A bit of Poland

So, our final destination was a town called Rybnik in the south of Poland, where we spent three nights at a hotel in teh very center of the town. Most Slovenes would probably not know about it, although there's a grand prix Speedway track there, where our champions compete in this sport, that never really becomes an audience favorite.

Maybe somebody’s grandfather would remember, since many Slovenes were going for season work in the mines of South Poland, but I guess the memory of those days when Poles and Slovenes were still a part of the same Austrian monarchy are too distant to come up in everyday conversation.

So to present this pleasant town, I have to say I was surprised with all it offered for the youth. I was above all surprised with the game arcades, which are a rare exception in Slovenia and even if you see them, it’s an odd computerized Sega car. The town also has a very modern multiplex cinema, but with most movies being synchronized into Polish, which in their case means a loud and monotonous voice saying in the same pitch, with the same loudness and the same lack of enthusiasm in polish the things actors are saying right before him on screen, full of emotion and feeling. It’s strange to hear a heartbreaking plea of a beautiful young girl, that fits perfectly the stone-melting sadness of her empathy awakening face being over-voiced by a dull middle-aged masculine voice sounding like counting stairs and reaching third of nineteen floors with the elevator out of order, but being to uninterested to even be angry about it saying the very sam thing in polish.

So we preferred to stay in one of the local bars in the city center, with nice prices, friendly staff speaking foreign languages and a very pleasant atmosphere.

Next day we went to Klinček, the Polish ski slope. I don’t want to be mean, but if this is one of their better ski resorts, I completely understand why I can’t see a Polish skier in the world cup. Personally I’d prefer to go to Zakopane, to see the ski jump, but out itinerary was set and I stuck to it.

On the way we stopped at the museum of bread and I have to admit it was a pleasant experience. It was a combination of a collection of old household appliances, a didactical museum and a place where the owner moralizes about the lost values in hope to make children who haven’t felt poverty, how every breadcrumb can be of importance and we should cherish it.

It was obvious, this man has experienced the worse part of WWII, with years of starvation during and after the war. I can thus full understand what bead means to him and how he has it as a symbol of different things, along with the nostalgic connotations; he really appreciates bread as a god-given gift. But I’m afraid that with his stories to younglings who never experienced hunger, he didn’t get through in saying that every thrown away crust of bread is a sinful act and how you could use old bread to put in soup. I’m afraid the effect was just the opposite.

Still the large collection of old household tools made me wonder when they’ll appear on Home shopping channel in the recycled plastic form; things like a century old cherry pit remover.

They also had a class room from the period of right after the war, similar to the one my father still might have been in, although not in Poland and a very large space, where every visitor made a unique bread pastry and could eat it fresh out of the oven moments later.

But the part of his collection he was most proud of was the bread figurines. It started with a nativity scene, but turned out to be everything possible – made from bread. I guess most people would say it’s a special way of creative industries and home craft to make garden gnomes from bread, but I found it a simple country kitsch (although the definition of kitsch means also being mass produced – while his collection deffinetly was one of the kind).

Then we came to the parking space of the lower cable cart station, with some 20 minutes to walk to the cable cart itself. It reminded me of the carts that fell down on Pohorje in Maribor, just months before the end of its lifetime – with the new one being just moments from construction... but the Polish ones were yellow.

True, it was March and the snow was melting, but we were still high enough to expect a skier or two, but there were none… or the sown for that matter.

Well, there was a forest path with some white patches under the mud, which symbolized a cross country track,  and in the distance there was a rectangular toothpaste shaped white patch with a ski-lift resembling an imitation of a ski slope, but not even I, who do not ski, was fooled by it. Maybe our Danish colleagues were more easily convinced, after all, they come from a country where only skiers are drawn by boats.

Still, a trip to Klinček was worth it, for we got a real traditional Polish mean at a mountain lodge there and it really hit the spot. I ate fast and digested fast… it was tasty, but after the meal nature called – on the speed dial.

All in all it made ma quite happy to get to the hotel to rest and gather strength for the next day, even though it meant going down under – and I don’t mean Australia.
We went to the Polish underworld.

A still working Silver mine really fascinated me, although my feelings on the way there were somewhat mixed. It’s more then obvious that Poland really had an autocratic system, where an individual didn’t count for much, so seeing sights of abandoned, polluted or relocated people for the sake of industry, were not rare. If anybody has a comparison between their and our (Slovenian) communist era, it’s more then obvious Slovenia lived in wealth and freedom.

To my surprise the bus stopped at a parking space just by a forest and we went of. There was a forest trail in the middle of nothing. And suddenly we came to a round tower, reminding me of medieval warehouses, only it was too new… and there was nothing to store in it nearby, nor any people needing a storage in this forest. It was the gateway to the underworld.

From here we descended into the depths to the narrow corridors carved into the bedrock, that functioned as a water drainage for the mine (to prevent folding). We boarded narrow metallic boats that took us for the ride under the surface of the earth.

It’s hard to find words with which to describe the feeling of several tons of rock above you. I didn’t expect to find any life here, yet wherever there was an electric light, some flora started growing. But the arches, the miners built in the places where the ceiling could collapse, were very impressive. Even though they’d be in the dark and nobody would see them, they had decorations and even flowers there. Who knows what sad stories are behind these impressive structures, never meant to be the object of admiration and still made very beautifully.

Next we went to the mining museum, which wasn’t really much different from other similar museums in old mining shafts, except for the elderly dwarf coming to great us and telling us stories of the underworld – which I was only able tu understand by the help of the translations of our Polish colleges.

But the thing that really made me happy was a souvenir I’ve bought. It might sound silly, but it’s a 3D photo album of the mine. If you remember those colored red-blue glasses they used to have to watch 3D movies in the 80s, well it’s in that technique. And you really see objects on those pictures stand out so much, you want to stick your finger behind them on the leaf of paper – even though it’s not possible.

I’ll skip the presentations we had, it’s enough to say that the representatives came from three countries and that’s why we were there, but it’s interesting where those presentations were held. It was in a former school, that was now in private ownership (the building) and converted into a gallery. The combining theme for the art gallery was, to have works from local authors gathered there – regardless the artistic style. Hence there were naïve, almost childish like pictures there, along the cubist works, realistic expressions and highly abstract minimalistic paintings. All in all very impressive and worth a visit.

And then came the last day. Since our flight from Krakow was in the afternoon, we went to the city early, to gather as many impressions as possible.

We started under the castle at the statue of the dragon and continued up the hill. Naturally we went to every nook and cranny of the cathedral, ringing it’s bell, and right down to the lowest places in the tombs of Polish kings underneath it. It’s all very interesting, but I was slightly fed up with the guide, who kept trying to convince us how strong religion is in Poland and how the western world should praise them for being defender of the roman-catholic faith, who stood up to various non-believer from the east.

We went on to the covered markets, where naturally I had to buy a few more souvenirs and while thinking what to do next, we decided to take a horse and buggy ride and enjoy a two hour ride through the city. Luckily the driver spoke English, and I can’t say our Danish friends had the same luck and were probably somewhat sorry they borrowed the idea from us.

So we saw the window of the former pope, the University, the city tower gate, the paintings sold in the streets and the chaotic traffic, that made me wonder how come the horses are so meek and unfrightened of the cars passing by. But since you probably know Krakow from one of our previous issues of the Globetrotter, I’ll head back to the airport now, and fly back home.