Laurie in Poland

vacation within a vacation

I have to keep reminding myself that my trip to Poland is a "vacation." Because we work 5 days a week, it doesn't feel like a typical vacation. This weekend is different. I am staying in a little beach town on the shore of the Baltic Sea. The water is seriuosly cold, but due to the heat, I think it will feel quite refreshing later today.

I got on the train yesterday morning at 6am and had an uneventful, comfortable trip as far as the northern Poland town of Gdynia. The countryside, with its rolling hills and fields of crops, is quite scenic. The best part, of course, is the cows, combined with fields of poppies and other wildflowers. If you see Gdansk (Lech Welesa, Solidarity) on your map, look slightly north and you'll see Gdynia. In Gdynia, I had to transfer to a no-reserved-seat train. At first, I chose a seat, not realizing I had plopped down in the cushy 1st class. The compartment mates told me to just stay put, what could the conductor do? Well, I'll tell you what the conductor did: he told me to move to the crowded, sweaty 2nd class cars. I sat in the diner car, which would have been fine had it been airconditioned, or had there been windows that opened. I did get some reading and napping done, and finally my stop, Koszalin, appeared.

In Koszalin, I was met by Jupi Podlaszewski, who will take me to Stalag Luft IV today, the POW camp my father was in. Jupi has a story as well: his father served 2 years in Auschwitz, before escaping (less than 150 people successfully escaped) just before the camp was liberated. Jupi has an English-language teaching school in Koszalin and is also a theater director. If you have any good quality english language fiction you want to get rid of, please consider giving them to me and I'll send them to Jupi.

Jupi drove me to Mielno, the town I'm staying in, about 5 miles from Koszalin, and will pick me up a little later this morning for our trip to the camp. Last night, I had a lovely 5-course prix fixe dinner at a place called Meduza, on their verandah overlooking the sea. I didn't have to stretch out the dinner to stay for the late (9:30ish) sunset; the service was terrible. Anyway, dinner was avocado, tuna, and hardboiled egg salad; a thick mushroom soup (velotte?); medallions of pork in a brown herb sauce accompanied by potatos; 2 small scoops of vanilla ice cream in a cherry syrup with fresh cherries and 2 beers. The price: 62 zloty, about 20$.

After dinner I walked around a bit, saw a group of elderly Poles gathered singing along to an accordion player. Back in my spacious room (30$ a night, my Polish friends think this is highway robbery) I watched a little German MTV and tried to figure out how to open and close the patio doors. Both here and at my room in Krakow, the windows have two sets of hinges: one that lets you open the window on the at the top, and one that lets you open the window from the left. This is such high tech engineering, I often can't figure out how to open the damn things and get scared that they're going to fall out on my head. So far taht hasn't happened.

Breakfast was included in the price of the place I'm staying in and all I can say is wow!: tomatos with generously slices of fresh mozz, 3 different kinds of salad, sausage, 3 different kinds of ham, 4 kinds of cheese, breads, pickles, yogure, real cereal, all accompanied by a Polish rock station. The only surprise at breakfast was the lack of fish. Every 2nd restaurant here is a fish place. I would have been happy to chow down on some herring and smoked salmon. Alas, it was not meant to be.

After the tour today, I hope to get in a little beach time. Tomorrow I get back on the train to Krakow.

posted by Laurie Sabol @ 6/25/2005 09:40:00 AM