European Adventure 1 -- Wroclaw & Duszniki

25 December - 2 January

Vodka (wodka) is by far the No. 1 Polish brew and is consumed in astonishing quantities.... You can take it for granted that there's at least one emergency bottle in every Polish house and that it will appear on the table as soon as a visitor arrives. Moreover, it's supposed to be emptied before the guest leaves. In restaurants, too, drinking is an important part of life, sometimes virtually the only activity, and you may be shocked by the speed and style by which vodka is absorbed by human beings....

As you might expect, at such a rate you won't be able to keep up with your fellow drinkers for long, and will soon end up well out of touch with the real world. Go easy and either miss a few turns or sip your drink in stages. Though this seems to be beyond comprehension to a 'normal' Polish drinker, you, as a foreigner and guest, will be treated with due indulgence. Whatever you do, don't try to outdrink a Pole.

- Krzysztof Dydynski, Lonely Planet Guide to Poland

Well, once again Christmas has come and gone, but the one that I spent in Gdansk two nights ago is one that will stick in my memory for a long time to come. Me, Paul and my dziadek spent Wigilia (Christmas Eve, the most important part of Christmas in Poland) with the Majewskis, and ate, and drank, and ate, and drank, more than we've ever eaten or drunk before in our entire lives. But the food was so damn good that it didn't matter: barszcz (beetroot soup) and piorogi, jellied salmon and pickled herrings, potato salad and carp, followed by endless trays of cakes, pastries and chocolate, all served with glass after glass of white wine, cognac, tea, coffee and kompot (fruit preserve). Me, Pawel and Piotr all had a giggle listening to the old people at the table: Piotr had guaranteed that over dinner his grandparents would discuss three topics - death, church and increasing food prices - and, sure enough, within a minute his grandmother started talking about the last time she went to confession, and promptly triggered the next topic by stating "it may be the last confession I ever go to". This two-hour meal, which was preceded by a Bible reading and the sharing of holy bread, was followed by Tomek (Piotr's dad) dressing up as Swiety Mikolaj (Santa Claus) and distributing presents. Much to our surprise, there were presents for me and Paul under the Christmas tree too: we both received very elegant ties (grey-and-brown for Paul, blue-and-navy for me, which suited us perfectly), lots of Polish chocolate (including marzipan, my favourite) and, for me, a Frydyrik Chopin CD. (Which reminds me: Russ, when I get back, you're teaching me how to play piano.)

Anyway, I was very sorry to leave the Majewskis when we did: it was a wonderful night and left us all with a warm feeling inside, the way any special occasion should. Normally we would've attended Midnight Mass as well (we could hear church bells pealing all over Gdansk at two minutes to 12) but drank a beer and went to bed instead, as we had a 5:20 train to Wroclaw the next morning.

As always seems to be the case before leaving a city, I hardly slept that night: for one thing, dziadek must've set the heating to about 80 degrees, because at about half past 12 I felt like I was lying inside a blast furnace, covered in sweat and constantly swigging from the water bottle next to the bed. The beer didn't exactly help either: by accident I'd bought half-litre bottles of Okocim Mocne ("mocne" means strong, and in Poland that equates to FUCKEN strong), and drinking it only made me want to sit up and keep drinking. But drinking all night wasn't an option considering our early-morning train, so I tried my best to get some sleep and shut out the wheezing/panting noises coming from Paul's side of the bed.

After about two hours' sleep we were all up again, and strangely, I didn't feel particularly tired at all. The sandman really hit me with it on the train though, and just as I was about to fall asleep some Nazi with a mullet walked past our carriage, saw me lying down and told me off for having my "filthy shoes" on the seats. I gave him a dirty look, sat up, then had an idea: I took my shoes off and went back to lying down on the seats. However, five minutes later a guy joined me and Paul in our little carriage, and the moment he heard me speak English to Paul he asked me, in Polish, where I was from (God knows what made him assume I could speak Polish). I told him we're from Australia but that I'm of Polish descent, and instantly he broke into a smile and started talking to me about all sorts of crap. A few minutes into our conversation he reached for a rainbow-coloured towel next to his bag and revealed what was underneath: a half-empty bottle of slivovitz, a spirit almost twice as strong as vodka. He took a big swig from the bottle then held it out to me: "Mateusz, you have to try this. Just a small sip." I told him no, and for the next hour, at five minute intervals, he'd hold out the bottle to me and insist that I take a swig. Naturally I didn't, but he himself kept drinking and getting steadily more and more drunk: his eyes couldn't focus on mine anymore, and his voice started to become mildly incoherent. The reason he was drinking, he told me, was because the Army had put him on radar duty over Christmas, which meant he missed out on "the most important night of the year" with his family. Naturally I was sympathetic, which only encouraged him to tell me everything about his wife and kids, as well as his entire past, present and future. Like Barek, he seemed to like me more and more with every passing minute, constantly offering me his bottle of slivovitz and telling me, "You know, you talk like a true Polack. To Hell with Australia; you should stay here."

Eventually Wojtek (as was his name) fell asleep, and ten minutes later our train pulled up at Wroclaw's main station. Once again, me and Paul sweated, strained and struggled off the train with our luggage, and looked around the platform. I couldn't see anyone familiar, and just as I said "I guess we'll have to wait a bit" I spotted my older cousin, Milena, flanked by my grandparents, walking rapidly towards me. "It's so good to see you again, Mateusz!" she cried, and so began our stay in Wroclaw.

Wroclaw, so far, has been defined by alcoholic drinks. The first thing me and Paul were offered upon arriving home was a shot of vodka: "to help wake you up", Uncle Jurek explained. We tilted it back, and I noticed from its bisongrass aftertaste that it was me and Paul's old favourite, Zubrowka. "We drink this stuff in Melbourne all the time, with apple juice" I said, and a minute later, glasses of Zubrowka and apple juice (more Zubrowka than apple juice, I think) appeared on the table, to accompany our lunch of brown bread, meat and sausages. Me and Paul then went to bed for a while, and, my God, was it a pleasure to have a bed to myself again! It was already dark when we got up two hours later, so we went out with my cousins for a few beers in Wroclaw's Market Square. Upon coming back, more glasses of Zubrowka and apple juice manifested themselves, followed by a glass of whisky and Coke (for me) and more mocne beer for Paul. By the time I ascended the stairs to go to bed I was feeling pretty light-headed, and dreamt about underwater kebab stalls all night.... so yeah. That's pretty much been my stay in Wroclaw so far: today we haven't done too much coz it's still Christmas and most of the city is dead. At any rate, I don't have time to write any more - I hope you all had a great Christmas too, and have an absolutely disgraceful New Year's Eve!!

Au revoir,

Mateusz

Hello Mama i Tata,

Well, as I'm sure you know me & Paul are in Wroclaw and having an excellent time. The food & alcohol is never-ending, and it's especially nice to have our own beds & bedroom again. It was sad to leave dziadek and the Majewskis behind in Gdansk, but at the same time we were starting to get sick of the city and the change of scenery has proved to be just what we needed. It's been good for Paul especially since he can now join in conversations, at least with Kasia, Michal & Milena. As I mentioned in my e-mail to Matylda, we went out to a pub in the Stare Miasto last night, and tonight we're going to stay home and watch some DVDs. I can tell we're going to have plenty of entertaining memories from our stay here, and already we're looking very forward to Sylwester. Anyway, Kasia's calling for me so that we can start watching the movies, so I better go.... please understand that I can't e-mail that often because we have so little time and there's no point wasting it in front of the Internet; as it is I haven't e-mailed a single specific person since Budapest. Tell Matylda I say good luck for her upcoming performance and that no, I haven't had any nosebleeds.

As has happened so many times throughout this trip, I've sat down at the computer and now I'm thinking, "Where the hell do I start??" I don't have anywhere near enough time (or energy) to relate everything that's happened since I last e-mailed, so I'll just limit myself to New Year's Eve for now, and if I'm still conscious after that I'll have a go at describing some other stuff.

For New Year's Eve (or "Sylwester" as they call it here), we went to a little mountain town called Duszniki Zdroj, where my cousin's boyfriend's mother and stepfather live. My first surprise upon arriving was the sight of a Union Jack fluttering amongst the falling snowflakes: as if this wasn't surreal enough (considering we were in the middle of a small Polish town), a tall elderly man stepped out to greet us, and introduced himself with a chuckle as "the only Pommy bastard in all of Duszniki". And he wasn't kidding: this guy was a genuine Brit from head to toe - Marmite-eating, BBC-watching, antique clock-collecting - and living, bizarrely enough, in the middle of the Silesian mountains. Although married to a lively (and not unattractive) Polish lady, he could speak about as much Polish as Paul, which meant that him and Paul - both thoroughly starved of English conversation - got chatting immediately, and didn't stop til some three or four hours later.

The night started off with an "English Christmas", hosted (with undisguised pride) by Jeremy himself. It was novel having two Christmases in one year, and I have to admit that the English Christmas was pretty good too, the highlight being a very rich, brandy-soaked Christmas pudding. The only problem was that, having seated myself in the middle of the table, I had English going into one ear and Polish in the other, with Jeremy discussing European history with Paul, and the Poles complaining how bad the Christmas pudding tasted (pudding is about as familiar to the Polish palate as barszcz is to the Australian).

Anyway, the setting for our NYE's festivities was a ranch-theme restaraunt on top of Duszniki's tallest mountain. We had to dress up in Wild West-style clothes for the occasion, which initially struck me as a bit of a problem, since I hadn't really considered including any cowboy hats or spurred boots in my luggage for Europe. Nevertheless, I managed to look the part just by adding a few minor details: attaching a sherriff's badge to my suit pocket, tying a handkerchief around my neck, and wearing some jeans and heeled black shoes. The end result actually looked quite spiffing (if I may say so myself), and Paul really looked the part too, after Michal's mum supplied him with a brown leather vest and cowboy belt.

Anyway, we got to the "ranch" at about 8:30, and basically, if you can imagine a two-storey Lone Star steakhouse, decked out with enough meat and vodka to feed and inebriate an entire army, then you can pretty much imagine what this place looked like. The only problem, me and Paul quickly noticed, was that there was not a single girl in sight: the place was full of couples in their 30s and 40s, with the odd small child running around. Anyway, we sat down and began by eating a bowl of tripe soup. Neither Paul nor myself had ever had tripe before (tripe is lamb's stomach, by the way), and its appearance wasn't exactly appetizing. As it turned out, the appearance wasn't deceptive: it WAS pretty unappetizing, with a flavour and texture like snails in brine. (Still, at least it made the straight vodka taste better by comparison, which was probably the point.)

I should point out at this stage that our banquet hall-style table actually held two groups of people: me, Paul, Milena, her boyfriend Michal + two of their friends (also a couple), and then a group of three couples in their 30s. It's a Polish tradition that when you share a table on occasions like this, the two groups have to drink in unison, in friendly competition to see who can set the pace. Considering that Polish people were setting the pace here, I knew that we were in for some pretty serious drinking, and within minutes it became apparent that I was right. Before we'd even finished the tripe we'd already downed three shots of vodka: the other group would call out "The right side is ready!", we'd call back "So are we!", and we'd raise our shot glasses, wish each other "Na zdrowie!" and tilt them back, then blink our watering eyes. Just as I thought we were going to take a break from this blitzkreig on our brain cells, Michal produced two bottles of absinth (which he'd bought over the Czech border earlier that day), together with another bottle of vodka and a bottle of gin. By the time the second course was being served, Michal and Marczin (the other guy with us) were already roasting sugar cubes over glasses of absinth - and that's GLASSES, mind you, not shotglasses. Initially I thought they were going to distribute the sweetened absinth over a series of shots, but no, to my complete amazement, they swigged back the lot in one. Anyone who's had abinsth before will know that's no mean feat, to say the least!

I have to admit that I wimped out on the absinth: after three shots of vodka the last thing I wanted to do was down something twice as strong. But I made up for it half an hour later when bottles of Dorota, a cheap Polish wine that makes Passion Pop seem classy, suddenly appeared all over the place. I grabbed one and finished the lot within 20 minutes: another 20 minutes later my head was spinning so much I lay down on the couch next to the toilets and promptly fell asleep. I was woken up 15 minutes later by a guy gently shaking my shoulder and telling me that it's time for the next shot, as if I needed the stuff on prescription.

This guy (whose name I can't remember, unsurprisingly) was yet another one of those Polish men who seemed to regard me as some kind of perfect young man, in that, despite having lived in Australia all my life, I speak excellent Polish and know everything about Polish history. We got talking earlier (during the tripe soup) and he explained that he was "a socialist and a nationalist": I replied that I was exactly the same thing, so we shook hands and from there the guy took an instant liking to me. So did his wife, incidentally, who asked me to dance with her every time a new song came on, and kept offering me more and more Dorota while complimenting my appearance. At the end of the night, when I kissed her hand, she clapped her hands with delight, turned to her friends and exlaimed, "There you go! Prawdziwy Pan! [A true gentleman!]". I couldn't help grinning at that :)

To be honest, my recollection of the night is actually pretty blurry: for example, I remember standing outside during the countdown, drinking straight gin and talking to some guy about farming, then the next thing I remember is taking some time-out in an abandoned tractor some 500 metres away, trying to get my head to stop spinning. I don't even know if my passing out on the couch was in-between or after this (I'm pretty sure it wasn't before), but yeah.... needless to say, trying to keep up with Poles is futile when it comes to drinking; a bit like trying to compete with a Ukrainian in truck-pulling or saucepan-folding. Completely, utterly futile.

It was 4 o'clock by the time we got home, and I crawled into bed feeling totally fucked. It didn't help that, in my tiredness and dizziness, I'd spilt lemonade all over my side of the bed (yes, we had to share a bed again that night), but then I was too tired and dizzy to care. Needless to say, I felt a little "stale" the next morning, and upon telling Michal's mum this she offered me her "trusty" hangover solution: another shot of vodka. It seems the drinking here just never ends....

That day (today) we went up to a different mountain, walked around in the snow for a bit then went to the pub, where none of us actually had any alcohol (we'd all had quite enough by then). Afterwards we drove back to Wroclaw and had dinner in a Chinese restaraunt, and I have to say that it was probably the worst Chinese I've ever had: Poles should definitely stick to serving bigos and piorogi.

Anyway, there's still shitloads more to tell, including me and Paul's very entertaining night out with two 28-year-old ladies.... I won't go into any detail about it now, but basically, I got talking to a girl at a bar who, evidently charmed by my Australian accent (lol), insisted that Paul and I join her and her friend for some drinks at another bar, which we did. They introduced us to a drink called "barman", which works on the same premise as the drinks I used to make myself in Year 12: it's basically vodka mixed with lemon concentrate, the lemon concentrate being so strong that it completely wipes out the taste of the vodka. It's actually quite refreshing and somehow, the sourness actually keeps your head clear: I had five of these plus a Jager Bomb (Jagermeister & Red Bull), yet felt as clear-headed by the end of the night as I did when we started - or so I thought anyway.

But that and other stories will have to wait until later; I'm tired as Hell and it's starting to get difficult to see what I'm writing. I hope you all had an equally degenerate New Year's Eve, and rest assured that I'll be back in less than a month.... coz by now you all desperately miss me, right? :)

Best wishes for 2005!

Mateusz

P.S. Fotki will be sent out tomorrow.