Wroclaw, Sulistrowice May 29-30

The previous day we had tackled the Polish phone system so now we decided to have a go at the post office so send back a few gifts and what not. It was not so hard as we feared and we got some help from some English speaking Poles along the way.

We had lunch at a cafeteria style vegetarian restaurant in the middle of the central plaza. While I stood with my tray waiting to pay, a tall, unshaven drunk man wedged his way in line beside me and mumbled something in Polish. I pushed by him, and then ignored him like the rest of the customers were doing. Later the same drunk staggered from table to table, sometimes yelling. Everyone ignored him. We kept waiting for someone to throw him out but know one did. Alcoholism is a problem in Poland.

Joan managed to get a decent connection to our friend the taxi driver and we arranged to meet at six. Now we had a bit of a problem because we were also suppose to meet Piotr and Lukasz that evening so we called them and put off our meeting until nine. It was amazing that in the previous 5 months we had had only two "social engagements" and now we had two on one night.

But the Taxi driver and his wife never showed up. We had agreed to meet at the campground so we knew that they knew where that was. But for some reason, they never showed. We cooked dinner for ourselves then went to meet Piotr and Lukasz.

The bar was very crowded so Piotr invited us all to drinks at his house. Piotr had driven so Joan, Lukasz and I rode our bikes in the dark to Piotr's. On the way Lukasz gave us a great tour. On an island there were some gorgeous churches lit by gas lamps. They looked great. He told us about the huge 1997 flood and the heroic efforts to save the town. He wasn't there though, he was camping (in the rain) at the time.

We stopped at a rare late night store to get some beer, chips, etc. As usual there was a line at the store and while we waited he pointed out the special line for taxi drivers, "the vodka line." If you're partying and run out of vodka, you can call a cab that will pick up the vodka and take it to your home. You pay the normal price for the vodka and for the cab ride from the store to your house. Actually, you can have anything the store sells delivered this way, not just vodka.

Piotr lived in his family's great apartment. We ordered pizzas and drank beers and had a great time. Lukasz showed us hilarious pictures of a canoe camping trip with some friends. They had stuff strewn all over the river bank like the aftermath of a tornado and it all came out of just a couple of canoes. It looked exactly like one of my family's trips. In fact, Piotr and Lukasz seemed like family. We felt like we had known them a long time.

We had so much fun, they wanted to ride with us out of town the next morning. So at ten a.m. they met us at the campground. First we were going to go to Lukasz's house for breakfast then ride out. Lukasz gave us another city bicycle tour on the way to his parents.

There's a very pretty park called South Park near his parent's house. He said the park was largely built by a Jewish business man as gift for the city. Later Nazis forced him to build couple of buildings. He had no choice - unless he did it he and his family would have been immediately sent to the concentration camp. They were murdered in the camp during WWII and Nazis took everything they owned.

Lukasz also pointed out a whore house. It was in a fairly normal looking house with a crude plastic image of a dancing girl above the door.

Lukasz threw one incredible breakfast feast. Brunch feast really. We stayed until well into the afternoon. The bread and honey was particularly great. We lingered over coffee, some more bread and honey, more coffee, a little more honey. Probably the best meal we had in Poland.

Finally we got going and by then it was too late for Piotr and Lukasz to join us.

On the way out of town we passed a big mall with huge stores like Office Depot.

Then we got on some really pretty, light traffic roads. Tons of other cyclists passed us on their way back to the city. Two guys flagged us down. One of them had a brand new bike, a week old, but had just run over a thumb tack. They had no patch kit so I fixed the tube for them. They were about 22 years old and just finishing some sort of electronics degree. We helped them with an English vocabulary list that had the dreaded phrasal verbs. These are phrases like "get out" in which the meaning of the phrase if different than the meaning of the individual words. They also had phrases like "pros and cons."

There was one English word they taught us: Effo which, they claim, is an acronym for eat fast and fuck off, referring to certain kinds of restaurants. There American teacher said it was a word.

They had just finished telling us they didn't know what they would have done if we hadn't helped them when a former professor of theirs rode past. He probably could have helped them too.

They were a little pessimistic about their chances of getting a job in Poland but they had friends who had found jobs as far away as Ireland and they were willing to go.

We camped next to a small lake. The man who ran the campground was distinctly drunk when we arrived. He had a lot of trouble adding up the price. For once we had company in a campground. It was the weekend and there for a handful of other tents and several bungalows had been rented. Unfortunately, the men's room was closed for some reason. The men were supposed to share the ladies' room. But no one seemed to have told the ladies. I had several awkward moments.

Then in the middle of the night we woke up to a ruckus outside out tent. People were yelling. Then just outside the tent was a very drunk, loud, deep, desperate voice, "IVAN!!! VODKA!!" He yelled it over and over and over.

Some of the other tent dwellers seemed to be yelling at him to go away and eventually he did.

Next: Poland Chapter 7 - The Quarry

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