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
A City Called Bydgoszcz 