MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
DATE: JUNE 22, 2008
PLACE: CARREFOUR, ZGORZELEC, POLAND

Finding a Guinness in Poland proved to be the greatest challenge thus far.

We rented a car in Germany for the weekend and had only two days to hit both Czech Republic and Poland, so we chose a Polish town closer to the Czech border, Jelenia Gora.

We didn’t ask it to, but our Garmin (navigation system) chose an absolutely gorgeous route through the Polish countryside and through a number of small towns that stood as grim reminders of what Eastern Europe has suffered. The drive was both breathtaking and sobering — and I say that as a left-brained person who usually can’t be bothered to look out the window. However, had it taken us that route during the winter, there is no way we could have made it, so proceed with extreme caution should you find yourself trusting a Garmin in rural Poland in the winter.

Just as in Prague, the Garmin got us to our destination city flawlessly, but seemed to find the absolute craziest route within Jelenia Gora to our actual destination, Palac Paulinum.

Palac Paulinum is a restored palace nestled in the woods, but not an unreasonable distance to walk to/from city center. The grounds were expansive, and the staff very friendly. Oddly, there were hardly any guests, so we practically had the palace to ourselves. (There are worse things.)

After unsuccessfully trying to ask the concierge how to exchange our Euro for Polish zloty (she didn’t know what “ATM” or “Geldautomat” [German for ATM] was, and my miming using an ATM with my debit card didn’t help), we meandered into town for dinner and hoped there would be a magical money exchanging stand somewhere. We actually saw one such stand, but they had just closed and tried helpfully to communicate (in Polish) how to get to another one. Lo and behold, once we turned onto the next street, there was an ATM about every ten feet. With English translations! Score.

There were plenty of shops and a few sundresses in the windows that I wanted to buy, except all the stores were open from 10am-1pm on Saturdays and closed on Sundays, so it was not to be. (Memo to Jelenia Gora: you could enjoy more financial success if your stores were open when people were out of work and could shop in them!) Nevertheless, this seems to be a common theme throughout Europe where Sundays are reserved as family days and families spend time together taking walks or relaxing at the local Eis Cafe (ice cream shop).

Google informed us that Belfast Irish Pub was in Jelenia Gora, so we headed there expecting the usual young Irish ex-pat and Guinness on tap. Fail. The pub was about ten square feet, with two patrons and a lone, local bartendress. Our request for a Guinness was met with confusion, and she asked the other people in the bar if they spoke English. We’re pretty sure she was mocking us as she looked at the other two patrons with a confused expression on her face and said “hallo, Guinnenski?”. Giggling ensued from both the bartendress and the patrons.

One guy did speak a little (”klein”) German, although at that point we were really confused because “Guinness” never needed a translation before. No one there seemed to have any idea what a Guinness was, so we left in search of dinner and figured we’d find a Guinness at one of the many beer gardens in the square.

Fail again. Plenty of beer, nary a Guinness in sight.

We sat down for dinner at the Retro Restaurant and enjoyed a salmon and halibut, respectively, entree heaping with colorful salad and french fries, and a beer — for 55 zloty ($25 USD) total. Crazily cheap and delicious. Our very nice waitress spoke no English but fluent German, so we we navigated the meal just fine. I asked her if there was any Guinness anywhere, and she laughed (clearly recognizing what Guinness was) and said no.

Hmmm.

We wandered back to the palace (stopping at every bar to check for Guinness, just in case) and ordered some pinot noir and a cheese platter to drown our Guinness sorrows. We then settled in for some Family Guy courtesy of Hulu (what else do you do in a Polish palace?) and promptly fell asleep within 30 seconds, at 8pm, wine and cheese untouched. Waking up hungry only to stare at a beautiful but dried-out cheese platter you can no longer eat safely may be a first-world sorrow, but it is a sorrow nonetheless.

In the morning we set about Googling Irish pubs in Poland to see if we could make a detour. We found one, about 90 minutes (one way) out of the way, but given that it was 8am, the prospect of hanging around the (by then boring) palace until it was late enough for this Irish pub to conceivably be open wasn’t very appealing. We also had a six-hour drive back to Germany ahead of us and wanted to stop in Dresden on the way, which would be more difficult if we started wandering Poland in the opposite direction in search of an Irish pub that conceivably didn’t serve Guinness (its population was a good 10,000 less than the already-small Jelenia Gora) and even more conceivably didn’t exist.

I started to accept the fact that a Guinness in Poland was not to be and headed to breakfast, where we were the only two guests. The view from the patio was spectacular, but breakfast was limited to bad coffee, cornflakes (note: the Polish apparently drink cream, not milk, with their cereal), and a tomato/cucumber/mozzarella salad that was actually tomato/zucchini/mozzarella salad.

The brochure for the palace highlighted a salt cave, so we wandered the grounds in search of a little spelunking. Despite our best efforts, we couldn’t find it, so we asked at reception. She asked us to return in fifteen minutes because the cave was “on-off.” (??) Intrigued by a cave with a power switch, we Googled “salt cave” and learned it’s a popular Eastern European spa experience where you sit in a room and breathe salty air. The English translations assured us that spending 45 minutes a day in a salt cave (which charges by the minute) would cure every disease known to man, including neurosis.

Eager to cure our neuroses, we returned and followed her down some stairs, through the sauna, and to a door which opened onto … a three-by-six room with two lawn chairs and some positively garish blue and red lights glued onto a wall of salt.

After we stopped laughing, we plunked down to breathe some salty air (which was really piped in from who-knows-where) for a bit. Sad to discover I was still neurotic, we snapped some photos and wandered, still laughing, back to our room and then headed back to Germany.

After we’d been driving for awhile, we passed a supermarket and ran inside to see if they sold Guinness. (Perhaps Guinness had once offended Jelenia Gora?) They had an entire beer aisle, and Miller Genuine Draft, but no Guinness.

Now we were obsessed. If we drove by what even looked like a bar, we slowed to look for Guinness signs. As we approached the German border, we had pretty much given up hope, and decided to buy a Guinness in Germany near the border and drive back to Poland to drink it. (This is not cheating, because many countries do not have any sort of Guinness distribution, so if I’m to meet my goal, I have to bring my own. Still, it’s more fun if you get the Guinness in the country where possible, since the adventure of finding one is the whole point.)

Immediately before the highway onramp that would take us into Germany, we passed the Polish equivalent of what appeared to be Home Depot and Wal-Mart, called Carrefour. Willing to give it one last try, we went in and discovered it was actually a mall with, among other things, a grocery store.

There were security guards (or police? We couldn’t tell.) patrolling every inch of the place, and they wouldn’t let Damon go into the grocery area with his backpack.

I went in to take a peek, figuring they didn’t sell beer at all. I walked past a limited-access aisle full of hard alcohol, hoping that the beer wasn’t similarly off-limits as I wasn’t quite sure how to gain entry.

Luckily, the next aisle was freely accessible, full of beer, and most importantly, HAD GUINNESS!

I walked to the line, beaming, bought my Guinness, and took a photo in the parking lot:

Eastern Europe has a strict 0.0 alcohol limit for drivers, and we weren’t quite sure what the policy on passengers and alcohol. It seemed bad form to drink beer in the mall parking lot, so we found a back road on a farm where I enjoyed my Guinness out of sight.

The moral of this story: if at first you don’t find Guinness, try, try again!

(Massive thanks to Damon for photographing the trip!)

MISSION: ACCOMPLISHED
DATE: JUNE 21, 2008
PLACE: O’CHE’S BAR, PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

Since we were already in Germany, we decided to rent a car and knock Czech Republic and Poland off the list.

Eastern European countries have a high rate of vehicle theft, so you cannot rent a German car in Germany if you are going to countries on the prohibited list (like, say, Czech Republic or Poland). We ended up with an Opel Zafira minivan which we discovered all too late had no air conditioning. Whoops. (More on that during the drive back from Poland.) By American standards it was still a nice, new car, although since I didn’t do any of the driving (haven’t learned to drive stick yet) I can’t speak as to how it handled.

We also rented a Garmin nuvi (navigation system), which we were told had strong coverage of Eastern Europe (moreso than other brands). It took us to Prague with no problem — that is, until we were inside the city and making our way to the hotel, at which point it had us drive down pedestrian streets (double-whoops) and then suggested we turn left into a wall (a direction which we ignored, unlike some people). The location of the hotel may have had some part in confusing the GPS as it was 50m from the Charles Bridge and situated right in the middle of the tourist district, where the streets are frequently overrun by wandering pedestrians. In the end we parked and decided to walk the last bit of the route to avoid killing any innocent Czechs.

We spent Friday night at the U Zlatého Stromu, which is quite literally at one end of the Charles Bridge.

Couldn’t have asked for a better location. The view from the room was fantastic, if you didn’t mind leaning out the window for it:

The man at reception was very nice and spoke English well. (Hey, I’m busy learning German, so my capacity for Czech vocabulary is limited.) We chatted a bit about his feelings on globalization and Czech Republic’s impending adoption of the Euro. (Czech currently uses the koruna; at the time of this visit, 1 koruna = $0.06 USD.) He thought it was a positive step because if larger countries like Germany were adopting the Euro, it must be a better choice. (Selfishly, I prefer pre-Euro European countries because their currencies tend to fare better against the declining U.S. dollar.)

The hotel has a popular bar (there was loud partying outside our window until at least 4am, even though nothing else on the street was open much past midnight) and a 24/7 restaurant (the only one around from what we could tell during our 1am wandering). Somehow between 4am and 7am the restaurant transformed from a crazy party to a demure, formal dining room which served a delicious complimentary breakfast that included ample warm croissants (my second-favorite food, after Guinness), fresh fruit, and a brimming cheese platter, not to mention poached eggs and bacon. Om nom.

During our Garmin-inspired “tour” of the nearby area the night before, we saw a Guinness sign in front of a bar, so we headed there for a lunchtime drink. After sitting down and ordering our beer, we realized that the place, O’ Che’s, was a socialist bar named after Che Guevera. I couldn’t be less of a socialist if I tried, so drinking my Czech Guinness at O’Che’s was especially amusing. (We didn’t try the food, but they did have free wi-fi, which scores points.)

Prague was once the up-and-coming Eastern European city, until it was eclipsed by Budapest, which is prime to be eclipsed by [Split? Vilnius?]. (If the initial transition at all interests you, I can’t recommend reading Prague by Arthur K. Phillips highly enough.) I expected it to be more expensive than it was, but we were struggling somewhat to spend our last 500 koruna. We ended up purchasing two matted photographs and a cute WC sign from vendors on the Charles Bridge for around 100 koruna apiece.

We wandered for an hour, had some ice cream, and then headed off to end our Saturday in Poland.

(Many thanks to Damon for photographing the trip!)