It turned out that the nature reserve
wasn’t the best place to camp the night before, as Polish truck driver never
stop going up and down road until 2am.
It’s strange to think that the Polish
economy is so poor considering the truckies work all hours of the night. Then
again, maybe they aren’t working but trawling for something else.
We were all up early due to the restless
sleep and got off in pouring rain. In fact along with the trucks, it seemed
that the rain didn’t stop all night.
Our destination for the day was Warsaw as
we were picking up Michael and Caitlin (the relief troops), who had just flown
from Australia to Heathrow and then jumped on another plane to our
grandfather’s homeland of Warsaw!
The drive was quite smooth as we managed to
drive down a new highway between Lodz and Warsaw. It was so new in fact that
Google hadn’t been made aware of it, nor many other Polish drivers.
We got into Warsaw and near the airport
well ahead of schedule, so parked up in the nearest McDonalds had some lunch
(in our van), used their internet and toilets then buggered off to the airport.
The reception at the airport wasn’t as
dramatic as anticipated as I had to stay in the van in a dodgy parking spot
right outside arrivals, while Claire and Mum made their way inside. Mum and
Claire waited outside the arrivals hall for a fair amount of time, only to find
that Michael and Caitlin had exited from a different area and had found them.
After we loaded everyone and their luggage
into the van, we made our way towards the Warsaw campsite we had booked for the
next 2 nights. Michael and Caitlin had not travelled to Europe before, so it
was quite the eye opener landing straight into Poland and being subjected to
their driving.
It was also the first time Michael had been
in a car driven on the ‘wrong’ side of the road, so with the combination of
Polish driving he quickly woke up from his jet lag.
Riding shotgun, Michael added value to the
team very early by spotting Polish Skelp close to the campground
(supermarket/shop). We then took them inside to be dazzled by the sights,
sounds and smells of Marco Polo where you can get horse for half the cost of
chicken and Vodka for $6.00 AUD.
After checking into the campsite, we
unpacked and made our selves comfortable for the next 2 nights also getting
stuck into a couple of cans while we did so.
As our new arrivals were still a little
tired from the flight we decided to relax at the campground and cook up a BBQ
dinner of Peri-Peri chicken filets (6 huge filets for $4.00 AUD), salad and
potatoes.
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| Polish BBQ from Sklep |
Michael and Caitlin were up early due to
the sun coming up sometime between 4-4:30am and also the camping mats we
provided were on the thinner side of comfortable after a 36 hour journey. It
was also Caitlins birthday, so I suspect she may have been a little excited to
be awaking in a foreign country on her 27th birthday J
 |
| At the Bus stop catching their breath, after we made them run for bus we were on time for anyway. |
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| Warsaw Euro 2012 Stadium 'Go Polska!' |
Our first stop was outside the Warsaw
Football stadium, which was hosting the Euro 2012 cup games and final. This was
also the reason why our campsite and all hotels/apartments had gone up 10-15
fold since we were last there.
After a couple of shots outside the
stadium, we jumped on a tram into the old town to wander around and see not
only the spots Claire, Mark and I had visited before but allow Mum to point out
some places that she knew our Grandfather had attended or commented on (i.e.
Warsaw University).
Heading towards Old Town on a sunny afternoon.
 |
| Checking the football scores in the Stare Miasto. |
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| Timing the shot infront of the Warsaw Palace. |
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| Outside Warsaw University where Waclaw Borkowski (Matthew, Mark, Luke and Michaels Grandfather) attended before the war. |
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| Cruising through Old Town. |
We soon tired and decided to stop for lunch at a local Polish pub and restaurant for a light lunch, which consisted of a fair amount of beer and local delicacies of Bigos for at least a few of us.
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| 'Nastrovia' |
After lunch the team split as Claire and I headed over to the town of Praga to leave the rest of the gang to visit the Warsaw Uprising Museum. As we had been directing everyone around town during the morning, we pointed out where we were and where they needed to head to.
As Claire and I were travelling on the
train towards Praga, engrossed in conversation we quickly stopped when we both
saw one of the strangest sites you will ever see in the middle of a major city.
Was it a nude homeless man doing his best to celebrate a Polish win, or
possibly a giant lizard making it’s way through town destroying everything in
its path.
No.
It was a couple of big fucking Brown Bears!
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| The BBBBbbbbbiiiiigggggg Bears! |
Claire and I arrived back at camp later in
the afternoon and got some “chores” done while we waited for the rest of the
team to get back.
It soon moved on to about 6pm and we had
finished our “chores”, but were still missing the intrepid travellers.
As I sat outside enjoying a beer, I saw a
very hagged Michael and Caitlin drag themselves past the front gate, followed
10 minutes later by an even more hagged Asylum Seeking Sloth.
It turns out that there had been a bit of a
‘balls up’ when getting the bus home to the campsite. Michael went into a fit
of hysteria within a minute of getting on the bus, as he didn’t recognize the
route they were travelling on from the morning and decided to hit the stop
button, much to Caitlin and Mums objection.
This error in judgment, quickly escalated
as they then got on to the wrong bus, then soon realized that they were in fact
on the right bus in the first place and the next would not be passing through
for another 30 minutes.
I’m not sure what was said to Michael
during the space of that 30 minutes but he came back a pretty deflated young
man and proclaimed that he would never argue about navigation or directions
with Caitlin again. Always a good argument to get out early in a couples trip
around Europe.
As it was Caitlins birthday, we went out
for a celebration dinner. We all
scrubbed up and booked a taxi, as the thought of catching another bus was all
too much. We lead Linda to believe that
we were to caching the bus again, only to surprise her that we had ordered a
polish maxi taxi. You should have see
her face- priceless.
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| The Birthday Girl. |
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| Mother and Son. |
We arrived back in Old town Warsaw and settled at a Italian restaurant for dinner. We would of like to have gone alfresco style but the Euro Cup 2012 was on and all seats were taken. We enjoyed pizza and drinks by the fascinating mirrored toilet instead.
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| Luke investigating the photographic angles of the bathroom. |
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| Having a great time with the birthday girl. |
We wanted to have a ride on the beer bus but Linda was clearly shattered from the day’s events and we all agreed to take her home as it would be inhuman to keep her out. We took a few snaps to finish the night up (note the one where Luke is standing on Michaels head taking a Screamer!) and grabbed another taxi home.
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| An end to a great night. |
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| As above - standing on Michaels head with the dukes out. |
We served up birthday cake for Caitlin and gave the camera the most chocolaty smile possible. The girls made there to way to bed, while Michael and I stayed up drinking a few sneaky scotches and bundies.
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| Chocolate or Number 2's? |
Being hospitable Aussies we tried as best
we could to say hello, see if he spoke any English and offered him a drink of
some of the Bundy we had left (half a litre).
For most people Bundy drunken straight is
somewhere between diesel fuel and methylated spirits, so we had a chuckle to
ourselves as we introduced the Russian to the quintessential Australian drink
thinking he would choke on it as it went down and then go to bed thinking he
had just been poisoned.
Mistake number two.
The Russian had the shot, then grabbed the
bottle out of my hands and then proceeded to scull it! He then passed the
bottle to Michael and myself and forced us to scull it with the same vigor. We
obliged hoping that that would be the end of it, but he continued to drink…and
drink….and drink.
Thankfully the Bundy did the job and he
ended up climbing into the back of his car and passing out, never to be seen
again.
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