Fling with a Republic and the Discomfort of Travel
The pending chance of sponsorship for the documentary project on TEFL teaching has got me all flummoxed and curious. Since leaving Future Planet I have not had to deal with the tribulations of film sponsorship without the backing and support of my experienced colleagues. The drafting of contracts, the intricate detail and the eagerness to get started are driving me to work and spend hard on my new project, so much so that for the past fortnight, I have been unable to spend much time away from my video camera and edit studio.
It is not very often that friends and relatives are able to take the time from work and come and visit the salty baron lands of Bochnia, the bustling jerk of Krakow seems to have much greater appeal, and so when three old chums from Southend came to visit this week, I was more than disappointed to only be able to spend one evening with them in the twilight of the city. So fractured was I from a week of darting back and forth from place to place, shooting interviews, gallivanting around classrooms and pursuing new subject matter that I decided the weekend should serve only as an adventure and I should free myself from the clutches of the film project and the now monotonous traits of Bochnia.
I awoke on Saturday morning at six a.m. with a slight hangover and a bad idea. Without paying much attention to the temperature or my agenda, I packed a bag and threw some water on my face while ranting about my desperation to cross the Polish border for the weekend. My weary companion, still awash in the bliss of sleep, followed me graciously to the kitchen and joined me for a cup of tea. To say that I had thought my plans through logically would be a down right lie, but Joanna seemed to see some logic behind my rambling and agreed to join me on an escapade to Krakow in an attempt to find a bus that may take us to a foreign destination. It wasn’t until we opened the door that we realised Jack Frost had been in the night and had left more than his standard October snail trial. The ground was covered in glistening white mounds of snow, diaphanous and smooth like large piles of cotton wool. We walked down to the city centre and jumped on a minibus to Krakow, as usual our transport was rammed with people and we were forced to stand in our winter clothes and with our pack backs stapled to our torsos, this made it almost impossible to eat the two drozdzowkas we had bought for breakfast and so the one hour journey proved an immediate challenge to our agenda. I was however able to manoeuvre my body in such a way that I could squirm round and plug myself into my iPod as to not have to listen to the tired and bloated sounds of RMF FM which boomed at full volume around the minibus. I drowned the sounds of Polish election campaigning and sloppy remixes of solo Freddy Mercury songs with the latest ‘65DaysOfStatic’ album, which proved a dazzling platform to my inner monologue of complaint regarding just how troublesome it is to travel from this supposed commuter town to the nearest city.
We arrived in Krakow dishevelled and hungry, we munched on our breakfast and grabbed take away lattes from the Dworzec PKS café. Joanna spotted a bus leaving from Krakow in twenty minutes, which was bound for a small town on the south central Polish border. I have been to Cieszyn before and have revelled at the ease of crossing the border with no queuing or stupid questions, the transformation of Polish Cieszyn to Czech Cieszyn is an amazing thing to experience and worth the journey alone, and so with a little persuasion on my part, we decided to board the bus and take the three hour trek to the border.
The road works outside of Krakow are indeed dire at the present moment, and crossing the bridge to get over the Wisła is a gruelling task. The bus jerked and pulled back and forth for thirty minutes before we even left the city boundary, and once again I must confess that if it were not for the frivolous audio pleasure of my iPod, I would have become increasingly bitter with frustration. This time however, we were able to sit for the duration of our journey, taking pity on those that had to stand, but appreciating their patience. The sporadic and spicy sounds of ‘Love is Simple’, the new album by Akron/Family made the journey glide by peacefully, the gorgeous and confused genre bending of their music combined with the scenic snow covered views of the passing mountains, reminded the twisted cynic in me that not every journey comprises of sweating, heavy, air tight vertical abstractions through grazing traffic.
We arrived in Cieszyn exactly four and a half hours after departing the house in Bochnia. Although we had been sitting down for the last three hours, we both felt extremely tired and ready to find a warm place to sit and drink more coffee. The typical picturesque Rynek on the Polish side of the border was almost empty, which made for a nice photo opportunity and a banana break. We circled the market square hand in hand, marvelling at the brave gent sitting lonesome on a bench in the corner with a fistful of crumbs and a map full of hungry pigeons. The city was indeed so quiet that it came as a surprise to find that the Tourist Information booth was still, a nimble little Polish lady handed us a free map of the area and gave us directions to the train station on the Czech side of the border. She told us that Prague is beautiful by night and if we want to make the most of our journey into the country we should make our way to the capital.
I am an awkward man. For some reason I find it difficult to accept that the capital of a country is the most worth while place to be, this may be due to my jilted attitude towards London, it may be due to my several experiences abroad, or it may be due to the pretentious artist in me that just wants to do everything differently from everybody else. Nevertheless, baring the old ladies advice in mind we took to a small café on the road to the border, the eerie rhythmic keyboard noises gracefully protruding from the stereo had an immediate impact on us both and we agreed that we should proceed to grab a table. We found ourselves sitting on a pair of exceedingly comfortable armchairs at a mahogany table with the sun pouring through the large windows at the front, the coffee tasted good and the slender slim cigarettes we smoked made us feel like we were trapped in a Leonard Cohen song. We discussed our options, either way we were going to Czech but whether we should hit the capital or try something different was still a decision to be made. Upon leaving the café, we walked straight to the border, which is located on a bridge just off of the central avenue of the small city. We crossed with no problems and in a matter of seconds we noticed the dramatic change in scenery, the shops were more rustic and slight, the people were speaking a new foreign tongue and the streets even smelled different. This was mostly due to the sudden increase in Vietnamese restaurants about the place, filling the air with the juicy smell of fried vegetables and noodle dishes.
We walked the streets and located the Rynek, if anything the Czech side of the border was quieter than the Polish side, the cobbled streets and colourful residential buildings and clothes shops gave off an appealing and almost clay like feel, as if they had been built simply for the purpose of being. All the shops and market stalls were closed and so we decided that although we had completed our mission and crossed the border, we were not far enough into the country. We traced the rough guide we received from the small Polish lady at the TI and found ourselves at a rather sober looking Dworzec. The ladies at the ticket office were remarkably helpful and for some reason I was able to understand more of their language than Joanna. They informed me of a city about fifty kilometres from here that was well worth seeing. We got ourselves a pair of tickets and danced around the one swaying drunkard, spinning on the floor in a purple anorak. The train arrived soon afterwards and we were able to clamber aboard out of the bitter cold and take refuge next to an elderly Czech couple who looked on in curiosity as I pulled the Jon Snow biography ‘Shooting History’ out of my bag. Joanna plugged herself into the iPod and the train took us part of the way on our journey to Ostrawa, the third largest city in the country.
To get there we would have to change trains again at Ostrava-Kuncice and board the waiting train straight to the city. The lady checking the tickets, like all of the Czech people we had met so far, told us that she spoke Polish and then proceeded to speak to us in her native tongue, the languages are indeed similar but without a little preparation and advanced warning, it can be awkward. We managed to gather from the inspector that our train would be waiting on the platform as soon as we arrived at the next station and we would have to jump on it as fast as possible! This was made easier by her opening the door and almost shoving us out onto the platform at the appropriate time and the second train carried us the additional two stations to Ostrava hl.n. Upon arrival we journeyed straight to the city centre, passing through the airport-like train station and travelling the two-kilometre stretch to the Rynek. When we finally got there, I found myself to be too hungry to be taken back by the abundance of modern buildings splintered around the fabulous surrounding Czech architecture. Instead we headed to a large ‘nighthawk’ style restaurant tucked away in the corner of the Rynek. We were greeted by a bubbly bouncing Czech lady in a red, white and black frock, she spoke little Polish or English but made us feel extremely welcome, granting us a free pint each with our supremely crafted pizza. After wolfing down forty inches of stuffed crust delight, we asked the waitress if she could point us in the direction of the nearest hotel or hostel. She told us, or at least I think she told us, it would be tricky to find somewhere and we would have to take a tram to get anywhere suitable. We then proceeded to pay our bill and walk another two kilometres in the wrong direction after getting some dodgy instructions from a receptionist at the Imperial Hotel who tried to charge us one hundred and seventy Euros for a night. Our stroll through the city's industrial estate proved uneventful and frightening, when we finally came across a struck old gent who could point us in the right direction, it was gone eight o’clock and I was ready for bed. Upon finding a suitable hotel however, my mood did so rapidly change from bloated and pragmatic sleep face to primitive prancing party gazelle.
We found the Trio Hotel situated in the middle of a self proclaimed ‘party district’, smitten in every direction with over sixty pubs and nightclubs. We checked into our hotel and took a disco nap before chatting to the reception staff about the city. A gent in his early twenties with a tribal tattoo all up his forearm and a head full of spiked black hair, told us that this was the city all the Czech people from Prague come to to get away from the tourists and the staggering inflation of alcohol. He said that it was rare to find a Brit in these waters and that I should be pleased to be here, for this is one of the few untapped party resources of the Czech Republic. I paid the hotel bill of thirty seven pounds and went back to our giant apartment suite to locate Joanna. She was watching Czech TV on the couch and ready to hit the town.
We visited several bars up and down the strip, we danced to Flogging Molly in an Irish bar, unwound to smooth jazz at the Acid Club and jumped about like infants to Drum N Bass at The Sherlock Holmes Pub. The drink correlated with the modest price of our hotel room, the maximum we paid for a gin and tonic was one pound ten pence, while the Staropramen and Radagast flowed at way under a pound a pint. The most shocking factor of our radiant and financially comforting spree was that we heard no English or Polish outside of our own conversations. This seemed to be utterly bizarre when reflecting on the hordes of English that swarm to Krakow for cheap stag weekends and the like. How long will it be before Ostrava also becomes a playground hotspot for drunken revelry at the hands of the Brits and the Poles alike? Only time will tell.
In the mean time we managed to do the party district justice, we hit several bars and clubs and we managed a little dancy dancy to top it all off. Although our hotel was cheap, it was in the centre of the action and we were unfortunately reminded of our location throughout the duration of the night. We managed to get our heads down at some point in the small hours, and our slumber was only disturbed at around eight o’clock by my mobile alarm after we agreed to get up early and take some photos of the city as evidence before leaving for Poland by train. We checked out and circled the city once again armed only with a digital camera, the walk back to the train station proved a pleasure and the eleven pound Euro City ticket back to Poland proved a sexy reminder as to just how little money our random excavation had cost us. The train took us straight to Katowice where we changed for Krakow and found ourselves back on the Bochnia bus in no time. With buckets of minutes to spare, Joanna placed her vote in the town centre before we headed back home for some cous cous and onions.
Copyright Daniel Emmerson 2007 all rights reserved