Month: June 2006

Lodz – pronounced Loooch – in supposed to be the 3rd biggest city in Poland. I'd heard that Poland was undergoing significant redevelopment and was a vibrant country, shaking off it's old eastern bloc legacy. I went with high expectations. I was sorely disappointed.

I was flying on Ryanair. For those who don't know of it, it's a budget airline. Think of a big yellow schoolbus that flies. That's the general comfort level. It gets you there in one piece, but that's about it. No frills, no perks. To save weight, even the booze (that you need to purchase) comes in tear-open sachets instead of those miniature bottles. The planes are only on the ground long enough to spew out a load of passengers and cargo, refuel and take on another load. That's the theory. My flight was delayed by 45 minutes because some idiot checked in but didn't show up for the flight so they had to remove his baggages and because of that, we missed our tower clearance window and had to wait for another one.

I'm becoming used to budget air travel, so I always pack some essentials: ipod, snacks, water, a few books and most important of all, earplugs. Because you can be assured that is ALWAYS a screaming child two rows behind you. The flight itself was 2 hours, which is funny because all of the places I've travelled to for work have always been 2 hours out of the UK :)

The flight itself was uneventful, and I had my nose firmly in a book of Jeremy Clarkson's thoughts on Britain and the state of the world in general. The only bit of drama was when the really nervous passenger sitting next to me noticed that I had a spider stowing away on my leg, but the book took care of that as well.

Landing in Lodz, I quickly realized that I was in a one horse town. The airport only has room for one international flight at a time, and it shouldn't be much bigger than a 737. In fact, I think that the Ryanair flight to/from Stansted is the only major flight served by the airport. The queue for passport control had to wait outside the terminal building.

Getting a cab to my hotel was an interesting experience as well, because while there is a taxi stand at the airport, it's always empty. You need to call for one to come and pick you up – an interesting experience when you don't speak polish. Using hand gestures, a kind local who didn't speak english asked his cab driver to call one for me, and off I was to the hotel. I checked in, got freshened up and went to Piotrkowska Street, which is one of the highlighted tourist attractions of Lodz.

I wanted to be impressed. I really wanted to. All of the websites and brochures I'd seen were waxing lyrical about all the little cafes and shops. Let me tell you. St-Denis in Montreal whips that street's ass so badly, it's not even funny. Hell, Crescent street gives it a black eye. The terraces are there, but they're all “themed” to bad capitalist stereotypes. I saw the “Sioux” steakhouse and grill, the “Notting Hill” english terrace, “The Mexican” restaurant, the “Figaro” Italian restaurant, the “Tokyo” sushi bar and an “Irish Pub” that had Guinness and perogi on its menu. The pub looked interesting, but the air con exhaust of the building kitchen was blowing smells of stale grease directly at it. Yum.

The whole city is like one giant identify crisis. The taxi that took me to the hotel had Rod Stewart playing on the radio and 80s bubblegum pop followed by the latest J'Lo track were playing in the restaurant when I had breakfast the following morning. I didn't know what to expect going to a town I knew nothing about, but I really didn't expect this. It's like the whole place has no soul. Massive concrete blobs and exposed steel everywhere, graffiti, rusted cars bodged together overlaid with McDonalds and Diesel Jean , Gucci and Orange phone ads.

I'm sure there are some lovely gems hidden away somewhere, some remnants of earlier grandiosity – but honestly, what I'd seen so far didn't inspire me to go look for them. To give it a fair chance, I did go wandering most of Monday. The meeting was only on Sunday and my flight on Monday was at 3:30, so I had all morning to try and find the hidden gems of Lodz. That's when I found the dog shit.

Piotrkowska St is bisected in two by the road that led to my hotel and I'd only explored the lower half of it on Saturday. The brochures at the hotel told me that the upper half led to the old town square and a nice church past a landmark square and a park. Sounded promising.

Monday was a really hot day. I drank about 1.5L of water and sweated it out just as fast as I was drinking it. My baseball cap is now toxic waste that I'm not going to wear it until I can wash, and preferably sterilize it. There was a nice smoggy haze above the skyline, which did wonders for my allergies. As I was walking along the street, the smell of broiling dog turds pretty much set the mood for that morning. The square is bordered by run down buildings, dollar shops and the ugliest church I have ever seen. The whole facade is crumbling down. When I got to the park, it was a shamble of unkept grass with more dog shit thrown in the mix to liven it up. At that point, I pretty much gave up and turned around and headed to find a cab to take me to the airport 4 hours before my flight was scheduled to leave so I could be in air conditioning.

I'm a shutterbug. A good indication of what I think of a place is by how many pictures I take. I probably took a few hundred the first time I was in London, and same thing when I was in Munich, Geneva and Tuscany. Lodz? About a dozen, and half of those are to remind me just how drab the city can look. If Lodz were a colour, it'd be dirty beige. At one point, I stopped trying to find nice pictures to take and started taking pictures of drab ugly/or tacky scenes. That pretty much sums is up, really.

The weekend wasn't a total bust though. The work part of it was actually quite interesting. The people there were jovial and cordial and my presentation was well received. I was even able to eat most of the catered lunch which, given the fact that I'd actually forgotten to tell them about my allergies, is pretty much a miracle. It was good food too, so that counts for a lot in making this weekend ok.

The hotel room was ok as well, if a bit sauna-esque at times. I think they're going to remember me as that eccentric foreigner that kept ordering tea but not using the teabag (cause I'd brought along a stash of green tea bags, which were better than their Lipton crap). I also caused a bit of a kerfuffle because I asked a waitress how to say “thank you” in polish, but that was outside the realm of the english words she recognized so she went to ask her boss, who didn't understand me either, who went to get his boss – same thing – who finally got somebody to translate the fact that I just wanted to know how to be polite in the native tongue :) After that, I just said “thank you” which is a word they recognize so it's all good.

One last thing I need to mention. Passport control at Stansted was miraculously fast! It took me 30 seconds to get through. People who have travelled with a non-EU passport through that bloody maze that never ends will be suitably impressed :)

• passport & travel details? check!
• maps of Lodz? printed.
• presentation? on disk, on paper, on memory stick.
• travel adapters? two.
• camera? charged and ready.
• phone? charged and ready.
• ipod? charged and new playlist.

I just need to pack a few clothes, grab a book or two, some earplugs and get my new glasses and I'm ready to go.