IT'S GRIM UP NORTH (PT 1: SOPOT)

Sopot is Poland’s premier seaside resort, once the playground of the rich and fashionable, now it’s just a small seaside town comprising a beach, a pier and a main street which is patrolled by holidaymakers in the daytime, holidaymakers and drunks in the evening, and Peruvian pan-pipe players at all hours. The pier is, according to whichever guide book you pick up, either the longest wooden pier in Europe or the longest wooden pier on the Baltic. There is nothing on the pier, not even an Elvis show. Once you have walked the length of the pier four or five times you have exhausted half of Sopot’s attractions, and all that remains is to get on a boat.

Various types of marine traffic call in at Sopot pier. A relative newcomer is Viking II, a reconditioned fishing boat done up like the Viking longboat in Asterix cartoons, complete with red and white striped sail, which does 45-minute trips round the bay during the day, and dinner cruises to Gdynia in the evening. The canopied restaurant on deck serves such typical Viking fare as kielbasy, chips and Zywiec, and the seats are adorned with animal skins which you can wrap yourself in when the wind comes up and don a two-horned helmet for the Erik the Viking photo opportunity. The Viking II is sister ship to the Viking I, last seen on the Vistula at Kazimierz Dolny. The sight of a Viking longboat materializing through the Baltic mist is quite impressive, I imagine the town drunks must have sobered up rather quickly the first time they saw it.

However, as we had just spent half an hour sheltering from a downpour under Sopot pier, I ignored Harold’s pleading glances towards the Viking boat (I think his alter ego Sven resurfaced briefly at the sight of it) and piped him aboard the ferry to Hel. The journey, via Gdynia, takes 2 hours, and when Hel finally appears it looks rather like the Isle of Sheppey, only not so exciting. It has one main street with a good many bars and fish restaurants, and – our hearts sank – yet another group of poncho’d Peruvian (or possibly Bolivian) Indians playing the pan pipes! This truly was a descent into Hel. We ate very agreeable grilled cod fillet with chips and salad for less than 50 zlotys all told, including a couple of beers, and after a slow wander through a fairly uninteresting market (not even a T-shirt saying “I’ve been to Hel and back”) boarded the ferry back to Sopot.

The Grand Hotel in Sopot was once, I am sure, quite grand. However, despite reports of recent renovation, it reminded me of nothing so much as the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. The view of the sea and the pier is nice, and the rooms are large, but the Orbis idea of luxury still leaves a lot to be desired. Nice bathroom, but it would have been nicer if the loo door had shut properly, and the corridors were about as cosy as a reform school. The staff were efficient and spoke good English, but unsmiling in that Orbis way they have. This would have all been quite acceptable had the room rate been commensurate with the level of comfort, but the Grand is essentially a 3-star hotel charging 5-star prices (445 zlotys a night). For that price, one expects fluffy towels or at least an extra pillow. However, the breakfast is first-class, and is taken in the dining room overlooking the sea, where it is served until 11 a.m. The cocktail bar is an absolute gem – how clever of Orbis to perfectly recreate a 1970’s communist-era entrapment scenario! Right down to the inebriated Russian (“I’m a businessman – now”) and what must be the only three-generation team of government-sponsored escort girls, who sat grimly smoking while the barman, glued to the Bond film on the TV (nice touch!) studiously ignored the customers. As theme bars go, this one gets first prize.

There are three good restaurants in Sopot, otherwise it’s fish and chips, kielbasa or rotisserie chicken on the prom, chips optional but Pan pipes compulsory. We had a couple of beers on the main square and enjoyed watching the town drunks doing their own version of the Lambada and annoying the Bolivians, some small compensation for them having annoyed us all day. We decided to have dinner at Le Balzac, a name which Harold always insists on mispronouncing. The interior is extremely refined, bordering on fussy, with an invisible pianist hidden away in a
back room. The middle-aged headwaiter was straight out of The Birdcage, camper than a row of tents, and flapped around sibilantly, endlessly lisping “prosze bardzo” and “uprzejmie”. Harold muttered something in reply which also began with “up”, but was in English.

We kicked off with soup – Harold started with wild mushroom and I went for French onion, both of which were freshly-made and delicious. For main course Harold had Italian-style lamb (i.e. in tomato sauce with pasta) washed down with a bottle of Cotes de Beaune, while I remained faithful to the maritime tone of the town and had sole fillets stuffed with salmon mousse, an elaborately constructed dish which I took great pleasure in demolishing with the help of a half bottle of Alsace Riesling. Harold kept interrupting his eating to flick through his Polish-English pocket dictionary – I thought he was trying to decipher the more obscure items on the menu, but he muttered that he was looking up the Polish for “shut” and “door”. It was a wet night, admittedly, the poor dear must have been sitting in a draught.

The final damage was quite steep, but the evening was thankfully free of Pan pipe music or chips, and our Larry Grayson impersonating waiter was simpering at Harold as we got into our taxi. So, he’s lost Blondie in Krakow but can always take comfort in the knowledge that he has a devoted admirer in Sopot. What is he like, eh???

NEVER AS GOOD AS THE FIRST TIME: KRAKOW REVISITED

Nothing is ever the same second time around, is it? After our triumphant visit to Krakow at the beginning of the year, we took our visitors with us this time - Sid Grimthorpe, Harold’s former NCO from somewhere north of Scarborough, and his wife Ivy. Lovely people, salt of the earth and all that, but I had great trouble deciphering a word they uttered. They spoke a guttural dialect vaguely resembling working-class Icelandic - it made Polish sound quite mellifluous by comparison.

We took them to the Kawiarnia Ratuszowa under the Rynek on the first evening, which was a good choice. It’s essentially a steak-and-chips place, but the food is always copious and good value for money, which is important where Sid and Ivy come from, and fresh, which is important to us. I think we all had steak, salad and chips in some form or other, and the bill was about 150 zlotys for four of us. Sid made approving noises in his native tongue, something along the lines of “Eee, arby reet hawa yer ganny son” (I’m sure all those from north of Watford will know what he meant!).

After dinner, Harold of course wanted to have a snifter at Panaceum and look up his old girlfriend Blondie, she of the long blonde tresses and quivering thighs. Indeed she was still there, but not as Harold remembered her. Gone was the shimmering mane of gold and the split to infinity skirt - she now sported a skinhead crop, nose ring, tattoo and Doc Marten boots. Harold smiled ingratiatingly in hopes that she would remember him and tell him her twin sister was in the back slicing lemons, but if she did remember him she certainly didn’t let on, and stomped sulkily back to the bar after slamming down our drinks. Harold was quite mortified, and convinced himself he must have inadvertantly jilted her last time, hence the embittered transformation. I made sympathetic noises, but had already spotted the sullen spiky-haired gel in a leather jacket and combat pants hanging around near the door. I hadn’t got the heart to tell Harold the truth, at his time of life it might have killed him.

The next evening, after a day tramping through the salt mines, we returned to the Elefant Pub which had so impressed Harold on our last visit - only to find it wasn’t called the Elefant Pub at all! It was in fact called simply Pub C.K. Browar, but the PUB sign over the door is adjacent to the sign over a department store called … Elefant. Oh well, it will always be the Elefant Pub to me. Sid, being a northern man, immediately took a shine to this very male drinking establishment and he and Harold had fun working their way through the Polish equivalent of a yard of ale - a 3-litre glass pipe with a tap at the bottom, full of cloudy beer (made on the premises - the pub is also a micro-brewery). Ivy and I had to almost drag them out bodily before they started on a second, as we’d reserved a table at Pod Aniolami, which we had so much enjoyed on our previous visit. Alas, we were faintly disappointed this time. Our first two choices of wine were not available, neither was the lamb main course. This is frankly inexcusable at the height of the tourist season. Harold ordered smalec to show Sid and Ivy some typical Polish cooking. Their reaction was not really enthusiastic, and the Polish speciality came off badly when compared with the scrapings off Ivy’s mother’s chip pan. Sid liked the red barszcz, but Ivy claimed the duck was tough (although Harold’s was delicious). My bigos was all right, but no more. Frankly, how exciting can bigos get? Having visitors from England, particularly ones as outspoken as the Grimthorpes, sometimes opens one’s eyes to faults one has a tendency to overlook as a resident in Poland. Such as the food. And the number of restaurants and cafes which charge you to use the loo, even when you’re a customer. Or the fact that shopkeepers NEVER have any change. We saw one girl open an empty till at the start of business one morning. For goodness sake, don’t they have banks here? It makes it very difficult trying to impress people, I do wish the locals would make more of an effort sometimes.

The next day we did our Jewish thing, and packed the Grimthorpes off to Auschwitz while we tramped around Podgórze for hours looking for the Emalia factory. When we eventually found it, of course it was nothing like it was in the film, and there was not even a plaque to commemorate Oskar Schindler. It was just an ordinary factory producing something or other. We dined in Kazimierz again, this time at the Klezmer Hois, which has a bigger dining room than Ariel, though still resembling your Aunt Myriam’s sitting room in Golder’s Green. The food was better than at Ariel, I thought - I tried chicken knedlach, or dumplings, which were delicious, and Harold’s trout was excellent. Sid had a huge vegetable omelette, and Ivy had chicken schnitzel , which she said was dry. I started to get the impression Ivy wasn’t over-keen on Abroad. There were two klezmer bands, the first young and rather soulful, the second older and more traditional Jewish wedding music. A large group of American ladies sitting behind us shouted at each other constantly throughout both performances, while we and the rest of the diners were trying to listen to the music. Harold finally thought up the most anti-American gesture he could make without mentioning the war, and lit a large cigar, blowing the smoke quite deliberately at the chattering matrons. Sadly even this did not shut them up.

Ivy wanted to spend the whole of the last day shopping in the Sukiennice, so we set up base camp at a terrace café on the square and occasionally relieved her of bags full of wooden carvings, Polish dolls, amber jewellery and embroidered tablecloths, freeing her arms up for more purchases. Sid sat nursing a Zywiec and muttering in his own language, something about “divvy gan yam weeya” which I think was a mild indication of concern about space in the suitcase.

On our last evening we tried a new place – U Szkota – a cellar restaurant and bar a shade upmarket after some of Krakow’s seedier student bars. The décor is olde-worlde and the Scottish theme extends to waiters in kilts and haggis on the menu – although we refrained from pointing out that the hunting scenes on the walls were most un-Scottish. Ivy and Sid, cautious after the exoticism of the Jewish restaurant, played it safe with sirloin steaks in various incarnations, but thankfully this time Ivy declared hers delicious. Harold went for roe deer (or “Bambi”, as he insensitively calls it) which was very good. I, unwisely (not like me at all) chose goose. I realized later, as I was sawing through the leather-like pieces of meat, that goose can never be fresh in a restaurant due to its size, and had obviously been cooked earlier, sliced and frozen. Let that be a lesson to me.

On our return to Warsaw, we took Sid and Ivy to Champions Bar at the Marriott for their farewell dinner in Poland, where we had burgers and pizza with chips. They thought it was reet smashing, like.

N.B. If you wish to try some of these restaurants yourself, the addresses can be found in “Krakow in your pocket”, a handy little guide available for 6 zl from any Krakow bookseller or tourist office.

CRACKING KRAKOW

Harold and I recently made another visit to our (so far) favourite Polish city, Krakow. We arrived hot-foot, in a manner of speaking, from the snows of Zakopane, Harold still sporting his reflective goggles, thermo-nuclear ski jacket and bobble hat and insisting on being called “Sven”. He might even learn to ski next winter. Although a super place for a short winter break, Zakopane is not exactly the culinary capital of Poland. After three days of grilling our own kielbasy to the haunting wails of piped Górale music, we were ready for something a tad more sophisticated. A nice hot chocolate was just the thing to keep out the cold until aperitif time. Kawiarnia Jama Michalika (ul. Florianska 13) is the height of sophistication, an instant antidote to the hillbilly atmosphere of Zakopane. Do give the cloakroom attendant your Puffa jacket, otherwise you’ll feel rather out of place. The interior is dark - “Sven” even had to take off his ski goggles - but once your eyes adjust, it’s breathtaking. Totally art deco, as one would expect of the birthplace of the Mloda Polska movement - who were actually still hanging around, if the rather noisy OAP’s tea party was anything to go by. There are four rooms which get darker and more atmospheric as you go further back. The last room looks like an opium den. We sat under the beautiful stained glass dome, in giant chairs straight out of Alice in Wonderland, and listened to Chopin’s Polonaise, expecting Oscar Wilde or Diaghilev to sweep in at any moment. The waitress wasn’t quite Nijinsky - we waited an eternity for the menu - and the view of the Coke machine through the kitchen door took something of the atmosphere away, but the hot chocolate when it did arrive was thick and creamy, although sadly not served in a giant cup. Make sure you get a table with a lamp, Harold couldn’t even see the black-on-green menu with his specs on. Prices are reasonable, and it would be a nice place for an early-evening snifter for non-smoking Aubrey Beardsley fans. Saturday lunchtime we fancied a change from Polish, without going completely off the map, so decided to eat in a small Hungarian restaurant called Balaton (Ul. Grodzka 37). We ordered potato pancakes Hungarian style - more by luck than by judgement, as the menu was in only Hungarian and Polish. The service was brisk and efficient, and the place filled up quickly, so it’s obviously a popular weekend lunch spot. The pancakes are the size of omelettes, and are groaning with goulash filling, served with a generous side portion of raw veg salad. With a pint and a Coke it set us back a colossal 66 zlotys.  

 

 

Harold refused to go into Jama Michalika again without a torch, so I dragged him to the Czartoryski museum to look at the shotguns. I did make a point of sitting him down in front of Leonardo’s Lady with an Ermine, and was surprised at how long he stayed there gazing in deep contemplation. Afterwards he said he didn’t think much of the painting at all, that chap who was in Titanic was a waste of space all round, but he was very impressed, however, with the alarm system.


On Saturday evening Bambus was pulsating with loud music and raging hormones, so I took Harold away before his old trouble started playing up, and parked him in the testosterone-filled Elefant Pub, a cavernous beer keller away from the Rynek, on the corner of ul. Karmelicka. The house draught lager and a darker version, brewed by C.K. Browar, was real-alish - slightly cloudy and not very gassy, with a faintly bitter aftertaste. Harold sampled quite a lot of it, and pronounced it to his liking . Even better, it costs less than 5 zlotys a pint.


We then headed off by taxi to Ariel, the famed Jewish restaurant in Kazimierz (ul. Szeroka 18). A word of advice on this one - book well in advance. The restaurant only seats about 26, and as we’d only reserved that same evening, we found ourselves seated in the souvenir shop almost on the pavement. Fortunately, due to a cancellation we got re-seated in the main restaurant. Although the food at Ariel is fine - and cheap - you don’t go for the food. You go for the music. There are two regular Klezmer bands who take it in turns to squeeze themselves into a tiny space between the bar and the diners and perform the most fabulous music. It’s more Schindler’s List than Fiddler on the Roof, so don’t expect to come out singing “If I were a rich man, biddy-buddy-boom”. Expect to be amazed. The concert costs 18 zlotys per head on top of the meal. For the record, Harold had goose leg served with croquette potatoes, I had chicken cutlet Jewish style served with salad vegetables, and we got so carried away on the music we had two bottles of very palatable Hungarian Egri red, at … 37.50 zlotys a bottle. Yes, that’s right. 37.50 a bottle. Total damage 150 zlotys, music included. Oy veh.


Harold fancied a quick one after dinner (I thought he meant a brandy) so we returned to Panaceum where Blondie positively quivered with excitement. She shimmied up in a split skirt that hardly covered her modesty, and was all over Harold like a dose of shingles. I almost expected her to launch into a rendition of “Hey Big Spender”. Still, she was a nice young gel and made an old man very happy. She was still waving happily through the glass door as we headed off to the Harris Piano Jazz Bar across the square. Not a terribly late-night place, as the excellent Polish jazz group were just finishing their last number as we arrived about 11.30 p.m., but quite late enough for a couple of old fogeys like us.


On Sunday, after marching Harold round the Wawel Royal Apartments where I giggled at the rude Hieronymous Bosch and Harold inspected the wiring, we returned to the Rynek. In the Town Hall Tower is a door leading to an underground theatre and a restaurant, the Kawiarnia Ratuszowa. The totally Gothic bar with a pair of life-size medieval types sitting on the counter looking like they’ve had a few too many vodkas was featured on one of the BBC’s travel programmes recently. The background music however (at least on a Sunday lunchtime) is mellow and jazzy, and the food is good and served in massive portions. Harold’s sirloin steak was pink and perfect this time, served on a wooden platter with chips and salad. My onion soup was tasty and the bacon salad was gargantuan. With 2 beers and 2 cokes, 72 zlotys.


Krakow is excellent value for money, although charges for little extras such as cloakrooms and toilets is annoying, and watch the taxi meters like a hawk - the name “Ariel” seems to add zeroes automatically. Otherwise, it’s a case of he who is tired of Krakow is either tired of life or seriously in need of a large box of Rennies.