Paco´s Life: Madrid

Easter Europe IV: Lublin, descubriendo Polonia / Discovering Poland

If Budapest had started to fix the difficult beginning of this trip, Lublin definitely made me forget it. From this point the Easter Europe Tour would acquire a much more interesting character. To travel without company would make the trip a more personal an authentic experience. From this moment we could say the success of this tour would mainly depend on how good the hospitality people I had contacted would be. In Lublin the contact was Ula, a very friendly polish teacher who, already from the first messages we had exchanged had given me a very good impression. Actually, the decision of keeping Lublin as a stop of my trip had been motivated not only for the personal pride of not changing my itinerary because of the Katerini incident but also due to the good vibrations I had about this girl. And Ula didn’t disappoint, she picked me up at the station and spent with me all my time there. After the crazy Hungarian night I arrived to Lublin pretty fucked up so, the first thing I did, following the most typical Spanish stereotype, was to sleep a very necessary siesta at Ula`s nice apartment. This trip has been very intense, just one day in each city, walking a lot during the day and drinking a lot during the night. A fucking exhausting experience, likely to destroy anyone´s resistance. It`s been days with hardly any sleep so I found out these short 40 minutes siestas were basic to recover my energy and been able to keep going.

Anyway, let´s back to the issue: Lublin and Ula or, better said, Lublin, Ula and Ewa, Ula´s flatmate who also happened to be a very nice girl. Both of them took me for a walk into town and, more than the city itself, what I really enjoyed was the conversation. I happened to had just read a book about the II World War which described how germans and russians had taken their turn to invade and fuck the polish. After the Word, Poland ended up controlled by the URSS with all this fact implies: totally lack of thinking freedom, hard communism system, limited food allowance, a controlled government and all these kind of non-nice consequences. In Ula´s words, the polish would only be allowed, for example, to one packet of jam per month since most of the food produced in Poland would go to Moscow. No wonder they don’t like Ivan too much. It wasn’t till the end of the eighties when a movement conducted by work associations and students managed to get rid of the communism and started the current capitalism system, in line with the rest of Europe.

I spoke about all this with my hosts while I was having, as usual, a delicious polish lunch – dinner – whatever. Here you have some recommendations to fill your stomach in Poland: first some “bigos”, vegetable dish I don’t really remember much what it was, followed by “pierogis”, bread balls filled with different stuff and ending with a dish made of potatoes and meat called “placek po zbojnicku”. All very tasty, I probably gained around 5 kilos in this trip. It was 7 pm and I was totally full, good we had a good walk through the city afterwards. Lublin is the typical small student town, nice to walk around and a bit empty at this time of the year. Continuing the communism history overview, they took me to the soviet bar in Lublin. Well, maybe the ruskies were a bit bastards but the atmosphere of this kind of places is definitely cool, with all these soviet signs, propaganda, pictures of secret police and stuff like that. Not to mention the menu containing a lot of different varieties of vodka…

So, with my stomach feeling more comfortable thanks to the soviet alcohol, we continued the Lublin tour: people playing music in the middle of the street, pints of beer with a vodka shot at the bottom and a few funny pictures

The night ended up with a funny cultural exchange at Lula´s place: polish vodka vs the leftovers of my Pampero Special Edition bottle of rum, Spanish music vs polish hits. And, pay attention to the great musical finding of the trip, I am sure this will become a classic in Orense v2 parties! The guy with the beard is amazing, I could not stop laughing!! That´s the good thing about travelling, you come back home with new musical influences…

With such a good ingredients, the “party” kept going till very late so next day there was only time to visit the university and take the road again, well, I mean the train… Sitting in that wagon I did my balance of the Lublin stop and I got the conclusion it had been perfect even though it hadn’t been my typical way of travelling. Without any specially nice places to visit nor hard party, the polish experience had left a very good memory. I had the feeling of had been involved in that country more in a day than a normal tourist would do in a week. I had gained a friend I am sure I am going to meet again and the bad start of the trip had been definitely forgotten. I started to think that, as long as the rest of people I was going to meet were as good as Ula, the experience was going to be great. I realize there is starting to be a lot of “thank you”s here but they are more than deserved. Thanks a lot Ula Lula!!