For 3 days we have traveled around Poland, and whilst I don’t want to sound dramatic, I think it’s trying to kill us!
Have you seen any of the Final Destination films? You know, the ones where a group of teens cheat death because one of them had a premonition and altered their futures. But no matter what they do to avoid it, death still catches them up.
That’s a little bit like how this leg of the journey feels.
It started on that first day on the road into Poland.
Up ahead of us 2 freight lorries pulled onto the road carrying their heavy load of logs.
We all commented that having seen the films we did not feel at all comfortable, so Nikky pulled back. It was at that point they discovered a third lorry had sandwiched us in.
With growing discomfort, we changed route and left the convoy.
We all breathed a little easier. But about 15 minutes later we joined a new road and found ourselves in exactly the same position with the same lorries.
Thank heavens when a dual carriageway opened up ahead, the foot hit the gas and we pulled away from our first threat of impending death.
Our next brush with death was the car stalling on the train tracks. We all held our breath whilst praying for the car to restart before we came to a sticky end. I’m not one to pray, but in those moments I did try to reach out to some higher power willing them to assist us.
We eventually arrived at the apartment that would be our home for the next 3 days.
It was a new property that the owners had just released on the rental market. And it was decorated in an eclectic mix.
We had skulls with sharp antlers primed to catch our arms when we reached for the top shelf. A bank of old cameras with snake-like cables hanging down above the bedroom doorway could easily act as a garrot. Sheep shears balanced in the cupboard handles that with one knock could slice into us. And a 25kilo kettlebell suspended from an eye in the ceiling above the kitchen table.
We all joked about the weight, especially when we each took it, in turn, to headbutt the damn thing when we tried to sit at the table.
But the following morning when we found water leaking through from the shower, through the fixing in the ceiling, we all agreed that something more sinister was at play and Poland really was trying to kill us.
Even the homemade Wodka offered to us by the host felt like a threat of poison which would leave us paralysed after the first glass. He really must have had an iron stomach the way he chugged it down.
He was very charming company, but his English was poor and I had no skills whatsoever in the Polish language. We tried to talk through google translate. But after a spelling mistake which changed joke to drug, his personality changed, he revealed himself to be a law official and wanted to do a body search for narcotics! I prayed that the arms on display in his garden bar were purely for show and he was not about to pull a gun on me!
So whilst we have all taken something new from our experiences learned in Poland, there was a cheer as we crossed the border into Slovakia.