day one: on the road with muhammad

Right then ... finally we can get back to the original purpose of this damn blog, which was to tell you where I am at any given moment and what the Hell I'm doing there.

Before I get to that, though, I want to quickly share three facts which may help throw some context onto my present situation.

Fact #1: As most of you know, I'm in my final year of a linguistics degree. To graduate, though, I need to complete a whole bunch of 'core units' plus some unrelated subjects of my choice. The core units are basically done, so now I'm primarily studying 'historical inquiry' (which is history, more or less, but with more emphasis on the worldviews of historians than on the events they describe) and religion. And within the religious field, I've chosen Islam as my focus.

Fact #2: a very simple fact, which I've come to realise gradually over many successive visits: Poland is an extremely cool place.

Fact #3: My fitness has declined terribly in the last two years, and I really want to try and claw it back to the level it was at before. So when vacation time came up this year, I started thinking of ways I could have a 'physical holiday'. I wanted to do it in Ukraine if I could, but for various reasons that just wasn't feasible.

So, where does that put me? Well it puts me on the outdoor terrace of a building complex that used to be the stables and granary of a giant castle, in a tiny Polish village called Krasiczyn*.

Not entirely making sense yet, is it?

No, Anthony, it isn't.

Er ... ok. Well, I'm here at the end of Day One, and I arrived by bicycle. How many more days there will be after this one is yet to be determined. See, I've set myself two tasks this week (and probably part of next week), which are these: cross the southern half of Poland by bicycle and regional train, and write an essay about the 'Clash of Civilisations Hypothesis' along the way.

Ultimate success in this mission will mean two things: first, I reach Zgorzelec on the German border, almost waving distance from Dresden. And second, I plumb the depths of Islamic theology and politics, and come up with a decent response to Samuel Huntington's thesis (Huntington being the guy who made the phrase "clash of civilisations" famous in a 1993 academic paper, stirring up quite a controversy in the process).

The two goals are quite different, in several respects. For a start, I must finish the essay, but I don't necessarily need to traverse the entire breadth of Poland. It would be nice, of course, but it isn't life-and-death. There's certainly not enough time to do all of it on the bike, which is what I'd ideally like to do. So I'm gonna cycle as much as I can and do the rest by rail. The regional trains are extremely cheap and also extremely slow (a journey of 40-50kms can last well over an hour), so you can still take in a bit of the landscape as you go along.

Having said that, I still might not get there, 'cause obviously the family is being quite understanding by allowing me to go off alone on this ridiculous mission, and I don't want to drag it out forever. However, I would at least like to make it to Wroclaw, 'cause I've heard such nice things about it. And so, as usual, we'll see what happens :-)

Anyway ... the journey kicked off today in Przemysl**. Although in fact, it really started at the bike hire shop in L'viv, where the guy was so keen to tell me all the details of all the local cycling tours I can do with his spanking new company, that I had to make a mad dash across the city afterwards to catch my bus.

In the process of negotiating the chronically decayed Ukrainian footpaths, I badly ripped one leg of my jeans on the bike chain. That's gonna cost me about two hours of sewing that would otherwise have been devoted to Huntington's Big Civilisation Idea Thingy.

My torn leg tucked into my sock, I arrived at the bus station just as the bus was pulling out onto the road, and stood pleading with the driver to wait for me while I bought a ticket. I guess the guy took pity on this weird, out-of-breath foreigner with a gaping tear in one leg of his trousers, 'cause he agreed to wait, and after grabbing a ticket inside the bus station I ran out to the road and jumped on.

The driver later extorted me somewhat by charging an extra 50 hryvnias for taking my bicycle in the luggage hold of his bus, whereas I happen to know that the 'official' fee is only ten. But y'know, I didn't really mind. The guy had basically held up traffic for me at L'viv bus station, and if he hadn't done that, I would've had eight hours to wait for the next bus.

A few hours and an argument with Polish customs later (the bastards took all my $1.50/packet Ukrainian cigarettes!), we arrived in Przemysl. It's a town I've been through many times, 'cause it's the border crossing by rail between Poland and Ukraine, but I've only actually been into it twice – both times in the last month.

Przemysl leaves a rather striking impression ... on me at least. It is, in a sense, the 'end of Europe'. Going just a few kilometres east from there by road, you come to the Shegyni border checkpoint, which vividly marks the transition from the EU to the former USSR. It does this mainly by making you sit on a bus/train/bench for a few hours while officials comb through bags, unscrew the ceilings of vehicles to search for contraband, and take your documents away for extended periods to run them through nobody-knows-what kind of computer systems, eventually returning them with a smile (on the Polish side) or a world-weary sigh (on the Ukrainian side).

Going in the Poland-Ukraine direction, the next place you encounter after the checkpoint is the tumbledown village of Butsiv. This place could hardly contrast more sharply with its Polish neighbour. While Przemysl's charm derives from its dramatic setting on a hillside that leads down to a river, its expansive 'rynek' (market square) with cosy cafes, open-air bars and grand churches ranged around at different elevations, and its relaxed, thoroughly European atmosphere, Butsiv's appeal lies in its being the kind of place where an unidentified shape on the roadside can turn out to be a foraging chicken with its head shoved firmly into the long grass. Przemysl's streets are laid with elegantly-arranged cobbles, lined by Volkswagen Golfs, and frequented by cyclists. Butsiv's aren't laid with anything much at all, they're lined with bits of metal randomly sticking out of the ground and open sewer canals, and the Golfs have been replaced by Ladas – along with the occasional hulking wreck of a  Soviet-era truck.

Both exercise a certain kind of attraction (partly depending on your taste in decrepit and/or abandoned motor vehicles), but transiting from one to the other is a bit like following a nice rendition of the Moonlight Sonata with an AC/DC medley (Bon Scott era, of course – we'll have none of that other dreadful Scottish git with his stupid hat!), or having a main course of delicate Japanese cuisine with a slab of chocolate mud cake for dessert. Or, I don't know, some kind of indulgent massagey thing followed by a punch in the throat. The good metaphors seem to be floating just out of reach today.

(See what I did there? Hehe.)

Anyway ... so I got to Przemysl late in the afternoon, went to one of the aforementioned cosy cafes for a cappuccino and a quick re-read of Huntington, then jumped on my bike and rode about 10kms along winding country roads, some of them flanked by deeply-shaded forests. It was a stunning ride (though a very short one compared to those I'll be doing in the coming days), and at the end of it I arrived here in Krasiczyn.

I'll try not to bore you with too much detail about this place, but it is pretty damn cool and quite a find (I'd never heard of it until a few days ago). The highlight so far has been dinner at the castle. I wandered in there at about eight, as the sun was starting to dip below the horizon, and there was no-one around the ramparts at all. I don't think I'd be boasting too much if I said that, for someone born a long way from Europe, I've seen quite a decent number of castles in my time ... but I don't think I've ever had an entire one to myself before. Think I might buy one ;-)

Inside the castle walls, I enjoyed a sumptuous meal of shopska (goat's cheese salad) and zhurek (a traditional Polish fermented rye soup with sausage, egg and spices, served in a bowl made of crispy bread  –  truly one of the finest  things you can put in your mouth in Eastern Europe), and washed it down with a glass of Chilean dry red, which you can only get in Ukraine if you're prepared to live without one of your kidneys. All this amid the elegant arches of a proper castle dining hall. And the total bill? A bit less than eight Euros. Amazing.

Then I exited the castle to find myself in near-total darkness. The path leading away from the castle was very dimly lit, and ancient trees with sturdy, angled trunks towered all around me as the full moon poked eerily through their silhouetted leaves. It was spooky ... but in a really, really satisfying way.

Finally I arrived back at my hostel, which was constructed out of the ruins of the former castle granary, and is nowadays guarded by two black cats – one of whom is currently trying to unplug my computer at the wall socket – and a super-friendly, floppy-eared dog shaped like an oversized marzipan log.

Short version: Krasiczyn had obliged me with a perfect evening :-)

See, I really do love this country, for all the unexpected and fabulous stuff it throws at you. I mean, that's so not how I was expecting to end my day when I woke up this morning! Poland retains the ability to surprise, always holding a little more up its sleeve ... and I retain the ability to go "Oh, how you rock!" every time it reveals another snippet of coolness.  

So yeah ... blah freakin' blah. Now you've got the context, plus a bit of ramble about the country which I currently have a crush on. Tomorrow the 'quest' gets serious: I have to cover sth like 40kms to reach a place called Jaroslaw, and start putting pen to paper on this essay.

I like to think of it as my 'road trip with Muhammad'. Let's see how far we can travel together ...



* Polish "cz" is roughly equivalent to the "ch" in English "cheese", so this place is pronounced like "Krasichen".

** Absolutely no idea how it's pronounced! Every time I say my version of "Przemysl" to Polish people, they have no idea what I'm talking about. Polish is quite the challenge ... but a stunner of a language, nonetheless :-)