Waiting for the Parts - War Breaks Out 9th Oct 2001

Depressed though we were by the non-arrival of the solenoid, we were cheered by the fact that the complete England Greece game was going to be shown. Having arrived in the nick of time, I barely managed to make it out to buy beer before the off. As has become our habit of late, I had insufficient funds in the store and there was something of an impasse when I could not understand why they would not accept my 500 Zwoty note. In the end, the situation was resolved with my flexible friend. During payment, I realized my error - for some reason, they were not keen on accepting Slovakian money. What a fool I am!

Like a top lass that she is, Hippy made us supper while I indulged myself. I could hardly bare to watch, dire as it was. When full time came up, I went off to do my duty and wash the pots. Hippy was quite adamant that I should watch the end, which had me a little puzzled. As it transpired, Mr. Beckham restored some semblance of reality to our world cup bid and of course Hippy had tuned in to the world service while I had been out and bit her tongue for the duration of the match. What a star - Hippy that is.

We staved off hunger on Sunday morning with that great British standby. Bread and marmite. In my hurry to buy beer the night before, I had omitted to get brecky. We spent our day trying to put the solenoid out of our minds by internetting, strolling and sunning ourselves on the banks of the Vistula. Strangely familiar, the Vistula, we thought and from the angle we were adopting, it became clear that the resemblance was with Trent Bridge no less. In the park following the river, there is a charming little statue of a faithful dog that had dutifully waited for his master for a year after his death at a roundabout - Greyfriars Bobby? Of course the whole situation would probably not have arisen were it not for the mad hatters on Polish roads.

We've been having an awful lot of trouble trying to get to see a bit of orchestral music. This was one of our main aims in Eastern Europe as it is such good value. Scanning the 'what's on guide' we discovered that once again there was nothing to be seen (or is that heard). As a cultural alternative, we set off for the cinema. On the bill was in fact a little Ludvig van B. For those of you not familiar with Mr Kubriks most excellent works, this is an obscure reference to ' A Clockwork Orange'. This to be shown at the students union cinema - no surprise there then. We scrubbed up and raced over making it just on time. Taking our seats, we were surprised by the length of the b-movie which also seemed to feature many bizarre sequences including a fat man having phone sex. We eventually got into this film "Happiness" and actually enjoyed the black comedy and can recommend this film to people with reasonably open minds. "Clockwork Orange" never actually appeared and so we can only assume that the pro vice chancellor had continued to follow Mr Kubriks instructions not to allow the showing of this cult classic.

This confusion threw us rather. But we'd enjoyed it - so what the hell!. On returning to the hostel we decided to catch on the news and tuned into the World ServiceÖÖÖ..The Afghanistan newsÖÖa bombshell literally. We are dismayed, thrown, filled with so many conflicting emotionsÖ..why does Blaire have to get involved?ÖÖ. how will other Middle Eastern countries react?ÖÖ will they close borders?ÖÖwill we become a target as foreigners? Ö.. This means immediately that we cannot sleep, we overhear the American couple next to us also talking late into the night. That night we both slept badly wondering why men feel that killing civilians will capture/kill an organized terrorist who has so many ways of "disappearing" it is untrue. We can never expect humanitarian logic from politicians I suppose.

We have decided to continue our journey, and suck it and see what develops in the Middle East and the 'Stans'. It may mean a change of route via Spain to South America. We will see. One thing we both thought is that Pakistan had been very brave to allow USA to use it's airspace - this is bound to make political difficulties for them in and out of the country. But to be honest a lot of Muslims are probably fed up of the bad press the fundamentalists are giving them.

Tired the next morning was not the best way for Pat to negotiate with Airport customs over the phone. He return to the room saying 'we're off to the Airport. In his haste to get his solenoid he had failed to find directions to the airportÖwhich led to tetchiness between us. Another phone call and instructions later we headed offÖ. directions were perfect thankfully as neither of us could bear more stress. ButÖÖthe chaps at UPS could not be more helpful. We had the undivided attention of one of their export clerks for the day who led us through the red tape that is Poland. After filling out the requisite forms, it seemed that we would have to pay tax and duty equivalent to 17 pounds. The reason is as follows, although they agreed that the value of the solenoid was only 20 pounds, because the invoice included 30 pounds for postage and packing, the real value of the item was 50 pounds. Hey ho. After submitting the fully filled out quadruplicate forms, we settled to a 4 hour wait at the airport - having been initially told 15 minutes. Katovice international airport is not the most interesting place to spend this amount of time. We got on our way and had a boring ride to Wroclaw which at least turned out to have cheap and excellent accommodation with a helpful warden who insisted on us bringing the bike inside for the night. Not a complete washout of a day then.