Four Countries, Three Trains, One Hangover

Dec. 27 – Budapest, Hungary

Not that I expect any sympathy but yesterday I finally bore the full brunt of Slavic hospitality. After a trying day at Auschwitz – Birkenau, I retreated to Krakow with my new acquaintances for a last night in the old town. A friendly group of Poles deployed their country’s full alcoholic arsenal (flavourful beer, flavourfuller fruit liqueurs, flavourfullest “sweet bitter” vodka) on a Canadian whose best drinking days ended long ago. In an English-Polish-Slovak-Russian mashup, we earnestly discussed Polish history and politics, relatives in Mississauga, and general consensus that “Ukrainian border guards are bastards”. Feeling generous, I did some German-English translating for a Swiss father and son who bellied up to the bar.

It had been many moons since I had combined alcohols so recklessly, and my hangover started even as I headed back to the hostel from the last pub. I sat down, blunt-brained, to write on the most sensitive of topics, then turned in for three hours’ sleep. I awoke to one of those “I’ll never do that again” mornings that I was certain were part of my past, packed up and headed to the train station.

Vicious and persistent, the headache conducted guerrilla strikes against different parts of my skull as the first train ambled through the Polish lowlands to the scruffy town of Katowice, and then as the second shook its way into the Czech city of Ostrava. Waiting for the final train connection in Ostrava, desperate for cranial relief, I ate one of those pitiful sandwiches you can only get at a railway station, and a whole bag of potato chips. This helped, but I still cringed a little when the stout, mustachioed old lady asked for assistance carrying her bags (apparently lead-filled) onto the train to Budapest. Rolling into Slovakia, a pungent, mouth-breathing family trio lumbered into the wagon and sat behind me. I buried myself in a book, but their blather distracted me still, as did the last hits of headache. It was only once the train reached cavernous Keleti station, nearly empty, that my 17-hour hangover finally vanished.

Tired but no longer mentally incapacitated, I will start exploring Budapest tomorrow.


Christmas in the 21st Century

Dec. 25 – Krakow, Poland

The Okens family Skypemas dinner.

There will come a time when tales of Skype-ing your family on Christmas Eve will sound old-fashioned and quaint – like actually hand-writing a letter or going on a sleigh ride. But we’re not there yet.

Let’s have a virtual show of hands if you Skyped someone for Christmas, or chatted with people via Facebook. Chances are, if you’re reading this you did one or the other or both. And why wouldn’t you? It’s cheap, easy, and impossible to be with everybody you know and love. There are rumblings that our hyperconnectedness makes us unhappy. That it strips us of true human contact and makes us lonely, even as our number of Facebook friends expands. But for me, this Christmas, this was not true at all.

Krakow could make a stranger sad right about now. It got milder and the snow vanished. There are, in fact, few lights and I did not find large nighttime gatherings of people going to Christmas mass. This morning, out for a run, I encountered only a few dog walkers along the river. But in the middle of this medieval town, there is Wifi and I have a MacBook Air.

Yesterday was my first-ever Skypemas dinner with my parents, sister and aunt. My hostel suite has a kitchen, and I cooked up some cheese pierogies to go with kolbasa sausage, borscht-in-a-cup and plus-sized Polish beer. I fired up my laptop and connected to my parents’ Skype address in Canada. And so we had a dinner table (lunch for them) conversation in between my mouthfuls of pierogies and gulps of “Kasztelan Niepasteryzowane” which is smoother to drink than to say. Contacts such as these don’t need to be long or particularly deep to be meaningful. That improvised gathering was the most important thing I did yesterday.

The Internet provided a few other bonuses. I listened to two CBC broadcasts; the reading of the story “The Shepherd” (a Facebook link by a friend) and this year’s “Vinyl Café” concert. These have become a yearly ritual and I felt right at home, here in my hostel in Poland. Courtesy of YouTube, Elvis crooned “Blue Christmas”. And on Facebook, friends reported about Santa-impersonating fathers, cats sleeping on the wrapping paper, and about gathering with family.

“Home for Christmas” is not about to disappear. A MacBook Air cannot give you a kiss under the mistletoe. On Christmas morning, fiber optic cable won’t squeal with glee seeing the presents under the tree. But if you are alone at this most sentimental of times, and you know the difference between the real and the virtual, get online.

Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas!