Kids & Parenting
After completing my previous entry, Etchewska reminded me that I overlooked a detail from day one of our mini-expedition. Food. We didn’t go to bed hungry. Once we had secured a ‘bed’ for the night at Odrodzenie we headed outside to a balcony that overlooked the bonfire and party I mentioned earlier. After settling a small debate about which picnic table to sit, I cast off my load and flopped down heavily in a heap, exhausted. I don’t wear a watch, I never have, but a photograph of the clock on the railway station, Szklarska Poręba Górna, where our walk began showed 10 am. Beyond the overly bright lights of the balcony, it was pitch black. It must have been somewhere around 10 pm. Subtracting time for our chair lift cheat, the coffee that perked us up and the beer that nearly finished us off, leaves 8 hours. 8 hours of walking, of trudging, of grovelling at times, in the heat with heavy loads. No wonder we were curtains. My answer to fatigue was devouring every morsel of chocolate in our possession. Etchewska’s answer was considerably more sensible. Thoughtfully, despite her condition, apparently much worse than mine, she unpacked all the necessary equipment – burner, pan, Sporks – to make, wait for it, the pièces de résistance a wholesome dinner of boiled buckwheat and rehydrated vegetables, with tinned tuna thrown in for good measure. De-tinning the tuna was my responsibility and that didn’t go well. Just when I needed the ring-pull to work properly, it snapped clean off. Great. It’s funny how little things going wrong, when tired, can be disproportionately both annoying and demoralising. Without a can opener at hand, my half-baked idea to get at the protein was to push in the lid, which, as a useful by-product, would squash the fish down so I could drain the oil. It worked a perfectly. I managed to extract the lid without cutting myself. A minor victory. Those lids are sharp, watch out for ‘em. Whilst our feast was bubbling away, Etchewska, whipped off her shorts and replaced them with winter long’s there and then on the balcony. What do think Mikey? Is that an immutable law of being in the wilderness? Are discretion and inhibition inversely proportional to the distance travelled from the city limits? Maybe you’ll find that out for yourself one day. Etchewska saw that I was beginning to feel chilly too and offered me a spare pair of long-johns she had packed for that purpose. Warm but not toasty, dinner was finally announced as ready. I was starving, we both were. And then a peculiar thing happened, only a few Sporks into our meal we both decided that we weren’t hungry, at all. Maybe the chocolate was to blame. Maybe we were both overtired. Whatever the reason, we packed up and headed for the floor of the dining room and a good night’s sleep, or so we thought. And well, you know already what happened next…
*
Writing about our trip has made me feel thirsty. During the day, it was sweltering out there on that ridge. I’m now thinking about water. Cold flowing water. And because of that I’m now thinking about a medieval market square. It is connected, I promise. Loosely, granted. On my way to Tajne Komplety –a café bookshop, selling overpriced espresso –last Friday, where I meet a local academic for English conversations, I spotted a young boy chasing pigeons in the water fountain side of Rynek, a beautiful cobbled quadrangle in the centre of Wrocław. I guessed his age to by about 18 months, about your age the last time we saw each other. That boy looked a little like you too. His hair was dark, his skin olive coloured. Time for a little fatherly gloating. He wasn’t nearly as handsome as you though he did have a huge smile on his face racing around. When he realised he couldn’t get close to catching a pigeon he did something clever, that I’ve never seen anyone, least a boy his age do. He flopped to his bum, sat down and waited patiently for a pigeon to come to him. I chuckled to myself and imagined you might have done something similar. When a pigeon came close he pounced with all he had and landed square on his face with each attempt. A brave boy. He looked like a goalkeeper launching himself headlong to a save a ball powered into a corner of a goal. All his attempts failed. He didn’t come within a hairs width of catching a bird. Yet, he smiled, he laughed, he persevered. All admirable qualities.
I have mixed feelings about observing scenes like this one. I can’t prevent myself from looking. I’m drawn to them. They have a certain unavoidable gravity. I see you as the main player, always. I imagine how you might behave in similar circumstances and that brings with it pangs of regret. It brings with it anger and frustration and disappointment. Though I’d rather not admit it, it brings envy too. I envy all the other Papa’s who can have fun being with their children and watch them grow. But, none of those things prevented me from being thoroughly entertained by that little boy trying to bag himself a pigeon. I wonder how he would have reacted had been successful? Now there’s a thought.
Before going to back to our moan-tayne getaway, let me digress. Allow me to make a couple of observations about living in Wrocław. First, the people here rarely smile. Mostly, they wear down-turned rather than upturned lips. I call that post-communist face. I’ve been trying to perfect my very own with little success. Walking around with a sour face is hard work, so I adopt my usual smile. Second, everyone –and I do mean everyone, everyone, that is, except foreigners– waits to be told when to cross a road. Even in the absence of traffic, I see people waiting for a “green man”. It drives me bonkers. I feel like running up to them and shouting “Are you crazy? Can’t you see there’s no traffic?” I never do. Annoyingly, their lack of initiative has rubbed off on me. Now, I stand and wait in the presence of a “red man”, not a car or truck or tramwaj in sight. And that Mikey drives me even more bonkers. Tonight, on my way back from class I had to walk on a red man, otherwise I would have missed the 32 home. “I’m British damn it, I’ll walk where and when I want to walk, thank you very much” ran through my mind as I defied a rule that appears to be set in concrete. Both the concrete and that rule, no doubt part of the post-communist hangover. It was a small victory. To be fair, the Policja here, so I’m told, can and do fine people for “Jay walking.” In fact, the Policja, can and do fine people for all sorts of things they really shouldn’t. Etchewska was once fined for taking a short-cut across a grass verge. A strażnik, a city guard – a civilian form of police or Straz Miejska– argued that she was damaging the grass. Sharp a razor, Etchewska pointed the ground and offered the quick riposte “What grass?” There was no grass, it had all been worn away. She was fined, what was, for her, back then, the equivalent of half a days a work. Crazy.
*
After the worst night’s sleep in recorded history – nothing like hyperbole, the worse sleep in recorded history would most certainly be no sleep whatever, obviously– Etchewska and I collected our things and headed for the showers. They were warm and I think it’s fair to say that being washed clean of the previous days sweat was marginally re-vitalising. Before breakfast we decided to make our own coffee out on a balcony that offered views over the Moantaynes we had trudged the previous day. We spent some time trying to piece together where we had walked. I traced our route with my pointing finger over the trails we could see. What a view! And what a treat to have fresh percolated coffee, again. Out there, in the relatively crisp morning air I tucked into a first breakfast of yoghurt – warm but not off – with oats and a muesli bar. The hubbub from behind, reminded us that there was a hot breakfast to be had. For me that meant a second breakfast of jajecznica (scrambled eggs), with, according to the menu boczek (bacon) and szczypiorek (chives). In full that’s jajecznica na boczku ze szczypiorkiem. What a mouth a full! A pity then that szczypiorek was present and discarded; the boczek absent and craved. Polish eggs are a far cry from World Famous Scrambled Eggs (refer to Perfect Day, for a full description) but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. They were tasty and filled a cavernous hole. For Etchewska, it meant a first breakfast of –now, brace yourself –HOT APPLE PIE with a generous dollop of WHIPPED CREAM. You read it here first. Apple pie for breakfast and why ever not? Etchewska asks. I hope Mamma gives you healthier breakfasts than that me laddio. Over brekky we discussed the day ahead. Whilst my mind was fixed on making headway to see Samotnia from above, Etchewska suggested a small circular detour to begin our day. Another detour? Here we again, I thought. She wanted to check if two wiaty she had spotted on the mapa, existed in the real world and could be used for future mini-expeditions. Her detour meant walking down instead of up and I really wanted to walk up instead of down. Etchewska’s reasoning was sound, however. “If they’re there” she argued “then we could stay in one them for free next time.” Her suggestion of leaving our bags at the lodge swung it. I rather wish it hadn’t. Those first few steps took us down a steep graded path. My goodness Mikey. Each step tortured my body. The look on Etchewska’s face told me she was equally sore.
The Moantaynes in the Karkonoski Park Narodowy aren’t particularly high. It’s just that since being separated from you, my motivation for keeping fit, my interest in life in general, has ebbed to an all-time low. The world about me has lost much of its flavour.
Though our movements were slow and laboured, we smiled nonetheless, took in the morning, which was heating up fast, and trudged – as our tired bodies allowed – in search on those wiaty. Evidence of the first wiata was entirely absent out on the trail, in the real world. We trudged on some more. Only the foundation remained of the second wiata, not much use for sheltering from rain. It had been an unfruitful detour. Disappointed, we headed back up that steep graded path to pick up our gear from the lodge. Getting back up was just as difficult as getting down. We kept stopping for breathers, which did nothing to lift my spirits about the days walk ahead. It was going to long and arduous.
I had purposely packed my rucksack heavier on the second day than I had done on the first. I thought it might help Etchewska ascend the highly compacted contour lines of the first hill. I was wrong. That “crazy hill”, as Etchewska now refers to it, was steep, very steep, and long, very long. Or at least that’s how it appeared and how I remember it. Her suffering was evident early on. To help out, I hauled her rucksack again, which hurt exponentially more than it did the previous day. Still, I offered smiles through gritted teeth and offered words of encouragement between deep inhalations and exhalations. We were now on the main ridge, Śląski Grzbiet, again and somewhere before the highest point, Tepy Szezyt, at 1387 metres, it was becoming ever more difficult to carry my own ruck sack, as well as haul Etchewska’s over one shoulder. That approach was knocking me off balance. I was an over laden ship about to keel over. It put too much pressure on my right shoulder and my contralateral hip and leg. I decided, no insisted, a repack and exchange of rucksacks was in order. We removed anything that looked remotely heavy from one rucksack and crammed, shoved, squashed and squeezed it into the other. I tested the effects of my efforts by picking up the heaviest rucksack. I could barely lift the damned thing. Gulp. By comparison the lightest rucksack weighed almost nothing. For the remainder of our walk, Etchewska felt a tad guilty. I don’t know why. It was my hair-brained idea. I didn’t mind the extra weight a bit, it added to the challenge. I wanted to feel exhausted at the end. Okay, I admit it, I did mind a bit, just a little. But that’s how it goes out the trail, everything is played to the strengths of the weakest link. Easy in theory, difficult in practice. My turn to be that weak link another time.
As we walked along, the ridge once again offered specular views of the Polish side to the left and to the Czech side to the right. We greeted on coming walkers with “dzień dobry” – good day – who offered “dzień dobry” or “dobry dzień”, or something like it, in return. Puzzled with the latter response, Etchewska explained that that is how Czech people say hello. Humph, never heard that before. Etchewska, greeted younger walkers with “Cześć”, who reciprocated with the same greeting. I was too embarrassed to try. All my previous attempts to pronounce that word had failed miserably. It comes out sounding more like “chest” and that’s definitely not the correct way to say it. It should sound more like “chesh-ch”. Figure that out. Polish, Impenetrably difficult. Mikey, start learning now if you ever want to achieve anything like fluency.
Somewhere toward lunchtime, or soon after – I wasn’t sure of the exact time, the heat had befuddled my brain – fatigue coupled with a baking sun forced a much needed break. So tired, we didn’t even bother to find a spot much off the trail. We slumped to closest bit of grass we found. It felt good to sit, really very good. From that spot the Czech side was hidden behind the brow of a hill to our backs. The lower reaches of the Polish side, however, could be seen for miles. Sorry, scratch that, better be European here and use kilometres. Almost directly ahead, I could make out the small village of Przesieka and Zbiornik Sosnówka, a large lake, 10 km away, I guessed. Toward the right, or north-east, sat Karpacz, our ultimate destination which still looked a dauntingly long way off. Etchewska, offered me water and a Polish dried-cured sausage that looked like a reddish thin version of Kiełbasa (keow basa). I welcomed the water. The sausage didn’t go down so well. Sinking my teeth into the skin caused the fat, melted in the heat, to ooze out and dribble down my chin. Disgusting. Swallowing it was difficult. Taking a second bite was not an option.
*
That sausage reminded me – right there on the ridge – of the corned beef sandwiches Mum packed me up with on a school trip to Jodrell Bank, when I was 8 years old, or thereabouts. That was a hot day too. My mistake was to leave my school bag in the overhead rack of the coach during our class tour of the observatory. By lunchtime I was starving and ran to retrieve my butties, but I didn’t take a single bite. The inside of that coach, sat there in the car park, had reached oven-hot temperatures and beyond. Tin foil wrappings, encased my sarnies in a mini oven of their own, which augmented the effect. I took one look at my favourite type of butty, usually deliciously yummy, and almost puked. All the fat had dripped into the bread and created a soggy mush. Gross. The ground beef looked like it had been sneezed out by some terrifying dinosaur that expelled fiery red bogies instead of green ones. There’s my imagination running amuck again. No, conscious of that memory, I rejected the sausage as though it was the vilest bit of chow I ever tasted and grabbed handfuls of salted peanuts instead. Peculiar then, how, on that school trip I scoffed, without hesitation, an Orange Club and a Mars Bar, that had also melted into a gloopy mush on that coach. Kids.
*
It was that time again. Time to press on. I heaved myself, up, onto my feet and helped Etchewska find hers, or was it the other way around? The pattern of contour lines had changed. The path between our resting spot to the cirque ran mostly with rather than perpendicular to the contours. Had it not been for the heat, or the accumulation of fatigue, that should have made for easier walking. In reality it was only marginally easier than going up. The views of Wielki Staw –Great Pond –offered by the ridge when we got there were stunning. Courtesy of clouds, the water didn’t look nearly as blue as I Imagined. A little farther along the trail, I took refreshingly cold water from a moantayne stream – straight from the tap – and farther along still came my goal, the post glacial cirque of Kocioł Małego Stawu – Small Pond – and Samotnia, the lodge we intended to have our wedding ceremony just a month or so ago. If, if, what they say is true and a picture really is worth a thousand words, it would take the next two pages to describe how beautiful the view was from where we stood. So I’m not going to try. You’ll just have to take a look at the photographs we took, one day, that is, if Mamma ever releases her grip on you. We rested there for a while, to figure out if we could make it to Karpacz in time to catch a bus we needed for the first leg of our journey home. We weren’t sure. All we knew was that there was one short down-hill, followed by a short up-hill, followed by a particularly protracted and painfully steep down-hill. It was hot. We were tired. But we trudged on. We rested near the top of the first down. We cwtched up beneath the sun. I floated off into a half comatose state. We drank all the water we had, then, you guessed it, we trudged on down. We took a pee break at Strzecha Akademicka, a large lodge that sits above Samotnia. I was tempted to have a beer there….but resisted…that would have surely scuppered our plan to catch the 4 o-clock bus. So we kept on trudging down.
I made a brief reference to it earlier. With an unpronounced vastus medialis my legs are designed for ascents, not for descents. Every downward step off that Moan-tayne made my legs, but especially my knees wobble. A blister on the ball of my left foot added insult to injury. Things were looking difficult for Etchewska too. And she told me off a few times for walking too fast. Truth is, I didn’t have enough strength in my legs to stop myself from walking ‘too quickly’. I wasn’t as much walking down that moan-tayne as falling down…with style, or lack of it. In Toy Story – which I hope you’ve seen by now, young man – Woody makes a similar observation about Buzz’s apparent inability to fly, when he blurts out “That wasn’t flying that was falling…with style!” Hilarious. Dream Works genius at its best.
The last stretch of the trail was lined on both sides with spruce which offered welcomed shade. It was much cooler down there, thankfully. Streams on both sides gave the illusion it was cooler still, like the effect a red light of a fake fire has on room, but working in reverse. Eventually, finally, at long last, the tree-lined trail came to an end and gave way to a road. Etchewska’s fatigue was noticeable – mine too – so before plodding on we sat on bench for a while people watching. Without trees, without shade, it wasn’t long before we began to fry. So we moved on. Too soon, evidently. Only a few hundred meters later we needed another break. Then a little bit of heaven– a shop selling the Polish equivalent of Mr Whippy ice-cream, lody. We opted to share a tall spirally spire of chocolate and vanilla flavoured lody. Scrumptious, delectable, mouth-wateringly tasty, lip-smackingly delicious and cooooold.
Time was running short. So we trudged on and descended two of the steepest gradients yet. So steep I thought my knees might pop. When we arrived at the bus stop in Karpacz I made myself comfortable on the tarmac whilst Etchewska checked the timetable. As it turned out, our timing was impeccable. We had fifteen minutes to spare. The remainder of our journey home was relatively straightforward, with one exception. On the bus, in an attempt to move my rucksack out of other passengers’ way, Etchewska fell hard onto her behind, in the rear door-well. It sounds funny. The huge bruise it left was not. She still has it. My turn to feel guilty. At Jelenia Góra, we left the first bus for a connecting one…or at least that was the plan. To my right I noticed a sign that read “Jelenia Góra Zachodnia” and a building that looked like a railway station. Even though Etchewska had previously warned me about the infrequency of rail services in Poland, my hopes for train back to Wrocałw were high. My gut feeling about a train paid off, but only because it was late. Had it been on time, we would have missed it. We chased around for tickets. Etchewska, offered a bit of coaching whilst we stood on the platform, waiting. The train would be packed, she said, because “people are making their way back from the moan-taynes to the city, just like us” so we needed to be assertive to secure a seat. I may have taken her pep talk a bit too far. When the train arrived, I took a typically Polish approach – elbows out – and manoeuvred myself to front of a small crowd that had congregated around one of the carriage doors. Success. Two seats, one next the window, in the direction of travel, acquired. Though thankful, Etchewska, raised an eyebrow – in her usual way – at my uncompromising approach.
It was a long slow journey. That train crawled along at no more than 50kph in places. 50kph, in the 21st century, in Europe.
It was late by the time we arrived at Wrocław Główny. We were hungry, again. So we rounded off the day with gyros z frytkami i surówką (gyros with French fries and salad), and lashings of garlic sauce at a cheap place beneath the railway arches, near to Globis, where Etchewska works. After wolfing the lot down with gusto and cheating the dishwasher out of a job by leaving our plates spotlessly clean, we headed to Arkady Capitol and caught the 32 home. At hasta la vista stop, for those in the know – that’s Kolista for those out of the know – we alighted, walked through Queen Etchewska’s Park –recently damaged by summer storms – entered the secret code to open a high security gate, passed through it by order of the Queen herself, passed through two other doors, permission granted by royal ascent, climbed the stairs of the royal tower and opened the door to the place – or should that be palace? –we call home. In all, we had a terrific, if exhausting, weekend. One day, who knows? We might be lucky enough to share an adventure just like it…I’m ever the optimist, Mikey.
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