Matching Tracksuits

I made it out Friday to catch the bus at six. Almost all the students were there, but no bus. We stood, waiting, and I began sitting, “I don’t know how many times I’ve told these people in Vienna and Strasbourg, ‘I can assure you that we will be there,’ and what if the bus doesn’t show up? What if they make a liar out of me?” I remembered that the bus company wanted full payment before the trip. “What if they decide not to send the bus, citing this as a reason?” It finally showed up, thirty or forty minutes late — I can’t remember exactly. We loaded everything on and we were off. We made it through the first border without much trouble, and we were whizzing through Slovakia. It was here that the first change occurred. Bogdan told me the problem: “The drivers can only drive eight hours each — sixteen hours total. If we go to Budapest, it will be too far for them to drive to Vienna, so we’re just going to Vienna first.” Fine by me, I thought. We slowed down our pace a little and arrived around seven thirty.

Somewhere in the middle of Slovakia — a beautiful country with mountains which shoot up to sharp peaks suddenly — Bogdan told me, “If you don’t have enough money for the accommodations, you can use some of the money Wojtek got from the students.” It was like he slapped me. “What is that money for, if not for the accommodations?” I asked him. “For museums and such,” he responded. Suddenly the money trouble returned. I got out the information concerning our bank payments, hoping that Janusz had indeed paid the whole sum. At first I thought he had — the amount was correct. Then I noticed it was in shillings. “We’re in deep *&$#,” I thought to myself. Before continuing, I’ll explain how I arrived at the stupid assumption that this money was for accommodation: Talking to the mayor, I told him how much it would cost and he responded, “Wojtek has 100 zloty from each student,” he said. Therefore, as we had been talking about the cost of the hostels, I assumed — first mistake but not the first time — that this money was that.

We arrived, and the decisive moment approached with nauseating speed. I began talking to the receptionist, hoping that we could talk her into letting us pay by bank deposit. “So you want to leave without paying and without giving any security that you will pay,” she said ever so sweetly. I offered my credit card as security. She smiled and virtually whispered, “We don’t take credit cards.” Of course not. I went back and told Bogdan and Wojtek. “And that’s for one night, right?” asked Wojtek. “What?” “We’re just staying here tonight, right?” “No, tonight and tomorrow night.” It turned out that the mayor told Wojtek that we could sleep on the bus the second night while we drove to Strasbourg. He only told me, “You’ll be in Vienna 31 May and 1 June, so you’ll need rooms there too . . .” I talked to the receptionist on Wojtek’s urging. “Maybe we can cancel tomorrow’s reservations — and that would mean we need less money.” I thought, “Yeah, they’ll love that.” They would have — we simply would have had to pay the full sum regardless of whether we stayed or not. What else would you expect? It was what I expected, but I was hoping for some miracle. Finally, we just coughed up the money and that was that. For the time being.

Vienna is a great city, but tremendously expensive. I had dinner with Astrid that first night and a simple meal — pasta and a beer — cost 240 shillings. That would have been about 70 złoty if she hadn’t graciously paid. A hot dog cost me 10 złoty. It was beyond outrageous. Astrid told me before I came, “I warn you, Vienna is very expensive.” I had no idea she how expensive she meant.

The next day we visited a couple of places in Vienna. First, we went to a historic Polish church in Vienna so everyone could go to mass, then we went to the emperor’s summer palace. Of course, the emperor had to have two — a summer and a winter palace. I wonder why not waste more money on spring and fall palaces, as well as one for those hot Indian summers and another for the unexpected return of winter that comes every few Aprils. After all, how can one expect an emperor to live in only two palaces? Surely there were more people who could have gone hungry to provide him with three or four more palaces. Whatever the reason, the poor emperor had only two palaces in Vienna and we visited his humble summer one. We walked around the grounds (didn’t actually go in — that was too expensive). Afterward, we were going to walk to the center of town, but some of the teachers and students felt it was too far and decided to go back to the hostel. Those of us who went had a nice enough time, but I can’t speak for those who went back to the hostel.

The next morning we headed to Strasbourg and made it about two hours before we stopped. I thought it was a toilet stop. “The bus broke down again,” I heard one teacher tell another. The drivers had worked on it a little while we were in Vienna, but obviously hadn’t fixed the problem. So we spent five hours in a parking lot somewhere in Austria waiting for the drivers to fix the problem. I called Strasbourg and told them that we might not get there until early in the morning. I read, wrote, read, rested, walked, talked, read, wrote. It was hellish.

On a side note, I think the Kiss tour buses parked beside us for a little while. I saw a bunch of guys milling around and several of them had key chains with Kiss ID cards, the sort that one wears to have unrestricted freedom backstage. I didn’t see any of the actual band members, nor did I try. I think they’re a bit silly, though I didn’t always. I once got in trouble for listening to my neighbor’s Kiss record — forbidden music when you’re six. There were all those stories that “Kiss” was an acronym for “Knights In Satan’s Service” and that listening to them would melt your brain or something along those lines.

We finally made it to Strasbourg around 3:00 a.m. and got everyone checked in and in their rooms by 4:00. Then we got up at 8:30 for breakfast and the big event: the Council of Europe. After breakfast we got our lazy selves on the road and walked to the center of town, arriving at 12:45. We decided to leave for the Council of Europe at 1:45, giving us forty-five minutes to walk there. We met at 1:45 and got underway at 2:05. After walking for eternity we made it to the Council of Europe compound itself. I was in the front so I headed straight to the visitors’ center. Wojtek took most of the group to the place they’d gone last year. After we went off to find them, we were ten minutes late. I was concerned that the discussion itself began at 3:00 and that by being late we would be interrupting. That concern was for naught. As was my concern about dressing nicely. Before leaving I asked all the students to bring something nice to wear for that day. When Bogdan heard this, he laughed. “We didn’t last year, and it was no problem.” I explained that it was a major international governing body that we were going to observe, not a carnival. “We need to look nice,” I said. When we got there, I noticed that no other groups were dressed up — nothing to worry about. Still, we looked sharp, except for a few (notably Wojtek and his running pants).

We watched a video about the Council of Europe, then headed up to the debating chamber to observe. I must admit that I was terribly excited about it all. We were about to watch a cooperative of over forty countries working together to solve problems of mutual concern. I knew we wouldn’t watch any ground-breaking decisions — such things take months or even years to accomplish. Still, I was eager to watch it all. Then one of the students asked me, “How long do we have to stay here?” and another said, “This is so boring.” Of course. I had forgotten what I would have been like at that age. “Do we have to stay here long? This is so boring!”

The debating chamber was circular, very similar to the interior of the United Nations in New York. There were joined desks arranged in arcs with the main table and podium at the top of the circle. Around the outside of the room were the translators’ booths, eight of them in all: English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Norwegian, Turkish, and Greek. Of course, I put on my headphones and turned the dial directly to the languages I’d never heard before, then turned it to English so as to actually understand what was going on.

We watched a session of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, of which our mayor is a member. The topic under consideration dealt with locally elected officials being removed from office in Turkey without due judiciary process. We were there long enough to hear a summary of a report about the problem and a representative from Turkey speak about the issue.

So how long did we stay there? I had worked frantically for four weeks to plan this, and the local government was paying several thousand zlłoty for this trip. I worried about it constantly for those four weeks and got absolutely no sleep the night before we left because of all the things I was fretting about. I thought we would stay for longer than twenty minutes, but that was it. I must admit that I was both disappointed and un-astonished. Not even the teachers were interested in it. In fact, just as one student had asked me how long we were going to be there, one teacher asked if we were going to be long. (Later that evening I saw her showing to a couple of other teachers some of the things she’d bought. It was a shopping excursion for her.)

After the Council meeting, we took the kids out to eat and then for a guided boat tour of the city. As we sat on the boat, I realized that the English portion of the tour was difficult enough that most students wouldn’t understand it but simple enough that I could translate it. So I began giving a rough translation. And then it suddenly got more difficult. I struggled for a few minutes, then got one of the best students and just told him in very simplified English what the guide said and he told the rest of the students in Polish. Such was my one and only attempt at translating.

The return trip was blissfully uneventful. We left at 12:00 p.m. Wednesday and arrived home in Lipnica 9:00 a.m. Thursday. We stopped in Germany to look at a famous church which I’d never heard of. It was very small, more like a chapel, and the outside and inside walls were covered with small paintings depicting the history of the world (from a German perspective, I assume). Each picture had a black angel with a very dark halo. What I found amazing was not the paintings themselves, but the fact that the ones on the outside were still intact, free from the slightest bit of vandalism. I do not know if they post a guard there in the evenings, but I saw nothing suggesting that.

Looking back on it now, I’m not sure whether I think the trip was a success or not. I guess the fact that we made it there and back without losing anyone or anything makes it somewhat of a success. Still, the lack of organization (which several students noticed and mentioned to me) made the whole thing rather stressful and chaotic — we wasted a lot of time. I’ve learned a lot in the past five weeks, and I think next year’s trip (if it does indeed occur) will be much better. Thankfully, that’s at least a year away . . .