Zapiekanka: The National Snack of Poland

The zapiekanka is one of the few popular relics of Poland's communist era.

It's all the things that quick and easy snack food should be - filling, tasty and a bit messy.

Basically it's a long flat toasted roll, hand-prepared with a topping of cheese and fresh mushrooms laced with tomato sauce.

Some zapiekanki (the plural form) are huge, they're always cheap (about $1.50), and they're ideal for warming you up quickly on a chilly day.

You can buy the zapiekanka all over Poland, usually from informal street stalls.

On top of the basics, any number of other ingredients may be added: garlic sauce, ham, salami, corn, etc. 

Some zapiekanki stalls go a bit crazy in the variety they offer - check out the bewildering array of options on the menu below :

As with all fast food, quality varies; once you find a place that serves a great zapiekanka, however, you'll never go anywhere else.

The best zapiekanka I've ever eaten came from a small take-away window at an old-fashioned cafeteria near the corner of the market square in Toruń, a city of Gothic architecture in the north.

If you're visiting Toruń, look for its window on the corner of ul Różana and ul Ducha Świętego.

Another top zapiekanka outlet I encountered was housed within this circular building in Plac Nowy, Kazimierz, a neighbourhood in beautiful southern Kraków:

I'm due to go back to Poland soon, for the first time in three years. I hope those zapiekanka stalls have survived. If so, smacznego!*

(*Bon appetit!)

Poland 1: Jazz & the English Language Club

I stumbled across the English Language Club in 2008, while updating the Poland chapter of Lonely Planet's Eastern Europe guidebook (which is what I'm doing again right now).

While wandering around the beautiful Old Town in Kraków, I happened to glance up at a sign on a building near the massive and historic St Mary's Church:

There's an interesting back story to this simple social group. According to Roy, its current organiser, the club's origins can be traced back to 1983.

This was, of course, deep within the communist period and the club was presumably a safe way for Polish students to meet and talk with foreigners who were visiting Kraków as tourists.

The tradition continues in the 21st century, with a less covert mission - to provide a weekly space for Poles, expats and tourists to meet up and chat.

There's nothing fancy about the setting, a simple room on the top floor of an old building owned by the Catholic Church, with folding chairs and a grand ceramic stove in the corner in 19th century fashion (nowadays it's heated from within by electricty rather than coal).

Anyone is welcome to come along to the meetings, and the club charges two złoty (about 60 cents) to cover hot beverages and biscuits.

There's usually a crowd of 25 to 40 people there, and on the most recent Wednesday I got into some interesting conversations as I moved around the room.

Among those present, I chatted to a Kraków local who's recently been to India and wants to go back to live there; and an English teacher originally from Liverpool who ended up in Kraków mainly because he was friends with a Pole he knew while living in Edinburgh.

A Ukrainian who's working in Poland gave me the lowdown on the differences between the Ukrainian and Polish languages - he estimated they were about 40% the same. An English teacher discussed recent Polish government cutbacks to the education budget and what that might mean for teachers.

But my most interesting discussion started with a Canadian whose relationship with Poland started via jazz, as he's a musician who first made contact with the lively Polish jazz scene online.

This was a cue to mention my theory that jazz became so popular in Poland because it was the new, energetic music form in the 1920s, when Poland had just been reassembled after more than a century as part of other people's empires, and the music resonated with its nation-building task.

However, a local IT worker in our huddle of chairs disagreed with my theory. He thought jazz may have instead become popular in the 1950s and 1960s as a gesture of musical defiance against the communist regime and its suffocating cultural restrictions. He also pointed me to Beats of Freedom, a 2010 documentary on Polish rock under the communist regime.

Now all I have to do is find it.

The English Language Club meets every Wednesday from 6pm to 8pm at ul Sienna 6, Kraków, Poland. Entry is 2zł.

Poland 1: Signs of Kraków

It's the end of my first week in Kraków, Poland. As always at this point in these trips, I'm missing home a little, but also being pleasantly reminded of how beautiful this city is.

I don't take many photos on these trips, especially when in a city I've visited before, but I do have a few from this week that I'd like to share with you. They're of signs - more or less - which have caught me eye over the past few days...

1. I really like the look of this cafe-bookshop's sign. This sort of signage is something the Poles do very well; rather than a garish commercial logo, it's a tasteful compromise between a classic look and modernity, fitting in neatly with the city's centuries-old streetscape. There's even a hint of the art nouveau in there, I think:

2. This faded old sign on a wall in the Old Town caught my eye. I imagine it must predate the communist era, and as far as I can work out it says "Entry to dairy". Of which there is now none nearby.

3. Not exactly a sign, but here's a glass of Żywiec beer next to a bunch of flowers at the Irish cafe-bar Nic Nowego (which means "nothing new"). Those cavorting peasants on the logo must have got that way by drinking the product, one presumes:

4. The former Jewish district of Kazimierz was devastated by the Nazi regime's genocidal program in World War II, but in recent years the eastern part of the district has seen a revival of Jewish traditions and motifs. This is the sign above a bar in the quarter, in a building which was once a shop:

5. Finally, here's a large diagram of a herring, its parts labelled, on the wall of a bar which serves "Polish tapas". Well that's what the menu says. They're snack-sized dishes composed of Polish foodstuffs such as śledź (herring), kiełbasa (sausage) and golonka (pork knuckle). They go well with a vodka!

This post was sponsored by Airtours. Check out its site for best deals on all inclusive holidays.  

Shakespeare Untranslated: To See, or Not to See?

To be, or not to be? To see, or not see a Shakespeare play in a foreign language? Now, that really is the question.

When travelling in a country with a different language from your own, a lot of its culture is still open to you.

Music and dance are no problem, opera is OK, and films might have subtitles. However, theatre is a problem, so reliant it is upon language.

But I love theatre, so I've always been keen to see it when travelling, if I can.

A few years ago, I hit on a solution to the language barrier - choose a Shakespeare play you're familiar with that's being performed in a foreign language, so at least you know the plot.

That frees you to focus on the acting, intonation, costumes, set design, direction and other elements without feeling bemused by the storyline. And if you know a little of the local language, you can still pick up something of what's being said.

Here's some of the foreign-language Shakespeare I've caught over the years:

The Merchant of Venice in Japanese

I caught this production in 2001 at The Other Place, which was then a secondary venue used by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, the Bard's hometown. To be precise, it was a Japanese production with a Romanian director, staged by the Euro-Japan Theatre Organisation.

It was great - the costumes were particularly memorable, an eye-catching mix of traditional and modern (eg Lorenzo in Japanese robes with a biker's jacket on top). 

Antony and Cleopatra in Italian

Well, it's a perfect fit, isn't it? Saw this in 2001 in a magnificent horseshoe-shaped old theatre in Rome - the sort of place you imagine opera being performed. It was done in a striking modern style on a candlelit stage - the men in Zegna suits, the women in classy black dresses.

The Tempest in Lithuanian

When I saw the poster for Burza in the Polish city of Toruń, with Shakespeare's name attached, I was puzzled as to which play it was. A look at my Polish dictionary produced the translation "storm" - of course, it's The Tempest! It was being staged in 2008 as part of the city's annual Kontakt festival (see the cool poster above). Kontakt started in 1991, and primarily aims to bring together great theatre work from Western and Eastern Europe.

To aid comprehension, patrons hired little radio-pickup boxes with headphones, which played live translation of the Lithuanian delivery into Polish, Russian and English. I did occasionally dip into the Russian, just because it sounded so portentous.

A Midsummer Night's Dream in Polish

All that time in Poland, and I finally got to see a Shakespeare work in Polish in 2007, courtesy of the much-respected Stary Teatr. It was magnificent. Working from a fresh translation (a luxury we English-speakers don't have), the company produced an edgy work in upmarket contemporary costumes and settings, laced with black humour.

The company managed the impressive feat of turning Shakespeare's famous comedy into something dark and uncomfortable. The scene directly after the four lovers are released from their magical enchantments was pricelessly awkward, and reminded the viewer that the characters had just been drugged and psychologically manipulated in the most humiliating way. Not really a laughing matter, when you think about it. 

There was also a nod to the original text - of the Rude Mechanicals, Snug (the one who plays the lion) could only speak in English. So we did get to hear some of Shakespeare's text, along with his attempt at a roar. That was fun.

Companions on the Polish Road 2: Toruń to Lublin

“A good companion shortens the longest road.”

This sentence is an old Turkish proverb, and it proved very applicable to my recent research trip through Poland for Lonely Planet.

(Though I won't mention the three wars the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth fought with the Ottoman Turkish Empire in the 17th century - for that would be tactless)

Last week I described the Poles I met while travelling from Kraków to Gdańsk. This week, let's hear about the fellow foreigners I met up with on the way...

Toruń: From the train station serving this beautiful Gothic city in southern Pomerania, I had to catch a bus across the broad Vistula River to reach the Old Town. As I walked through the station underpass to the bus stop, a cafe advertisement caught my eye, as it was largely in English.

When I dropped into the Kona Coast Cafe the next day I discovered a genial American, Jon Greene, behind the espresso machine. He and his Polish wife had decided to live in Poland for a while, and he'd refused to consider anywhere but Toruń (a fair call, in my opinion). We sat a table and chatted for a while, and I gave my approval to the coffee. It's worth dropping by if you're in town - the cafe's at ul Piekary 22.

Giżycko: For some reason on this particular trip, I had to catch a lot of buses and trains around 6:30am - for some reason the next choice would always depart too late in the morning. So on a chilly weekday morning I found myself sitting on a bench in front of the humble train station in this attractive lakeside holiday town in Masuria, in Poland's northeast.

Another early train had just left so there was just me on the platform, eating my packed breakfast from the hotel I'd just checked out of (Polish hotels will always pack you a breakfast if you have to check out too early for the in-house breakfast, which is much appreciated).

Then a young guy walked up to me and asked something. I explained that my Polish wasn't fluent, then found out he spoke reasonably good English and was on holiday from nearby Belarus.

Aleksandr and I were both heading to the city of Białystok, which required a change of trains at Ełk. Now I love Ełk, because it looks like the English word 'elk' but in fact has a letter 'Ł', which sounds like the English 'W'. So the name of the place is pronounced 'e-w-k'... which sounds adorable, for some reason.

(You can learn a lot of utterly unreliable but amusing nonsense about 'Ł' at its Uncyclopedia page, which describes the letter as "The evil twin brother of L. He is an ally of ∩ and controls the Unicode Villain Organization of Eastern Europe, or UVOEE for short.")

Anyway, we got out at Ełk, marched into the station building to discover which platform our connection was on, then trooped off to Platform 3 to board the next train.

We had a good talk along the way; I was intrigued to learn that Aleks, a keen sailor, had been due to join the Soviet navy just before the USSR dissolved and the career opportunity disappeared. Now he works in an automotive business in Minsk and sails as often as he can. Poland's northeastern lake country is perfect for that, of course. And not far from Minsk.

Białystok-Warsaw: A few days later I was leaving Białowieża, a small town in the eastern Podlasie region, which is famous for the wild European bison which still live in the surrounding forest.

I was waiting for a bus at about - of course - 6.30am, when I got into limited conversation with an elderly couple in Polish, who were impressed that I hailed from so far away. Then a waiter from the hotel restaurant showed up, on his day off, and we had a more fluent conversation in English.

When I left the bus at Białystok, I had the vague impression I heard some people speaking English. But at that stage in the Polish journey I do sometimes imagine hear English - my brain seems keen to twist what it hears into something I can recognises. Odd, but true.

Anyway, I shook my head, walked across the pedestrian bridge that led to the train station, and bought my ticket for Warsaw and onward to Lublin.

Then I realised there really were people speaking English - two middle-aged American women being helped by a young Polish woman who, I discovered later, had walked them all the way over from the bus station to assist them, even though she was due to catch a bus herself. Nice to see the Good Samaritan spirit at work.

After she'd left, I introduced myself to the ladies, and also introduced them to the dubious delights of Polish train station coffee (a choice of instant coffee or percolator granules served in boiling water, which you allow to sink to the bottom).

We shared a compartment on the train to Warsaw. Pam and Margie (I think those were their names, from memory) both had Polish ancestry and had been travelling to various parts of the country; they would be transferring at Warsaw to a train to Kraków. So we chatted, then I waved them goodbye at the grim Warszawa Wschodnia Station, where I was catching a connection to Lublin.

Lublin: My final meeting came courtesy of microblogging tool Twitter. I'd exchanged a few comments about my Polish adventures with Polish-born Twitter user @rusticbynature, then realised she was tweeting from my next stop Lublin, so suggested meeting up. So myself, Ania and her American husband Jaime, a keen photographer, got together at the Złoty Osioł in Lublin.

It's a hidden-away pub-restaurant in the centre of town, dimly lit and full of rustic atmosphere, and I wouldn't have found it easily by myself. If ever in Lublin, see if you can locate it, starting with this address: ul Grodzka 5a. Its name, by the way, means Golden Donkey...

Companions on the Polish Road 1: Kraków to Gdańsk

When I travelled around Poland in 2008, I made a point of talking with people I encountered along the way.

As I was researching a possible travelogue book about Poland, I wanted to get the most out of encounters with locals on my journeys.

Two years later on my next round-Poland Lonely Planet trip, however, being interactive was its own reward.

Some of my best travel memories, I realised, have arisen from chance encounters with people, both on transport and on the streets.

Although most Polish trains are divided into compartments and are thus conducive to chat, I find that Poles have something similar to the British reserve. The polite procedure when entering a compartment is to say "dzień dobry" ("Good day") to your fellow passengers, but not intrude further.

But if you do fancy a chat and you both speak enough common language to communicate, it's possible to end up in a warm and interesting conversation.

And there are other ways to meet both locals and other international travellers. Here's a few of my experiences in May-June 2010...

Kraków: In 2008 I discovered the English Language Club by accident, when I noticed its small sign hanging above a street in the Old Town. This time I made a return appearance in the company of Narrelle. The club has met weekly since before the end of communism in the 1980s.

It's run on a pretty simple concept - a mixed bunch of locals, tourists and expats meet in a big room up a tatty staircase to chat informally, helped along by tea and biscuits. If you're ever in Kraków on a Wednesday, get along to a meeting from 6pm to 8pm at ul Sienna 5, near St Mary's Church; it's a fun way to meet the locals.

Kraków-Łódź: On this meandering train journey to Poland's second-largest city, I realised that a couple down the corridor were lightly bickering in English. Passing by their compartment, I introduced myself and discovered the male half of the sketch was a UK academic who was heading to Łódź to consult with colleagues there about a possible joint project.

We had a pleasant chat, and speculated whether onboard catering might materialise once they added an additional complement of carriages to the train at Częstochowa. It did - in the form of a lady with a trolley - and I scored the last kanapka (sandwich).

Warsaw: Visiting funkily-decorated hostel Oki Doki to check its details for the LP book, I bumped into its owner, Ernest. That's not as obvious as it seems, as he spends a lot of his working days at other locations; but somehow we always happen to be there at the same time when I drop in every two years.

We sat in the hostel's bar and shared a beer or two as I heard about his latest travels. Ernest is the most well-travelled Pole I know, having been to just about every continent with his wife and daughter. But not Australia... yet.

Wrocław: In this attractive southwestern city I had arranged a meeting with artist Tomasz Moczek, creator of the famous dwarf/gnome statues which are scattered through its Old Town's streets. First I scored Poland's chattiest taxi driver, who was determined to have a lively conversation about Australia no matter how limited my command of the Polish language.

He deposited me at a crumbling old industrial complex which turned out to be a former brewery full of artistic offices and studios, and I sat outside in the sunshine with Tom and two of his friends who helped translate, as we all drank beer and talked art. That was fun.

Gdańsk: In the Baltic port city, I met up one evening with my friend Andrzej Gierszewski, as I have since Narrelle and I met him in 2007. On that occasion I was looking for someone to interview about the amber trade for a 'vox pop' box in Lonely Planet's Poland country guide, and Andrzej was perfect - he related a great set of tests you could do to discover if a piece of amber was fake.

Every time I return we've met up at cafe-bar Kamienica on ul Mariacka, a beautiful small street of terraced shopfronts featuring gargoyle-head drain pipes. We drank a bit too much beer (Polish beer is becoming a theme, I see), and talked history, culture and politics as the sun set.

Next week: Enter the internationals - an expat cafe-owner in Toruń, a Belarusian fellow-traveller, two American ladies on a bus, and the Polish-American couple at the Golden Donkey...

Poland 5: Bite-Sized Lublin

I'm back home now, and the contrast between the long days of the Polish summer and the short days of the chilly Melbourne winter are freaking me out just a little.

But before I leave the subject behind, lets pay a visit to one of my favourite Polish cities, the somewhat overlooked Lublin in Poland's southeast.

As I wrote in Lonely Planet's Eastern Europe book, Lublin would make a nice substitute for the wildly popular Kraków when the latter city's tourist crowds are too much to cope with.

Like Kraków, Lublin has a beautiful Old Town, an impressive castle, and good drinking and dining; but it's not overwhelmed with visitors and the pace is slower.

So here's a snapshot of Lublin, created by gathering together all my postings to Twitter during my stay in the city (with a glimpse of a day trip to nearby Zamość)...

- Bloody hell! What looms above the skylight of my hotel room here in Lublin, Poland? And has it been fed?  2:43 PM Jun 21st

- Ah, the trolleybus... combines all the disadvantages of both bus and tram travel in a single ungainly vehicle.  5:36 PM Jun 21st

- With the A$ so strong, I should be saving cash... but here I am at the Grand Hotel Lublinianka (and it's only costing me $90 a night!).  5:53 PM Jun 21st

- Well that's a record - the iPhone's battery almost drained by 10:45am. Apple should be ashamed of its non-removable battery's poor life.  6:42 PM Jun 21st

- Just located Lublin's first modern backpacker hostel... nice. Always satisfying to add something good and new to the LP book.  8:33 PM Jun 21st

- In the basement of my hotel, the Lublinianka, is a classy sauna; but not in the Lubyanka, the KGB's ex-HQ. Important not to mix them up.  4:58 AM Jun 22nd

- The colour-coded Renaissance facades of Zamość; founded the same time as Shakespeare was writing his stuff.  7:12 PM Jun 22nd

- You know, you can have too much runny scrambled egg in your life. Hotel breakfasts more impressive in theory than reality, aren't they?  3:11 PM Jun 23rd

- Behold the Fiat Polski, the standard car of Poland's communist era. It's about the size of a matchbox.  4:20 PM Jun 23rd

- On the road (or rails) again... off to Przemyśl next. Nice day for it!  5:14 PM Jun 23rd

Poland 1: Cinematic Exit

You expect change when you visit a city regularly. However, it’s still jarring when seemingly permanent elements of that city disappear.

That’s what I discovered in Kraków, my first stop on this year’s Lonely Planet assignment.

For the next few weeks I’ll be travelling around the whole of Poland, updating the Poland chapter of the Eastern Europe guidebook.

I began in the Polish city I know best, having lived here in 1994-95 as an English language teacher.

Kraków is an effortlessly beautiful city and its main attractions never change: the sprawling main market square, the Rynek Główny; mighty Wawel Castle; the narrow streets of Kazimierz.

However, in my own mental map of the city there are other fixtures, one of which was the tiny Kino Pasaż. Slotted within an arcade leading off the main square, this 42 seat cinema was a shabby little gem.

When Narrelle and I lived here in the 1990s, this was the place where current releases went to die, providing a last chance to catch them before they left the big screen altogether.

To be frank, I was expecting the Kino Pasaż to be closed when I returned to Poland as a travel writer in 2006, having been away for 11 years.  

Single screen cinemas were under pressure in city centres everywhere around the world, and this had no particular architectural charms that might have saved it as an art house venue - it was just seven rows of six seats (or was it six rows of seven?) in a scuffed old room.

So imagine my surprise to find it was still functioning in 2006, then in 2007, and in 2008. By now it had entered my own private folklore of the city, an eternal piece of Kraków’s furniture.

Then, last Thursday, I walked through the arcade to discover that the Kino Pasaż was no more.

The letters spelling out its name were still attached to the wall, and there was even a relatively recent film poster pasted on the door. But there were clear signs of closure, and I was able to peer through a recently uncovered window to see the battered old cinema seats within.

A woman working in a nearby office confirmed that the cinema had closed the previous year. As I stood there contemplating its closure and the likely removal of those big metal letters that had been there for god knew how long, I felt a distinct pang of grief.

Its closure wasn’t at all unlikely, after all. In an age of modern cinema multiplexes and boutique art house outlets, an ugly duckling like the Kino Pasaż was always living on borrowed time.

But still, it was a part of my life in Kraków in the 1990s, when Poland seemed much more foreign to me than it does now, as a comforting place to take in an English language movie.

And it was comforting to keep encountering it as the years went by, a tiny fragment of my own life’s narrative. I distinctly remember seeing Rapa Nui there, for example, an obscure Hollywood flick about Easter Island; an experience which provided context when I finally visited Easter Island a decade later.

So the Kino Pasaż is gone, and in a few years almost no-one will remember it was once there. But it lives on here, and in my mind.

Signs and Portents: Poland 4

Did Sherlock Holmes ever visit Poland? How many wheels do you really need to sell chocolate? And would you rather stand beneath a tiger or a pear? It's been a few months since I posted my most recent example of curious signs encountered on my Lonely Planet assignment in Poland in winter 2006... so here's another serve.

1. I'm used to encountering Sherlock Holmes all around the world... usually in the names of pubs. This sign, in the southeastern city of Lublin, has Holmes' iconic profile aptly endorsing a school which trains private investigators. I wonder if they've read his classic monograph on types of cigarette ash?

Due to an unfortunate translation, the detective school planted a lemon tree in honour of Holmes' favourite expression. 

2. This political poster was also encountered in Lublin, which is located not far from the border with Belarus. My visit coincided with a presidential election in Belarus, in which the authoritarian Alexander Lukashenko was returned amid the usual voting irregularities. The poster reads something like "Time to be together with Belarus", and Belarus' name is pointedly rendered in the same style as the logo of Poland's Solidarity trade union which fought against communist rule in the 1980s.

President Lukashenko was so popular that even the dead rose from their graves to vote for him - some more than once!

3. It's not really the sign that caught my eye here, but the whole vehicle. This gentleman outside the Lublin bus station is selling both public transport tickets (bilety) for city buses, and chocolate (czekolady).

Józef believed it was only a matter of time before the franchising rights to his chocolate-and-ticket tricar concept took off.

4. As I mentioned in an earlier installment, Polish businesses often include the preposition pod, meaning beneath, to refer to features of their buildings. Here's a picture of the Kraków pharmacy known as Apteka Pod Złotym Tygrysem - The Pharmacy Beneath the Golden Tiger.

Felinophobic customers could at lease console themselves that it wasn't a golden tigger.

5. ... and finally, here's Kraków's Restauracja Pod Gruszką - The Restaurant Beneath the Pear!

 Diners often experienced a strange compulsion to order the fruit salad.
.

Signs and Portents: Poland 1

Looking through my photos, I've noticed that I love taking shots of strange and quirky signs. They're often quite irrelevant to a story I'm pursuing, and therefore won't get published, but they are a lot of fun and tell you much about the local culture. And make you scratch your head in puzzlememnt. Or at least give you a good chuckle.

So without further ado, here's the first in an irregular series of quirky signs I've encountered along the way. First up, that champion of bizarre posters and curious signs, Poland! This set of images was taken in February 2006, during my first Lonely Planet assignment in Polska.

Pedro was so going to sue his travel agent when he'd saved enough to return to Acapulco.

This pic was taken in the middle of a very cold winter in Kraków. This poor guy was charged with advertising the charms of a Mexican restaurant by standing outside in minus-5 degree weather. Yes, that is a pile of snow behind the bin. And no, I don't know why there were swings in the garden or who would use them in winter. Or why you would use them in summer, for that matter.

The management couldn't understand the drop-off in trade since they'd erected the new sign - had they chosen the wrong type of cola?

A somewhat unfortunate sign outside a cafe within Kraków's main train station. You might expect the food provided by Gastro Wars to set off an unpleasant sequence of intestinal events once eaten, but it's all just a horrible misunderstanding. The company that runs the place has simply added the "gastro" from gastronomy to its own company name, Wars (pronounced "vars"). Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Tomasz couldn't help thinking he'd created a better-shaped heart than Pawel.

It may not have been celebrated in Poland until after the fall of communism, but Valentine's Day now seems as popular there as anywhere else. Before its arrival, male Poles marked International Women's Day on 8 March by giving romantic gifts to the ladies, making it both an officially serious and unofficially whimsical occasion. This was taken on the main street of Łódź on 14 February.

For some reason, Władysław was dying for some fries.

You can't escape the big M! This gigantic drink cup was placed next to one of the statues commemorating famous locals along Łódź's main drag, ulica Piotrkowska. The gentleman depicted here is Władysław Reymont (1867-1925), writer and Nobel prize winner. Look carefully at the straw on the cup - it's shaped like an ice hockey stick in reference to the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.

Roman wondered if it was finally time to launch his celebrity dumpling chain restaurant concept.

And finally, one of the stars on the Walk of Fame along ulica Piotrkowska in Łódź. Poland's second-largest city is also its film-making hub, as the National Film School was established here after WWII when Warsaw lay in ruins. These stars commemorate numerous stars and production people, though the only three likely to be known to people outside Poland are Roman Polański (Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown, The Pianist), Krzysztof Kieślowski (Three Colours trilogy), and Andrzej Wajda (whose 1981 Man of Iron won the Palme d’Or at Cannes).

Stay tuned for more curious pics! And if you have any odd or amusing signs you've encountered on your travel, feel free to email them to me at tim@iwriter.com.au, to be featured in a future posting.

Return of the Red Menace: More Communist-Era Relics

Last week I began counting down the the top ten communist relics I've visited in my travels through Central and Eastern Europe, complete with images (and bonus silly captions!).

We're up to the really big structures now. Who will come in at number one? Let the gender-bending drug-enhanced socialist games commence!

5. New Bridge, Bratislava, Slovakia. When Czechoslovakia's communist regime decided the Slovak capital needed a new bridge across the Danube in the 1970s, they didn't stop at mere functionality. "No," they said, "Let's build a bridge - and place a huge observation platform on an angled steel pylon above it, and make it look like a flying saucer!" And so it came to pass, an awkwardly located observation bubble immediately nicknamed 'UFO on a stick'. Nowadays it's been renovated and transformed into a restaurant and nightclub 85 metres above the Danube.

The Politburo had finally found the perfect place to hold their secret Coca-Cola tasting sessions.

4. Nowa Huta, Kraków, Poland. In the 1950s, Poland's new communist government came up with a bright idea to counter the traditional religious and intellectual elites of the former royal capital, Kraków. They would build a vast new steelworks next to the city, and a huge town to house the workers. But not just any workers' town, oh no, this would be a workers' paradise!

The finest socialist realist architects were called in, huge quanitites of concrete were ordered, and Nowa Huta (New Steelworks) was born. Today, it's missing the statue of Lenin that was the charming centrepiece of its main square, but Nowa Huta is well worth the tram ride from central Kraków for its razor-sharp streets, its enormous grey public buildings, and its sprawling residential blocks. Despite new monuments and steeet signs referencing John Paul II, Ronald Reagan and Solidarity, it's a corner of Poland that will be forever 1954.

Janek wondered when socialist realist concrete structures would score a sexy treatment in Wallpaper* magazine.

3. Warszawa Centralna, Warsaw, Poland. Opened in 1975, Warsaw's main train station (see video here) was emblematic of the dynamic future of socialist transport. It even - so I’ve read - had hostesses in slick modernist outfits assisting visitors through the new rail hub. From outside, the station seems to squat like a gigantic metallic insect, suggesting a spaceship of insectoid invaders who will soon swarm out to wreak havoc.

Curiously, it's not approachable directly from the street, but only via a completely disorientating labyrinth of claustrophobic pedestrian tunnels crammed with shops and ticket offices. Hardly anyone actually reaches the lofty main hall above, and the hostesses are, unfortunately, long gone.

The secret police had discovered how to dissuade people from fleeing Poland by train.

2. Slovak Radio Building, Bratislava, Slovakia. Let's face it, communist regimes only had two aesthetic settings - 'bland' or 'weird'. The Slovak Radio HQ, completed in 1983, is a gigantic, rust-coloured, inverted pyramid just outside the city's attractive Old Town, and falls firmly into the latter category.

For the thousandth time, Pavel wondered wherever the blueprints really had been drawn the right way up.

1. Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw, Poland. Yes, we have a winner! For its sheer enormity and visual scariness, this immense socialist realist structure is the one to beat. When I first came to Warsaw I couldn’t keep my eyes off it, so totally did it dominate the skyline. Even now, with added clock faces, and capitalist-era tall buildings as company on the skyline, it’s enthralling.

The Palac Kultur i Nauki was a gift from Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in the 1950s - the kind of gift you can’t politely refuse. It was built across an entire block of the city centre, which had been devastated in WWII. It's an immense skyscraper 237 metres tall (still one of Europe’s ten tallest buildings), and completely inconsistent with the city’s low-rise character. Strangely, the giant Renaissance-inspired concrete decorative flourishes added by Soviet architect Led Rudnev help not a jot in diminishing its inherent alienating vastness. But you know what? I love it. It terrifies me, but I love it.

Critics of the Palace's architectural merit were invited to discuss the matter in Room 101.

And a special mention... Alexanderplatz, Berlin, Germany. This square was at the heart of East Berlin, and was redecorated in the 1960s in a thoroughly socialist manner. As I haven't been there for 15 years I have no idea how it looks now, but here's a snap we took of its World Time Clock in 1994.

Günther was impressed by the DDR's advanced sundial technology.

And that's it for our communist relic countdown! Try to visit some of these if you can, and let me know what more you'd add to the list. If you'd like to email me an image of a Cold War gem and a few sentences about when you encountered it and what you thought of it, I'll feature it in a future posting!

Until then... keep striving to achieve the five year plan!

[To see the five earlier relics, click here]

Red Menace: Communist-Era Relics

I was recently writing an article on Vilnius, Lithuania, which started me thinking about all the former communist countries I've visited in Central and Eastern Europe.

I love those places.

For me, coming from Australia, it feels just like encountering stereotypical "Europe", with its ruined castles, cobblestone squares and art treasures - but it's an alternative Europe in a strange parallel dimension, which includes curious relics of the communist era, left high and dry when the socialist tide ran out in 1989.

That's why I often recommend that visitors to Europe skip the well-trodden tourist paths in the west and go straight to the good stuff. I'm talking about the weird and wonderful cities of the former communist bloc, with their gigantic concrete monuments, vast housing blocks and oversized cultural institutions.

It's freaky and it's fun. Or maybe I'm just perverse. In either case, here's a countdown of the top ten communist relics I've visited in my travels - with images!

10. Hideous Hotels across Poland. The now-privatised travel organisation Orbis controlled Poland's major hotels in the days of the communist regime, and added some fairly ugly additions to the existing stock. Below, for example, is the exterior of the Hotel Arkona in Szczecin, sadly demolished since I took this photo in May 2008 (watch it go!).

The management hoped the new trouser press would raise the tone of their hotel.

9. Soviet Trains, Vilnius, Lithuania. Judging from my day trip to the attractive castle at Trakai, Lithuania is still operating trains inherited from its enforced stay within the Soviet Union. They're big, clunky, and kinda cool to look at. Because the USSR had a completely different rail gauge from the rest of Europe, possibly aimed at foiling invaders, it's caused no end of hassle in linking the three Baltic states to the rest of the EU by rail.

"The struggle of class against class is a political struggle," said Thomas the Revolutionary Engine.

8. Fallout Shelter, Szczecin, Poland. This sprawling complex of tunnels, entered by a nondescript door beneath a platform at Szczecin Główny train station, was originally built by the Nazi regime when Szczecin was the German city of Stettin. But the Polish communists converted it into a Cold War shelter, and today you can go on a tour through the eerie labyrinth, which looks much as it did in the good old days of prospective nuclear annihilation.

Marek thought he might have overdone it a bit with the low-carb diet.

7. Green Bridge, Vilnius, Lithuania. This bridge, constructed in the 1950s, is a rare example of socialist realist art still in its original location. At each of its corners, a pair of statues stands forth, proud and purposeful, showing the way to the socialist future. They're extremely irony-inducing, given their placement near the most fashionable shopping boulevard in the city, and make excellent photographic subjects.

Piotr longed for Dimitri to realise they were more than special friends.

6. Socialist Realist Gallery, Kozłówka, Poland. This tiny village north of Lublin plays host to the Zamoyski Palace, once the home of 18th century aristocrats. But it's the Socialist Realist Gallery which is our focus here. This museum was originally an annexe of the palace, used as a storage area for truckloads of Stalinist art when the dictator was repudiated after his death. Arranged in an attractive jumble, with stirring anthems playing over the sound system and heroic statues dotted through the gardens, the collection makes an entertaining side-trip.

Lenin wondered if he should improvise a little twirl at the end of the catwalk.

Next week: The countdown continues - what will be named the top communist relic? Be here for the socialist showdown!

[To see the final five relics, click here]

Have Yourself a Foreign Little Xmas

The period between Christmas and New Year is not necessarily a quiet one for a freelance writer. As newspaper staffers go on leave while there's still a daily newspaper to produce, it can be a good time to pick up work.

In previous years I've written during this period for Melbourne's broadsheet daily, The Age. This year, however, I'm tackling a writing assignment for Lonely Planet.

One perennial of the holiday season is people complaining about the holiday season: its commercialism, its tacky muzak, the pressure to shop with crowds and be cheerful about it.

Which puts me in mind of past Xmases and New Year's Eves when we've been overseas, and how refreshing it was to step outside the usual hectic formula and celebrate year's end in a different way.

Some of the most memorable...

Xmas in Cairo, 1992 & 1993. Christmas in Egypt is naturally low-key, as it's a predominantly Muslim country and the Coptic Christian minority celebrate the day in January. This naturally made it far more attractive, as Xmas commercialism was entirely absent. The only glimpse of the Western-style Santa was in the foyers of five-star hotels.

One year we had friends around for Christmas lunch, including Texan fellow English language teacher James (who we referred to as Mr James, after the style of our students) and Mohamed, a local student. One exotic item on the menu was a taste of the Australian yeast-based spread Vegemite, on a piece of toast. It was universally reviled; though as this is the usual reaction to Vegemite from those not raised on it, we weren't disappointed.

Vegemite was, incidentally, one of the items we required from the decadent West whenever someone came to Egypt to visit us. The others were Twinings Earl Grey Tea and Branston Pickle, proof of our Anglophile tendencies.

New Year's Eve in Cairo, 1993. This remains the most impressive New Year's Eve I've ever had. The party was held on a houseboat on the banks of the Nile, bobbing slowly as the music played loudly and guests clambered above and below deck. It belonged to a friend of a friend, and was also home to two fat cats who seemed oblivious of the commotion.

Xmas in Berlin, 1994. We were living in Poland by this time, still teaching English, and had hopped on the overnight train from Kraków to Berlin. It arrived at Lichtenberg station in the former East Berlin, where trains had pulled in from Poland in the communist era, so it was a less than flash entry.

We were staying with fellow members of the Hospitality Exchange, wherein members trade each other free sleeping space when they travel. Our two German hosts had kindly arranged for us to stay in an empty apartment belonging to a friend of theirs, so we slept on a mattress on the floor and placed a gigantic bottle of cheap French wine on the window ledge to be chilled by the snow outside.

As Germans have their main celebration on Xmas Eve, we shared a salmon with the guys that evening. Back in Kraków, we were startled by fireworks being let off prematurely in anticipation of Sylwester - which Poles call New Year's Eve, it being the feast day of Saint Silvester.

Xmas in Kraków, 1993 & 1994. Although Poland is a deeply Christian country, Christmas there was also surprisingly uncommercial (though this may have changed by now). And very authentic to our Australian eyes, with small wooden stalls selling mulled wine around the edge of the snow-covered market square. The snow itself was something we'd only seen briefly once before, in Vienna.

There were other subtle differences. Poles place more weight on St Nicholas' Day, 6 December, when St Nick appears in the garb of a bishop, distributing treats and rewarding good behaviour. Kraków even had a special Xmas tram running the rails, on which St Nick made appearances.

Another difference was its duration. Not much in the way of Xmas decoration appeared before the first week of December, but the celebratory mood carried on to the end of the Epiphany season in January. As a result, it was not unusual for the concert hall to schedule a performance of Christmas carols well into the New Year.

On reflection, what was most enjoyable about these Xmas and New Year celebrations was the removal of the societal pressure to enjoy them in a set way. It's another reminder of something I'm always banging on about - the power of travel to make you see the world through fresh eyes.

What about you? Any memorable festive events overseas?