A Polish Birthday Celebration – and the Aftermath

Being a Brit in Poland inevitably results in a lot of fun being poked about your inability to take your alcohol, relative to the locals. This is pretty reasonable, and I’m happy to admit that I’ve been drunk under the table by fairly small women on more than one occasion. They just have different livers to the rest of the world. Well, I actually think this is an Eastern European thing in general. But anyway, I digress. 

Yesterday, I was invited to a birthday party by one of my Polish friends. It was a Saturday night, at the end of a difficult week and the party was for a good friend, so of course, I decided to go. I arrived with 3 of my mates, to find a flat full of nice people from various different places, platters of very tasty open sandwiches and a table/fridge combo with the amount of alcohol you might need to kill a dinosaur. I put my two measly cans of beer on the table (we were going out after an hour – I’m not THAT lame!) and got stuck in to my first one. I began to get acquainted with the guests, some whom I’d met before and others completely new to me. There was a lovely atmosphere, and the birthday girl was having a great time. 

Then, after half an hour, a friend of hers who does a lot of work in the former Soviet states East of Poland arrived with some interesting looking herbal vodka from Ukraine. It might have been a balsam, or something like that. Shots were immediately poured and I took mine and dutifully downed it. It was really rather tasty. So later, when a second shot was poured, I took it and sipped it, between my second and third beers. While it tasted strong, I didn’t really feel any particularly potent effect and soon the time came to hit the town.

So, we all bundled into taxis and headed to Bydgoszcz’s shisha bar, Ramses. Here we joined with another birthday party for a colleague of mine, so there was a veritable legion of us. We overtook pretty much the entire bar and everyone began chatting enthusiastically and generally having a great time. After an hour or so here, the sound that every ex-pat to have lived in Bydgoszcz in the last 10 years or so will know very well: Tomek – the local ex pat tour guide (provided you really like drinking alcohol) calling out “Kubryk time!”

So on we went to Pub Kubryk, where more drink flowed. But, as we arrived there, the sensation of the herbal vodka finally began to wash over me and my brain switched to half speed and twisted to an entirely incorrect angle. After a couple of hours, I was feeding myself an entirely necessary kebab at Bosfor and briskly walking up Gdańska street to my home. It had been a great night and I’d met some great new people.

Waking up this morning, I felt entirely dessicated. Like someone had come to me in the night and removed all the moisture from my body and left me there, like one of those butterflies in a display case, in a museum, only infinitely less decorative. The day after took the shape of a series of recovery efforts led by friends, starting with an offer of a fry up, followed up by cake/ice cream/cookie-based sugar overdose and finished up with pierogi.

 

During the zombie-like suffering that me and and my British brethren suffered, the Polish cohorts were doubtless whistling as life went on as though nothing had ever happened. Still, if I ever did reach Polish levels of alcohol tolerance, I should probably start worrying! 

Święto Śliwki – A Bit of a Kick in the Plums

One event which happens every year, on the outskirts of Bydgoszcz, in a small village called Strzelce Dolne (English pron: scheltseh dolneh), is Święto Śliwki: the Festival of Plums. At this wonderful event, countless hundreds of people show up to display their plum related wares. This can be in the form of jams, chutnies, cakes and myriad other foods. This year, there was also a tae kwon do demonstration, a performance of old, dying professions, such as barrel making, and various music and folklore performances. It was something that couldn’t be missed!

Sadly, despite being just 17km from the very heart of my city, it WAS missed! During the week, I had attempted to find the best way to get to Strzelce Dolne. However, as with many village names in Poland, there are more than 20 such places and the one in my area was not detectable on the PKS bus service website. Not the end of the world, I thought. I went to the bus station in person, when I had some free time at the weekend, only to discover that the transport information window is closed outside of weekday office hours. Very frustrating. Here, the huge notice board with all of the bus destinations was even less useful than the internet, only detailing the final destination of each bus (bear in mind that some of these buses will travel perhaps 850km). With a groan, I returned home to check on a map, whether any of the villages that were served by local buses came close enough. The nearest was 3.8km away. It was too far. Not only that but, while buses to the place were every 20 minutes from 8 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, buses back then stopped until a single service at 7:30 pm and no more until 4:30 in the morning. This bizarre timetable gap happens pretty often in Poland. There would be no plum jam cauldrons for me.

I moped around the house expressing my frustration for a couple of hours, at one point even considering just going to bed (at 3pm) until the next day. But, finally fed up of my whinging, my girlfriend suggested a walk along the river. It was a really warm September day and so we walked into the city where, alongside the resident beer boat, we found a new vessel that was somehow associated with the local sailing club (which I didn’t know existed).

Why is this boat here?

Whether they remain a permanent fixture or not, remains to be seen. Anyway, from here, we continued on down the river to the smaller beer boat, moored at “the bridge of hope”, where we decided our wandering had warranted some fluid intake and stopped for a beer in what may be the last of the September sunshine.

Bydgoszcz’s new bridge looking almost artistic in the sunset.

Amazing how a cold red lager can raise your spirits on a sunny afternoon

 

After that it was home for a pizza and a movie and the end of what was not the miserable day it had seemed, plums or no plums!

No plums on my pizza either