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Sorry for the delay. I've had other things to do.
Here's my first week in Poland :) I'll put up some photos at somepoint...
27th Dec:
Arrive at Prestwick airport to see that the airport slogan is 'PURE DEAD BRILLIANT'. Think about going home again or flying from a different airport...
Ryan air have a horrific colour scheme...It's like IKEA inside their planes. The seats are as hard as rock and I don't get much sleep on the journey over. Ritchie does though as 'I can sleep anywhere' and it's pretty much true...
Arrive in Kraków at 11.30am local time and get a taxi into the centre of Kraków from an over friendly taxi driver called Hendryck. Russ gets the brunt of his over friendlyness by receiving friendly punches on the arm every 5minutes! He drops us off near the main square and we try and find the accomodation that the friendly tourist lady in the airport organised for us. We fail and end up going into a pub and enjoying our first pint of Polish beer (in Poland...)
The waitress picks up on the fact that we speak English and then talks to us in English the whole time we're there. A few comedy hours later (mainly involving Ritchie going to the loo and being asked for 1zlote by a 'random scary woman' so he could take a piss...) we head off to the accomodation we have for that night. Turns out it's 2 apartments with the same front door which is cool. We dump our stuff and then head off out in search of some more pubs.
End up in an Irish and an English pub...in Poland. Decide this was a silly idea and head in search of the train station...This is found eventually and we wait for Anna's train to arrive. Her train gets in at 8.06pm and it's all very lovely when Ritchie and Anna are re-united :) We take her back to the apartment and then decide (after what seems like an age) that we should go to get something to eat.
We eat at Sioux, which is just round the corner from where we're staying, and then head back to the apartment. I have another phone call to Marcin persuading him and Konrad to come to Kraków the next day and then feel decidedly sick...so I throw up the meal I've just had...Eventually get to sleep after a good chat with Russ.
28th Dec:
Wake up at 9.30am and get in the shower. We need to be out of the apartment by 11am ish and the task of finding another place to sleep commences! Several phone calls later, Anna has booked 6 beds for the coming night in a hostel (I love hostels) and we're off to locate the hostel.
A few phone calls later and Marcin's telling me that he's not coming to Kraków with Konrad. Anna makes a phone call to Konrad and it's left hanging in suspense for a while so we go off to Wawel Castle. It's a bit 'WOW' that place as it's so huge and there's so many different styles of architecture. It's lovely and jumbled up :)
Receive a phonecall from Marcin announcing that him and Konrad are on the train to Kraków- I do a little dance of happiness. We head towards the main square and Ritchie buys a hat. It's extremely sexy ;) We then go into Pub Populary where Ritchie has his first warm beer. It's interesting to say the least...I give up on my vodka and Russ drinks it for me.
Then it's up to the main square where I find Marcin and Konrad and run over to them and give them both massive hugs. Konrad has longish hair and looks really silly :)
After a bit of wondering, we head to a pizza place and enjoy a pizza and (most of) a beer. We pop into a number of underground bars but they keep on making us sleepy! Eventually we find a nice underground bar with 'clean' air and interesting decor. A fair bit of vodka and beer later, we're all a bit sloshed and decide it's time to head back to the hostel...and get alcohol on the way. Ritchie and Anna head off to the hostel without me, Marcin, Russ and Konrad while we hunt for booze. After not having much luck, Marcin asks a random homeless guy if he can tell us where to get alcohol and he takes Marcin by the arm and leads us to a shop! Extremely funny...he then stands in the shop with us and waits until we leave. Luckily, he doesn't follow us :) Back in the hostel, we notice that Ritchie and Anna aren't back yet...because Ritchie went the wrong way!! Hahahahahahahahahahahaha, he got lost and even after Anna asks him the ultimate question- "Do you actually know where you're going?"- he continues to go the wrong way. They make it back though but it's straight off to bed for them...No vodka needed thanks.
The vodka we drink is disgusting and Marcin trys to blame it on the lemon (really!). So after polishing off a few shots of the evil vodka, we head to bed. Marcin and Konrad laugh about the word 'Pita' which translates to 'dick' as well as a few other things. They're such kids :)
29th Dec-3rd Jan:
Anna, Ritchie, Russ and I spent this period of the holiday in Zakopane (gorgeous mountain town in the Tatras).
Marcin and Konrad left the hostel in the early hours of the morning to head back to Rzeszow. We then headed off to the train station and got on a train to Zakopane. 4hours later we're all suffering from a sore bum, freezing fingers and lack of sleep (not Ritchie since he can sleep anywhere). Eventually we get into Zakopane and get a taxi up to our accomodation. We were greeted by the owner of our accomodation and shown to our rooms. There was some indecisiveness but then it was all sorted and everything was ok! Took a wonder into town to try and find somewhere to eat but everywhere apart from this crappy 'self service' cafe was busy. So we ended up in crappy 'self service' cafe where, once again, I had perogi.
Headed back to our rooms and were told by the owner that her son would take us for snowboarding lessons the next day. Half price lessons, can't complain :)
(30th) Had planned to go for an early morning stroll but that was shat upon and the alarm was set to snooze. 10am came around and it was off to the slopes with Seb, our personal snowboarding instructor. We ended up at the Nosal ski-slopes and hired gear before setting on up the beginners slope and getting strapped into our snowboards. First problem: I couldn't get up. Stupid boots that you can't move in! Anyway, got up after a pull up from Seb. We spent the next 4.5hours snowboarding. Russ got the hang of it pretty quickly and did quite well...apart from controlled stopping :) Ritchie and I struggled a bit more, me the most as I'm crap! Wiped out a couple of times much to my own amusement.
Later that day, we went out for tea to a restaurant called something like 'the Singing Highlanders'. Enjoyed a greasy potato pancake with mushroom sauce and watched Russ and Ritchie eat a tiny portion of meat! :)
Got back to our rooms for a quiet night which turned into a drinking session with the people from next door. Lovely people, very interesting but slightly crazy...
(31st) Woke up the next day feeling stiff as fuck and decided it'd be a better idea to go ski-ing (since I can ski!). Headed off in search of a random ski slope which involved trying to get past a mean dog but didn't manage. Eventually got to the slope and hired ski's out of someone's garage! Anna and I had a great time on the slope while Ritchie and Russ went back to the 'main' road to get snowboards. They came back eventually and amused me greatly with their attempts getting on the pommas. Admitting defeat, they walked up the slope and completely knackered themselves out. I managed to twat a pomma off my knee to my delight and had a corker of a bruise the next day. A few hours of ski-ing later and we decided to call it a day.
Got back to the rooms and had a nap before going and stocking up on booze. Spent the next few hours getting rather drunk and avoiding crazy Polish 'men' with toilet brushes before heading back to Nosal for the firework display. The 4 of us ended up sitting on top of a giant mound of snow, drinking (and loosing) beer, singing songs, attempting to take steady photos of fireworks and generally being pissed as farts. Then it was back to the rooms to celebrate Scottish New Year wrapped in tartan blankets :) Before we could do this however, Russ and I had the delight of seeing Ritchie's penis!!!!!! A rather unfortunate event...(for a graphic telling of this rather unsettling memory, get in touch with me) Ritchie later claimed it was the 'tip of the iceberg', all I can say is, I bloody well hope so So, suitably drunk, it was off to bed.
(1st) New Year! Headed into town to have an explore and ended up walking through a market place. So many things to see and buy! Walked past an area where people were selling dogs!!!! Russ and I wanted all of them, they were all so cute, however, I think customs would have had something to say about it. Then we had the fun of experiencing Polish queuing etiquette (or lack of!) as we waited in line to go up a rather large mountain in a train-like device. The view at the top was rather disappointing due to the crappy mist/fog/cloud that was hanging over Zakopane, still, I'm glad we went up as it was very nice.
Once we made our way down, we headed to Sphinx restaurant to get something to eat. Queued for a little while to get a seat but it was worth it. I enjoyed a portion of lumious pasta and then had the change to admire the rather attractive waiter and cute messy haired chef while Ritchie and Russ waited for AGES for their food. The waiter pretty much forgot about their order...I'm sure I heard Ritchie's stomach rumbling!
(2nd) Russ and I headed back into town again to pick up some postcards and touristy things before we left our rooms and journied back to the train station. Upon arriving there, we were told that the route we were planning to take from Zakopane to Torun wasn't actually running until sometime in Febuary (I think)...So! That was our plans shat on. Instead, we were told to get a train from Zakopane to Katowice and then from there onto Torun. (Bearing in mind that Russ and Anna had been told by one of the crazy people next door that Katowice station is extremely dangerous and people would stab you with AIDS riddled needles if you didn't give them money...I didn't want to go there) So, we clambered across the railtracks to get to our platform and waited with the other hundreds of people to catch the train. It eventually arrived and everyone just heaved for the doors. I kid you not! There were people climbing in (and out) of windows, putting bags through windows and later Russ told us that some guy was using his bag as a battering ram to get thru the crowd! Eventually, Anna and Russ (who had gone on the train in a vague attempt to get seats) got off and we admitted to defeat. Instead, we exchanged our tickets for a different train the next day and after a quick phone call to the woman who owned the rooms, went back up to the chalet to sleep.
(3rd) This day is a blur of trains, stations (in particular Warsaw train station), being tired and grumpy on the train and interesting food. We arrived in Torun (in the North of Poland) around 7pm and were greeted by loads of our friends from the farm, which was simply lovely They then took us to a lovely pub where we enjoyed a few beers and caught up.
After a few beers, it was time to head back to our respective flats- Russ was staying with his girlfriend Milena in her friends flat (Tomas and Zaneta) while Ritchie and I went to stay in Pawel and Maya's flat (which was extremely lovely!). Anna stayed at a friends...
That's all for now.
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