Five Have a Taste of Poland

Day 1 - July 14th

Let’s be honest here, in the past I haven’t been overly enthusiastic about Ryanair, and the occasional minor observation I’ve made might lead you to the conclusion that I don’t like them. Well, following my return flights to Krakow recently, I can say that whilst I still believe that their business practises are more suited to Del Boy and Arthur Daley, the flights themselves were exemplary, and the on-board hostesses incredibly hard working and pleasant. Both trips ran on time, were smooth and uneventful and nobody seemed to lose any luggage. Travelling with only hand baggage was easy and the only annoyance on the flight was the continued hard sell of anything and everything; also I wasn’t overly comfortable in my allotted 18 inches of ‘personal space’. The oxygen mask had more room to move around than I did.


The flight was booked to Krakow, so naturally I’d expected to land somewhere close to Krakow, such as Croatia. Not so! We landed at Krakow’s small but quite pleasant Balice airport, and within 10 minutes I was in the arrivals hall - so early, in fact, that I had arrived 15 minutes before my friends, who had flown in a week earlier, arrived to collect me. Maybe they, too, had been to see if I’d turn up in Croatia.

Once we all met I was driven to the apartment I’d be staying in, before a quick look around the local town of Jaworzno. Formerly an important coal-mining town, only one pit remains open, providing coal for the nearby power station. My last visit to Jaworzno had been in 2005, and the place had looked down at heel as a result of so many job losses and closures. Well, that is changing, thanks to huge EU reinvestment that is being used to remodel the town centre and provide new roads and facilities. I’d return to the town later in the week for a proper look round and the chance to compare the new with the old.


With unpacking and nitty gritty bits done, it was time to start holidaying properly. It was a cloudless, sunny and hot day at 32°C – the sort of day that our Government back home call a Level 4 Health Alert Day. The best way to cool off was to drive up to nearby Dzieckowice for a swim. Just outside the town is a huge lake, ringed with tracks and small sandy bays. It’s a popular spot for locals to unwind and relax, swim in the lake, hike, cycle and make barbeques. It sounded great. We parked up, found a nice place to dump the bags and hit the water, which was chilly to start with but so refreshing after the heat of the afternoon. After a bit of diving and general swimming, we decided to play some water volleyball. At this point we discovered that we hadn’t got either a net, or even a ball, so we substituted with pine cones – how’s that for a bit of ingenuity?


Unfortunately we had to leave after too short a time, in order to prepare the barbeque. This entailed going into the forest that surrounds the lake, so that we could collect wood. Do what? Yes. In Poland, barbeques are not dinky little metal trolleys on wheels. You collect and chop wood, build a fire and cook the food over the open fire. It was just like a Famous Five adventure – Five Burn Down a Forest in Poland – so I was hoping for lashings and lashings of vodka. We even had a dog, our very own version of Timmy, who is a beautiful Husky / Alsatian crossbreed called Viki, and an absolutely gorgeous animal. We didn’t have a gay Uncle Quentin to hand, and the female in our party, Katarzyna, had no wish to be a boy (call me Colin) – but in the overall scheme of things, I think that was for the best.


My first thought was ‘how are we going to cut the wood, then?’ – a question answered by Lukasz, who delved into his sports bag and produced a wicked looking axe. 'Heeeeere’s Johnny! 'Talk about being prepared – how many people go swimming and hide a big chopper in their swimming trunks? (don’t go there). Tree surgery – or perhaps butchery would be a more apt description – began in earnest with various fallen branches being cut up into manageable sizes. I helped by humming Monty Python’s Lumberjack Song, as this is the full extent of my knowledge about cutting down trees. (In case you’ve forgotten how good it is – or are too young to remember it - here’s a taste):



But I digress ….. Once the wood was hacked up, the fire was constructed and ignited immediately. Attention now turned to three branches, each around 3 feet long with a fork at one end. These forks were then whittled down to create sharp prongs. Given the back to basics nature of the barbeque so far, I wondered if we were now expected to hunt our prey and kill it, flay it and cook it. Fortunately this was not the case, and the badgers in the forest breathed a sigh of relief. A trip to the car revealed that whilst I was winging my way over Europe to Krakow, the ingredients for the evening had been prepared in advance. Out came a bag of sausages and a huge pot with just about everything you could imagine in it. There was also bread and some other extras, and, far more importantly, significant quantities of beer. Good.

With the fire roaring away nicely, cooking of the sausages began. Now, anybody who knows me knows that I do not cook, have never cooked and have no immediate plans to learn to cook. I am to cooking what George Bush is to world peace. I can’t be bothered to spend two hours a day mincing, dicing, chopping, marinating, shredding, cutting, heating and chilling when I can take a box out of the fridge, bung it in the oven and consume it 25 minutes later. So this was entirely novel to me, but that’s what holidays are all about.

I had to take two sausages and ram them down onto the sharp prongs of my wooden fork, and hold them over the fire to cook. This was a long slow process, not helped by a gentle breeze that would suddenly blow the acrid smoke from the fire into my eyes. Change position, and the breeze would follow me round the fire. It took 25 minutes to cook two sausages, which is an inordinate amount of time to sit holding a stick. It then took about one minute to eat them, before the process began again. This never seemed to happen to Five on Kirren Island! As I’m always on the lookout for labour saving devices, I fashioned a holder for my stick from spare branches so I could leave it hanging unattended over the fire while I went in search of beer. Although construed as cheating, it was an eminently more satisfactory way of going about things. After an hour, or two sausages, the main pot went onto the fire. As this would be my one and only time to try cooking real food, I decided that the moment should be captured for posterity.

Once ready, the food was served, and it was incredibly tasty. I have no idea exactly was in the pot, but I’d have it again, which isn’t much help. As the night drew in, a major crisis developed. The beer ran out. Lukasz decided to set off to a shop in the area, so I went along to help with carrying. On the way, we passed this dinky old car from an age gone by, so it just had to be photographed. It’s not a great photo, I can only assume eye-to-camera co-ordination suffered from smoke inhalation at the barbeque.

We came across a shop after about 15 minutes, a sort of Spar type place. We chose our stock, and I said to Lukasz that I would handle the purchasing part, in order to try out my exceedingly rusty Polish. Dumping everything on the counter, I said to the girl on the till, “Добрый вечер. Как дела ? я желаю купить. Насколько пожалуйста?
She stared blankly at me. “What’s the problem, doesn’t she understand Polish?” I asked Lukasz. “Oh yes, she understands Polish. So why are you speaking bloody Russian?” Oh, hell. I’d got my languages all mixed up, having done some Russian at night school recently. I figured that it would be better to leave the rest of the transaction to Lukasz to sort out, and concentrate on packing the new supplies. Then it was back to the barbeque to consume them. By the time we called it a day it had gone 2 a.m. and as I’d been up since the previous midnight to get ready to travel to Stansted I suddenly felt shattered – the combined effects of the trip, swimming, lumberjacking, cooking and eating – and possibly drinking – took it’s toll. Time for bed, as tomorrow would need an early start because we were going to visit Krakow. Night all!