Holiday Snapshots

One

Our tour guide, Luke, of Crazy Guides, arrives to take us to Nowa Huta in the ‘Trabby’. It’s pale blue. It’s also made of fibre glass, and pretty old. When I get in, the interior reminds me of the first car we ever had. It has seat belts, but he advises us not to wear them! It has very few controls. There’s a sort of bar on the dashboard that I hang on to. The gear lever is also on the dashboard, and looks complicated. The car smells heavily of fumes, and apparently you have to add oil to the petrol before driving. It has a manual choke, which brings back lots of memories of learning to drive and inadvertently flooding the engine!

Later Luke shows us the engine. There isn’t a lot to it. I think he realised when he was referring to the horsepower of the car, and I had absolutely no idea how it compared to my car, that he was speaking to the uninformed! ‘Not much to go wrong’ we comment, however Cat spots that the engine is worryingly close to the petrol tank!

It rattles a lot as we move through the traffic, and especially when we pick up speed. Apparently he can make it go quite fast, and can even take corners on three wheels. I’m quite glad he doesn’t attempt it with us in the car.

When we arrive in Nowa Huta, he just mounts the kerb to park the Trabby. ‘We don’t bother to lock it, no one is going to steal it!’ On the return journey, I sit in the back, and find myself almost banging my head on the roof as we go over any bumps.

Two

We eventually find the minibus that will take us to the salt mine. It’s already full, and there are no seats left. The driver nods at us when we ask if we can get on. We have to stand, but the journey’s 'only 20 minutes'. He lets other people on after us, and it begins to be a bit of a crush. There are so many nationalities; someone comments it’s like the United Nations on a bus!

We set off. It’s pretty packed, but we keep stopping and the driver lets more people get on. We begin to wonder if someone is actually sitting on the driver’s knee. The windows steam up, so much so that we can’t really see out, though I am at least getting a little air from the sun roof above my head.

Eventually someone gets off (a struggle, but they manage) and Cat gets a seat. The guy next to her is listening to the ‘Wake Up to Wogan’ podcast. Things are getting more surreal by the minute. Only the Brits are discussing the journey. I'm thinking it's that Dunkirk spirit starting to come out!

We turn off the main road. It can’t be far now. The road gets progressively worse, and is full of potholes. At one point my feet actually leave the floor as we go over a bump, and Cat leaves her seat. It’s starting to feel like some form of torture for tourists!

Eventually, after about 35 minutes, (it seems longer), we arrive. When the bus stops, for a few moments, no one moves, not quite believing that we’ve arrived. I think none of us are sure how to extricate ourselves without tumbling into a heap.

The return journey seems like an anti-climax, as it takes about 20 minutes, and everyone gets a seat!