David Kellam

Well, just a quick entry for today. Typing on the treo is getting tedious :p

We arrived in Olsztyn yesterday after

– well, that was yesterday’s effort. Thanks to 9 hours on the train back to Berlin, this should be a little longer.

In Olsztyn, we stayed in a Polish 3-star hotel. By God did it feel like 5. ROOM SERVICE!!! So much has changed since the festy days of Koczalin (sp?). After spending an hour at the internet cafe sorting out the unfinished survey, I headed back to the hotel to enjoy a meal at semu-Western prices. Unfortunately, Liz said we would have to have the cold buffet as there wasn’t enough time to order before we had to meet for pre-concert travel and warm-up. Cold buffet says she? Stuff that says I. After racing around Osztyn for 15 minutes, desperate to find some ‘real food’, I chanced upon the ‘Gourmet Cafe’, wherein I found two piles of menus - Polish and French. Great start. Anywhere with an exclusively French menu has to be good.

I enjoyed a good steak - nay, an excellent steak - at this Gourmet Cafe, with a creamy mushroom sauce and fries. Of course, it may have just been my 2-week absence from steak that made it so good, like the Ingham frozen deluxe chicken on Survival Camp (’97). But I doubt it. My taste for steak is well trained.

I raced back to the hotel, amidst Cluedo-esque speculation as to where I had actually got to. Nice to feel wanted We headed to our concert, whereupon we were greeted by a POSTERA CRESCAM LAUDE t-shirt and some random polish guy wearing it. Like all Polish(*), he never stopped talking.

We sang an acceptable concert (my voice had finally recovered), and returned to our hotel with a few detours - unsuccessful attempts to find Lody (ice cream). Nestle ice cream (and all their products) are incredibly popular in this country. It’s a shame they’re no good.

We eventually found our beloved Lody, about 500 (200 according to ever-optimistic Polish estimatuon) metres away from the Hotel. However, it seemed that this Sklep (shop) had been converted into a Bottleshop, as symbolised by the chain across the supermarket exit registers. Some incomprehensible combination of semaphore and mispronounciation ensued, whereupon one member of our party was finally admitted into the Sklep’s sanctuary and permitted to purchase immitation magnums. Lody never tasted so good. (undoubtedly a result of the hereby-dubbed ‘Ingham Effect’).

I returned to the hotel room and decided to flip through the TV stations - all 56 of them. Channel 37 was quite interesting. It featured a tv ouput of someone playing a Total War-like computer game, with commentary in Polish. If only there were an English version with Civ 3, I might have found more than temporary amusement. Instead, I headed to the bath to defestify and purge myself of Polish dirt. This was only marginally effective, most likely due to the use of Polish water as the cleaning agent.

We departed Olsztyn and headed to Gdansk, aboard the restaurant car of course. I would rather not describe our afternoon in Gdansk, as my enjoyment thereof was significantly hampered by incompetent organisation and communication. We did manage to find good pizza though :). I ordered a large, with extras and 2 drinks and walked out 40zl poorer - or about $16. Not exactly bargainous, but oh so needed

Our concert rocked. We sang amplified to an audience split between a small grandstand (does that make it a petitstand,smallstand or just a stand?) and the other side of the river, whereupon one found 3 ships, waterfront restaurants and bystanders. We sang the light music program reasonably well and in sunglasses :). We should have done some Blues Brothers!

After the concert, we headed back to the hotel. Thankfully, I was with Meg and Kate who knew where to get off the tram. The others in the previous carriage were not so lucky and faced an additional 20 minute walk. Nyer! :p

We hung round in Hindsy’s room drinking (me with my highly intoxicating Swiss cordial!!!) until I was too stuffed and went to bed.

Despite sleeping like a log, I awoke tired and ready for a day’s sleeping on the train. Unfortunately, I have this annoying habit of being incredibly tired until the PRECISE moment I board a train. I need to work on that.

I have made the mustake of not travelling in the restaurant car for this journey. The lure of an empty carriage immediately in front of us and the fact I had already stocked up on Skleppy goodness meant in a moment of temporary insantiy, I chose not to sit in the restaurant car. Well, let’s just say I will be looking forward to the next leg of the trip, where hopefully I won’t be stuck on plastic moulded benches with 3 others to remind me of the lack of space. I should have foreseen this (slaps forehead).

That is all for now. I may post again on the next leg if I am inspired by the relative luxury of the Bar Wars.

DRK

Mood: less than amused
Music: Ghost Love Score (amidst ‘My Top Rated’ on my iPod)
Finances: not looking forward to my gprs roaming charges ($400?)
Business: all sorted
Comfort: v. Low
Choir Friendliness: pretty good
Adjective originality: minimal

DRK

* I should like to qualify this statemen but I won’t

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 7th, 2005 at 8:13 pm and is filed under Europe 2005. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.