Maxine and I decided
to go away for a week and settled on Poland a country neither of us have been
to and agreed to split the visit between Kraków and Warsaw. I booked the
flights, Maxine booked the accommodation and car, and keeping with the James
tradition, I cocked up the flights by booking the return to and from Kraków,
instead of to Kraków and return from Warsaw.
I got to hers on time
but cocked up her MacDonald’s order and missed the part about her love of
sausage, so she ended up with an egg McMuffin, and I ended up on the receiving
end of what was probably a week of patient, but exasperated expressions.
First stop on the
Poland trip - Ikea, Milton Keynes, ostensibly for a coffee “I know,” said
Maxine as we set of for Luton airport, “let's go to Ikea for a coffee, after
all, it's on the way!”
As we walked in, she
then volunteered, “While we're here, I just need a couple of cupboard handles.
Oh, and a bacon butty as well!”
Ikea do many things
well, but sorry to say, bacon baps are not one of them. It was borderline
pathetic, the bap was too big for the two fat laden pieces of bacon, or the
bacon was too small for the bap. The lady behind the counter laid the bacon on
the plate, and then placed the bap next to it, in other words, a self-assembly
buttie.
What a load of crappy
bollocks. By the time you get through paying, getting a coffee, getting pepper
and mayo*, the bacon is cold and congealed.
A bacon bap should be
assembled for you by the server so that when you reach your table, it's still
warm and comforting. That was the first time Ikea have disappointed me.
Anyway, we got to
check-in, and discovered I'd left Maxine's passport in the car. Queue another
patient expression and off she walked back to collect it. I forgot about it the
rule of liquids for hand baggage, I'm a fat 50 something sweaty white man, it
would have been nice to see some racial profiling as I had to take my walking
boots off.
Due to the size of my
belly and general lack of flexibility, taking off and putting on clunky boots
requires planning and a bit of a warm-up stretch, neither of which I got to do.
This was also all
done in front of what seemed a judgemental audience of staff and other
travellers.
A female friend of
mine once said she hated going in to the mess on her own as it seemed as if a
hundred pairs of eyes would look her up and down and think, “Yeah, I'd fuck
her.” or that old favourite as they stared at her chest, “Nice tits.”
Me, as I struggled to
put my boots back on, I could feel the eyes on me as my belly bulged over my
jeans and out from under my T-shirt, my face turned red and leaked sweat, and
their eyes all said “Fat bastard!” my jeans were also in danger of falling down
as I’d had to take my belt off, because, you know, security!
You can tell how much
an airline cares about you, by how they treat you. The staff were great and
I've no complaints about their professionalism. However, once we had gone
through the check-in at Gate 30, they stacked us all up in a 3-story sweaty
stairwell for about 15 minutes or so as we waited for the aircraft to be
cleaned from its last trip.
Because of my
arthritis and the fact that Maxine's used to a little more luxury, we paid for
extra legroom. When we got shoehorned into normal row I moaned about my
arthritis**, and how much I would suffer, and a very nice young man who
genuinely looked 14 years old moved us to some emergency exit aisle seats.
As of day one, the
holiday was in danger of being nicknamed the piss tour. I got to Maxine's, we
both a piss before we left. Got to Ikea, both had a piss, then got to the
airport, guess what! Maxine broke first. On the aeroplane, I beat Maxine again,
and lasted an hour and a half.
Our hire car was a
Nissan Juke with an interior that's got orange highlights all over the place,
it's as though group of mature male oranges threw a Lemon Party in there.
The first address we
entered into the car satnav wasn’t recognised, although Google maps on my phone
did recognise it and got us there safely. So, in other words the Polish Satnav
doesn't recognise addresses in Poland - although in truth, that could just be
operator error!
We decided to use Airbnb
rather than hotels, as it meant we could breakfast and dinner when we wanted
and not have to eat out every night. Our first address was an apartment, and I
think we were the second lot of people to use it.
We chose our
bedrooms, and then took a wander to do some quick sightseeing and shopping at
the modern shopping centre which was a ten to fifteen minute walk away. Hotels
are really going to have to step up their game. The flat in Kraków was brand
new and absolutely beautiful and was set within a block of flats called The
Pianissimo.
The local
supermarket, a Carrefour, which is a French supermarket, was a fifteen minute
walk away, and once wandering around it, discovered that we were in Poland -
there was an alcohol aisle that was just vodka. Every type of vodka.
There was another
main aisle and some counters scattered around it. The other isle was nothing
but whisky, every kind of whisky, even Bells whisky was nicely packaged with a
big Union Jack printed on it. This is probably because the jocks are too
embarrassed to stick the Saltire on. Anyway we bought a traditional Polish
breakfast for the next morning; salmon, cream cheese. But no bread, it would be
stale the next morning.
For the first night
we couldn't be arsed to cook so went out looking for traditional Polish food
and ended up in Pizza hut, Maxine had the exact same as she would have in the
UK, I went all adventurous and had the veggie choice.
My bed was very low
and the next morning it took me a minute or so to nearly rock myself out and
up, and I had to abandon my effort when I staggered upright in to a sort of
squat position, nearly headbutted the wall, and then fell back down again.
So, I wormed my way
down to the end of the bed like a dumpy anaconda, but with less lethal grace, and
grabbed a chair to lever myself up. All went well right up to when the chair
tipped back on me and dumped me back on the bed - bollocks! Effort two worked
well having taken into consideration the lessons learned from number one.
Not being a believer
in early starts when on holiday, Maxine was still in bed, so I went for a walk
to the supermarket for a couple of rolls but got there too early.
Polish supermarkets
don't follow the Tesco’s tradition of opening early and not having any fresh
rolls, so I went for a walk to find another supermarket, got slightly
disorientated and walked an extra mile, found a corner shop and bought a
baguette.
Got back, started
making brekkie and discovered that the baguette was actually garlic bread. So,
brekkie was cold garlic bread smeared with tomato and garlic cream cheese, and
topped with smoked salmon.
That first full day
we visited Kraków castle and took the long way and had a nice meander along the
river Vistula embankment to get to it, it would have been a lovely walk, but it
bloody well rained the whole time.
The castle was quite
impressive, but I preferred Alnwick castle. But that’s because it was part of the
Harry Potter series. It was also full of school kids, the politest and quietest
of which were the Japanese.
After the castle we
walked to the city market square, which is world famous, but again, less
impressive when it’s raining so much. After a good walk around the square and
the inside market, we decided to call it a day and ordered an uber.
Now, I’ve never used
an uber before, so thought it would be interesting to see how easy the whole
process was. We decamped to Burger king to get out of the rain and the first
thing I did was download the app.
After installing it, I
entered all my personal and bank details, and opened the app for the first
time. It immediately showed where we were (little blue dot), and where all the Uber
cars in the city were (little cars), and a large text box asking us where we
wanted to go.
After inputting the
details of the shopping centre, it then recommended a driver. Once we had
accepted the choice, it then sent through the details of the car and driver.
Fantastic, I can now see why uber are taking over the world!
First uber driver
wouldn't come to us despite there being a road running next to us, he wanted us
to walk almost a kilometre to him as he sat in a taxi rank. By the time we had
trekked through the rain and got to his location he had cancelled the booking
and buggered off.
The second Uber
driver turned up ten minutes later and genuinely did not say a single word to
us. We flashed the phone to him, nothing. We got in, nothing. We spent half an
hour getting bounced from side to side by a driver who only knew how to
accelerate, slam round corners, or slam to a halt. We got out, nothing, not a
word.
Other than the
journey, it was a great ride, no pointless small talk. Oh yes, he also had a TV
on his dashboard and was watching a Polish soap pretty much as he drove. Maxine
thought it was for our benefit and that the screen had a filter onto prevent
him, the driver from being distracted by it. So, I stuck my head up next to his
head, and no, she was wrong, I could see it perfectly.
He dropped us off at
the same shopping centre as the previous day. As we were knackered, we went
straight up to the food court and after perusing the different restaurants, we
settled on Restauracja Olimp, mainly because it was both buffet self-service
and pay-by-weight. Below is my plate:
Beef stew
Chicken & pepper
kebab
Sausage (large)
Roasties x 5
Carrot and beetroot
spiralized into spaghetti
Courgettes different
types (Inc. yellow ones)
Salad with olives and
feta
The only bad thing
was that the food was lukewarm rather than hot, perhaps it’s a Polish thing!
After dinner we went to Carrefour again for smellies and to pick up some
brekkie for the next day.
The checkout guy
managed to serve us without a change of facial expression (miserable at how
shit his life is), making eye contact, or speaking once. Even the guys and
girls at our Aldi, who are under far more pressure, can spare a smile and a
quick chat.
On the Wednesday we
visited Auschwitz and joined a guided tour, with the exception of our guides
the staff/security were some of the most miserable people we met, and we were
in Poland, so that's some bar to surmount.
As sobering and
informative as Auschwitz was, it was spoiled by the state of the paths. They
(the paths) were all mainly smashed bricks and stones, and enough mud and
puddles to do the Somme proud.
A large number of
visitors were wearing normal shoes or trainers and between the state of the
ground and the rain, their feet must have been soaking. The guide who took us
round mentioned the state of the paths was practically the only complaint
visitors had about the place, but that the management had other priorities.
On the way back to
the flat we stopped in at the local MacDonald’s for a coffee. Maxine's very
much in to doing all she can for the environment, so she now takes the fold-up
camping mug whenever she goes out for the day.
The poor guy manning
the MacDonald’s customer ordering booth struggled to understand that I wanted
two coffees; one in their cup, and the second in Maxine's mug. To be fair to
him his English was better than all of the other languages I speak***.
He told us to drive
around and explain it to him face to face, which we did and once he understood
he gave a big smile and took the mug and disappeared. At the next window the
young lady who then served us gave it back along with two cups of coffee in disposable/throwaway
cups and said, “Here, you pour it out. We're not allowed.” Ahh, crazy Polish
rules!
The flat had Netflix
and Maxine had discovered Brooklyn 99, so once we are settled in the evening
that was all we had.
Cracow and Warsaw
were awash in electric scooters and bikes. The bikes it seemed had to be picked
up and dropped off at specific pick-up points, but the scooters were GPS tagged
and were just abandoned anywhere. Next time I come to Poland, I’ll make use of
them as although it initially seems lazy to use them, you can pack in a lot
more sightseeing.
We booked a tour of
the Jewish quarter, the Jewish ghetto and the Schindler museum. The tour was
carried out in an eight-man electric vehicle, and the guide drove in a manner
that I would describe as quite forceful.
At one stage he
raced, and outran, a tram and cut just in front of it causing it to slow down. Pedestrians
on crossings were just an impediment to go around as closely as possible; none
of this stopping for them bollocks.
The separate guided
tour of the museum was pretty good, but the building suffered from too many
tourists and tour guides. At one stage our guide was asked to lower her voice
as she was interrupting the Russian speaking guide.
The tour around
Jewish ghetto and quarter were okay, but it would have been nice to be able to
get out and walk around, and although that option was offered by the guide, the
fact that a couple of people instinctively said no, the rest of us just
followed them like sheep.
Once that malarkey
was finished with, we tapped into Google ‘Vegan restaurants.’ The first choice
we walked to had as the specialty of the day that good old vegan standby, Lamb!
Clearly Google
struggled with the concept of ‘vegan’, and ‘no-kill-animals’ and after a minute
or two of zooming in and out on the phone screen we found one that had the
words ‘Vegan’ in it, and so walked there.
I'll be truthful
here, in my experience vegans tend to be sad, anorexic, pale, and interesting
people, and there was only one in the restaurant, and she had the ubiquitous
nose ring that all people who do enormous fibre-based poo’s have.
The restaurant was
very compact and had seating for approx. 10-12 people, this could be a
reflection on the number of vegans in Kraków, or perhaps it was just trying to be intimate and edgy –
you choose!
It also did not have
a toilet, again, perhaps they’d learned their lesson with the bog being blocked
by plant-based
materials. Whilst there I had
yet another Polish specialty - the Texan burger, Maxine went with the Middle
Eastern soup, and both were filling and surprisingly nice.
The drive to Warsaw
was some four hours long and went quite quickly, but that was because I dozed
for most of it. When it was my turn to drive and after we had set off, Maxine
asked me how we were doing for fuel, I checked, and we were on half a tank, so
no problem. When we arrived, she asked again how the fuel situation was. Again,
the tank was half full.
Then she suggested
that I might be reading the wrong gauge – and buggery bollocks! she was right, I’d
been looking at the temperature gauge, and we were nearly out of unleaded.
On the positive side,
the temperature stayed remarkably level for the whole trip, so kudos to Nissan for making a car that didn’t vary
in temperature too much.
And first impressions
of our new Airbnb were positive. The house
was on a dirt track set off the main road and was walled and gated. The whole
place was pretty awesome and in the basement was a swimming pool, a one-man hot
tub, and a 4-person sauna. The bedrooms were huge, and Maxine’s was ensuite, so
I got the main bathroom to myself.
The house was very
nice, however! It is on a septic tank, and according to the tasteful signs on
the wall above the toilet, all toilet paper and other non-faecal matter must go
into the small lidded container next to the loo. I used shit-bins when I was in
Kuwait back in 2002 so I had no problems with it (so long as I didn't have to
empty it). Maxine’s face, however, was a picture of delight when I told her.
Additionally, as
mentioned above, we each had our own toilet; hers ensuite; mine off the landing
corridor. Problem was, mine had an opaque, but not frosted, just slightly wavy
lines running vertical, glass door and the toilet/loo was right next to it. In fact,
if the door is opened whilst one is on the crapper, one has one's toes
painfully squished by the door.
If someone was in the
corridor, a slight glance to the side would reveal a backlit person having a
dump (or whatever) and yes although the glass is opaque it's possible to see
the bulk (in my case, mass) squatting and dropping, so to speak.
The bed was a queen
size (do they have those in Poland, or did the commies execute/exile them?), it
was nice and firm but for some reason I was only supplied with a single sized
quilt. There was a heavy bedspread that was the right size that went over it,
but it was a bit weird. For an idea of what it was like strip the quilt off
your double or queen-sized bed and place a single quilt in the middle, and
you'll get an idea of what it was like.
As a practicing and
devout fat man, and has already been mentioned, I struggle putting on walking
boots. So, imagine my delight in finding out that both Airbnb’s had Ikea extra-long
shoehorns. Either it's standard across the Airbnb world, or the Polish ones are
just used to dealing with chunkies.
The next day, Friday,
rather than drive into Warsaw and struggle with both Polish drivers/traffic and
parking, we took the train. Asking several people for help always starts off
with the following phrase “Hello, do you speak English?”
The youngsters, on
the whole, could, but the elders, not so much. So out came the most valuable
tool of the century for any traveller - Google Translate (GT).
I typed in the
question, it then showed the text in Polish and gave me a choice of using the
speaker to dictate it. Using the speak-and-translate function produced some
hilarious results.
The train from
Jozefow to Warsaw cost 9 zlotys, so about 2 quid. There was no ticket machine
or office on the platform. The rule is if you have no ticket you get on the first
carriage and pay the conductor. She didn't speak English, but GT came to the
rescue.
I got a bit cocky on
the train and misread where we were to get off, but Maxine pointed out that we
were nowhere where we needed to be, but in my defense the train took a
different route to the one on Google.
First stop in Warsaw
was MacDonald’s for coffee, and for me, a McRoyle, remember, this is the
continent, and to quote that great philosopher, Vincent Vega, ‘They use the
metric system!’ so it was really just one of the greatest foodstuffs in history
- a quarter pounder!
The MacDonald’s also had
a rather intimidating security guard doing a constant circuit staring down at
the seated customers, possibly to scare people into honesty. A point of
interest - MacDonald’s coffee in Poland seemed better than in UK.
We ended up only spending
the one day and night in Warsaw, and decided Krakow was better, mainly because
Warsaw is too spread out, but then that’s probably true of most capital cities.
The drive back was smooth and problem free, I think! I dozed and drooled
practically the whole journey.
Once we arrived in Kraków
we went to the Polish
Aviation Museum, and as enjoyable as it was, it seems heart-breaking that
all those aircraft are just sitting outside rotting away.
We booked a hotel
next to the Wieliczka Salt Mine which was our destination the next day before
catching a flight home. Once we had dumped our luggage we took a train in to Kraków
and spent the rest of the day wandering the old part of the city, in particular,
the Old Square which was filled with food stalls and the whole place smelt
fantastic.
We chose a Polish
restaurant and I ordered the Polish selection which I couldn't finish. It was a
selection of all their different foods and was easily one of the best things I’ve
eaten in years. Maxine went with the potato pancakes with a sauce with small
hunks of beef in it.
We had booked two
double rooms at the hotel. Now to us, being naive, a double room meant a double
bed, but to the crazy Poles it means three or more single beds. I say three or
more because that’s how many I had in my room. when I met Maxine later and
bragged about the number I had, she shrugged and said, “I've got four!” I checked,
she did!
The two preceding
Airbnb’s had good-to-fucking-awesome sized showers and shed loads of shower gel
and/or shampoo laid on for our benefit. The hotel had two poxy bars of soap
that had I have stacked the one on top of the other, they would have fitted in
to a matchbox. In their defence there was also two sachets of shampoo, each about
the size of an individually wrapped condom.
The problem from my
point of view is that the bars of soap were so small that each time I put one
in the centre of my palm and rubbed; the bloody thing shot off like it was
spring loaded. I spent half my time in the shower shuffling backwards and
bending over to retrieve the thing. The shower took a lot longer than it needed
to and I was in danger of having a stroke and was out of breath by the time I had
finished washing from all the effort.
The three beds in my
room were in a tight row and the only thing separating them were the bedside
tables which were tightly jammed in between them. I’m not a small man and have
for the past few years slept in a double bed, so the thought of sleeping in a
single bed filled me with trepidation.
I had genuine worries
about gashing my head open on the side table when I rolled over or rolled out
of the bed. Once the light was out, I did an experiment and decided it was just
too dangerous for me to go to sleep with a sharp(ish) wooden corner lurking just
inches from my face.
I got up and unjammed
the table to the right of the bed and laid it on the next bed. The one on the
left, I moved further away so if I did roll off, I would get my head stuck in
the gap but not get bashed open by the edge.
Brekkie was the
typical continental brekkie, or a Polish version of it and was based around
cheese and coffee. Feta, cheese triangles, different types of cheese slices,
cold hams and something else that was so pale and moist I think it had been
recently carved off a fresh corpse, but could have been turkey slices pumped
full of water.
There was also that
Polish favourite, lard. A large jar of it with another jar of large pickles.
There were three types of bread and a couple of different types of rolls. There
was one dish there, that can be best described as boiled eggs roughly mashed
down with a generous helping of bull or horse sperm and allowed to slowly turn
to a slimy eggy mess. There was also chopped up lengths of frankfurters stewing
in their own cold juices and disappointment.
The Salt mine was a 10-minute
walk from the hotel and we bimbled round in plenty of time and after getting a coffee
we chilled out in a rare piece of sun, and waited our turn. We joined the queue
and when we reached the head of it and showed the operator our e-ticket, she
shook her head and directed us over to the Online ticket office. It was actually next to where we had been
sitting whilst drinking our coffee, but it hadn’t registered in our minds.
The salt mine was impressive
in every respect and was one that along with Auschwitz left an impression, obviously
in different ways.
From the time we got
to the hotel at the start of the holiday I tried to confirm the return trip
online, but no go. When we got to the check-in, we were not only told I
couldn't have extra leg room because we did not online check in, but because we
did not online check-in, we had to pay an extra 62.68 (308 zlotys) to get on
the flight.
I explained that the
online booking kept coming up with ‘Flight disrupted, online booking not
available’. Apparently, that wasn't good enough, and the woman at counter said
it was my fault as I didn't phone to complain, I pointed out that there was no
phone number on bookings page, but that was our problem. So, we had to leave
the check-in counter, walk approx. 50 metres and pay an extra 310 zlotys. One
complaint coming up to Wizz Air.
We were both a bit
annoyed/emotional at being pissed around, and it didn't help that were both
hungry. We visited a coffee shop in Departures, and I picked ham and cheese but
when I got it back it had turned in to a slightly warm egg mayo salad. Maxine
ordered an eggplant wrap, but upon toasted delivery it had turned in to
eggplant and brie. Pretty shitty if she was a full-blown vegan. We swapped, I
took a bite of the wrap and the fucking thing exploded all over my lower face -
queue wet wipes to get it out of my beard.
Wizz Air Balice seemed
a bit more on ball than Wizz Air Luton and loaded us straight into the bus to
take us to the aeroplane rather make us wait in a stairwell. But no, it was just
a ploy to lure us into complacency!
We drove out to the
plane, pulled up, and sat there for fifteen minutes. In other words, replace
sweaty stairwell for sweaty bus. Kudos to Wizz Air for damaging the end of the
holiday.
Once we were loaded
on the plane, it turned out there was a fault on one of the doors and the
captain didn't want to take a chance. Despite how shitty I was starting to
think Wizz Air was at that stage, I had to agree with him.
Again due to the
inadequacies of Wizz (as in ‘I'm going to the bog for a quick Wizz’) Air (as in
we're going to deprive you of Air, and make you lurk in stale stairwells
and buses and smell each other’s farts) I was again not given the extra leg
room I had paid for.
There was no chance
of moving as the aeroplane was chocka, bit luckily, I end up on an aisle seat
and was able to stick my worst leg out and become an impediment to cabin crew
and passengers alike.
Much as I have moaned
about Wazzock air, the check in staff in Luton were brill, as was the cabin
crew on both legs of the journey. The staff at Krakow Willy Air could do with
more smiles, or at the least neutral expressions.
*And tomato ketchup
if you're common and have bad taste.
**Try having
arthritis and having to keep the knee bent for a couple of hours.
***None.