I call my little blog “ Travels with an Unlikely Aunt.”
It was a whim of an idea. It’s obviously not catchy. Even my friends cannot remember it.
But there was this Grahame Greene novel called “Travels with my Aunt.”
Then I mixed it up with the play “Charley’s Aunt”, who was a young chap pretending to be another young chap’s aunt for the purposes of schoolboy deception.
I am an Aunt, but not a classical one I think. An Unlikely one perhaps.
And Voila!
A persona. A catchy phrase that is totally unmemorable.
I went to Poland in the role of a true Unlikely Aunt as my eldest nephew married his Polish girlfriend, Malgorzata, or Maggie when you leave Polish shores.
There was going to be small family wedding in the town in which she had been brought up and where her family still live.
If you look up Kalisz, there aren’t a long list of things to visit. There is a big town square, there is a river. There are parks. And Lots of Catholic Churches. There are cobbled streets, a train station and a honey festival. I did all of those and that was on the first afternoon.
My brother and I rented a car and we drove around the area. Stephen had declared a wish to find a local pub and have a beer.
Stephen lives in New Zealand. He has gained that “ good day mate” mentality where you can find a nook and smile at friendly people and laugh at the gathering storms.
We drove and we drove. I had the map. I would navigate us to little town after little town, through which we would slow down long enough to see there was nothing more than a few houses and vegetables.
The odd child on a bike. A dog.
We were in an area known as the capital of the tomato. There was nothing more than fields of cabbages and greenhouses full to the brim of aforesaid tomatoes. Literally for a two hours we wandered every road from no-town to no-town until we came to what I have to describe as a square. With a fountain and a couple of benches. We emerged from the car as if we had found El Dorado. Neither of us speak any Polish but we went into the first shop which we sadly found to be a butchers. We smiled wanly and congratulated them on selling EVERY part of an animal and stumbled into the other shop. Which had laundry detergent, cakes and dried fish.
We went with the cakes and sat on the bench in the square eating them.
There were people milling around. Buying things. Children with a scooter. Nobody looked at us askance. We were obviously not the first people who had ended up here, hoping for a pot of gold and ending up with a bad chocolate eclair.
In Kalisz we were all staying at the Hotel Calisia, which is where the reception would be.
There was an overwhelming seventies feel to the hotel. With marble and brass and a curving staircase.
In the reception area itself there is the bar. To the left of the reception area is the kidney shaped dining room, to the right are the bedrooms. Along the corridors are chairs. Rows of them on every floor, as if there would be auditions for wedding guests. The dining room is where the wedding reception will be happening. They will put the tables together to make one long one and the space at the end will become the dance floor.
The wedding itself was held at the court house. There were just a few of us. A young couple of classical string players, two women to officiate; One speaking in Polish and the other in English for Joel.
It was a very practical and humane service.
Joel and Maggie were declared married and we emerged into the afternoon sun and threw rice. A group of the parents’ friends arrived to drive us back to the hotel. With their windows open and wedding music blaring out on their radios.
There was a not very dry champagne ( Read between the lines here for my taste in champagne) There were bottles of red, white and vodka on the table. There was a lot of vodka.
The first course was a tasty courgette followed by a special vodka.
There was a main course that had a lot of meat and the very best mashed potatoes. There was a lovely cake. And then as I might have been looking for a small chocolate and a cup of mint tea, these vast platters of cold meats, cheeses and pickles arrived.
I now understand it is a traditional “ soak up the vodka” thing.
Then the lights went down and the music came up. The vodka shots were flowing. The dancing commenced. Jackets came off. Twirling happened. Margaret had asked us all to learn this folk dance which we performed in a circle. it looked easy, but those folk dances are designed to confuse.
I danced a little bit. I think of myself as quite a good dancer. Unfortunately, someone took a video and my dancing looked like a pigeon strutting with a stiff neck.
Note to self…only dance in dark.
I went to bed and left the dancing and the vodka shots to others.
Long and the short, big and the small…is that my nephew has married a woman that he truly loves and has gained a large and gloriously chaotic Polish family.
When we got on the train to Warsaw on the Monday morning, Margaret's father, Artur, came to see us off. We all waved and said the two or three Polish words we knew which we hoped were thank you and I hope you don’t have too much food left over.
And as the train slowly pulled out of Kalisz station he ran alongside and kept running till he ran out of platform. Margaret was crying and I understand why.
Who would do that? Run alongside a train pretending you were faster than any engine?
It would be a father who didn’t care about anything more than to let his daughter know he would always be there to catch up with her if she needed him.
