When your holiday has been hijacked by two of the world biggest news stories simultaneously you know everything isn’t going according to plan. During the Easter holiday, I embarked on a ‘21st Century stag do’, my friend was having a kid, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Two nights away in Krakow: cheap alcohol, lively nightlife and celebrating my friend becoming a proper adult. The perfect escape from exam stress.
A few days before we arrived, the Polish president, his wife and 94 other civil and military leaders died in a plane crash. The alcohol was still cheap but the nightlife was far from lively, the country was in an official state of mourning and the Poles were in no mood for partying. The enormity of the situation dawned on us as we spoke to the few Poles who were out; the disaster was referred to as a ‘catastrophe’ by many and others were close to tears when the elephant in every room was hit upon.
The trip was not going quite as well as we had planned, it had been an experience, but on the day we were due to leave, none of us were that upset that the experience was coming to an end. However, a certain Icelandic volcano had other plans. Our flight home, along with every flight into Britain, was cancelled, and there were none for the foreseeable future. I began to panic about the disruption the delay would have on my revision, but hearing my father-to-be friend call his expectant (and thus hormonal) girlfriend to tell her he might miss the birth made it almost seem worth it.
We initially settled in for a long stay, but on the orders of said frantic girlfriend, we started checking ways of getting back. Taxi’s, hire cars and trains were all considered and rejected, before another of my friend’s Eastern Europeans origin came to the rescue. The Bradford Polish Ex-Servicemen’s Club were operating a rescue coach to bring home stranded visitors. We booked ourselves on the coach, it wasn’t leaving for 3 days, so in the mean time we had no choice but to wait it out.
We would now be in Krakow for the state funeral of the President and his wife; what’s more our hostel was on the path of the official path of the funeral procession. As workers erected banners and barriers in preparation for the funeral, we went out to enjoy another night in a mourning city.
It got to midnight, and we had managed to find a candlelit bar that was one of the only open bars in Krakow, we even found some English girls who were also trapped due to the flight cancellations. Everything was going well until it reached mid-night and, like Cinderella, the magic began to wear off. For the entire day of the President’s funeral Krakow was a dry city. As we ordered 6 pots of cinnamon tea and slices of black forest gateau, the girls seemed progressively less interested in the chat they had previously seemed to be loving. I still don’t know why.
The next morning, nursing our cinnamon tea hangovers, we woke to find the street outside our hostel packed with mourners and a note telling us that we would not be able to leave the hostel until the evening due to the funeral. Although this meant we were stuck without food or drink for ten hours the sight of the funeral procession and thousands of mourners spontaneously break into the national anthem as the coffin of their fallen President went by was a memory that will stick with me for a long time.
Two days later we embarked on our 40-hour coach trip home. I was sat next to a Polish man who had very loud machine gun fire as his mobile phone ring tone. He had a surprising number of friends. I had some very disturbing dreams.