Why My Head Still Hurts On Monday Evening

Things I Was Supposed To Do This Weekend:

• Go to see a film with the New Daddy and maybe have a drink (note the singular) in the cinema bar (where it's safe to say you'll only have the one because it's like drinking in the lobby of an unpleasantly cheap hotel).
• Meet Annie and Jenna for cocktails, Scrabble and gossip about boys.

Things I Wasn't Supposed To Do This Weekend:

• Have a cocktail party where I drank all of the cocktails and everyone else drank beer. And then go out.
  
• Pay €6.10 for a pint in a disgracefully unhip city centre bar.
• Buy rounds of Jaegerbombs on my already-into-the-overdraft Laser card and think it some kind of free money and booze deal when the barman consents to give me cash back (note: not in the same bar, I'd have needed the credit card to buy them there).
• Drink the bottle of champagne that the Leitrim Lady presented me with on my last birthday and that had been kept back for a "special occasion". Am now pretty sure that bringing a drunk brother, two of his friends and comatose Polish man back to your flat does not constitute such a special occasion.
  
• Tuck the comatose Pole up with a blanket on the couch and head off with the other three to a rave in an underground garage, to dirty dance like an uncoordinated epileptic until it was very very bright outside.
• Not go straight to sleep when I did finally get home. In fact, not go to sleep at all.
  
• Send Annie a rambling, shambling, apologetic text message begging for a raincheck.
  

Had I done what I was supposed to do I'm pretty sure I would have two new friends and a bruised ego after a serious Scrabble shitkicking. However, chances are I'd also have a nasty tummy bug, as the New Parents and Fake Neice all caught a dose of something rotten. Having done instead what I wasn't supposed to do at all I now have one of the worst hangovers in living memory and a big shiteating grin to go with it.

Eastern European Escapades

I believe I mentioned bouldness on holidays, and as ever am only too happy to elaborate a little on what I got up to. There was the usual fun with hostel bookings ("Female dorm" misheard as "Please may I room with an Italian stag party?") unfamiliar foods ("you taste it", "no, you taste it") and public transport (wrong wagon, third train ticket for our imaginary friend, possibly fake ticket inspectors, haggled fines) but as ever, when I mention bouldness I mean, of course, boys.

Ever scored in a hostel? They do not make life easy for you.

However this suited me just fine on one particular occasion, nay, I was glad of it. Strawberry and I had met some English gents and ended up going out on the tear with them. The Blond was very obviously interested in Strawberry, the other painfully obviously interested in myself. Strawberry has a fine man at home and has no interest in rocking any boats, but was too nice and self-conscious to tell the Blond that (we've all done the "I have a boyfriend, you know" bit just that little bit too early in the conversation, and come off like conceited tits). So it was left to me. I bided my time in telling him, I'm ashamed to admit, because I thought it was funny. He was one of those supremely confident types and they get my goat. Anyway, my wannabe paramour was just the kind of man I'd have not the slightest bit of interest in, and he knew it. He kept angling for compliments or indeed any sign that I'd be willing to play, and getting none. Eventually though he saw his chance, and seized it. True to form, I got billy-bo-jangled drunk (it's an effective defence mechanism against the social discomfort of shit nightclubs) and Romeo made his move, lobbed the gob, went straight for the kill.

Eejit that I am, I sat there and let him.

He decided to strike while he was on a roll, or something (I was pissed, remember?) and the four of us got a taxi back to the hostel. Thinking to further push his luck, he was scanning the nooks and crannies of the place for somewhere to play with his prize undisturbed, but to no avail. "We could share a bunk?" he suggested hopefully. "Fuck off" came the gleeful reply. "I'm going to bed. In my room, and on my own".

I woke the next morning with an acute sense of regret about the kiss, a mounting sense of dread in case he thought it might happen again, and an absolute cunt of a hangover. It was too hot to sleep so decided to retire to the couch and look at my book (I was in no fit state to actually read, but I needed a prop) only to find both couches occupied by two specimens I'd much rather have run into the night before. One of em gave me a big sloppy grin, and I was sold. I spent the next 3 nights scanning the nooks and crannies of the place for somewhere to play with my prize undisturbed, and had remarkably more success than Romeo. I'd love to have brought him home with me. It's not often I meet a man who doesn't put up with any of my shit and it was wholly refreshing. And he may not have been able to dance, but the boy could make me weak at the knees with a kiss. He's off to try his luck in London for the next while, but with a lot of luck he might change his mind and opt for Dublin's fair city instead. I hear the women in London are shit...*

*I may have made that part up, but corroborative evidence would be greatly appreciated

Auschwitz

On my 3rd day in Krakow, 10 of us from the hostel gathered our hangovers to our bosoms and headed off to Oswiecim, to visit the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps and pay our respects to the millions of people that had suffered there. It was a difficult day.

I hadn't given much thought to the trip beforehand, or to the impact it might have on me. My knowledge of the Nazis has been pretty much limited to primary school history lessons and Indiana Jones films, so my notions of what had happened there were vague, to say the least. Some of the other travelers I'd befriended on the trip had already visited, but nobody spoke at any length about it, other than to say that they'd been there. It's rare that backpackers maintain a dignified silence about anything, had I been more perceptive (and less hungover) this would have been a good indication of what was in store.

The touristy shite around the entrance is minimal, what's needed and no more. We had an hour before our tour was due to begin, so while most of the group opted for a sit down, Strawberry Shortcake and I took a stroll. We were in Auschwitz I (we were later to visit Auschwitz II, or Birkenau) where most of the original buildings have been preserved or restored, and many of them now house museums. Our guide, Anna, took us around some of them later. I found the one containing the loot stolen from prisoners almost physically shocking, and know now why it was the one image from our school textbook that had stayed with me. Seeing so many everyday objects amassed in vast floor-to-ceiling quantities was a very tangible illustration of the scale of the slaughter. Such personal effects too; worn shoes, prosthetic limbs; these are not people's things, they're more than that. But the hardest ones for me were the ones Anna didn't take us to. Individual countries have set up museums on site to remember their dead, and Strawberry and I visited two of these in the hour before the tour, "The Tragedy of the Jews of Slovakia" and "Czech Prisoners in Auschwitz Concentration Camp". The rest of the camp was on such a massive scale that I had genuine difficulty in getting my head around it, but it was in these two buildings that I got a real taste of the horror of what had happened there. Here there were biographies of the individual people who had been taken to Auschwitz, their life histories and cruel deaths documented in black and white. Photos of them with their children. Postcards they had written to their families, posted 3 weeks after their deaths under the pretence that all was well.

Harder for me again, there were pictures of the children. Beautiful, doe-eyed, gawky, jam-faced kids. There were drawings they had made during the short time they lived there, the poems they wrote. Few referred to their surroundings at all, their work is full of hope for a better life and sweet memories of the life they had before their incarceration. What happened to them beggars belief.

It was gratifying to see the respect that people paid to their surroundings while visiting the site. I've traveled some, and have come to expect the worst of tourists. Perhaps it's because the place itself is so physically arresting, perhaps it's the dignity of the staff. I personally found it disconcerting to see the camp on such a beautiful day. It gave the experience a very surreal feeling, that the visual impact of the camp was at such odds with its history and the emotional toll it takes. I was very grateful to have gone there with the group that I did and to have shared the experience, even though it was little spoken of afterwards. Sometimes it's enough just to have been there in one another's company.

Home, Sweet Home

I'm normally a little bit thrilled when the wheels hit the tarmac in Dublin. Not so yesterday morning. I felt thoroughly wretched, and did not want to be home. I'm sure a lot of it had to do with how tired I was (I hadn't had more than 4 hours sleep on any night of the previous three, and I don't function well without at least 10 hours). Packing before going to the airport had been a truly horrific experience, I was so wrecked leaving the hostel in Krakow that I was close to hallucinating (what had kept me from my bed was absolutely worth it, but that's a tale for another post).

I never ever thought of myself as the backpacker type. I smell better, for one thing. I always bring too many clothes and a bag that I cannot actually lift myself. I snore, embarrassingly, and worry about it when I have to share a room (unless I can atone for it with sexual favours, in which case, my snoring must be considered "charming"). I'm allergic to most forms of public transport. I'm not 19 years old anymore. I could go on, but you get the idea.

After the trip to Belarus I pretty much decided that independent travel was probably not for me, though I fancy the idea. I've always thought that I'm a pretty gregarious individual, but over there I felt myself struggle a bit with the group, and it knocked my social confidence. The last two weeks have restored it tenfold though. I think the difference was in getting to choose the company I kept, rather than traveling with a group. And d'ya know what? I'd talk to the wall, and it'd talk back. A big stupid smile will get you anywhere, and with most other travellers a friendly hello is enough to elicit conversation, sometimes even dinner and a night on the tiles. I've met some fucking headcases over the last few weeks, and I'd love to be able to take them all home and introduce them to the fine array of headcases I've cultivated as friends here. It'd make for messy fun.

My traveling companion, Strawberry Shortcake, was (and is) the best you could ask for (I'm not just writing this because I know she'll read it...) in that she's easygoing, funny, and attracts good looking men like moths to a flame, so it'll be tempting to head off with her again. But I'm itching to go it alone and see what happens. My mam'll worry and my nana will wear her knees out saying novenas for me but I'll make up for it by calling home once in a while and keeping a blog that'd be suitable for them to read. This one won't be, by the time I get around to telling you what I actually got up to on my trip.

I haven't started my Pole hunting yet, by the way. I had just about enough energy to dress myself this morning, but nowhere near enough to dress nice. In fact I now suspect that my pants may well be pyjama bottoms (from the leisurewear section in Penneys... I don't know if that's their code for jammies or not. The local kids all wear their jammies to the shops though, so I'll fit right in). Tomorrow's going to be a scruffy day too, I'm off to see NIN and the Foo Fighters tomorrow eve and it's bound to piss rain.

I is Polski

I've had a half hour to myself before the madness begins and I genuinely meant to spend it recounting my tales of Gdansk and Warsaw, but I made the fatal error or having a quick look to see what was new on I Can Has Cheezburger? Those fucking lolcats are fierce distracting. I shall no doubt tell my tales in lurid technicolour detail some other time, when I'm at home and it's raining and nobody will come for midweek beers.

For the meantime though it will suffice to say that Gdansk was beautiful, and I'd liked to have spent longer there had we been in different accommodation (we ended up staying in a church out in the suburbs... don't ask). Plan ahead, folks. It was nice though, like a 2 night retreat punctuated by stressful bus journeys (I am mildly allergic to public transport, and intend to regale Sweary with tales of some of my more colourful journeys when I return). Those suburban buses hadn't a patch on yesterday's rail excursion though. Come back, Iarnrod Eireann, all is forgiven.

I've decided after only 3 days (4? 5? every day's like fucking Sunday) in Poland that I want to marry a Polish man and have his babies. They're so manly and handsome... (the men, not the babies. The babies are usually cute and Cabbage Patchish). Dublin and my sometime hometown of Naas are both chock full of Poles, so all I need do now is find out where they congregate of an evening, learn a few key phrases, and dress nice once in a while. Maybe I'll wear that bikini out some night. They're bound to fall at my feet.

But on the Bright Side...

...I'm having a ball other than that (and I've met some pretty ridey backpackers, and am only fantastic at chatting them up, so I reckon Poland will be fun)