Travelling to Krakow for a cheeky Polish city break.
This trip feels more footbally than some of our football trips. We are travelling with Wonky Sheep, the official Wales football travel partner and everyone in our gang is a regular Wales Away traveller. All that is missing is football. There is no football involved in the making of this blog.
A bit like the last time I visited this city in September2005. There were fifty of us, all football fans, all traveling to watch Wales Away, but due to us booking prematurely, before the stadium hosting the game was announced, we ended up watching the game on the telly. Only a handful of diehards made the effort to travel the 600km round trip to Warsaw for the game. And it was a bizarre scenario: we lost, but celebrated losing. Back in those days we took it for granted we weren’t going to the World Cup, but Poland winning meant England weren’t going either. Childish really.
On that trip I missed out on going down the salt mine (all we become clear in tomorrow’s blog), so despite having a general policy of not going back to the same city and visiting new places, I was always determined to come back. Besides, Megan hasn’t been here and it really is a special city.
The piss-taking started pretty much as soon as the tribe started to gather. Despite only going for five nights, Sally Shawshank had brought not a case, but more of a trunk, like Phileas Fogg would have taken around the world in eighty days. Luckily she had brought Bob Hoskins with her to keep them, ‘on the move’.
Another one of the gang had brought a big case to go in the hold because of the liquids in hand luggage thing. If you’re going to bring forty-eight cans of Bow with you, they need to go in the hold.
We all know that airport bars are expensive, but they still manage to cause a sharp intake of breath as you are paying for your preflight beer. But we still do it and spend the next three days moaning about it.
Wonky had sorted us out with ‘speedy’ boarding, so we were soon sat on a half empty plane ready for take off. With the exception of a light aircraft holding eight people from Swansea ‘International’ Airport, I can’t recall ever being on a flight with so few passengers. Although we were warned off from moving around to stretch our legs. The steward told me if I moved to the three empty seats to my left, three people would need to move to the right to avoid the plane being unbalanced and going around in circles.
Megan and I were sat next to each other, albeit with an aisle between us. I was also sat to Gwylim from Carmarthen. We soon established we had a mutual friend. Gwylim had shared a bed with Tim Hartley, the man on the radio, for his first year in university, back in 1948. Actually it might have been a room they shared. Yes, I think it was a room. We discussed walking football, going to football with your children and tactical voting in the Caerphilly by-election, and many other subjects before we landed in one piece on the tarmac of Krakow Airport.
Once Sally had recovered her trunk from trunk reclaim we discovered we are not the only ten people on this trip. There’s around twenty of us gathered around a Wonky flag and soon troop off to the waiting coach.
Check-in was easy in the clean and modern Ibis Centrum. Once I had explained to Sally how light switches work, it was a race to drop our bags off and get back down to the bar. Those that were too slow would find out that the bar closed at ten of the PMs.
Despite the lady in reception telling us everywhere was closed, we quickly found our new ‘regular’ pub just over the road. The local beer went down well with those that drunk it, whilst I enjoyed the local cider. We shared snacks of crisps, twiglets and platters of smoked cheese and had a round of local shots that tasted of marzipan, but nobody actually knew what the drink was.
This place closed at midnight so we reluctantly headed back to the ranch. We did stop off at a local petrol station, but as soon as we walked in the guy behind the counter started shouting “too late for alcohol”, so we walked back out and off to bed. I didn’t mind, tomorrow is a trip to the salt mine. The reason I’ve wanted to come back for twenty years.