My trip to Rybnik in Poland, where I stayed with a gorgeous family, was one a happy one. It was actually my second trip, the first having been made in the summer before. This time it was winter, the atmosphere was uncomfortably cold, the wind was especially frightful to feel, and the landscape was to some degree dilapidated; yet the landscape was still beautiful in its own way, and the cold was somehow bracing.
Landscape of a Town
Perhaps it’s a thing with Polish towns, but as you walk onto any main street in Rybnik, look anywhere and in one direction you’ll spy the basilica. This basilica, found of course towards the heart of the town, was made in red brick, with two forward-positioned spires topped with dark slate that overlooked the market square.
Walking to that square, we saw it was filled with snow and somebody had put up arches of fairy lights for Christmas, which were actually nice to walk through, and, as Poles never would forget, there was a lit nativity scene erected in wooden statues and encased in a wooden hut-like construction beside the square. Then there were also the views, of spiky, leaveless trees, train tracks, and the indelible mark that Silesian coal-mining left on the region, concretely in the huge quarries we could see, as well as just the general aura of this being a mining town.
This is why the landscape is so penetrating and moving, because there are these examples of real ruggedness and the holy red basilica couched amongst it all.
The Host Family
The family I stayed with had young children whom I played with a lot. I already knew them as I had tutored them online, but getting to know them in person was a very delightful experience. They were humorous, energetic, polite and intelligent, much more so than in our lessons together (the dimming effect of online learning, perhaps?). Their politeness did not make the other qualities suffer, because they were never so polite (to the point that politeness feels like it’s a defect) not to assert themselves and their wants.
For example, the father of the family had kindly gifted me a carton of strawberry-tasting buttermilk, which they called Maślanka, and if I wanted to have a glass and I got it out from the fridge their six-year-old would unfailingly ask me with a gasp and a smile of expectation, ‘Can I have a glass of Maślanka?’ It goes without saying that I didn’t begrudge it her, and it made the glass I had far more enjoyable.
Also, after I had come back from a walk in the snow and was speaking to their mother in the kitchen, the kids came and gawped at me in natural curiosity—a wild snow-trekker!
The parents too were each interesting and heartwarming to share moments and conversations with, of course. Actually the father and I would often spend a lot of time in the kitchen speaking about things, sharing thoughts and opinions about world affairs, ideas, and music that we have enjoyed listening to in our lives into the evening’s later hours.
This wasn’t something that I had expected to be honest. That sort of stuff, I feel, doesn’t usually happen with someone you only ever met once before. But the longer you spend in Poland the quicker you realise, Poles care. And maybe all our talk was nonsense, or maybe not, but it felt edifying. And the food that was prepared by them both was some of the best and heartiest cuisine I have ever tasted, by the way.
A Random Encounter
The father and I went to the basilica one night for a concert, and although about the concert there isn’t much to say, I did enjoy being party to a conversation (in Polish, so of course the words of it were gibberish to me, however the human tone and feeling less so) between him and another concert-goer as we were leaving. She, somewhat elderly, had almost slipped on the ice, and from then on an interaction ensued between her and the father. Eventually we found out she was an artist who had also spent some years in France. I remember finding her a gentle creature.
Adventures in Prague
Since Prague wasn’t far off from where I was staying, I went there by train for a handful of days. The Czech taste is the main thing that appeared to my eyes, and it was an interesting one; as I was walking through one of the Old Town streets I came up with a formula: ‘In Prague all sorts of people come together.’ I thought this because it was a city in which people were either artists, students of life, students who wanted a beer or absinthe, older and more mature people, and all these people could enjoy life in the city without finding much tacky. It is understandable why the word ‘Bohemian’ means what it does; I think I know now why it was ever so attractive to be classed as such. Actually, Bohemian isn’t what I thought it was—it really is just a laidback attitude to what gets so-called polite people’s backs up in England: the holy trinity of drink, sex and art.
I also attended a concert in the sumptuously decorated Spanish Synagogue, where we heard a range of pieces played by a string quintet, occasionally an operatic singer being brought out, occasionally a trumpeter. One might say it was all the more appreciable by it not seeming to be snooty, rather a natural part of life flowing from one thing to another.
It seems that nothing natural is disallowed in the Czech Republic, and maybe it is because of that that no-one feels so weird about things which people in the Anglophone world might feel is “taboo” in at least some sense. Incidentally, we (my new hostel buddies and I) came across a young male trio in the Old Town’s main square at night, made up of one Canadian and two Czechs, and while the Canadian said some obscene things (‘I’m just here to **** *******’), the Czechs were endearing.
Summing Up
Central Europe is very different to the U.K. When I went there in the summer, I visited a mountainous place in Poland called Szczyrk. I’ve never seen flowers more beautiful than those strewn upon a bridge gleaming in the sun in that town in the mountains.
The Czech landscape in the summer too was a beautiful thing. The roads seemed perfectly designed to view the countryside from the car, no eyesores like indiscreet direction signs or adverts.
The cobblestoned streets were also attractive to the eye, and made one forget the grim, unforgiving pavement of London. Then there are the large hills surrounding Hlučín Lake, a nice lake in Czech Silesia which my host family and I visited to cool off from the intolerable global-warming-sun, which led one to breathe breaths of clear, philosophical air.
Everything was stunning there in the summer. It felt good and enriching to travel from the edge of Europe in the U.K. to the heart of Europe and uncover these delights.
Not to say that the U.K. isn’t also beautiful, but to sample the air and vistas in other regions of Europe as part of my break, and most importantly to meet and connect with the people, was and always will be welcome.
