Tag: Poland

Vacationing in ovens

Because most of summer was spent gentrifying our kolonistuga — forcing spiders to move out of the house by redecorating — there was neither much money nor time to plan any vacationing outside of Gothenburg. So the trip to Poland at the end of summer was going to be a “working holiday” before fall-work would start. Sara was doing lights for Goat, and one of the tour stops was OFF Festival outside Katowice. I was enrolled to document the show, so figured I’d visit dad in Warsaw before heading down south.

The whole trip went off without a hitch; not so much as a train delay during the whole week! Incredible, really, but it turns out that when you book hotels through one of those “meta-reservations” websites, those reservations are real things! The times we live in, I tell you it’s magic. (Spying and commercial magic, but still magic!)

I spend a couple of days with dad and his family in Warsaw, and then leave for Krakow where I meet up with Sara. The weather is broken: It’s silly hot, the papers talk about a record with 38°C, and most of the days are spent jumping from shadow to shadow, pressing cold drinks againsts sweaty bodies. It did not help.

We stay at Cafe Młynek, and I’m in playing at “spoiled vegan” by stuffing my face with latkes. We drink water, walk, chill out in the contemporary art museum in their “chill-out” lounge until a grumpy lady chases us out because we’re too chilled-out. (Polish service-mindedness has never been a particularly prominent trait, but it’s still surprising how assholish people are — “the service industry” is an euphemism for something completely different in Poland.) And then we walk some more, consider doing bungie jumping but end up too hung over to bungie anything.

[x_video_embed no_container=”true”][/x_video_embed]

Once we’re in Katowice we get our passes to the festival and start to get acquainted with the setup. It’s the most controlled event I’ve been at in Poland, and certainly the most tightly controlled festival. You drink thither, you listen to music hither, should you take drink from thither to hither you will be fined 100 Euros. The only accepted currency are either 2.5 zloty paper tokens, or 50 zl prepaid Mastercards. And there’s no easy way to find out how much credit you have left on your card, so you end up holding up the food queues while going through the four cards in your pocket, trying to guess which one had 5 zloty left and which one had the remaining 2.5 zloty. And for this money you could only buy Grolsch beer, as they were one of the main sponsors. Happily, you were free to wear any shoes you wanted, despite the Converse sponsorship and event-tent.

We watched some of the obligatory big acts, and most of them were meh, with Smashing Pumpkins leading the pack by a stunning illustration of “phoning it in.” Goat got a great reception and I got some good pictures. Piotr Kurek and Metz were nice, and along with Mikky Blanco there were plenty of smaller acts which were fun to hear. Thinking back on it, I’m not sure if anything stick out particularly, and there’s nothing new from the festival that found it’s way onto my music player, but the whole event was enjoyable in a responsible, adult way. Also, I found these vegan cheese doodles which were just awesome.

Only setback of the trip was that Air Berlin has misplaced Saras luggage on the way down, and in order to stay in character they misplaced both our luggage on the way home. Once we got the stuff back a week later it was soaking wet — apparently they store lost luggage in a pool of stagnant water — and what wasn’t ruined was moldy and had to be washed. The vegan snacks had survived though, so one week after homecoming I could sit back, gorge on doodles, and reminisce about an excellent trip back to the home country.

Vacation revisited: Poland

So, just the other day when I and Sara got back from our two week vacation in Poland, I thought I’d put up a short post with a video of the trip. No less than one and a half month later, here it is! We flew to Warsaw, stayed with my dads family there, then off to Kraków, Sanok, Polańczyk and then home by way of Warsaw again.

There are many “firsts” with Sara, and travelling with a girlfriend through my childhood vacation memories was another, very pleasant, one. As a kid I relied on being led, fed and amused by parents and other adults, and now an adult myself (34 being the age at which you’re no longer considered a teenager in Sweden) and sort of responsible for navigating for the two of us, it’s both empowering and odd having to make sense of buss tables and booking hotels. I’m not used to it, is what I mean to say, but it all went well with nary a fuckup.

[x_video_embed no_container=”true”][/x_video_embed]

Polish food was a hit, and Kraków had some good local cousine in vegan variety as well. As a rule, I am weary of the places which marked themselves as “vegan fusion” as too often you’ll get soulless food modelled on what the chef imagined would look the most holistic with little regard for taste. Culinarily I don’t approve of being lumped together with people who wear their chakra on their sleave, so once we found Café Młynek, with their potato pancakes and breakfast platter, I overate catastrophically once and overspend the other times we ate there.

Even though not vegan, the remaining milk bars in Poland are as campy and wonderful as I remember them, and both pierogi and żurek were things I promised Sara we’d learn how to make once we got home.

A feature which I don’t recall from childhood were all the arachnids; The whole country was covered by spiders, big spiders, and from Warsaw to Polańczyk we kept taking pictures with our fingers perilously close for measurement. Perhaps they were to thank for the utter lack of mosquitos, but if I’d have had a phobia the whole trip would’ve been a nightmare. I don’t kid, there were spiders hiding behind the spiders even.

In Sanok, my city of birth, we stayed with my aunt Barbara. She got one of her friends to guide us by car through the countryside to show some of the more interesting Eastern Orthodox churches left, and the oldest one we saw was also the most spectacular, or at least it’s location; it was a good ten minute climb to get up there, and just imagining how people hundred years ago would have had to make the trek up there in the dark of winter for christmas mass, or on any rainy Sunday, painted a very vivid image.

Beksiński also had the good taste of being born in Sanok, and we visited the new wing of the museum dedicated to the works donated after his murder. For the first time I also spent some time with the orthodox icons and iconostasis at display, learning the difference between Hodigitrian and Eleusan icons of Mary and the child Christ.

Along with the museum, a lot of the infrastructure has been improved in the city. The main square has been dolled up, and each evening we’d see wedding photographers shooting one bridal couple after another by the colourful fountains and lit façades.

We visited Polańczyk for one night and it was far less lively than it used to be. Perhaps it was a question of timing, or perhaps the small village at the foot of the Carpathians has seen a shift towards family vacationing, but bars started closing around eleven. We stayed in one of the multi-storied sanitaria which were the original tourist trade, and what ten years ago was slightly warmed over communist brutalism, now had been restored into something between kitch and living museum. They are sanataria in the classic sense, offering a multitude of treatments, diets, analyses and soothing walks in the forest. One of them even offered cryotherapy chamber therapy, which means you spend a couple of minutes in a room at -150°C. It’s supposed to have rejuvenating qualities, but unfortunately they only do it once a day and we were too late to join the group.

The sanatoria are immensely popular, and while we were trying to get a room walking in off the street, one of the places had no vacancies for the next six months. So I’m proposing to get a bunch of people together next summer, book a two week stint at one of these sanatoria, and freeze our balls off in the beautiful Carpathians.

My first vacation as an adult went swimmingly. Now that I know that I can do it, I want to go again.

Wednesday: a day, well, spend

In any other city I wouldn’t hesitate to move about, but here in Warsaw I have old habits and they are difficult to break. My expensive Apple phone finally became useful with some creative use of offline maps and the GPS, and me and Tomasz managed to bus about with a minimum of confusion and lost time. Tomorrow we’re heading to a barn and then to a commentator for an interview; we’re actually watching the guy on TV right now, and I’m trying to come up with a lighting strategy. Somehow, it’s far simpler to tell other people how to take pictures than to improvise yourself, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

The Internets did lie to me as for the weather – I was told, in no uncertain terms, that there’d be 8 degrees and sunny today, but I really should have packed something besides my optimistic jacket. Also, I ought to be a better brother to my brother and get him a present, seeing as it’s his birthday today. (Which reminds me that I missed Matildas birthday three days ago. Oh well, I guess we’re even now)

[x_video_embed no_container=”true”][/x_video_embed]

We go to country. No, other country

Fridges are ultimate todo-lists, I’ve discovered. I’m going to Poland for a couple of days with my brother. I haven’t been for a while except for funerals, so it’s a good change of pace tagging along to something which is less depressing. I don’t know how I’ll fit all the orders for Zubrowka, but I’ll manage somehow. I might be difficult to get hold of, but SMS ought to work as usual. If there are requests, I might upload video and stuff! How about that!

Well, fuck. Sorta.

When my paternal grandmother died last spring, we stopped by in Sanok to check in with my fathers father. Although not totally estranged, the relationship wasn’t very cordial and he hadn’t yet met dads second wife of fifteen years, nor their kids. The meeting was short and somewhat strained, but since grandfathers refusal of taking chemotherapy had left him with only a handful of months to live, dad thought he’d make an effort.

The previous occasion that I’d spoken to him had been almost ten years ago. Dad called me up on Iceland while visiting grandfather who had taken ill, and asked that I talk with him. I told shortly of what I was doing and where I was, and he sounded very weak and grateful that I’d taken the time to speak with him. The stories I’ve heard about him has him pegged as a dick, and perhaps illness had brought awareness of this to the foreground.

Regardless of his feelings, he died two weeks ago from metastasized cancers. When we met him in spring he had a brisk step and keen, albeit weary eyes. He’d cut back on the amount of work and now went to his tailors studio only to keep himself occupied during the days. He was living with a woman who cared for him, and if he was wanting for anything it was certainty that he’d die with dignity, which he’d found lacking as of late.

When I last saw him, I was ten or twelve. He gave my brother a straight razor and me a paratrooper knife. “When the Russians attack at least you can take one with you” he said. Mom confiscated the razor. I used the knife when I parachuted ten years ago, but have not killed any Russians. My brother went to the funeral a week ago, while I stayed at home, tied to work, sending my regards to those left behind, and from afar.

Now both my parents are without parents.

Funeral. Photography as coping mechanism.

After four days of travel to and from the funeral, I’m back in Gothenburg. Playing chess in granmas room felt odd with her not present, and suddenly every medicin and picture on her dresser took on new meanings. The blanket I’d used as a backdrop for her portrait was on her bed, and our youngest half-brother was sitting on it, dispensing dubious chess advice.

Once in Sanok, seeing relatives I hadn’t seen for years was truly a memento mori moment — gray hairs, walking canes, half-serious comments of “it’s us next” over dinner and photo albums. The jovial uncle who used to tell dirty jokes now tells of the dirty jokes he told the nurses when recovering from surgery.

Below are all the pictures I took in chronological order. I don’t know what grandma would have thought of the video, but she might’ve asked if doing it hadn’t made me hungry, and perhaps I ought to have some dumplings.

A bit of a rain, err, storm

With temperatures in the 40s, and with humidity that can only be described as totally fucked up atlantic, it was with desperate joy that I received todays short storm. And it really was a storm – during 30 minutes it literally poured down, making cars go “sploosh” through deep puddles.

Now it’s warm as hell again, and twice as humid. It’s bloody unbearable. I’m actually dripping with sweat and my pants feel like I’ve pissed myself!

—————update—

Here’s a video of the rain from the increadible stifling heat of the office. This is some ten minutes into the storm; it’s worth remembering that just ten minutes prior the temperature was in the almost-forties and not a drop of water in sight (if you don’t count all the miserable sweat, of course).

Bumb-ily-bumop-bymop-bumpup – a busride

I visited my cusin in Cracow the other day, and we ended up sitting in pubs watching football; Occasionaly I danced like a god (like a god I tell’s you!). Nice city, nice cusin. One night when we took a bus home to the subs I just had to capture the busride – the bumpiest parts where those that promted me to take out the camera. Trust me, before I started filming it was [——–this——-] much more bump.

If I could only find a way to work here, I’d consider moving for a while.

Travels of a sweaty gentlemen

Today is the first day that the weather has relented somewhat. It’s still almost 30 in the shade (that’s 86 degrees Fahrenheit for you metric-challenged) and the humidity is still horrible, but it’s getting better. (Or I’m getting accustomed to it)

Whichever way, I’m not going to Poland in the summer again. Ever, ever.

Caught a cold in Warsaw, and today is the first day that I’m not actually making diesel-engine sounds when I breath. Yesterday it was 48 degrees in the sun (118F). What the flying hell on a shit!

I’m keeping indoors until sundown. (Yesterday, after the sun went down, it was still 30 outside, btw.) Tomorrow onwards to Krakow to meet up a cousin.

As a result of my hiding, I’ve been online a lot and downloaded a pdf of Neil Strauss “The Game” — his biography of pickup artists and his way to becoming one as well. Fun read.

Other than that. I still haven’t found a good PC app to resize & crop images, so if anyone has any to recommend, let me know. I do take pictures occasionally, but can’t be arsed to download the drivers that would let windows recognize a stupid SD card. Stupid computer.