Poland

We spent Saturday / Sunday nights in Berlin and then we ducked over to Poznan in west Poland to catch up with Will on Monday night and then we headed back to Berlin Tuesday / Wednesday nights. So we didn't have all that long in Poland. The drive from Berlin to Poznan took about 3 and a half hours and was remarkable only for the rain and the extraordinary number of trucks and potholes on the polish roads.

We'd agreed to meet Will at the main square in Poznan so we headed in what we thought was that direction. Unsurprisingly neither Sarah nor I speak Polish and we didn't have a town map so our first two attempts were somewhat unsuccessful. Eventually we found a servo, admitted defeat and bought a map. After one more lap of Poznan (just to make sure we'd really seen the sights) we found the main square. Not much to it really, nor Poznan for that matter. Couple of nice looking churches and a lot of roadworks really.. the rain probably didn't help :)

After a short while we also found Will and his room-mate and set about finding the nearest watering hole. Will assured us he knew just the one and we headed that way. Apparently the barmaid was a friend and so we had a couple of beers. I might remind our readers at this point that 'a beer' in Europe refers to 500ml and not, as one might assume, a measly 275ml. So we were getting along alright and decided to grab some food (which wasn't bad) and hit up the local Aussie bar.

I'm not sure what about this bar distinguished it as the Aussie bar because as far as I could make out the owner and all the customers were (very) polish. In fact I think when Will and Martin first visited the establishment they were the first australians to do so. Anyway after a couple more drinks someone suggested shots. My recollection gets slightly hazy at this point but i remember tequila and vodka, lots of vodka, and something blue (which may have also been vodka). For some reason (which was obviously important but which now escapes me) i challenged the bar owner to an arm wrestle. This was probably my first mistake. Apparently 'arm wrestle' translates to Polish as 'vodka drinking competition'.

At this point I'll make a quick diversion to Sarah's memory. On returning from the toilet she found a disturbingly long line of empty shot glasses on the bar and the polish bar owner collapsed on the floor.

Back to my memory: I woke up at midday with a sore head. Apparently I had remained strong right up until the point where I had to walk somewhere. Also apparent (from my forehead) was the fact that I'd fallen over at some stage.



So.. Will's residence was located in a nice old (and large) building, now being used for a school about 30min out of town and we had lunch the next day in town at an interesting little place which served savory pancakes from around the world. The drive back to Berlin was surprisingly a lot better than the drive into Poland, probably because i slept for a large percentage of it.



Result: I don't actually remember a whole lot of Poznan and the only photos we've got are of a pretty decent sunset on the road back to Berlin.