Ingrid Goes to Poland!

Another week, another country! And our new minivan’s (whom we lovingly named Ingird) maiden voyage to Poland! Turning in the paperwork for my UK Visa Application up in Berlin was a perfect excuse for mom and I to hop over to Poland for a day… I think mom’s been plotting buying her “Polish Pottery” since I was little, so it’s no surprise that she couldn’t resist going and buying it first-hand almost as soon as we got settled in Germany…

But it must be said first that I FINALLY got my visa application turned in! After endless waiting for Oxford to get me the right paperwork, and then more waiting for my scheduled appointment in Berlin, it has finally been sent up to Dusseldorf and is being processed as we speak! The gal at the office gave mom and I a little bit of a scare though… After driving 6+ hours from Stuttgart to   Berlin for a 15 minute appointment we weren’t in any mood for  surprises… But she seemed fully prepared to try to elicit heart-attacks from us… Apparently the concept of being a US Citizen stationed in Germany with the military is a difficult concept… But thank goodness, after only one quick dash by mom back to the car for an emergency copy of our military orders, she seemed pacified that having two passports (one official/diplomatic for the military, and the other my civilian for personal travel) was not my sly attempt to defraud anyone… Thank goodness there was a US citizen working in the office who was able to get it straightened out… And here I thought getting into Oxford would be the difficult part!

After breathing a deep sigh of relief we headed onward to Poland! Now it must be warned that the following is opinion based on merely one day in the country… But Poland was miserable… I swear we crossed the border and the sun seemed to immediately disappear into a gray sky, and the once pristine autobahn became a pothole infested road that was reminiscent of the occasional patch of I95/64 highway passing through Richmond (my fellow Richmonders know exactly what I’m talking about… :-) Mom and I both swore that there was something about the bad road and looming miles of forest without so much as a road-sign in sight that was sure to bring on severe-depression if endured too long… Talk about feeling the weight of the looming (albeit former) Iron-Curtain… :-)

Our drive through Poland to the town of Boleslawiec (which while it may have seemed like an eternity, was in fact only a little over an hour) did provide several illuminating facts about life in Poland… 1) Mushrooms are apparently abundant! The only human life I think we saw for 60km were elderly men standing by the highway selling mushrooms… Needless to say, mom and I had quite a bit of fun imagining what kind of crazy scenario might tempt someone to actually buy mushrooms (which in addition to being tasty, can be both poisonous and hallucigenic) from a dirty old homeless looking man that lives under a bridge… Scary to say the least… Haha 2) Apparently modest is not a Polish virtue… While driving we saw more than one group of men pulled over on the side of the highway  relieving themselves… Not behind one of the millions of trees surrounding us, or even behind their trucks/vans… But in front of them, in full view of any poor American traveler that might happen to drive by…

We reached Boleslawiec at sunset (thank goodness, because mom and I had come up with any number of horror scenarios that ended with two women getting stuck in the middle of no-where Poland in the dark)… The town of Boleslawiec had a quaintness in the old buildings and shingled roofs on some blocks, and looked like World War II had just ended on others… After a few wrong turns, we managed to find our guesthouse, The Blue Beetroot Inn, which I have to admit it was absolutely amazing…

The Blue Beetroot made the trip to Poland worth it… It came highly recommended and lived up to all our expectations… It was adorable… The Inn was actually an old barn that had been remodeled, but it retained it’s arched ceilings and original hardwood beams throughout… Mom and I figured that the only thing to do in Poland was to eat and drink, so that’s exactly what we did… I fittingly ordered Polish pierogies (in honor of my dear friend Allison who made pierogies with me several times in college), which were amazing… And mom nearly got me drunk off the bar special, the “Blue Beetroot” (vodka + blue curacao + sprite is wonderful but they do love to pour in an extra measure of the vodka!)… All in all, we deemed the night a success solely based on 3 hour dinner/desert/drinks spree…

We woke up with the rooster outside… Which was nice because I got the chance to take a walk around outside and see the sunrise… We set off early after breakfast to hit the pottery shops! We must’ve gone to a total of 6-7 different shops around Boleslawiec in a 6 hour time-frame… While overwhelmed at first by the magnitude of selections and designs, we eventually hit our groove and tracked down an amazing assortment! Mom even managed to stay under budget!

By mid-afternoon we had loaded Ingrid full of pottery/dishware, made several illegal u-turns (in true Hope Bird fashion), made an accidental trip to the “Polish ghetto”, and seen both a one-legged  homeless man selling yet more mushrooms and a 3 legged dog… It was too cliché to imagine… On our way back to Germany we even  managed to get pulled over by the Polish Politzei! :-) But no need to worry… After a little linguistic fumbling (in which mom asked the policeman if he spoke English in German… Haha… Needless to say that only elicited confused silence…), he checked our passports and let us go… We chalked it up to random ID checks for cars with international license plates…

We made it back to Stuttgart after another 7 hours of driving that afternoon/evening… It was a lot of time spent in the car but we arrived gloriously with a minivan full of polish pottery! While I loved the Blue Beetroot and the pottery shopping, I doubt either mom or I are planning a trip back to Poland anytime soon!

Although… I do have an upcoming trip to Paris, France this weekend! So hopefully my next post will be full of the ever-so-familiar pictures beneath the Eiffel Tower and in front of the Palace of Versaille! :-)

With Love from Germany… Mary Elizabeth