GREASE IS THE WORD

Heart attack on toast - but what a way to go

I decided to celebrate my __th birthday abroad this year, to mitigate the potential humiliation of only getting 2 birthday cards, like last year. Air travel is so tiresome these days - whatever I wear, I always seem to set off the metal detectors. Next time I'm going to go naked, to save time. How can you set off the alarms with one shoe and not with the other? McChe, who is far more dangerous than I, sailed through unmolested whilst I was being manhandled by security. We eventually arrived in Warsaw courtesy of Wizzair late on a Friday night, and on the Saturday morning set off bright and early to visit the Old Town. Warsaw's Old Town is a replica, rebuilt in 1947 after being completely destroyed by the Germans, and is fairly convincing, give or take the odd bit of Soviet cement peeping through under the peeling paint.



Imagine my surprise and delight when we arrived on the Old Town Square to find it invested by the KNOB!* in full Bavarian tracht, playing "Happy Birthday to You"! Wolfgang, Manfred and the boys had kept secret from me that they were touring Poland (or "East Prussia" as they still call it) and sprung a surprise on me. Wie schön ! They had found it quite difficult to find appropriate tunes for their Polish repertoire Their playlist now only has one song: "Sorry seems to be the hardest word", after the Polish Ministry of Culture insisted they cut out "These boots are made for walking" and "Under my thumb".

McChe displayed a remarkable facility with the language. He learned to say "vodka", "beer" and "maer drink the noo" in Polish within 24 hours. On our first evening, we found ourselves, inexplicably, in a Polish karaoke pub, where he got his first exposure to Zywiec, the pearl of Polish breweries. He even found himself a girlfriend, although I didn't know how to explain to him that she was just a plastic blow-up doll brought along by a stag party. He's been writing to her ever since we got back. Her name is Malgosia.

Despite intermittent showers, it stayed dry on Sunday for the Chopin concert in the park, where we found a spot on the grass under the big tree on the left in the video clip I showed you last time. You could have heard a pin drop as the pianist delivered the Warsaw Concerto. The rest of the first weekend was very changeable. It was snowing fluffy cotton from the horse chestnut trees when it wasn't chucking it down with rain. The gay umbrella was up and down like a tart's knickers.

Our flamboyant friend Tarquin de Folle arrived from London on the Sunday night and we went to meet him at the gleaming new airport terminal and took him straight to "Pub Lolek", the Flintstones-like beer garden in the middle of the park, where you can grill your own sausages over a barbecue. Tarquin looks like a typical Pole with his shaved head, singlet and combat pants, although admittedly you don't often see them in fuchsia pink when Legia are playing at home.


Everywhere we went we saw posters of Pope John Paul II, the Poles don't seem to know that he died and has been replaced, and I for one wasn't going to tell them. Statues of priests and primates (the frocked type, not GB's relatives) are dotted all over the city, often adorned with votive candles and the occasional beer can. However, they don't let their piety interfere with their devotion to spending their new-found wealth, and shops are open seven days a week.

The rental apartment we had found on the internet turned out to be superior to expectations, and was spacious, modern, beautifully furnished and centrally located. Tarquin and I took a double room each, and McChe slept on some straw in a cardboard box on the balcony. Glass and chrome towers are shooting up like asparagus in the city centre. A spanking new glass-roofed shopping mall thumbs its nose at the dirty grey bunker of a railway station (a present from the Russians). All the new buildings have been constructed and fitted out with great taste and using high-quality materials. We are not talking Arndale Centre here.

Zloty Tarasy shopping centre, downtown Warsaw

The old and the new

On the one extremely hot day of the week we took cover under the trees in the old Jewish cemetery. It is the biggest Jewish cemetery in Europe, but is rather neglected, given that there were not many descendants left after the war to tend the graves. One of the pre-war tombs was that of Ludwig Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto. His thinking was that a common language would discourage people from fighting each other. What is Esperanto for "Civil War", I wonder?

We took a ride on the tram across the river to Praga, where the 2012 World Cup stadium is being built on the ruins of the old "Stadion" where the 'Russian' market used to be. There is a tradition of Russians on that side of the river. In 1944, having trundled all the way from Moscow, the Ivans stopped their tanks in Praga, got the deckchairs out and sat there eating their sandwiches and reading the Sunday Sport as the Polish Home Army insurgents got mown down by the Nazis and the city's cultural monuments were systematically blown up. When it was all over and the centre of Warsaw was reduced to a pile of rubble, they packed up their picnic and rumbled in over the bridge in the tank tracks of the departing Germans. There is an excellent new museum in Warsaw dedicated to the Uprising where we spent most of Friday. We all came out rather quiet with sombre faces.

Scene from Polanski's "The Pianist" showing the devastation of Warsaw

In the evening we'd perked up enough to go for dinner at a lovely place called Honoratka, near the old town, which is reputed to have been frequented by Chopin. It's very "old Polish", all flowers and lace and candles, Tarquin absolutely loved it. We got the party started with Tatankas - Bison-grass vodka with apple juice. When in Rome, etc. It's a very pleasant summer drink, if you can get your hands on the bison vodka - your local Polski Sklep should stock it. Proportions much the same as G&T. The menu was very Polish: I had tartare of smoked salmon with capers followed by zeberka, or suckling pig ribs in a beer and honey sauce, which came clean off the bone. Tarquin ordered placki, or potato pancakes with sour cream, followed by chicken breast with spinach, and McChe had pierogi for the third time that week, followed by chicken livers wrapped in bacon. We shared some typically Polish vegetable accompaniments: stir-fried beetroot, "kopytki" or potato dumplings, and tomatoes with onions and cream.

We skilfully averted the waiter's attempts to steer us to the expensive imported wines and plumped for a half liter, then a full liter, then another half liter of the Moravian house red. Very drinkable, and light, a bit like Italian wine. The waiter confessed halfway through our meal that it was what he drank. In fact, I think he'd been drinking it since he came on duty. Complimentary cherry liqueurs rounded off our meal quite nicely. The background music was eclectic, to say the least - first a sort of electronic Mantovani which you can listen to on their website, followed by some old pre-war Polish torch songs, then hip hop. By our third carafe of Moravian we were singing along to Polish reggae, and the bill only came to about ₤70! That's what I call a good night out.

As we were leaving, the waiter told me that I had been sitting in the VERY CHAIR where Chopin had sat. Fancy! I almost felt moved to give everyone a blast of Chopsticks on the Joanna before departing. I saw our waiter give Tarquin a broad wink over my shoulder. I think my gay umbrella might have turned into Cupid's arrow, readers!


I resisted the temptation to stock up on any more blue and white Boleslawiec pottery (of which I have half a ton at home), discouraged by Wizzair's baggage restrictions, but couldn't resist a couple of large Polish sausages and a tub of smalec (seasoned pork fat, the original schmaltz, also known as heart-attack-in-a-tub and totally delicious). Coming through security at the Warsaw end I had to take off coat, shoes, belt, and then open my case, whereupon the security man pulled out my Big Polish Sausage and started squeezing it curiously. "Kielbasa" I whispered, shiftily. " Chmnszk" he replied sternly, and replaced it carefully without unwrapping it. I think he suspected it was a sex toy. Thank God he didn't find the smalec, or I might have had to give a demonstration.



* Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band