Pictures of Przemyśl

One attractive Polish city I've never written a travel article about is Przemyśl. It lies in the southeast of the country in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, and has a mighty river (the San) running through it.

It shares the experience of many Polish places in having belonged to many nations in its history. In its early existence, Przemyśl (pronounced pzhem-ishl) was variously claimed by Moravia, Hungary, Kievan Rus and Poland, then had a long period of prosperity within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before being absorbed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Since the 1920s it's been part of modern Poland, though for a period in World War II it was divided along the San River between the occupation forces of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

All these cultures have left their mark on the place, so it's a good city in which to wander around with an eye for an interesting image. Here's a selection of shots I've taken there during my Lonely Planet research trips...

1. King on a plinth. This is a statue of King Jan III Sobieski, who in 1683 achieved a seeming miracle in leading his troops to a defeat of the Turkish army at the Battle of Vienna.

It marked the furthest point the Ottoman Empire would ever reach in its conquest of Europe. He was a fairly local lad, having been born a little further east near Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine).

2. Ukrainian connection. The border between Poland and Ukraine was shifted dramatically westward at the end of World War II, and is now only about 15km to the east of Przemyśl. Hence you see some Ukrainian language on signage around town, in the Cyrillic script. This sign, at the bus station, indicates where to buy tickets:

3. Papal monument. This statue of Pope John Paul II in the main city square struck me as notable because it showed the late pontiff as he appeared late in his life, rather than as an idealised heroic figure:

4. Pipe dreams. Also in the market square (or Rynek in Polish) is this curious piece of street art. It's symbolic, it turns out, of Przemyśl's historic renown as the manufacturer of pipes. Not far away, in fact, is the Museum of Bells and Pipes.

5. Soldier in the square. Another feature of the sprawling Rynek is this statue of the title character of The Good Soldier Švejk, the satirical comic novel by Czech author Jaroslav Hašek.

It focuses on the soldier's misadventures as a member of the Austro-Hungarian army during World War I, summing up the futility of war. Švejk spent some time in Przemyśl in the story, hence his presence here:

 

6. The good pizza. And finally, here's Švejk recommending a local pizzeria:

This post was sponsored by Grata Apartments in Kiev, Ukraine. Check out its site for deals on accommodation in Kiev.

The Unicycle Diaries 5: An Imperfect Grasp of the French

A fragment taken from my travel diaries written in French Polynesia, in October 2005...

Passage at patisserie this morning:

"Comment dis 'receipt' a français?"

Blank look.

"The bill... l'edition?"

Glimmer of understanding.

"Ah! Le ticket!"

Hands receipt over.

Vaguely remembered schoolboy French is a dangerous thing (especially if, like me, you never actually studied it at school). A receipt in English is a recipe in French, a French 'ticket' is our receipt, an English ticket is a 'bilet', and our billet is... oh, never mind.

Overnight, the previously perfectly sunny weather gave a hint of the coming wet season, pouring down in the wee small hours. We later went swimming in a steady light shower, experimenting with the waterproof casing of Narrelle's camera by taking pics of the hotel from the sea.

Preconceptions of paradise

The aquamarine shade of the ocean is so distinctive and somehow instantly relaxing; it makes me wonder whether it's a case of chicken and egg. Is aqua an instinctively relaxing colour, or have we been brainwashed by decades of travel brochures and tropical movies into finding it so?

It's the same with the holiday destination; we're attracted by what we know about it, what's entered our consciousness through media coverage and fiction. Polynesia immediately conjures up images of Bligh and Mutiny on the Bounty, along with an 18th century focus on free love and sensuous women.

Add to that Paul Gauguin's paintings and the tropical cliches like palm trees and pineapples, and you have a simple compelling picture. But how valuable is it? Westerners know a fair bit about Japan and nearly nothing about neighbouring Korea, yet presumably both of them have just as much to offer the traveller.

Pacific pacification

Either way, there's something extraordinarily relaxing about Mo'orea. It has the air of a quiet beachside town par excellence; akin to holiday locations on the Red Sea or the quieter islands of Fiji. The medium-priced hotels here have the best of both worlds - comfort and informality.

At night there's nothing much to do, no TV in the room and nothing but the stars and the quietly undulating surf to watch. To anyone living and working in a city nowadays, that's all it takes to qualify as paradise.

We combined breakfast with experiments involving French, and some clever deductive work by the patisserie proprietor ("You are Australian? Your chapeau is like Crocodile Dundee"). Yes, that's the choice you make when you consider the hot sun of the Pacific: risk sunstroke or risk constant identification as an Aussie on vacation.

The local shops are refreshingly un-mall-like, with wooden verandahs enclosing a green quadrangle. There's a bank, newsagency, Internet access and  a little supermarket selling fresh baguettes, limited vegetables, and some local fruit such as pineapple and grapefruit.

Even supermarket prices are breathtaking in French Polynesia, but it's cheaper than eating out all the time. For 20 cents you can even buy a sac de pain, a long narrow plastic bag for putting your baguette in - does your supermarket at home offer that?

The French connection

Back at the hotel we met Michael, a stocky tattooed Tahitian who will take us for a tour of Mo'orea on Wednesday. Turning our back on the obvious attractions of the sea (local aquatic activities include swimming with sharks and stingrays), we want to turn inland and see more of the interior landscape and local culture.

After setting up the tour, we chatted for a while about French Polynesia. He's dismissive of the push for independence, basically on economic grounds; Tahiti and its neighbours have become deeply reliant on imports and French spending over the years, especially while French nuclear testing was operating in the area.

I suggested the French would have to compensate the territory either way if the testing proves to have dangerous long-term consequences, as are already hinted at in scientific investigations of damage on Moruroa.

But Michael had done well out of Tahiti's French connection, living in Paris and travelling across Europe and Asia. He's the modern face of a once-remote people who are now connected to the world, like it or not. The advantages of this connectedness no doubt help maintain this region's vestiges of colonialism, decades after it became a dirty word and vanished elsewhere.

Propping up le bar

At night I sat in the bar for a while, reading the Wodehouse biography and half-hoping to strike up a conversation with someone. But it was one of those nights when there were no English speakers around.

Coco said hello when I arrived and I had a brief chat with him and two gorgeous Tahitian women exuding Parisian chic in strapless tops; but conversation would be too hard to sustain with our limited grasp of each other's languages, so I took a seat inside and ordered a Hinano beer.

Not for the first time, I felt frustrated by my lack of the local lingo; but there was something pleasingly exotic about sitting with a beer, reading about the quintessential English humorist, while listening to the gentle flow of French around me. As has been frequently noted, it really is a beautiful language to listen to.

The Unicycle Diaries is a random series of excerpts from my travel diaries. For previous instalments, click on the Unicycle Diaries Topic tag below, then scroll down.

Montréal en Anglais

I'm back from Canada - and I have to say, I ♥ Montreal. What fascinated me most about it was how its French heritage meshes with its British history, creating a Francophone city with dashes of Anglophone place names and culture. For example, my hotel (the excellent Hotel St Paul) was on Rue McGill, named after a successful Scottish fur trader, and my nearest Metro station was named after a British monarch.

Here are some examples of the British elements I found scattered through the otherwise French-speaking landscape...

1. This grand building in what was once the commercial hub of Old Montreal was built by the Grand Trunk company in 1900. Grand Trunk was a British-owned railway company which built and operated lines in both Canada and the USA, and this was its North American headquarters. A historical curiosity is the death of the company's president Charles Hays on the ill-fated maiden voyage of the Titanic in 1912.

2. Here's a sign on a famous bagel shop on the distinctly Anglo-sounding Avenue Fairmount, in the attractive district of Mile End:

3. The nearest Metro stop to my hotel was Square-Victoria, named after the first Queen of Canada. Here she is in the middle of the square:

4. I went on a walk through Montreal's extensive underground pedestrian route one day, and crossed through the Gare Centrale (Central Station) on the way. Above one end of the station concourse I encountered a vast post-art deco bas-relief frieze created in 1943 by Charles Comfort. It was scattered with English words, including those of the Canadian national anthem...

5. ... which made me think there must be a French-language version somewhere, for balance. And sure enough, here it was at the other end of the concourse (with a McDonald's sign placed for ironic impact):

6. Most unexpected of all was this statue I discovered towering above Place Jacques Cartier, on my way from the Champ-de-Mars Metro Station. Right in the heart of Old Montreal, in a prominent public position opposite the former Palais de Justice, is a statue of Napoleonic war hero Lord Horatio Nelson. A war hero, that is, to the British, and famous for defeating the French fleet at Trafalgar. How cheeky is that?

Disclosure time... on this trip I travelled courtesy of the Canadian Tourism Commission.

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...

Signs and Portents: Poland 3

Gone to Hel and back? Or just dying for a pie in the most unlikely of places? This week I continue my survey of curious signs encountered on a Lonely Planet assignment through Poland in the depths of winter in 2006...

1. There’s nothing like that nice Mr Shakespeare to encourage confidence in an English language school... though you might wonder whether Poles are really motivated to speak just like the Bard.

Interestingly, the great playwright used to be styled as 'Szekspir' in Poland, though the original spelling of his name is usually used now. Szkoła języków obcych means 'school of foreign language', by the way, and this example was in the beautiful Main Town of Gdańsk.

The Bard was pleased that his passing mention of Poland in Hamlet had been noticed by the right people.

2. Don’t ever say something will only happen on 'a cold day in hell' if you’re heading to northern Poland. For on the end of a long sandy peninsula north of Gdańsk lies the attractive village of Hel. And when I was there in March 2006, it was very cold indeed. Still, how many people can say they’ve been to Hel and back - and saw a Baltic grey seal in an aquarium on the way?

The tourism bureau wondered why its “Go to Hel” campaign was failing to bring in the visitors.

3. No, this scary metallic fish seen in Hel wasn’t an aquatic offshoot of the robots in the Terminator movie series. It was actually a warning about maritime pollution - the sign reads 'Don't litter the sea'. It was also a tribute, I felt, to the surrealism endemic in Polish poster art.

Newly-released papers revealed that Poland’s former communist rulers had attempted to construct an artificial dolphin for their Socialist World amusement park.

4. This bumper sticker belonged to Gdynia businesswoman Beata Zielińska, a former Adelaide resident who had taken the secret of Australian meat pies back to her homeland and manufactured them to be sold to Polish schoolkids. The sticker reads 'The pie is good and cheap'. Quite right.

The EU was willing to approve manufacture of the Aussie meat pie, but drew the line at Vegemite.

5. This starkly evocative sign was one of many stencilled onto the giant concrete ruins of the bunkers at Wilczy Szaniec, better known in German as Wolfsschanze or in English as Wolf’s Lair. This hidden complex in the East Prussia region of Germany (now the Masuria region of northeast Poland) was Hitler’s wartime HQ from which he directed Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941.

It’s supremely ironic, I think, that the Führer's nerve centre, where he spent almost all the remaining years of WWII, is now deep within Polish territory. If you’re going to visit the ruins by the way, I couldn’t think of a more atmospheric time to do so than the midst of winter, when the broken concrete blocks and surrounding vegetation are thickly covered by snow.

Von Stauffenberg intended to show the Führer exactly how he felt about him with a surprise novelty gift.

More intriguing signs and portents to come...

North Dakota: History Rides Again

As intensely as I might have tried to peer through the mists of time, I would never have dreamed that one day I’d be having an up close and personal encounter with the original headdress of Sitting Bull.

But here I was a few days ago, in Medora, North Dakota, inside the North Dakota Cowboy Hall of Fame, eyeballing the handsome historical artefact in its tall display case. A display case it was about to part company with.

Medora is a cowboy town in the infamous Badlands. It was once a thriving ranching settlement, founded in 1883 by French aristocrat the Marquis de Mores, and today it’s an entertaining jumble of restored shopfronts, tourist attractions, and bars and restaurants done out in Wild West decor.

With much of the place owned by a foundation, Medora is part tourist attraction and part real town, with a vibrant, compact centre.

The Cowboy Hall of Fame is about more than ranching and rodeo; it also celebrates the Native American culture of the region. As a sparsely settled place, North Dakota has a higher Native American proportion of its population than most other US states, and it was this connection which drew our attention today.

Coincidentally, the day our group of travel writers hit town was the day that the headdress of the victor of the Battle of Little Bighorn was to be returned to his descendants, via a college of the Sioux people within the Standing Rock Reservation to the south.

Since we were there, we were invited to attend a short ceremony conducted by Phil Baird, board president of the Hall of Fame and a Native American himself, to send the headdress on its way. The display case was opened and, as we stood looking on, Baird undertook a ‘smudging ceremony’, wafting the smoke from a smouldering feather along the length of the headdress.

As part of the ceremony, Baird spoke both English and Native American words, addressed the four points of the compass, and asked us to add our own silent thoughts to the occasion. Then, the event completed, the headdress was taken from the case, lain carefully on an indigenous star quilt, and transferred to a van for an escort from an officer of the local sheriff’s department.

It was a moving ceremony, undertaken with great conviction and emotion by Baird. As there were only ten people present, including we four Australian journalists, we felt greatly honoured at being included at such a significant event at the last moment. Especially, I suppose, as we were cultural outsiders; although, as I mentioned in last week's post about Montana, there are often similarities between Australia and the USA. The smudging ceremony, for example, reminded me of Aboriginal smoking ceremonies that I've witnessed.

The Cowboy Hall of Fame has, of course, now lost an important exhibit, along with a gun that once belonged to ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody, who had a working relationship with Sitting Bull in the post-Little Bighorn days (both items had been held in trust on behalf of the rightful owners). But it seemed fitting that the headdress should be back with the chief’s people, and hopefully visitors will eventually be able to view it in its new home.

But the institution still has plenty of excellent exhibits tracing the cultures of Native Americans, ranching and rodeos - the horse being the common factor of all three. And Medora itself is a lot of fun, with cowboy bars serving huge steaks; shops and hotels that look like they’ve dropped in from the 1800s; and the neighbouring Theodore Roosevelt National Park, packed with distinctive Badlands scenery and roaming wildlife from prairie dogs to bison.

The Wild West is long gone, of course; but its echoes linger in North Dakota.

Disclosure time... on this trip I travelled courtesy of North Dakota Tourism, zuji.com.au and V Australia.

Clubbing in the Pacifique

There's something about islands, and the tiny airports that serve them. As our ferry pulled away from the quay next to Hamilton Island's airport, a big red Virgin Blue 737 roared unexpectedly over our heads, its takeoff having been concealed behind the headland we were passing.

This dramatic intersection of technology with nature seemed quite neat, as we were heading determinedly away from the high-tech outside world to the Club Med resort on Lindeman Island, part of the Whitsundays group between the Queensland mainland and the Great Barrier Reef.

Towards, in fact, a lack of mobile phone reception, unless you fancied a steep hike up to the 8th hole on the golfcourse above the resort.

Luckily there's wireless Internet access at the bar so, dear reader, I'm able to type this at you while seated on the outdoor terrace looking out over palm trees, a beach, a turquoise sea and a selection of vegetation-covered islands along the horizon.

Yes, I know, that sounds like a sample of bad copywriting for a travel agency poster, but what I can say? That's how it is. There's even a soft balmy breeze gently ruffling my hair. Well, not quite, it's too short to be ruffled, but you get the idea.

Anyhow, Club Med is... interesting. I'd never been to one, but had a vague idea of it being a place for sporty young couples and singles. It turns out that the Club Med in the Whitsunday Islands, at least, is very family-friendly. Partly that comes from the price, which is pretty reasonable for a week; partly from the kids' facilities and the fact that a self-contained island resort is a safe place for kids to run around; and partly from the all-inclusive nature of the tariff.

That's a very rare thing in the world of travel; you know once you're on the island that you won't be putting your hand in your pocket unless you want to use a few extra services such as massage. Though I can't help wondering what a non-drinker would think about subsidising everyone else's alcohol consumption. Though perhaps a non-drinker would go to a resort where they could pay a la carte instead.

Either way, it's liberating to leave the wallet in the room safe and simply eat and drink as you feel like it. It also eases all sorts of social issues such as whose turn it is to buy the drinks.

It's an unconventional business model which must limit the opportunities for the resort to make extra profits by offering tempting chances to spend more; and probaby explains why the standard of food and drink is firmly in the 3-star (actually 3-trident) range. However, the guests like the system a lot, so it must be a drawcard in itself, and certainly a point of difference.

And vive la différence. Another notable point about Club Med is the scraps of French terminology about the place, courtesy of its French ownership. The staff, for example, wear shirts with the initials GO, which stands for gentil organisateur; as opposed to gentil membre, a Club Med guest. There's something charming and faintly retro about the use of French in an Anglophone country with a mainly Anglophone clientele, a reminder of the time not so long ago when French was the langue internationale.

And, come to think of it, there's something pleasingly retro about the whole place. Although there's much more emphasis on guests making their own choices of activity (or non-activity) than there was back in the '60s when Club Meds were famous for their group activities, there are significant remnants of that era evident in the nightly cabaret shows performed by the indefatigable international staff (last night's had a Bollywood theme); and even more so by the curious 'crazy signs', a communal dance led by the staff, who assemble suddenly around the pool an gyrate energetially to loud music. It's deeply odd, but in a charmingly eccentric way.

It'll be interesting to see where this Club Med heads in the future. There's talk of an upgrade to 4-trident status, which would presumably raise the rates but allow for higher quality in facilities and services. The Club Méditerranée concept will be 60 years old next year, and obviously has to keep evolving further from its origins as a simple 1950s holiday camp.

It's not, frankly, a resort for those needing peace and quiet - there's a lot of sound and motion throughout the day, especially by the pool and the bar - but there's something attractive about its unaffected retro charm.

Tim Richards travelled courtesy of Virgin Blue and Club Med. Virgin Blue flies daily to Hamilton Island from Brisbane and Sydney.

The Unicycle Diaries 2: Transit of Tahiti

Taken from my travel diaries written in French Polynesia...

Travelling eastward across the Pacific and the International Dateline is like starring in your own personal version of Groundhog Day; only with the added variety of radically different scenery as each day is repeated.

We spent Saturday 29th October and the Sunday morning in Auckland, then spent Saturday evening all over again in Tahiti, and now Sunday 30th on the neighbouring island of Mo’orea.

When we finally get past this weekend to Monday 31st, it’ll be a relief. Not that you should really be watching the calendar when you’re on holiday.

Our flight arrived at the capital Papeete at an impractical hour (as many flights into Tahiti do) on Saturday night, but in the end there was enough time to walk to the waterfront and have a meal.

The Saturday night collection of food vans and fold-up tables was fun, exuding casual charm. Patrons order from a surprisingly diverse range of dishes including Tahitian fish like mahi mahi, French standards like steak frites, and displaced Chinese food like "chow men".

Because we’re only here for a few days, we hadn’t applied our minds to speaking French, but were suddenly faced with linguistic limitations. My French stems almost entirely from literary references in Agatha Christie, PG Wodehouse, Sherlock Holmes and films like Amelie, while Narrelle’s is sourced from imperfectly-remembered schoolgirl lessons.

As a result, we’ve been committing blunders like asking for a receipt (‘recipe’ in French) instead of the correct word. Fortunately the French speakers of Tahiti take a more sympathetic view of Anglos mangling their language than their compatriots in Paris. Funny to think that after visiting that city 15 years ago, the next time we’d enter French territory would be so far away from Europe.

Here’s something strange I’ve noticed: the soundtrack to every overseas experience is in English, no matter how exotic the locale. On the Papeete waterfront, we could hear ABBA drifting from a nearby cruise ship; on a ferry’s radio, a Jamaican guy was singing “I need some nookie tonight”; and as I sit typing in the hotel bar, the background music is alternating between French numbers and English covers.

Before leaving Tahiti we went out early to visit the Marche, the city markets. The building is one of those practical open-but-covered structures you see in the Pacific, a vast mostly timber shed housing numerous stalls. Locals crowd in, buying and selling handcrafts, fish, flowers and fruit, including the more interesting varieties of bananas you never see in the West.

There are some beautiful but huge wooden masks that would never fit in the luggage, and some suspiciously sexual statuettes - you could imagine them selling by the truckload to sniggering tourists mindful of the old Tahiti stereotype regarding free love.

And now we’re on the neighbouring island of Mo’orea. The catamaran ride from Tahiti only takes 30 minutes, and the two islands are visible the whole time. While both are volcanic outcrops, Moorea's eastern approach is far more dramatic, a sharp protrusion of jagged peaks covered with greenery. I felt like chanting "Kong, Kong!" as we approached, but that’s a story for another day...

Note: As this article is based on personal experience from some years ago, the author takes no responsibility for readers' reliance on the information within.