when I return for a week at the end of my journey, more time and more impressions. It will be interesting to see whether my first impressions are confirmed or contradicted.

Leaving Krakow I teamed up for a taxi with an English bloke who spoke even less Polish than me. A case of the blind leading the blind as I helped him buy a ticket to Kiev. But it worked both ways, he helped me with my suitcase...fair exchange.

It's a really interesting experience standing at a railway station waiting for a train when you can't understand any of the station announcements (not because of crackly sound this time, just language) and then realise that locals appear to be as frustrated and confused about the time tables as you are. At least I wasn't suffering alone, there was quite an international contingent on the platform......Dutch, Brazilian, Portuguese, and British, and we were all confused. Eventually the train arrived, and having checked it was the right one, I settled down. One stop later, an announcement and everyone gets off again! Much sign language and a helpful train official and I discover that the half of the train I'm in stops here, only the other half is going to Zakopane. So in the pouring rain I haul myself and my luggage up the platform, rboard the train and find a seat.

Once we're out of Krakow we pass through birch woodland, plots pf green, houses set apart in well worked gardens. I want to see more but it's all pretty much shrouded in rain. At one point, when the man sitting opposite me gets off, I change places so that I can travel forwards and see where I'm going...and the train reverses out of the station, so I'm still travelling backwards. I become aware that we're steadily climbing and that the countryside (that I can see through the rain) is gradually changing. Pines and birch trees mix, vast meadows with streams running through them; steep roofed houses, pathways through woodland leading to level crossings; a sudden long view of a plain a nd valley. Cows, tall thin stacks of hay on strange spiked wooden skeletons, electricity pylons (I've seen no evidence of wind or solar power here, unlike Germany) Beehives in an orchard.

Hostel Bristol (yes, I know!) is a vast mausolueum of a place. It puts me in mimd of a miniature version of the hotel in "The Shining" then I realise there are people here, not just ghosts. It must have been quite a posh holiday place in the communist era. It's all brown marble and slightly distressed paintwork. The dining room is huge with marble pillars and chandeliers. My own room is small, functional but comfortable...although the two loos and showers seem to be shared by all the people on this landing. No one here speaks English, although by now I have established a technique that involved me attempting to say a phrase, writing it dow, or pointing it out in my phrase book and a simple mixture of words, written information and mime for response...it seems to work. I discover that breakfast here is extra so book it for " tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...."

When I wake up the rain has stopped and the air outside is fresh and clean, and I can hear the stream next to the hostel flowinf full of it's extra load. I take a walk into town and get my first hint of what lies beyond.

....episode 2. Arrival, at last!

I drifted off to sleep again, to be woken by a difference in the sounds I was hearing....the radio was playing a Polish radio station, and as I looked out I realised road signs were now in Polish! I'd entered the country without really realising. 

Then, naturally enough for this journey, I heard the driver groan, and then I saw them, the border Police were flagging us down for what was obviously a spot check (two other Eurolines buses whizzed past us). Two officers boarded the bus, took away our passports, and we waited....then they were handed over to the driver to return them, and we were off again. 

The radio played on, interesting to realise that in Germany the majority of music played was German, Polish radio seems to have a thing about English and american stuff, only around one track in ten was in Polish! Another difference, I'd been told I would know when I arrived in Poland because the roads were so bad....my informant was totally correct...we were bounced around like on the rural Irish roads. It's quite wierd looking at an articulated truck passing the window and looking for all the world as if it's mounted on a mobile bouncy castle! And then the Border Police flagged us down AGAIN......like I said, I don't really understand Polish but I think the tone of voice in "Piss off, your colleagues down the road have already done us, stop some other buggers" is fairly international, and it worked, so they let us go on.

Our first stop in Poland is at a run down Motel / Cafe / Bar. Sitting outside is an old bloke with a big moustache and a big bucket of mushrooms/ fungi he's selling. He wouldn't let me take a photo of him or his crop, but I managed to get one of two that were sitting seperatly in a box. It soon becomes clear, as we drive along, that mushrooming is a major activity, people are gathered near the entrances to woodland all along ther road tarding in mushrooms of all shapes and sizes (hope I get to eat some!)

I realise another difference as we drive along. In Germany (even in the more run down former soviet zone) there are wind farms everywhere, and solar panels on a large number of roofs. here in Poland there appear to be neither. And I've seen no recycling bins either. And now I'm pissed off because in spite of having made sure I had food to last me the journey I realise I'm going to have to bin most of what I had for today, the temperature on the first bus was so high, everything's gone off overnight.

Katowice is the first town we come to, a run down post industrial wasteland with little to reccomend it visually on passing through. Grey concrete, dust, and plastic. Mind you, the outskirts of Krakow don't reccomend themselves either. They are one vast mess of building projects, roads, buildings, tramways....and so much dust it's like driving in the Sahara!

The hostel is in an old 19th century tenement building in the old Jewish quarter of the city, which on first viewing is a strange mix of grandeur and decline. It still feels like it's not fully emerged from the communist era and reminds me of the GDR before the wall came down. Supper tonight is Pierogi (little steamed dumplings filled with cabbage and mushrooms) and Barscz (clear beetroot soup) but it's all so highly salted I find it hard to finish. However, the portions are large, and this cost me less than £4.00!

So, on Friday I wake up thinking it's Saturday, I'm all confused after all the travelling. It's pissing it down, and the forecast isn't optimistic. I set off on the tram to find the Orbis travel offices to sort out my train reservations. The first address I have is definitely NOT an Orbis office, and when I reach the second address I find it's closed down. This stalwart of Eastern European travel apparantly closed it's doors to the public this last January, so all the guide books are now wrong! I find my way across town to the station, and can't find anyone who will admit to speaking English. I finally establish I don't need a reservation on the train for Zakopane tomorrow and decide to deal with other reservations later!

Lunch in the Market Squasre, the cerntre of Krakow's old town, and full of "traditional" craft stalls, some of which are really interesting, and some are crap! Still it's interesting to see that in this tourist trap prices are still very low. And then I take a closer look at restaurants, and realise that all their prices, even the most expensive I see are under 40 zloty...that's less than £10 for the most expensive meals! My lunch is less than half that though, and veggie...but again so highly salted I'm in danger of becoming nauseous. This is going to be a problem if I don't learn "no salt" very fast!

Chaos,confusion and musing......episode 1

One hour before I am due to get on the bus for this 30 hour journey I discover something! Somehow or other, by one of those bizzarre mental glitches we all suffer from every so often, I have managed to book my ticket to Warsaw.......but I'm expecting to arrive in Krakow and have booked all my accomodation there! (and I hadn't even noticed when I printed it out!) So there I am, 40 minutes standing in a queue at Victoria coach station before a very nice lady changes it all for me so that I'm now going where I thought I was. Unfortunately this change then confuses the bus driver, whose list of passengers says I'm travelling to Warsaw...so we have to go through all the explanations....and this is when the next inkling of a problem sort of waves a little flag at me! He doesn't speak a word of English, neither does the driver's mate, nor do (apparantly) any of the other passengers!

Finally we get underway in a really full coach, as far as Dover where they somehow manage to squeeze another six passengers on board (and their luggage) I'm sure the coach is going to burst! 

Sitting there in the coach I discover that the "White Cliffs of Dover" are actually about one third a dirty grey colour where rough concrete patches have been plastered on to stop the cliffs from crumbling. Then through passport control, surprisingly cursory after the passport checks I've become used to going over to Ireland, and we're off....to the queue for the ferry, which isn't in yet, so we sit there, and it's pissing it down outside, and inside the airconditionning is off and everyone seems to be eating garlic sausage sandwiches, so the atmosphere is getting a little rich!

Calais, and it's a very eerie sight, it's golden beaches shorouded in a thin white mist. By this point I've realised that all on board announcements are in Polish, and I'm left looking around hoping that someone will take pity on me and explain the jist in a few words of English. And I start thinking about the linguistic task I've set myself. Wherever I've been before I've been able to at least get by in one of the common languages spoken in a country, or been with people who can do that. In Poland it will be different, although at least I've got a minor grounding in the language so will be able to manage the equivalent of baby talk. But it gets me thinking about those people who have to uproot themselves either by choice or under compulsion, and end up permenantly in a country where both language and culture are alien to them. Much respect to them, just a month is a daunting thought, a whole lifetime is terrifying!

A DVD comes on, the first of three I'm to see on this journey....it may be an English language film, but it's voiced over in Polish. Actually, during the journey I come to realise quite how bizzarre these voice overs are. I'ts always the same male voice (well, it was for the three I saw) and he does ALL the voices in a curiously unemotional monotone.

There's STILL no air conditioning, the air temperature is high, people seem to have moved onto vampire strength garlic sausage now, and the toddler in front of me is having his nappy changed, and the atmosphere seems to have thickened perceptibly. Then the toddler starts a tantrum, the bloke next to me turns up his MP3, and I realise that my earplugs are safely packed in my suitcase, which is safely in the luggage compartment.

By 5.30 I wake up from a surprisingly sound sleep to pre-dawn light and REAL deep forests on either side of the road, the sort that make me think of fairy tales, and wolves. Then a red double decker train pulls up alongside and passes me and I remember how 20 years ago my son was fascinated by them when we visited berlin the year before the wall came down. A strange encounter at Berlin Bus Station with a wierd self cleaning loo seat! When I get up the back of the loo suddenly sticks out an extra bit and the seat starts to revolve!

The ticket change causes even more chaos during the coach changeover, but finally I'm seated and listening to German commercial breakfast radio, and the weather forecast is not kind, rain and grey skies all over Europe.

Sixteen hours down, just another nine hours to go!

And so it begins............

Right now I'm starting the process of sorting stuff out.    Do I have enough socks? What about warm clothes? Do last years trousers still fit? Will it all fit into my suitcase? Can I fit my tripod in aswell? And so it goes....

Yep....I'm off on my travels again. Not just the usual trip over to Ireland, or to somewhere in a field in the middle of the UK like I've been doing all year. This time it's a biggie.

My Father, who died in 1962, was born, grew up, studied and married for the first time in Poland. His whole family was there. Except for two cousins, and a couple of more distant relatives by marriage, he was the only survivor after the Holocaust. Until his death when I was 6, he would tell me a story every night about himself as a child, and his adventures with his cousins. Whether the stories were true or not it was always a very special time for the two of us, our time.

Later, a few years after his death, I attended Polish School on Saturdays and became quite fluent. That all finished when I was around 11 years old. Since then I've never used the language. Yet somehow, in the back of my mind somewhere, there has been the knowledge that part of me is Polish.

So, this is it, nearly 50 years after the death of my Father, I'm going to poland for the very first time. I'm going as an outsider, with the very minimal Polish I can still manage, but I'm going to places I can remember my Father talking about, and to places that are relevant to my Father's family history.

I'll be writing about it in this blog...once or twice a week (maybe even more when I get really excited!) Please read it and travel with me.