Bitched Up at Christmas

The Christmas Gang, Left to Right: Katie, Our Humble Narrator, Clare, Adam, Fiona, Jacqui


The afternoon after we arrived back from Auschwitz-Birkenau we had to stock up on Christmas provisions. Now the Poles celebrate a good part of Christmas on Christmas Eve so we knew we had precious little time to gather all the ingredients required for a bitchin' Christmas feed. One problem... we had no idea where to buy groceries from.

Our American friend who we met in Warsaw, Adam, had seen one so with his meager directions we set off with great haste. They say the hour of greatest darkness, is right before the dawn, well Paul Kelly does anyway, and so it was that we had almost abandoned all hope when we found the supermarket.

We piled the trolley with every kind of food we could find, with one single proviso: that it could be cooked in a saucepan or a frying pan on one of two hotplates. When the dust settled we were gearing up for Christmas brekky of a Coco Pops substitute, croissants and juice. This was followed by a soup course, a pesto pasta with grilled vegetables, plates of dips and cheese as well as all the other little accompaniments like M&M's and candy canes.

The biggest coup was when Jacquie and I found a deli still open and proceeded to order great chunks of sliced meat with no idea what we were actually ordering. When we finally got the slabs home we realised it was overkill but we were trying to compensate for an actual roast. Anyway it served well for a Christmas dinner of cold meats, packet mashed potato, frozen veggies, tinned carrots with honey, corn and packet gravy. Hey, I know it doesn't sound like much, but the greatest masterpieces have meager beginnings.

The days festivities were accompanied by beer, wine and a scrumptious punch lovingly prepared by Clare and myself that included a delicious apple vodka. There was also something that the shop assistant called, with the help of an English-Polish dictionary, "component" which, in the end, tasted like foul port.

We attended midnight mass with about 1500 hundred Poles in the historic St. Mary's Cathedral on the Town Square which was quite an experience. I'm not sure how much you can take out of a Polish homily but the cavernous interior of the church with it's stunning blue frescoes and paintings was something to behold.

Might I add that we spent four days in a beautiful apartment with a view from the living room overlooking the historic Florian Gates and the Barbican. Photos to follow.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and Big Love.

paka