day fourteen: lessons

Hello!

Well, the holiday didn't end quite as I imagined. I was supposed to be back in L'viv tonight, but instead I'm staying here in Przemysl, 'cause all the buses have gone and Ukrainian trains refuse to take bicycles. You can buy your ticket and gamble on the possibility that the conductor might accept a bribe, but if he won't, you've just blown your fare. So I'm spending one more night in Poland.

(At this point, I'm furiously resisting the urge to rant about how this no-bicycles-on-trains thing just underscores the degree to which Ukraine is not mentally/culturally ready to join Europe. If I were to give in to these urges, I'd probably go on to specify – family reunions aside – how much I'm not looking forward to rejoining a culture which is so thoroughly geared towards making sure that anything a person may wish to do is against the rules and/or practically impossible. I may also mention how, as a result, contact with said culture makes many of those unfortunate enough to have it feel miserable, frustrated, and ready to kick things and swear at people.

But you see, I'm just far too controlled and restrained to mention any of that ;-)

In the end, though, I guess it's not a big problem. It gives me some time to reflect on the journey. I've learned a lot in the last two weeks, and in a few cases, it's been the kind of learning that may actually have concrete, life-enhancing results. Which can hardly be a bad thing, I reck'n.

Before I elaborate on that, however, there are threads to be tied up.

First of all, I mentioned in the previous entry that Scott and I were heading to Wrocław (which, in case I'm not the only one who's always wondered, is pronounced "Vrotswav"). It was actually my second visit, the first having been a week earlier, while I was on my way to the German border. And yet, so far I've failed to give it even a passing review.

Of course this trip hasn't primarily been about taking pics of cities I haven't visited before and commenting on them. Even so, Wrocław is such an impressive place that I feel I should say something.

I still know virtually nothing about how these Polish cities came into being and at whose behest. Whatever the history may be, though, it's clear that early Polish urban planners really knew how to lay out a central square. Even the German woman I met in Krakow last week commented on the grandness and spaciousness of the Polish rynek. (I say "even" because her country can definitely hold its own in this regard – I mean, aside from anything else, it contains the fabulous Erfurt, whose town square is the largest in Europe.)

A common planning strategy for Polish cities and towns is to put the town hall dead centre, with the rynek / main square around it. In Wrocław's case, the hall is so huge that it has three streets running through the middle of it! And the vast area around that is packed with exquisite architectural detail.

Of course the rynek is wall-to-wall cafes and restaurants, and not the place to go if you want to eat lunch at bargain basement prices (though Germany is at least three or four times as expensive, if not more so). But it's also strangely lacking in swarms of tourists – unlike Krakow's Old Town at the height of summer – and those who are there mostly seem to be Polish. So that's kind of a bonus.

Can't say that I really got any insights into the 'soul' of Wrocław at all ... I basically just walked around the touristy bits going "wow". But still, the "wow"s were frequent and heartfelt :-)

Getting back to our 'mission', though: by the time Scott and I got to Wrocław's rynek on the night in question, it was after 1am. This had already compromised his plan – which, you may remember, was to find a Polish woman who was prepared to participate in a 'screen kiss' with him. The ideal version of the plan had him kissing the Polish lass at midnight on his last full day in the country ... but y'know, sometimes one's dreams are unavoidably subject to the vagaries of rail timetables. So 1am or later would have to do.

I must admit that this little sortee did raise a couple of questions in my mind. Specifically, I wondered where exactly one draws the line between the innocent schemes of a couple of silly travellers and the parasitic behaviour of sleazy old men chasing younger women through Eastern Europe. But y'know, it was only a kiss that Scott was after, so I decided that it was innocent enough :-)

And so we set about finding the girl.

It didn't take long, either. She was ideal – friendly and chatty, attractive, no doubt rather photogenic. The only problem is that she had followed us down the street because she'd confused us with two other English-speakers who'd threatened to beat up one of her friends a few minutes earlier. Why had they done this? Well, apparently their explanation was quite simple: they had decided to attack him upon noticing that he was black.

Delightful.

This bizarre little occurrence got the conversation off on an awkward note, and the first part of it mainly consisted of us dissociating ourselves from the wish to hurt people whose melanin production was superior to our own. From there, as charming as our interlocutor was, it was rather difficult to move the conversation in the direction we needed.

(The road from "I thought you two were the racist fuckheads who came by earlier" to "Would you mind just kissing my friend while I film you?" is a long and difficult road indeed.)

The next woman we met also seemed like the 'right' one. We had her almost undivided attention (even though she was working), and again, she was open, chatty and attractive. The only problem was, she was also our waitress at the pub where we had settled in for the night.

It isn't that she was too busy to spend time with us – in fact we chatted for a couple of hours. It was just that ... well, between 'real drinks' (beer for Scott, red wine for me), we were having wisniowka shots. Wisniowka is a delicious cherry-flavoured vodka which I indulge in at least once on every visit to Poland, and since this was our last night, I bought numerous rounds of it.

The inherent difficulty here is that wisniowka is in fact evil. It's one of those drinks with the power to lull you into thinking you're completely fine, concealing under its veneer of fruity sweetness a 40%-proof kick. It's like sangria squared, then squared again.

So yes ... a long chat and five or six wisniowkas later, the moment had well and truly come for Scott to explain the mission to this woman and lean in for the kiss ... except that by this time, the whole idea had completely slipped our minds!

So that's how the mission ended: killed by several shots to the stomach. Damn that Polish firewater!

The following morning we stumbled out of bed, rode rather sluggishly to the rynek for strong coffee and dumplings, then parted in the square. I rushed for my train to Krakow, while Scott stayed behind and sought out the best, most eye-catching place to park his bike (which he was planning to sell before flying back to England).

And now, here I am a day later, back in the town where I started.

So what, if anything, have I learned from all this? Well, quite a few things, actually.

Firstly, I've learned that my suspicions about Poland were right, and that it is a really, really great country. I'm looking forward to deepening my acquaintance with it in the future.

I've also picked up a few ideas about cycling holidays, and about how the next one can be better. There's a bunch of stuff in my head now about what to do, what to take, how to plan and so on.

More importantly, I know that there will be a next one. 'Cause this has been, without a doubt, one of the most enjoyable holidays of my life.

I think I mentioned once before on The Manor that, in 2000, I spent three months travelling with Natalie (my ex-partner and one of my favourite humans) through Germany and Western Scandinavia. We started and ended that trip in Koblenz – an elegant and quite romantic German city, brilliantly located at the confluence of the Rhein and Mosel rivers.

Our initial arrival in Koblenz was in the first week of September, and from there we struck out in pretty much all directions, staying in a couple of dozen different places from big capitals like Berlin and Stockholm to obscure villages, arctic settlements and log cabins in the Norwegian fjords. In every way, it was just an incredible holiday.

By the time we got back to Koblenz in the dying days of November, it was difficult to remember what either of us actually did with our lives before the trip had started. And that, I have to tell you, is one of the best feelings I've ever had. The sensation that you've been on the road forever, that the earliest days of your journey are distant memories, and that everything beforehand seems a lifetime removed from where you are now, is just amazing. I think everyone should experience it at least once in their lifetimes if possible.

I'm telling you this because I got some of the same feeling from this holiday, even though it was only two weeks long. As the train took me back through south-eastern Poland towards Przemysl, it passed through a lot of towns that I'd cycled through ten days or a fortnight earlier. And it seemed like an age had passed since then. Finally, back at my starting point, it was as if I was seeing Przemysl for the first time in months or years, and I'd been on the road  for that whole intervening period. For me, this = major, major result.

So the next cycling holiday will

a) undoubtedly happen, and
b) be planned and executed better than this one.
 
On a less positive note, this trip was kind of the 'culmination' of a habit I've developed over the last few years of taking work and study with me on holiday. Up till now it had been unconscious or only semi-deliberate – I'd just pack some uni notes or whatever, so that if I had downtime, I could make use of it. Or I'd go on holidays near exam time, and therefore find it necessary to book an exam in one of the countries which I was passing through. (My university, unlikely though it may seem, allows you to do that.)

This time, as you might remember, I knowingly set out to combine the exploration of a physical place with the exploration of an academic subject – my 'On the road with Muhammad' idea.

I now understand that this was a mistake. Once you start allowing the non-travelling part of your life to impinge on the travelling part, it gets worse every time, until you wind up looking for places where you can conduct lessons and submit essays instead of doing what you should do, i.e. letting go and committing yourself to the journey.

So next time I'll do whatever's academically or professionally necessary first, then close all books, cancel all lessons and disappear, immersing completely in the travel experience (which, after all, is one of my main reasons for being). No other approach makes sense.

I think that's all I wanted to say. Hope you enjoyed this series of rants. Thanks to those who commented ... I always savour reading what people have to say about my little wanderings and ramblings.


I'm leaving you with my pic of a lake in far southwestern Poland, somewhere between Jelenia Gora and Karpacz. It's taken through a bus window at dusk, hence dark, blurry and a little indistinct. But it's still one of my favourite images from the trip, and it seems to me a nicely atmospheric 'parting wave' from the country I'm about to leave. Hope you like it.

Bye :-)