blogg

Nowy Sącz... how did I get here?

The last time I posted we had arrived in Poland and settled in our lovely little bed and breakfast with a mountainside view, played a show to a nearly empty field of grass and after a good night's rest we were to leave early in the morning the next day, early meaning 9:30am, for Kraków. With us we had two passengers who needed to be dropped off on on the way. First we dumped my friend David J. off in a small city whose name roughly translated means golden-snout-town and our second passenger, Pastor D. we left behind a short while later in a nearby town whose name is not as much fun to translate. We were finally on our way to the historic capital of Europe for 2011.

Had I gone to sleep early the previous night I would have enjoyed the sights and sounds of the Polish countryside. I went to bed late and instead slept most of the way there on the triple seat in the back of our people mover. Although more comfortable than I expected it proved to be a poor substitute for a stationary bed and I kept on drifting out of bizzare dreams and fantasies the whole time.

Polish roads while present and usable are far from comfortable. Potholes and cranks aplenty reduce your average speed from what should be around 120 km/h to something like 60 or 75 km/h and a trip which would have taken 3 hours in Canada turns to 4.5 or 5 hours. By the time we got to Kraków we had been travelling for about that long and I was glad to be out of the van and even though it was raining I was glad to be on my feet and walking. 

We were running late for a lunch with the director of AVC, the organization that made our entire trip possible, but it was forgivable given the atmospheric conditions. We arrived at the restaurant in shorts, tshirts and wet flip-flops - little did we know it was the oldest and one of the most prestigious eateries in all of Kraków, if not Poland - the punk rocker in me was thrilled to be rocking flip-flops in a restaurant kings dine in. The food was amazing and the service was top notch. We ate, we drank and a good time was had by all. The director joked that it was compensation for the gastronomical atrocities we endured in the Czech Republic.

We left Kraków in a hurry. We were on our way to play a show that evening afterall and time was not our side. Arriving at the location we were late again but we got our instruments in tune and started to play. We were in the middle of a playground in a park. Kids swarmed the teetertotters, swings and climbers. Parents hovered about and some youth from the local church watched over a trampoline as the little tykes bounced around inside. The sky threatened us with a downpour but only a few drops here and there ever made it to the ground.

After the show Tomek, our bass player offered to take me and the guitar player, Dave, for the night to his inlaws' in Nowy Sącz where he was staying with his wife. Given our track record this was the wiser choice, who knows what kind of 1/2 star motel we could have ended up in that night. We slept well that night.

Local Graffiti Nowy Sącz, PL