Dale Says

July 17, 2014

Dry Shoes

Filed under: Colorful Characters, Profile — Dale @ 11:57 am

32 Comments »

  1. We tend to meet interesting people on our bicycle trips, and our time in Poland was no exception. There were people in our group from Austria, Belgium, Canada, England, Germany, the U.S. – and a couple from Australia who turned out to be friends and guardian angels.

    Zen and Susie, the couple from Australia, were easily distinguishable each day, because they wore green luminescent stripes over their cycling clothes. Susie said the stripes were to warn drivers when they were cycling; Zen said it was to embarrass their children.

    Zen’s mother was born in Poland, and she fled to Australia shortly before World War II. Zen learned to speak Polish from her, so he became our translator. Susie was our entertainer, and she kept us thoroughly amused with her witticisms and her knowledge of literature, movies, and geography.

    We were in Krakow, Poland to cycle in the Tatra Mountains of southern Poland. We had signed up for a one-week bicycle adventure with a Krakow-based tour company, who furnished bicycles, hotel rooms, a guide, and some of the meals.

    The Tatra Mountains, part of the Carpathians, are located 60 miles south of Krakow. They form a border between Poland and Slovakia, and the Dunajec River has carved a fertile, green gorge that meanders among their peaks. This was our playground for the week – cycling among the flora, fauna, and the Gorale, a clan of highlanders known for their music, culture, and costumes.

    As we discovered, the Polish have an unusual way of doing some things. For example: We cycled in rain most of one day, and we were drenched and cold when we reached our hotel. We needed to get dry and warm. The heater in our room didn’t work, and the instructions were in Polish, so we assumed we were doing something wrong. We asked for help.

    “The heaters aren’t turned on in the summer,” the woman at the front desk told us, “Only in the winter.”
    “But we’re soaked and cold – can you turn them on for a little bit?”

    But she couldn’t (or wouldn’t) make an exception. Those were the rules, and they had to be followed.

    Darn, we thought. Well, we would put our wet gear on the heated towel rack in our bathroom (that’s right, the rooms in these modest hotels had heated towel racks). So we hung everything on the towel rack, turned it to high, and changed into dry clothes. An hour later the towel rack was still cold, so we called the front desk for help. The same woman came up, fiddled with the controls on the towel rack, and announced that the towel racks weren’t turned on in the summer either – only in the winter!

    We had been had by the Polish mentality, and we were stuck with wet clothes!

    But our friend (and translator), Zen, came to the rescue. After dinner, he knocked on our door and produced a rope, which he helped us fashion into a clothesline. We tied the ends to two chairs and hung our wet biking clothes out to dry. Then he took our soaked biking shoes to his room and used a portable heater he had talked the hotel staff into borrowing to dry our shoes overnight. It was wonderful the next morning to put on dry clothes and dry shoes.

    We spent a week with our new friends – cycling, eating, exploring, and learning – and we developed a bond with them. We were comfortable telling them about our lives, our hopes, and our dreams. And yet, we knew that after we got home we would probably never see them again.

    That’s travel. We experience it, we share it, and we move on to the next adventure.

    Travel is a learning experience.

    Comment by Dale — July 17, 2014 @ 12:11 pm

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