Escape from Poland

Just a quick one boys and girls on my last several days in Poland. I’m writing from Paris now and will update you on my continuing adventures here soon enough.

Moved on from Krakow to Wrocław. This was pretty exciting because it is a long way and I hitched, all by myself (Tony took off in the other direction from Olsztyn and we met up again here in Paris). It was easy, one ride all the way; seemed like a big deal before I did it but nothing really. This is Wrocław’s main square: And its inhabitants:

Who are not all the good Catholics you might expect:
I spent a couple of days there, organised an informal Couchsurfing gathering (!), and really enjoyed the place. Its centre is not unlike Krakow’s but with far fewer tourists and there are some nice sights to see. Then hitched back to Warsaw once more for a cosmopolitan day and a half of jazz and chicha – that city certainly has many sides to be discovered – then a flight to Paris. Like many things in life, travel has rules, and I think that flying is breaking the first. Walking is the best way of getting from A to B, through the spectrum of hitching, trains, etc; to flying, surely the worst. But the ticket was lowcost and I got to spend an extra couple of days in Poland and I bought it before I discovered the joys of hitch-hiking. Never mind, at least I got to go through duty-free.

Here’s one last photo from Poland, once again of political graffiti. I love it. ‘царь Влади́мир’ is Russian for ‘Tsar Vladimir’.

Further ramblings…

Next stop from Olzstyn was Warsaw. Due to my last visit and Tony’s enthusiasm, expectations were high. This is not normally how I roll. I know almost nothing about everywhere, but like almost everything, so am constantly being pleasantly surprised. This is the best way to travel. This time could never live up to last time, but was good nonetheless.

Almost every Pole seems to hate Warsaw, even some of those that live there, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s crowded and busy and ugly and has no real centre. But I love it. Maybe not to live, but at least to visit. The history is so real here. There is modern day graffiti celebrating the Warsaw Uprising. I knew a little about this previously, but there is a difference between knowing about, and seeing the places and reading the human stories. Despite the terrible past, modern Warsaw, like much of “new” Europe, does seem to be quite positive.Everyone should be sad to learn that the stadium market has just been closed. They are rebuilding the stadium to host Euro 2012. I caught one of the last days, when the stadium was already under destruction but the stalls outside remained. It was awesome, a huge, crazy mass of immigrants (yes, to Poland!) selling everything to each other, and barely an ethnic Pole in sight. I bought some socks and felt a bit like I was back in Asia, wandering between the stalls and bargaining and holding my wallet tightly. It was so, so much more real than the ubiquitous malls and hypermarkets which are spreading here too. I hope it will spawn again someplace nearby.

Next stop was Cracow, back in the south. You can’t escape how touristy this place is, but you can’t escape its beauty either. As I often do, I loved it. The old town is genuinely old, one of the few in Poland not destroyed during the war. The Jewish quarter is cool. There is of course a castle. And I forgot to take photos, apart from of this random apartment building. Don’t ask why; I don’t know. Enjoy.And I day-tripped out to the nearby salt mine, which is way more interesting than it sounds. It’s been active for about 700 years or so; there are literally hundreds of kilometres of tunnels. And heaps of carvings in the salt. And chapels!More or less everything in that photo is salt. The floor. The carvings at the front. The chandeliers. The bible stories on the side. Ok, so you can’t see any of that in my crappy photo, but take my word for it, it is most impressive.

That night I watched a certain game of rugby in a pub full of singing Frenchmen (a few of whom had suspiciously Ocker accents, but most of whom were genuine). Like everywhere in the world, there was a smattering of kiwis and at one stage Poi E was louder than something about les bleus. As we all know it was short-lived and we crumbled in now-usual fashion. I am glad I’m not in New Zealand at the moment, I am sure we will be having a collective whinge for the next few months (48?) But the next day I went to visit Auschwitz and don’t really care about the rugby after that. Ok, so it’s a cliche, but it really did put things in perspective. Nothing else can really be sad anymore. It’s not a fun place to visit, but an important one. Everyone should go there.

Finally, big ups to The Transistors who sold out and got played on National Radio. What is this blog anyway? A travelogue? Philosophical ramblings? Family boasting? Who knows, but you are getting what you pay for. Until next time, Cześć.

A new favourite: Estonia

I’ve been fickle before, and I’ll be fickle again, but right now my second favourite country in the world is Estonia. (First of course is our humble Aotearoa). Look, it has perfect lakes made by meteorites:And you can pretend to be local and go mushrooming:
(and then throw it all out because you don’t know what’s safe)

And check out fantastic autumnal scenery:
Or have the best graffiti I ever saw:
And take wonderful tourist photos like this:

And if you are stuck hitch-hiking at sunset, what better place to be than here: Isn’t it beautiful? In fact, it’s in Latvia. We never even got stuck in Estonia. This is partly thanks to our – well, only Tony had the balls to actually do it – new method of hitching: walking up to people eg. on ferries, in petrol stations, and asking ‘where are you going?’ then ‘can we come too?’ Worked almost every time.

Estonia was awesome. The Estonians were awesome. They all told us that Estonians are famous as cold, unfriendly, unsmiling people. If it’s true, we didn’t meet any typical Estonians! Everyone was great. We went on a road trip one day with our couchsurfing host’s flatmates to visit some forests and a Seto (an ethnic group from south east Estonia that I hadn’t heard of either) museum and drive to the Russian border to throw stones at it. We spent a couple of days hiking round Saaremaa Island. We partied in student-town Tartu for three days and as we tried to leave the pub at 3am made friends with some local celebrity who evidently had more money than us (not at all hard these days) and an apparent penchant for buying volumes of tequila for New Zealanders.

Then we started the long journey south again. We got to the Latvian border without any dramas, but things got more difficult from there. In the end we’d only reached Riga by dusk, so cheated and took an overnight bus all the way to the first stop in Poland. We’d decided to stop at a city called Olzstyn more or less because it wasn’t in our guidebooks and it proved a good choice. Getting there was ridiculously easy. We even got out of one ride and before he’d even driven away the next car had stopped! We spent a day checking out the city sights:Then the next cycling round the lakes of the beautiful nearby countryside. It was a long, tiring ride, which made us hungry enough to stomach (!) this soup for dinner:If anyone knows the word for the beef equivalent of ‘tripe’, let me know. Doesn’t taste bad if you’re not thinking about it.

VIPs, pig ears, and hitch-hiking. Just another week…

From last time I headed north to Warsaw to meet Tony and continue our adventures together. Warsaw seemed like an amazing city and I’m looking forward to getting back there in the very near future. Through some friends of his we got to a fancy party with: a great band who covered Joy Division in Polish while the beautiful people clapped politely; the mayors of Warsaw and Budapest; best of all, a buffet of food and wine which we took full advantage of. Then we caught the bus to Kaunas, Lithuania, and started to try our thumbs at hitch-hiking.

Unfortunately it wasn’t always that sunny. Fortunately it wasn’t all tractors. It has been a lot of fun as we criss-crossed Lithuania and then travelled up to Latvia (from where I’m writing). And combined with couchsurfing has meant we’ve met 100% local people, and saved a few coins. Highly recommended. It’s a pretty funny way to travel… very quick transitions from lows (every minute of 2 1/2 hours in the rain and hail) to highs (a ride in a truck with hot coffee and a bed).

Lituania was a beautiful country to visit. Check out this castle: And they eat pig ears and watch basketball. Yum? Well, when in Vilnius…
And we found our way here, to the hill of crosses, which is exactly what the name suggests but no less impressive for its unoriginality.

Polish paradises

“W go`rach jest wszystko co kocham” – “Everything I love is in the mountains”. That is one of the few full sentences I can say in Polish. Touché.

Until recently I’d been making a mockery of this blog’s title but have been a little more adventurous this week, tramping round the south of Poland with some (Polish) friends I met in Italy.

We spent most of the time in an area called Beskid Niski (prob spelt wrong). It was a great time, walking round the hills all day, eating some hearty Polish kai, playing guitar (not me obviously) and singing Polish mountain songs all night. The huts are managed and run by students from Warsaw and are pretty similar to our huts in NZ, the main difference being that these are not in real wilderness locations like at home, and the hut being a destination rather than a base. But as soon as I stepped inside I felt very much at home.
I also felt very priveliged to be there. I read through about six years of hut book and found two entries in English, one a Canadian and the other Irish. There is a very good chance I’m the first NZer ever there… so I filled a page with badly drawn kiwis and korus. We also went and camped at a random (Polish) mountian folk music festival where I got a little of the celebrity-foriegner vodka treatment and heard some beautiful melancholy songs round the campfire all night. It was really a brilliant five days or so, some of the best I’ve spent for a long time. I’ve loved visiting all these cities but walking in the forest will always be my favourite. Ah, the serenity:

So, from Beskid Neski a couple of us headed on to the Tatras: They are real mountains and we nearly destroyed our sleep-deprived selves (my fitness in Crete was a long time ago) walking up to the hut on the first evening but it was very beautiful watching the sun set over the peaks and the hills vanish below us. So you can imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to this:

I’ve been getting a bit homesick lately so a reminder of changeable wintery weather was probably good treatment! It meant I had to sit round and read Henry James and look out the window all day instead of walk further but there are many worse ways to spend a day. I hoped the weather would clear today but now the snow was up to my knees so I walked out this morning. Finally got to use those thermals and wollen hat that I’ve been carrying uselessly for so long. The work clothes will have to remain useless for a bit longer however… I’m off to meet this stranger and head Baltic-wards. Stay tuned.