Ian

I must admit, I was a bit worried when my wife came to me a few months back and mentioned that a couple of friends that we don’t see very often had invited us to accompany them on holiday this summer. My first thought was, “Why us? I guess no one else must want to go.” I was then told that it would not only be this couple and their two children, but that the same couple and their child that we had gone on holiday with the previous year in Tuscany would be joining us as well. A second thought quickly entered my head: “Including ours, that would be four screaming kids … do I really want to torture myself this way?” I was told that a place had already been reserved, and we would all be going to stay in an old winery turned guest house in the south of France near Carcassonne. This did have its appeal. I had only been to Paris on two separate occasions, and the desire to see more of the land of wine and cheese was always on my agenda, but to do this with two other families that we were barely in touch with and all our kids stuffed into the same building left a taste in my mouth akin to cold, mushy Brussels sprouts left in a pot of stagnate water on the stove for three days. It is not that I dislike any of the people we would be together with, it is just that we did not really meet much with either of the couples any more, so I could not see why we were invited to join in their summer holidays. My wife tried to tell me that it would be a good opportunity to re-connect as we had recently moved out of Kraków, where the others continue to reside. When I still had that sceptical look upon my brow, she just started repeating in a hypnotic voice “the south of France … wine … cheese … the south of France … wine … cheese”. It didn’t take too long before I was drooling and saying “OK, let’s do it!” As you can tell, my wife knows that I am easily persuaded when the right combination of words are used.

When the time came for us to depart fair Bochnia and set forth upon our lengthy four-day drive (we had decided that we were going to take it easy this time round instead of trying to squeeze 20 hours worth of road in one go as we had done the year before), the memories of our previous holiday to Tuscany came flooding back. I would not say that we had not taken into account our child’s aversion to sitting in a car for any extended period of time, I think we just hoped a year of growth might have made a difference. By and large the year had made a difference, and our child was relatively manageable for at least seven or eight hours of sitting in one place, with the occasional break here and there for food, petrol and toilet stops. The problems came when we stopped for the night. Imagine, if you will, being worn out and with a sore back from driving all day. The first things my thoughts went to were food, nice beer (we stayed in Czech, a beer lover’s paradise, the first night and Germany – need I say more – the second night) or some wine (the outskirts of Lyon on the third night) and then maybe an evening stroll around whatever town we managed to pull into that day before settling in bed for some well-needed rest. Unfortunately, my daughter had different plans. As soon as the door to the car let in that first breath of non-air-conditioned air, she would break free of the car seat that had so cruelly imprisoned her and take off running like a greyhound at the track that had just ingested a 20 kilo bag of cocaine and washed it down with four litres of espresso. If there were a way to harness the energy released by that little girl during these moments, I have no doubt you could power the whole of North America for a century (and the way us Americans waste electricity, that’s quite a feat)! This, of course, made a relaxing meal impossible. The embarrassment felt at a restaurant as your kid is flopping on the seats or floor like a fish out of water or is trying to set some new record of the most forks on tables other than your own licked within ten minutes is an embarrassment only parents can know. This release of youthful tension would last for at least three hours, so when she finally passed out for the night, my wife and I would immediately sacrifice a goat to the gods of sleep in appreciation (we brought along our own livestock just for the occasion) and then commence pouring booze down the back of our throats. Don’t think of us as alcoholics, though, as we did not necessarily drink to relieve stress or calm down; we drank to dull our threshold of pain, because during the night, our kid still seemed to expel impromptu spurts of energy, which would manifest itself into an elbow smacking me in the ribs, a foot wedged into my wife’s armpits or a diaper-cad bum smothering your face as the three of us had to share the same bed. A bottle of red wine at least dulled the abuse inflicted upon us to a bearable level.

After three bruise-filled nights of sleepless hell and four days of road weariness, we finally traversed the winding stretch of road that led to our destination, a guest house going by the name of Domaine de la Fraissinède, which is about 2 kilometres away from the village of Montlaur. Even before pulling into the gravel parking area that was to provide sanctuary for our trusty auto (borrowed from my wife’s father, as I haven’t completely broken myself free from driving cars that have their own strong sense of personality – i.e. they may fall to pieces at any moment or explode in a fiery blaze), I knew that we had reached a form of paradise on Earth. The rocky hillside, the craggy gullies and gorges, the vineyards, the beautiful weather, the vineyards, the quaint villages, castles and châteaux, the vineyards … I liked what I saw … immensely! Maybe this was going to be a good idea after all!

As it turned out, we were the first of our group to arrive, and whilst my wife and I were attempting to stretching our legs, backs, necks and arms after the cramped conditions of the car, which probably made us appear like rejects from a leper colony, our daughter managed to chew through her car-seat restraints and run headlong and screaming into the knees of our hosts, who had come to greet us (or kick us off their property if we did turn out to be lepers). After discovering that our flesh and extremities were in no immediate danger of falling off and that the aforementioned greyhound on speed was in fact our child, Laurence and Alain introduced themselves as the proprietors of our home for the week.

This is more of a post to show that I am still alive, but I also wanted to comment on the wondrous title of a news article I saw on the home page of the BBC News site this morning. This article was found under the Science/Nature section of the page. Gentlemen, there is a ray of hope in all this global worming after all!

Great tits cope well with warming

From time to time, I have come across a few of these tongue in cheek headlines from the BBC, and I must say that I appreciate them all the more for it.

If you have seen any more like this, send me a link (only factual articles, please)! I would love to have a good laugh!

The first major snow of the season has fallen over the past three days, and it looks as though there is no sign of it letting up … at least not today. It is good to see the flakes starting to fall in mid-November, especially considering how bad the last winter season was in terms of snow. And contrary to many many others here in Kraków, I love the snow.

My love for the cool whiteness has nothing to do with the frighteningly obsessive desire of many in this region to strap planks of wood to their feet and zig-zag carelessly and with apparent ease down powdery slopes. When I was working at a primary / secondary school in Czech, they used to take classes of kids to the hills for two or three days instead of furthering their education without the batting of an eye. See what I mean by obsession? I suck at skiing. I’ll be the first to admit this. There is probably no hope of me ever being able to master or even get by at this so-called sport, but I figure this lack of talent saves me from broken limbs or having my teeth knocked out by random trees that never have the common courtesy to politely step out of the way as I careen downhill screaming for the brakes. Well, actually, there is no real careening involved. I usually fall flat on my ass every 10 metres or so, meaning that it takes me two hours to reach the bottom of a relatively small hill, whilst others more proficient zip by multiple times laughing at me with my face buried in the ice and legs sticking in the air twisted in unnatural positions. Hey, at least I save money on ski passes by only having to purchase one for an entire day!

I grew up in the Deep South of the US in the states of Georgia, Florida and Mississippi. These are not places readily associated with heavy snowfall or winter sport. In any given winter, this area receives, maybe, if we are lucky, a weeks worth of the chilly, white powder, though this usually just turns into a hard, glass-like surface of black ice that most southerners could not navigate in their monster trucks and SUVs for all the money in the world. I’m not saying that southerners can’t drive; they are actually less frightening than many drivers I have come across from the north-eastern states of the US. This is just solely due to the fact that they are much more relaxed on the roads. Southerners have that sense of being lackadaisical and laid back when it comes to most things … driving included. What I am saying is that it doesn’t snow so much in the South, so those born and bred there typically have no clue as to how to drive in the stuff. Whilst living in Leesburg, Georgia from the age of 10 until I was 14, I recall the day when a single flake of glistening snow drifted to the ground. This was enough to cause all the schools in town to panic and shut their doors for fear of long yellow buses full of screaming kids skidding off bridges and sinking into the depths of icy rivers. I didn’t really mind having these days off as I was never really enthusiastic about having to sit through the tediousness of shop class, where we built nothing more exciting than wooden footstools, or going to the gym for physical education and being told by the coach that we would be playing football outside in sub-zero temperatures … in shorts. There was actually something worse that bothered me about attending PE and that was one of the coaches. Mr Reed was a stocky, middle-aged black man of short stature with a voice so booming that he never needed a megaphone to make announcements, even in the noisiest of environments. I’m quite certain he must have been a drill sergeant at some point in his life. Mr Reed had a thing about wanting all of us boys to wear jockstraps (a type of undergarment with a pouch up front for the testicles but nothing to cover the ass, originally designed to give extra support to men riding bikes on the cobbled streets of Boston in ages past) during every lesson with him. Not only was this supposed to be obligatory, but he would inspected the locker rooms regularly, and a little too enthusiastically if you ask me, to make sure we all had them on in the correct manner. I constantly refused to wear one of these, which caused me a lot of grief and possible hearing loss from being shouted at, but I never saw the point of a ten-year-old boy needing extra support for his under-developed genitalia. It was just too weird for me. Needless to say, I never got as good of marks in PE as some of the other boys that happily obliged our overly zealous sports instructor. Though we did get to escape from this hell for a few days, it always caught up with us at the start of summer when they tacked all those days missed onto the end of the school year. Here you were, sweating to death in a classroom, surrounded by gnats that seem to have nothing better to do than fly straight up your nose whilst kids from the neighbouring county, where they weren’t cursed by that now evil snowflake, where out swimming in the lakes and rivers and enjoying their summer holidays. This always brought about more rivalry during the inter-school football matches when the next school year started and quite a few fights under the audience stands as well.

The point being was that I never grew up around that much snow. I knew what it was and experienced it yearly in small amounts, but never had I been exposed to drifts so high that cars were lost for weeks under blankets of the stuff as I have seen here in southern Poland! It is truly a beautiful sight to behold in all its shimmering whiteness and untouched purity. I, of course, am referring to newly fallen snow or the lingering snow that graces mountains, hilltops and remote villages for months on end, not the grubby slush that you see in the city after it has been driven through or trudged through by thousands of vehicles and grumpy city-dwellers who curse the stuff for making the roads slippery and their trouser legs wet. When a city receives a heavy powdering of snow, it is a magical place for the first few hours. All the lights glimmering off the icy surfaces and rooftops and crystal-like icicles dangling from gutters … these things cover all the blemishes of a city. Rubbish bins with their rotting banana peels, broken beer bottles and used sanitary pads are hidden beneath a sheet of elegance, and the uneven side walks normally splattered with the vomit of drunks or heaped with dog crap are smoothed over to look positively inviting for a stroll. The only problem is that when the temperatures rise and the thaw comes, all of these unsightly traits are exposed again, except this time they are sickeningly waterlogged and look worse than ever before. The rubbish has been turned into some type of toxic-looking sludge, and all the dog shit has melted into reeking puddles of a substance that can only be compared to the contents of a baby’s diaper after having been fed a dinner of peas and mashed turkey followed by a generous dose of hot sauce and prune juice.

Let’s get back to the more pleasant aspects, shall we?

As I mentioned before, I had been exposed to snow before on numerous occasions, but it wasn’t until moving to Scotland that I actually got to live in this type of winter environment. It took some getting used to, I must say. Not only did I have to learn my footing in this new world, but I was also fresh from the US, and my American sense of dress (or lack thereof) still had me in white high-top trainers with matching white sweat socks. After a few near cases of frostbite due to my shoes soaked through and socks frozen to my feet so that the only means of removal were a welders torch and a chisel, I decided that boots and woollen socks (of a darker colour than white) were more practical. I also discovered the true meaning of a winter coat with some sort of waterproof lining as well as the layering of clothes to keep you warmer. Again, this is not to say that it never got cold where I was from, it could be quite bitter at times, but it just didn’t seem to last that long. What was the point of purchasing an expensive pair of boots or a thick jacket you’ll only wear one or two weeks out of the year? It just made no economical sense in a place where there was only enough snow during the year to build a snow dwarf with a baby carrot for a nose. Most years I had seen more frost in my parents’ freezer than on the ground.

I also have to give my heartfelt thanks to snow for practically saving my life one evening. One winter I had made my way back to Central Europe to visit some friends and do a bit more touring around places I had either not been to or had not explored at length. The latter was the case with Budapest, and after a few days of fulfilling my desires there (I can tell you now in all honesty, there is no better way to beat a cold spell than by slowly boiling your body at an outdoor geothermal spa whilst flakes of snow fall all around your head, which is the only extremity of your body you dare have sticking out of the toasty water for fear of extreme hypothermia), I took a friend’s advice and set out on a night train for Kraków, Poland. The train was relatively clean and comfy, but the heaters in the cabins seemed to be stuck on one temperature – dehydrate! Try as I might and with the help of various others that shared my cabin that evening, there was no way to open the window and allow some cool, refreshing icy air in to make the place less of an oven. To make matters worse, I had overindulged in a few of the local Hungarian brews the night before and had not thought of bringing a bottle of water for the trip north as I mistakenly assumed the night train would have an all-night dining car or bar. After about two hours of having the little remaining moisture evaporated out of my system and my flesh beginning to crackle like dried leaves, I could take no more. I positioned myself close to one of the exits of the train and waited as patiently as possible for the next station so that I could make a dash for any type of vending machine that might dispense some form of liquid beverage to quench my heinous thirst. Unfortunately, luck was not on my side.

The route the train took seemed to only stop at small Slovakian villages and towns where, if you didn’t know any better, “abandoned” and “village of the damned” were the best descriptive words for their appearance. I guess there must have been some life lurking somewhere in these places, otherwise there would be no reason for the train to make a stop, but the one or two flickering florescent lights that barely illuminated the derelict platforms could not confirm anything. I was at wit’s end by this point and on the verge of either ripping open the veins of one of my fellow passengers and lapping at their gaping wounds as blood gushed forth like a fountain or heading into the toilet and taking my chances at the sink that was surrounded by signs in two or three languages warning you “Do NOT drink the water. Really. We aren’t just having you on. This stuff would kill your dog if you let them have it. Even boiled, this stuff could eat through the hull of an armoured vehicle.”

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the train stopped in the middle of a stretch of woods somewhere in the heart of Slovakia. I really don’t know why many trains do this. I guess it has something to do with other trains on the line or something technical. Or maybe the driver just wanted to get out a bit, stretch his legs and take a leak … maybe a herd of deer had been hit (though I doubt any train would stop for that; more likely than not you would just hear shouts of “Yeeeeeehaaaaaawwwwww!!” coming from the front of the train) … or maybe Mexican banditos had blocked the track and were at that very moment pointing pistols at the gringos and telling them to hand over all the loot. I really didn’t care at that moment in time. It was my chance, so I took it. The exit door was forcefully flung open, and I leapt head-first into the drifts of snow beside the tracks. Handfuls of the cold, white goodness were shovelled down my dust-dry throat, and I smiled and laughed hysterically under the clear night sky as I realised I would live.

After rehydrating and trying to save some snow for later by stuffing it into any empty plastic bottle or beer tin I could find in the rubbish bin of the carriage, I scrambled back aboard the train just as it began its journey anew. My only guess as to why the train was finally setting off again was that the line was once again free of obstacles or the bandits must have come to the conclusion that the exchange rate at that time made Slovakian currency not worth their effort, so they let us all pass with no more than a few stern looks and one or two virtues taken.

Morning came as we pulled into Kraków, and I soon discarded all my makeshift canteens as a few open shops displaying bottles of various liquid refreshments came into view. Unbeknownst to me at that particular moment, this city that I was about to enter into was about to become my new home and where I would meet my wife and where our daughter would be born many years later. Each winter, the snow has kept falling, some years heavier than others, but it never seems to lose its charm when it graces us. Well, at least not until the thaw comes and those hidden canine treasures resurface.

Norway, Finland & Sweden – Part IV – Return to Oslo

I would like to take this moment to prepare some of you, because I know that I am going to upset a few people with the next comment, but please continue reading, and I hope you will understand why I am going to say what I am:

Sweden is dull.

Now, I don’t mean that “Sweden is dull and a red hot poker in the eye would be more preferable than a visit there”, and Jonathan may have a different opinion of this than I do; I just mean that after all the majestic fjords, rugged landscape and wooded lakes of Norway and Finland, Sweden just wasn’t up there in the running. Maybe the road I took was not the most scenic, maybe my senses were numb after seeing so many beautiful sights already or maybe I was just going blind from too much masturbation (well, I was single at the time), but something wasn’t striking that harmonic chord within my hearts.

There was, though, something striking within my loins, and this made our excursion into Abba country imperative: the thought of meeting up with an amazingly beautiful Swedish girl named Malin that I had danced with, flirted with and sampled the saliva of previously at the Royal Mile Backpackers hostel in Scotland a few months prior to our trip. Malin and I had kept in touch, and upon hearing of our visit to Scandinavia, she offered Jonathan and I a place to stay in Östersund with her and her parents for a few days. Not only would this be a chance to see the inside workings of a Swedish family and view first hand a different culture, but the idea of saving some money on accommodation was a bonus as well!

Malin was a lovely girl! Blonde hair, lovely sarcastic smirk, sparkling eyes, and when she spoke Swedish, it was all I could do to not excuse myself to some private corner so that I might frantically work more towards my ensuing blindness. I would have driven thousands of miles through any amount of brain-melting dullness (e.g. the yawn-worthy M8 from Glasgow to Edinburgh) to see her again. Yes, it was about lust … but lust with the hope of things on a grander scale! I wanted to fall in love with Malin and her with me; this would have been great! But Jonathan and I only had a day or two here, so quick, lusty encounters in the back seat of a Volvo would have to suffice for the present. I could accept that. Lust now, lay down the foundations, then return another day to romantically snuggle beside a file in our moose fur jumpers (or whatever they wear up there) and speak of the future we could have together raising blonde, transparent-skinned children and herding reindeer under the Aurora Borealis (though in Norway or Finland, not in bland Sweden). These were my secret thoughts as we navigated into the university city of Östersund. I say ‘secret thoughts’ because I didn’t really want to break it to Jonathan that if Malin were to profess her heartfelt longing for me to remain by her side and never part again, I would have handed Jonathan the keys and said, “So long, pal. It’s been fun. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!” But as you can surmise, since I am writing this from Poland and have been married to a Polish girl names Alicja for a number of years now, this passing dream never bore fruit, and, consequently, my friendship with Jonathan was saved.

But something was wrong. I can’t really put my finger on what happened, because nothing really happened. Malin and I smiled when we saw each other, we pecked at each others lips like chickens in a feed barn, and we snuggled beside one another in bed at night … but that was it. There was no real magic, no steaming of windows, no promises made to share woollen socks on a sunless winter’s night. Everything was nice enough, but that was it … just nice enough.

Maybe this lack of spark was due to the fact that after over one week in a car with Jonathan making animal noises to ourselves to break up the lengthy drive, my mental capabilities where on par with that of a wet sock (actually, the smell of our unwashed clothes was on par with a wet sock as well). Or maybe it was the fact that Malin, instead of smoking, was constantly shoving a pinch of snus (a moist, powdered tobacco) between her lips and gums every hour or so. She would even load up before going to sleep at night! Now, unlike American snuff, with snus and the way it is processed, you don’t have to spit out a huge brown blob of tobacco juice every so often. That, at least, prevented Malin from falling into the same class as the red-neck, trailer park ‘ladies’ that I had the pleasure of growing up around in southern Georgia, but it did mean that when you went in for a kiss from time to time, you cleared you sinuses with the strong pepperminty aroma from the flavoured snus and indirectly developed a nicotine habit. I did try this Swedish habit forming substance a few times myself and didn’t find the experience all that repulsive, especially with the mild buzz you got, but I just couldn’t get used to the idea of having to dig a saliva soaked mass of tobacco the consistency of mud out of my mouth when it became stale and tasteless after an hour. Also, no matter how carefully you tried to cleanse your mouth out afterwards, there always seemed to remain a few granules between your teeth that made it appear as though you had just eaten the grounds out of an old coffee filter.

Jonathan and I stayed a few days, and the hospitality of Malin and her family could not be beat. The city was quaint, but nothing outstanding, and we all enjoyed ourselves with a film at the cinema one night (Dancer in the Dark, if I remember correctly) and a trip to one of the islands at the lake (where we took a bottle of wine only to discover that we had not thought of taking a corkscrew, so Jonathan and I proceeded to push the cork into the bottle instead and ended up squirting the ever precious, overly priced alcohol all over ourselves). But when the time came to leave … well, we just left. Goodbye, speak to you soon on email, see you again some day. Anti-climactic (in more ways than one), but that is the way fate deals you your cards from time to time. Oh well, I probably could never have persuaded Malin to leave the humdrum countryside of Sweden for the rest of her life anyway.

The Rent-A-Wreck made the short hop back over into the land of its registration not long after we departed Östersund, and we began the final leg back to Oslo … through the much more delightful scenery of Norway. There were no more pertinent stops along the way, but we did have to break up the journey with one more evening stopover at a camp site. Again, this was one of those Norwegian camp sites with the small wooden huts that put many of the places I had resided in during my late teen years to shame (I spent an entire summer once in a house in Tallahassee with no hot water and having to share a pull-out sofa with what seemed like the entire roach population of northern Florida). This place had a TV, kitchenette, two bedrooms, hot running water and a cosiness that relaxes you to the bone. Hell, after sleeping in hostel dorm rooms for so long and having to smell the stench of a thousand sweat-filled hiking boots that had traversed the Scottish Highlands and trudged through cow and sheep shit all day long, this place was pure bliss!

I remember sitting outside that night and staring at the clear evening sky, seeing all those stars and even a satellite or two criss-crossing the expanse as they made their way around the globe delivering television signals to homes or spying on whoever needed spying upon at that time. I felt so moved that I went up to the phone booth at the entrance to the camp ground and called my father back in the States. Just as I was dialling, a ghostly green flare streaked its way across the sky, and as my father picked up the phone, I immediately blurted out that the Aurora Borealis had just started playing up and I wished he could see this marvellous spectacle of spectral light. Unfortunately, this would be one of the last few times I spoke to my. The next time we spoke was face to face in the few days before he passed away from cancer a month and a half later. I still really wish we could have seen the Northern Lights together. He would have enjoyed that to no end.

After two weeks on the road and around 4,000 km, our ragged vehicle plastered with decals displaying our cheapness in car rental agencies coasted back within the confines of Oslo city limits. We had seen quite a lot in that short amount of time and had met some interesting people, but my time was nearing an end, and I needed to get to Poland to start a teaching job in Kraków. My credit card had also reached the point of nearly crumbling to bits because of overuse, and I feared that repayment of the petrol and petrol station hot dogs was going to put a serious bite on any of the measly earnings I was going to accumulate from my future employment. But there was only a few ways for the budget traveller to get from Scandinavia to Poland, since flying out of Oslo at this time meant that you had to have the financial backing of one of the princes of Saudi Arabia, and that was by ferry, bus or hitch-hiking. I was sick of being cooped up in a car, so hitching was out, and a bus seemed a worse choice, so a ferry seemed the most enjoyable. And where was the closest ferry terminal with a direct link to Poland? After studying a map for a few moments, I looked at Jonathan, and he looked back at me, and we both nodded approval. Two nights after returning to Oslo, we jumped on the night bus to Stockholm. We would just have to give Sweden a second chance.

Six years ago I made my way around northern Italy with a friend of mine during the Christmas season. I was going through a bad patch of depression due to situations with a married girl I was leading astray, and with whom I actually worked as well (a double whammy), and felt that being around Kraków during this lonely holiday season whilst my ‘love’ interest was enjoying Christmas carp* with her husband was not in my best interest. Believe me, I know what you are thinking: “Well, it’s your own fault for screwing around with a married woman! What did you expect?” Yes, that is true, but I never claimed to always use my better judgement, and, you know, the fact that she had a nice ass was distorting my view of reality at that time. Hey, I’m a guy!

*(To this day, I still don’t understand the tradition in Poland of carp for Christmas. Why carp? Of all the fish you could choose from and are forced to eat due to Catholicism, why would you decide upon the greasiest, boniest bottom feeder of all Poland’s fair lakes and rivers? I don’t particularly like fish of any sort, so every Christmas, I usually end up cooking my own personal meal. Last year it was chicken curry!)

The summer of 2007 finally brought me back to Italy, more specifically to the Tuscany region between Florence and Siena, for a week’s holiday at a lovely old villa in the small town of Marcialla. This time, though, I was accompanied by my wife (who has an exceptionally nice ass*) and my one year old daughter (the result of my wife having an exceptionally nice ass). We decided to split this lovely abode with another couple we know from Kraków, along with their daughter, who is roughly the same age as ours, and Jonathan, who would be gracing us with his presence for three days before he began leading a tour out of Rome.

*(At the time of writing this, my wife was mulling over whether she found this comment complimentary or insulting and degrading. Well, she agreed to let me post it, so it must have leaned more towards the ‘complimentary’ side, which is, of course, how it was intended to be.)

The two thirds of 2007 were a strange period in life when it concerns old friends. After nearly eight years, I had the chance to become reacquainted my my friend JuLes when he passed through Poland on his way around the world, and since May 2007, we haven’t been able to shake off Jonathan for more than a month! Prior to this year, the last time I had seen Jonathan was about five years before at my wedding, but his continuous reappearance on our doorstep, no matter which country we seem to be in, had even caused my wife and I to include him in our house hunting plans.

“So, dear, what do you think about this place?”
“It’s very nice, but what about Jonathan’s room? I think it needs to have a separate entrance from the outside and it’s own toilet. I mean, I would hate to have to share a bathroom with him, wake up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet and find him sitting naked in the bathtub coated in smalec* with one of our cats and singing tunes from the Grease soundtrack whilst dancing an Irish jig.”
“Hmmm … I see your point. Let’s keep looking.”

*(Basically lard with gristle. Quite tasty on bread with a sprinkling of salt!)

Who knows how many places we passed up due to this recent conditional, so it is a good thing that we all get along well, and so far, my wife has never mentioned that I need to find a better class of friend or stop hanging out with Canadians as it might be a bad influence upon my character or damn my soul to the fiery pits of hell. Well, I guess it was too late for that, as I was already guilty of coveting my neighbour’s wife and committing adultery anyway, right?

Tuscany is a gorgeous region … undulating hills and curvy roads that make driving interesting (especially with Italian drivers careening around every corner without so much as a nudge of the steering wheel to get back into their own lane), quaint villages that seem lost in time, medieval cities that have apparently been cared for since their founding and have never slipped into decay, vineyards and olive trees more plentiful than the spots on a teenager’s gob … and the chianti made around here holds a wondrously tasty secret in every drop on the tongue. Even the cheap stuff is good enough to upgrade the town wino into a connoisseur. But when you look under the proverbial rug, there are a few specks of dust that have been left behind. Nothing major that would truly distract from the overall beauty, but just enough to irritate the nose and cause a sneeze from time to time.

This irritant mainly comes in the form of signs proclaiming the distance to other locales. Being the chianti region of Italy, maybe those responsible for printing and placing these markers overindulged before heading back to work after their afternoon siesta, because they all seemed to have been placed willy-nilly along their perspective routes. When trying to discover the location of our place of residence for the week, there was a sign at a roundabout claiming that Marcialla was just three kilometres down the road to the right, but as soon as you made that right, there was another sign claiming that our destination had magically gained a kilometre and was now four away. There did not seem to be any construction upon the road to have warranted this claim, and so far, the whole sci-fi time / distance phase shifting, wormhole, Star Treck-y alternate reality thing is just in films, so I have no idea where this extra kilometre came from. Maybe they just got the signs backwards and put the three before the four. That’s logical enough. Simple mistake, though easily corrected. I could have written the whole thing off and never let it cross my thoughts again. But then … on the way to San Gimignano, the first sign we came across said 11 km; after a bit further down the road, the next sign we came to said “San Gimignano 11 km”. Two kilometres further, the sign appeared again in exactly the same form! 11 km! Were we stuck in the Twilight Zone never to reach our destination, forever stuck on the same stretch of road never to reach our destination, or had the manufacturing plant just produced too many signs with the same number on them and didn’t wish to have anything go to waste? After what seemed to be a few dozen of the same 11 km signs, there was finally a change, and our fate did not seem to be so dire. Out of nowhere came a green sign with white reflective lettering proclaiming that we were now just 4 km from the medieval hilltop town that we had been seeking all afternoon for some an unknown distance. But we were wary at this point and would not believe this metal prophet of measures until we actually happened upon the solid city walls themselves. A collective sigh could be heard in the car as San Gimignano same into sight … well, a collective sigh could have been heard if it were not for the screaming and screeching of my daughter in the back seat who seems to treat every car ride as though she is being tortured by cruel and heartless parents who most surely brought her into this world for their own sick amusement by dragging her around picturesque countrysides, spoiling her with home cooked meals at every sitting and generally caring for her well-being.

It is a very odd trait of my daughter, but a gruelling 18 hours trapped within the confines of a metal box on four wheels spewing carbon monoxide into the atmosphere seems not to be a huge deal. We had decided to go by car, a task we shall not repeat again any time in the near future being that I am the only one with a licence and the ablity to drive in our family. On the whole, minimal fuss is made, and a few stops to stretch the legs, air out the nappy region (our daughter’s, not ours) and have a nose about in petrol station shops seemed to suffice. But if you just wish to make a quick 30 minute trek down the road, she howls like an irate banshee having her eyebrows waxed! This really is so off-putting when it comes to trying to make daily excursions to nearby locations of touristy goodness that we eventually resigned ourselves to just lounging around the villa, which suited our daughter just fine as it appeared that the high point of her day was a trip to the playground that graces the village market square; a playground that was still packed with kids at an hour before midnight, as I discovered one evening on the way back from collecting Jonathan from the train station in Siena. Needless to say, the high point of the day for my wife and I was when bedtime came for the little girl, and we could actually both sit down at the same time without having to chase our daughter down, stop her from stuffing rocks or rotten olives that had fallen on the ground into her mouth or prevent her from petting (or should I say ‘mauling’) one of the scabby local cats that seemed to be living out their final days at the same villa as us.

Aside from the inconvenient hours of siesta (though I am sure it’s not called ‘siesta’ in Italy, but I’ll be damned if I know what they do call it) that only occurred whenever you were hungry and did not wish to cook for yourself or really needed to get to a shop to purchase toilet paper, the only other real bother were the mosquitoes. Well, the only real bother for me and the husband of the other couple that shared the villa with us should I say. I have no idea what it is, but those damned little blood-sucking specks of pestilence never really went after my wife and her friend that much, only a few bites here and there as though they were taste-testing, and they left the young ones completely off their menu. But as for us guys ….

“Hey, Sam, you tried the kids yet?”
After making a sound reminiscent of a camel dislodging two months worth of phlegm from the back of its throat, Sam replies, “My advice: stay away, pal! Those things taste like sour milk, and there’s a constant funny smell around the buttock region. But have you tried the males? I gorged myself stupid last night! Give them a shot; you won’t regret it! Bon appetit, my friend!”

There must be a kind of scent or something that attracts these flying demons from Date’s Inferno to my pasty white flesh (I mean ‘delicate alabaster skin’), because any exposed region below the neck line was proclaimed as fair territory to extract my precious blood of life from. My feet and ankles especially received the worst of their plasma mining activities, and by the end of our vacation in Tuscany, these appendages looked as though I had developed end stage leprosy or an awful case of chicken pox that mysteriously confined itself only to specific areas. My poor daughter frequently has allergies that cause her to scratch herself silly in certain places, and we do our best to supply creams to soothe her and tell her not to scratch. Well, I guess I wasn’t much of a role model as I myself was going for broke and clawing at my feet and arms until they were raw. Eventually, we found out that the local shop had mosquito repellent, but the damage was done, and the scratching probably only attracted more of the little bastards with the smell of blood emanating from my open wounds.

The confusing distance signs, strange opening hours and airborne monstrosities in no way degraded the holiday into some sort of vile week of having bamboo shoots shoved under fingernails or anything like that, and by and large, it was a relaxing week (not taking into account that my daughter kept pointing at Jonathan and saying “Da-da”) filled with warm sun, excellent wine, good friends and astounding scenery. The villa where we stayed was built some time in the 15th Century and decked out with old relics, paintings and antique wooden furniture (which my wife had a tendency to leave wet bottles and cups upon, leaving a water ring that for 200 hundred years had never tarnished its surface. I think this is my soul mate’s unconscious way of marking her territory, similar to that of a cat rubbing the corners of its mouth against objects), and one of the rooms even contained a plaque claiming that Michaelangelo had once resided there for a time. Now, as to whether this is Michaelangelo the famous artist or Michaelangelo the local town gimp there are no discerning comments, but we’ll just accept it as the famous one, if it’s all the same to you. All in all, a lovely place with a spectacular view that I would happily recommend and return to again and again!

But, as with anything good, it must come to an end. The week drew to a close, and our week-long companions packed up early and rubbed salt into our wounds by heading to Naples for another week in the sun whilst we squeezed ourself back into the car for another two fun filled days of tarmac, discomfort and restlessness as we hit the trail once more for home. Holiday time was over, memories were created, friendships strengthened (after a DNA test proved that Jonathan did not sire our daughter), and as we pulled away from Marcialla, we discovered, with a smile, that we had even stolen the towels from the villa, though my wife swears this was purely by accident!

Just read a blog from a good friend of mine today concerning the small stuffed cow that he has been travelling the globe with for quite a few years now. If you are interested, you can read about it here: http://www.julianpegler.com/?p=162

Well, the point being that JuLes and his cow, named Biff, are not an oddity in this world. I myself have been known to jump a plane or train with the ever faithful Balthy the stuffed emu in order to satiate his lifelong quest for pins (flags or crests from countries visited). Jonathan, my good friend and homeless Canadian from the earlier Scandinavian adventures, was actually the one who forced me into this existence of plushness when he discovered Balthy in the lost-and-found bin at the High Street Hostel in Edinburgh. Balthy was presented to me, Jonathan told me that I must henceforth carry this modified beanbag wherever I venture and that I must affix the aforementioned pins to its fuzzy flesh. Though Biff and Balthy have actual form and a vague resemblance to some living creature, Jonathan carries around a stuffed sock with white cut-out paper eyes, ragged green bit of wash cloth hair and repeatedly replaced mangled cigar butt (because someone usually ends up smoking the cigar at some point) sticking out from a hole in the sock, all this based upon a Canadian icon of sorts called Ed the Sock – a loud-mouthed, arrogant “host” of a music video program on TV. Jonathan has even kept the same name and has gone as far as fabricating some strange background story of how “his” Ed the Sock is the evil twin of the original and wished to see the world instead of being trapped in the clutches of television stardom all his existence. Give him a break, he’s Canadian!

There are various reasons why we and many others like us cavort with these inanimate travel companions, but I guess the main underlying reason is to have some sort of unique foreground for the photographs we take: A slightly out-of-focus Biff against the expanse of the Red Square in Moscow; Ed the Sock in the gentle grip of a young monk in Thailand; Balthy warming up to an elderly woman selling bird feed in a Sarajevo market. I guess that many of these photos began as a humorous gesture to amuse of family and friends, but then it became an obsession … a sickness, even … especially with Jonathan and I … well, mostly Jonathan. Competitions started arising, points to be scored, goals to achieve. Could one of us get a Russian border guard to have their image snapped with a stuffed doll? Can you sneak a shot of the plush critter sitting astride a sawdust filled seal in the Tromsø Polar Museum? Would the Pope give these cuddly items a squeeze? And even more so, would he let you capture this on film for the faithful masses to become exposed to!? Sometimes these reasons outweighed logic and became our sole motives for going certain places; some of which have been fulfilled, some waiting for another day.

I guess there is also the fact that most us like being in the spotlight a bit, as well. I know that I can be a ham at times. Nothing starts up a conversation or attracts various sideways glances or full-on gawking as meandering up to some well-know or sacred landmark, withdrawing a mangy sock / cow / emu from your rucksack and then trying to find that perfect angle and shot that would encompass the beauty of the location only to flaw it with the presence of a tattered and stuffed something. I am not too sure how well this has been at winning the hearts of beautiful women, but then again, I am married to a beautiful little lady, and JuLes has the lifelong companionship of the lovely Gerri. Jonathan, on the other hand … well, what kind of impression could you hope to make with a grubby sock puppet?

The well-dressed Canadian meanders over to a table occupied by a beautiful dark-haired woman that has been catching his eye all evening: “Hi, my name is Jonathan, very nice to meet you!”
With a shy, come-hither look, the lady replies: “Hello. I’m Bertha. So, how did you end up in this small café in rural Cumbernauld?”
“Actually, I’ve been travelling constantly for over the past 10 years now. I now work as a tour guide for a prestigious firm which pays me to traverse the globe in search of exotic locales.”
More sparkles glint within her eyes: “Wow! That sounds really interesting!”
Jonathan notices the sparks flying and helps himself to the empty seat beside her: “Yeah, it is fun, but I really use it as a vehicle for my true love … photography. As a matter of fact, I was wondering if you could help me with a photo right now.” Jonathan reaches into his day pack resting on his lap and pulls out Ed: “Here, could you hold this a moment?”
Those once magical, sparkling eyes dull into the colour of charcoal that has been urinated upon to extinguish any remaining hint of flame: “Excuse me,” she says in a flat tone typically utilised by postal clerks, “I have to get back to the doctor now and have a bad case of haemorrhoids examined.”

Now, the story if he had been travelling with a cute, cuddly plush creature the likes of Biff or Balthy:

Jonathan notices the sparks flying and helps himself to the empty seat beside her: “Yeah, it is fun, but I really use it as a vehicle for my true love … photography. As a matter of fact, I was wondering if you could help me with a photo right now.” Jonathan reaches into his day pack resting on his lap and pulls out an adorable, stuffed, fluffy kitten: “Here, could you hold this a moment?”
Her eyes flare up with brightness unseen except by those who have had near-death experiences and claim to have ‘seen the light’. She stands up, grasping the collar of her button-down blouse and ripping the front open in one blindingly quick movement that sends mother-of-pear flying across the room to expose lingerie and cleavage that would have most mortal men shaking in their Wellington boots and drooling like a little child after an injection of Novocain. “Take me now!” she screams with passion. “Show me the love that only a heart as pure as yours can deliver unto my unworthy soul! Let me become fertile with your seed and bear forth the fruit of your sacred loins! I am at your whim … command me and deliver me into the paradise that is your embrace!”

I’m sure JuLes could back me up on this and that he had a similar experience when telling his future wife-to-be about Biff … right?

Whatever the reasoning the three of us have for doing what we do, we are not alone. There are others out there, and I think the world would be more boring and a much less happier place without us. At least we give others something to point and laugh at.

I am old enough to remember when email became a big thing and people began to lament the days of letter writing and the use of a pen or pencil. There was something much more personal about a handwritten letter … the time put into writing, the individual styles of crossing a ‘t’ or dotting an ‘i’, the crossed out mistakes and the misspelled words. Email came along, and paper seemed such a waste; everyone wrote in Times New Roman; spell check solved many issues; and postage stamps became less of a necessity. The only real thing that made email particular to an individual was bad grammar.

“Ah, yes … this one was definitely sent from Bob. He never could use his participles or prepositions correctly!”

But the times, they are a changin’ again, and email seems to be gasping for air these days. Outside of spam mail (which, unfortunately, seems to just keep thriving), the majority of email I receive now is either work related or from one of the multiple social network sites that send me email to tell me I have a new message or comment or something in my account on their site. And it is this that has grasped the neck of the personal email and is steadily applying increasing pressure day by day, slowly cutting off the supply of oxygen and making poor email blue in the face.

In general, I am quite opposed to social networking sites. Mostly because they are usually just so damned silly and cheesy. MySpace has probably one of the worst layouts anyone can imagine. It looks like a child’s cut and paste collage project gone wrong. Put a background here, glue a profile picture there and presto! Instant website! I also really hate the fact that many people put some damn song on their page that starts up without my asking it to. When I’m surfing the web, I usually like to have some music going on in the background (listening to a bit of Skinny Puppy as I write this), but then, as soon as I land on a friend’s MySpace page to find out what’s new in their life (because they no longer email me to say “Hi, how’s things? Not too bad here. I just wrote to say I contracted syphilis this week”), I get the horrendous sounds of some long forgotten, inside joke song cutting through my speakers over the top of the music I had chosen for myself and was enjoying. Nothing is more annoying than having “Ice Ice Baby” or “Achy Breaky Heart” spoil a good Gothic industrial tune! I didn’t want to hear this, and now it’s stuck in my head all day! Damn you! There are options to let the person visiting the page turn the song on if they want to hear it, please don’t force me to listen to this! MySpace also has a section for “bulletin” announcements. Basically, it’s a way to spam all your friends and contacts at one time, though most of my friends seem to use it to send surveys out to everyone. “What are your first memories?”; “Top 45 foods”; “How incontinent are you?”; “If you were a vegetable, which one would you be?”. Now, I will admit that some of these can be a bit informative, and you can learn something about an old schoolmate that you never knew before … maybe they once had a crush on you … maybe they were cheating on you during the time they were supposedly dating you in high school … maybe they secretly sacrificed llamas to the sun god and drank the blood of squirrels before they found Christianity (now they only sacrifice heathens and drink the blood of Jesus); but most of the time you only discover what kind of food the person had for lunch or which person they hugged last. Not really the type of thing that would come up in a normal conversation under any circumstance. It is also the frequency of these surveys that astound me. If I answered ever survey that was sent out, I wouldn’t have the time of day to even make it to the toilet!

Facebook is another one I am unfortunately a member of. Now, where the layout seems much more thought out and professional looking, there have come to be all these strange “applications” that you can add to your page. There are a few that may be useful or informative, such as maps showing where you have travelled (for those of us that like to brag) or your recommendations to others for books or music. But Facebook has gone silly with things like “Food Fight” (where you ‘throw’ virtual food products at each other), “Aquarium” (um, the fish don’t even move), “Booze Mail” (ok, I want a real drink, not a cartoon drawing of one) and the number one bizarre application: “Skid Marks” (you can have a pair of shit-stained, white y-fronts dishing out Confucius-like knowledge on your profile page). There is also something that is called “Poke” or even “Super Poke” that sends messages to your chosen contact like “Neil has poked you” or “You have been chest bumped by Theodore”. Well, I’m sorry … I don’t want Neil, or anyone else for that matter, to poke me. That’s annoying! And I have never ever chest bumped anyone in my life. Always seemed a bit too much of a frat boy to me, so why would I rub my pecs up against someone else? Facebook has taken a huge slide into the reeking sewers of the world in my mind.

There are also plenty of others out there that I am sure are quite the same: Friendster, Bebo, Multiply … and the list goes on. I cannot deny that there is some good in social networking sites, though. I have regained contact with many long lost friends from high school and from my travels, and I have been able to promote the music I play (whether my own or with the band Gasoline), and many of these sites make it easier for me to store photos that may be of relevance to friends (those snaps from the time you worked together in Abu-Dhabi as toilet cleaners) or family (cute photos of your sprog eating cat food and spitting up all over the jumper that your gran sent over as a birthday present) at no charge.

But an unfortunate side is that in most cases, this is now the only way I can keep in contact with my many of my friends as most of them only chat through these sites, and everyone has their own particular network they use, so you end up having to sign up for all of them. I have an account with 3 or 4 right now, and most of them have the same repeated pictures or information on them. Every day, it takes about 30 minutes to an hour to check them all, reply to any messages or comments that need an urgent reply or to nose about that old friend’s site that you have recently reconnected with.

I guess it is still quicker than writing and posting a letter … or sending an email.

Norway, Finland & Sweden – Part III – Rudolf or Bust

One thing became apparent as we crossed over into the land of the Finns … things were cheaper! Not necessarily cheap, mind you, but cheaper. We knew our stay in Finland was limited to maybe one day of driving through to Sweden, but we took advantage of this money saving opportunity and filled up on petrol … twice … just because we could. This decrease in price of go-go juice for our car also gave us the ability to buy not one, but two petrol station hot dogs with cola and potato salad. We were kings and living the good life now!

The northern regions of Finland kept us fascinated with their rugged beauty, just as Norway had done, but the horizon gradually began to flatten out, reindeer appeared from time to time along the roads, and lakes started to speckle the landscape. In an area covered by hundreds of lakes, one interesting mode of public transportation popped up that was new to our way of thinking – the small, single engine air plane taxi. There were signs here and there that almost seemed to be like taxi stands except with silhouettes of those types of aircraft with pontoons instead of wheels for landing on water (I’m sure there is a more technical name for them besides “air-planey pontoony floaty things”, but the name seems to escape me at present). But then we began wondering … how do you hail one of these? Do you have to call up a dispatch office or do you just flag one down from the sky with a brightly coloured banner? And what kind of price would you be expected to pay? Do the locals use them to get home after a night out drinking in the pubs? And do the pilots let you eat your kebab in the plane or is there a strictly no food policy? So many questions!

“Hello. Radio Air Taxi Service. How may I help you?”
“Hi, I need a taxi for two for a pick up at 37 Deer Dung Crossing. That’s on the corner of Moose Mess Lake and Turtle Head Grove.”
“One moment please … ” A click as you are put on hold, then the sounds of a Muzak version of Rock D.J. After a moment, the line clicks back over. “Green Cessna. 10 minutes.”
“Thanks.”

Unfortunately, our luck did not grace us with the answer to this quandary, and our grasp of the Finnish language (or lack of it) did not permit us to inquire with anyone that we might have had the chance to encounter.

Jonathan and I have always done our best to pick up a few words of the language for each country we visit. It is only fair. We are visitors, and we should respect the culture of the land we set foot on. But the Finnish language stumped us. That and Hungarian are the only languages so far that not a single word seems to stick in the brain. I don’t know what it is, just some sort of mental block, really. We tried our hardest, but to no avail. We reverted to body language and pointing … would have even tried drawing pictures if we had had any crayons.

Working in hostels around Europe, I have heard so many punters become irate when they find out that the local population isn’t fluent in English. We Americans are the worst for the most part. So many American college kids decide that it is the prime moment in their life to become exposed to other cultures before having to settle into the 9 to 5 grind, so they grab Daddy’s credit card, hop a flight to Europe, grab a rail pass and then bitch about how nothing is like it is in America.

“Hey, Todd … dude, remember that old guy we met in that small Romanian village in the mountains in the middle of nowhere? Remember how when I, like, asked him if he could point us in the direction of an ATM, he just look at us, like, ‘duh’? What an idiot! I mean, I was shouting at the dumbass at the top of my lungs and he just wasn’t getting it! Europe is supposed to be all cultural and shit, but this guy couldn’t even grasp fucking English, man! He probably was some illiterate inbred, you know, like that banjo playing Deliverance Georgia boy and the moose-humping Canadian lumberjack we met working at that hostel in Scotland.”

Anyway, we eventually made it to one of the big points of interest on our excursion that we had been planning to visit from the very beginning. Nordkapp was on that list; Lofoten way up there; crossing the Arctic Circle, too … but this was the mother of them all … the jewel in our sights … the place that you knew you could die happy after having been there. Yes, my dear readers, I am talking about the Santa Claus Village in Rovaniemi!

You know, all this time I had been told that Santa lived at the North Pole. I mean, that’s where I posted letters to as a kid! Well, I hope he has better postal service that we do here in Poland and that those letters were eventually forwarded to the new Finland address. I guess they weren’t as I never got all the Star Wars toys I begged for in my letters as a child. When and why did he move, anyway? Shouldn’t there have been a statement or something? Why didn’t we Americans know about this!!!

Press Release from Kris Kringle – “Due to global warming and the alarming amount of elves being eaten by starving polar bears which cannot cross ice flows in order to obtain their normal fare of seals and the such, Mr Kringle has decided to relocate to Rovaniemi, Finland. Why Finland, you may ask? After careful consideration of the surrounding countries within the Arctic Circle, Finland seemed the most logical. Russian Siberia did not have the infrastructure, and the Russian authorities considered Mr Kringle as a business oligarch; Norway was just too overpriced and, as everyone knows, is populated with trolls; Greenland turned out not to be so green; and Canada’s prime minister is quite busy at the moment reasserting their sovereignty in the area, so Mr Krigle thought it prudent to stay out of the way for the time being.”

Many American malls have an all-year Christmas ornament shop located upon their premises. I understand that many individuals wish it was Christmas every day of the year, but they apparently don’t shop at these stores as I have never seen a sole grace the interior of any of these places outside of the month of December. Maybe they are subsidised by Saint Nick and that is how the stay afloat. Santa Claus Village is pretty much a massively enlarged version of one of these with shops sprinkled everywhere selling kitsch holiday goods (snow shakers, decorative tree lights, Santa boxer shorts). And then there is Santa’s Office itself. In all honesty, I cannot tell you about this. You will have to head to the official Santa Claus Village website to see the awe inspiring photos and read more titbits like (and I quote):

“Santa’s friends often wonder how on earth they are going to convince their friends and relatives that they really have met Santa in person. The camera elves have a good solution to this problem – in a flash they provide you with a quality photo as a souvenir and proof of your visit.”

Why, you may ask? Well, as many hardships as we had endured, roads we had traversed, rabid reindeer we had narrowly escaped from, we failed to leap the final hurdle that would have enabled us to pour forth the pain in our souls upon the lap of Mr Claus … we arrived five minutes past closing time of his office. A resounding, guttural, heart-wrenching cry from the throats of two youthful human males could be heard echoing throughout Lapland that day; a cry that, if you listened closely enough, sounded vaguely like the words “son of a bitch!”

After a good cry to cleanse our spirits, Jonathan and I gathered up Balthy and Ed the Sock, took a few cheesy photos in front of the barred doors that led into Santa’s haven of bliss and packed ourselves back into the Rent-A-Wreck. We may have been shunned by the jolly ol’ fat man, but there was still some daylight left, and if we pushed hard enough, we could make it into Sweden before nightfall. Finland held no comfort for us any more. We were done. It was time to move on.

If anyone has read BBC News lately, then you might have heard about the bus full of Polish tourists making a pilgrimage in France that careened off the road, plunged into a ravine and burst into flames killing 26 passengers this past Sunday. My heart goes out to the families of those that lost their lives and my best wishes go to those that were injured and had to be treated in hospital. Any loss of life is tragic, but, unfortunately, that is the way of the world. I would like to comment, though, on the reaction of Poland to this event. Currently, Poland is yet again in a state of mourning. I say “yet again” because this seems to have become a trend over the last five years in this country. For over 50 years and all the plight and troubles that Poland has had to endure throughout history, there have never been as many “days of mourning” as there have been in recent years. This is not to say that one should not grieve for the death of another, but to shut down certain parts of daily life for every death is becoming a bit of overkill (pardon the wording). When Pope John Paul II passed away, I could fully understand a national period of mourning. He was one of the most important figures in Polish history and changed the lives of every Pole, either through religion or through his help in the downfall of communism in Poland. He deserved to be mourned, whether you are a religious person or not or believe in everything he worked for or not, just for everything he accomplished. He was, simply put, a well respected and good man. When a gas explosion in a mine trapped and killed over 20 people in 2006, this was significant cause for a time of mourning due to the fact that the state of Polish mines are atrocious and more than 80 miners have lost their lives since 2003. The miners were also a strong faction of the Solidarity movement. The death of a group of miners is as much symbolic as it is tragic. When the roof of a building collapsed under snow killing or injuring 140 Poles, Germans and Belgians at a pigeon convention, this was significant in that … um … well … what the hell, let’s have a time of national mourning anyway. And this is becoming the trend. People die every day. Large amounts of them at a time, even! But where is the line for it being a time to mourn or not. As a matter of fact, 11 students died in a bus accident on their way to a shrine in Poland back in 2005. Was there a day of mourning? Nope. Hmm … maybe the number of deaths has to be higher. But wait … in January 2006, 63 people in Poland froze to death in one week in sub-zero temperatures. That surely beats the 26 that died in the crash in France! Days of mourning … none.

Let us move on to what these days of national mourning entail. Usually, here in Poland, the idea is that celebrations and anything that might cause people to enjoy themselves too much and put them in a festive mood are put on hold. When John Paul II died, concerts and social events were cancelled or postponed and many pubs were closed all over the country. TV channels like MTV and other channels of a purely entertainment nature even stopped broadcasting for a few days. The major Internet portals changed their entire sites to black & white. When the miners died, many social events were put on hold out of respect for the dead. I don’t recall pubs or many channels shutting down, though. At least not nearly to the same degree as with the Pope’s death. Following the events in France this past Sunday, a state of national mourning has been issued, but it all seems a bit half-arsed. A few Internet portals have changed their headers and logo colours to black & white (just the headers and logos this time, not the entire site), and one or two channels have stopped broadcasting. Not really a massive showing of the nation’s sadness. What’s the point? If you are not even going to put real heartfelt emotions into showing your respect for the dead, then just keep moving along as 98% of the rest of the country has done. Remember all those things I mentioned that ceased after the death of the Pope and the miners? Well, as of today and due to the tragedy in France: pubs closed = none that I know of; TV stations not broadcasting = one (a satellite only educational channel); concerts cancelled = one … Rod Stewart … but, really, does that count? The Rolling Stones are still on schedule for tomorrow night, though they have been pressured into observing a minute of silence (instead of the original idea of pushing the concert start time to midnight when the time of mourning officially ends) and, get this, having to pay the families of those who died or where injured in the crash a sum of money. Did the Rolling Stones cause the accident in France? Was Keith Richards somehow mystically involved and brought this about by snorting his father’s remains? Did their “devil music” indirectly make the brakes fail on the tour bus (that rumour has may not have even been up to European standards for transporting passengers)? If the answer is “no”, then why are they being made to pay a chunk of their earnings to the families? Maybe I should go around town tonight, find any concert that is going on in Kraków and collect a percentage from any band that I find playing on behalf of the bereaved relatives. I mean, if we are going to mourn, let’s mourn across the board and not make it conditional as to the number of dead or their public profile. Light a candle, stop broadcasting, close the pubs, stop the celebrations … and stop hitting up a rich and famous foreign rock band for cash just because you can.