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Another couple of days in Poland: Zamość, Biłgoraj
We were extremely happy to leave that camping in Tarnów a day after the Roma arrived! They had a pretty good time, but "noisy" and "present" were the understatements of the year there. A couple of Dutch people immediately left upon their arrival in their very small caravan, helplessly waved goodbye by a powerless and slightly desperate camping owner. We felt for the guy for having such a bunch of über-anti-socials in his bungalows (which ones depended on their mood and the time of day), but we still had to leave.
Oh well. Because we wanted to have look around in Zamość before we met up with Irene's family we got the train a day earlier. Another 3 1/2 hours of doing nothing and again we arrived in the evening. Fortunately it didn't rain (anymore/yet). I'm sure the cabby taking us to the camping took the very long route, but, being tired as we were, and the bill being 6 złoty, about € 1,50, we let it go.
The camping itself again was (especially by Eastern European standards) exceptionally well. A number of good nice bungalows (which we didn't see on the inside of course), a swimming pool, a volleyballcourt, two tenniscourts, a trampoline and a "Chinese" restaurant were all present on-site.
And of course the curious and amazed looks by the people when you put up your 2-second tent in 10 seconds. Although the time saved immediately gets wasted on putting up the roofscreen.
Zamość was founded by Jan Zamoyski, the local folk hero. This pretty wealthy land owner saw a hill around 1580 and ordered an Italian architect, Bernardo Morando, to design and build "the perfect village". In which he succeeded pretty much. Besides some butt-ugly post-WWII buildings everything is pretty much as it was when it was built, especially the city layout itself. Hence the (self-invented) nickname "Pearl of the Renaissance".
Allright. Back to reality: There just isn't that much to see there. Tarnów had a nicer feeling to it. The palace is not accessible because it's still in use as a courthouse, just like thé marvel of the Rynek, the city hall. The two musea we wanted to visit were closed unfortunately. And a number of "used to be" buildings which serve no purpose at all anymore and have fallen in ruin. However, all in all it is nice and pittoresque.
After having spent a number of hours strawling through the rain (we even did the carriage ride, with a drunk Polak who told us all kinds of stuff nobody could make out) we went back to the camping and packed everything up in the pouring rain and went to the hotel. After a while the family arrived, and good times were had by us.
The reason they were here was because they wanted us to join them to Biłgoraj, birthplace of "nanny Poland", and the current place of residence for some old familyfriends they hadn't seen in a very long time.
Biłgoraj is situated just southwest of Zamość, and it's small enough to lack a decent map. Add to that the fact that besides the name the entire surface whas white in the GPS-navigator and one has a problem. The problem was solved by Irene, and we shot a beautifull picture of her desperately trying to make sense of 3 wildly arguing senior citizens. All things considered we had almost no trouble finding the adress and soon we pulled up in front of a big house.
We received a very warm welcome from Elżbieta and her daughter Natalja, and of course babcia, an 85-years ancient crone who could barely walk, but took care of the latest addition in the family (daughter to the oldest daughter Iza, who was at work as a dentist) and showed much joy in seeing us. Immediately the table was stacked with food prepared by the 21-year old student Pedagogical Animation Natalja, who fortunately spoke some English as well.
Between the (old) pictures and stories we were told the entire house had had a massive reconstruction and expansion, and a whole lot more.
After dinner, coffee, cupcakes and pie, the stories and the pictures and a slightly emotional but very bright babcia we visited nanny Polands' grave and laid a beautifull flowerpiece (the local flowershop was incredibly happy with us, we really made her day) together with all the objects we had with us from the others.
Upon returning we met Iza and her husband and their 6-year old son Michael. After getting more food stuffed in our mouths and drinking more coffee more socializing and more stories and more pictures the day was quickly drawing to a close, and we had to leave. We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail adresses (it looks like Irene will be continuing the family ties with Natalja, those two got along very well), ander after a few quick snapshots of the XVIIe-eeuwse church it was time to return to the hotel.
But although we were stuffed by the Polish family, we were again hungry when we arrived in Zamość, so taking the Lonely Planet's advice we decided to go the hotel Zamojski's restaurant.
Right.
Had we known what happened we probably wouldn't have gone through with it. The service was lousy, the food was great but it apparently just took hours to prepare. It was either that or the cooks were drunk.
We arrived at 20.15 to walk out at 23.45, but we had extremely much fun (what can one do waiting that long?).
In short, a long but fascinating day. The next one we were dropped off in Lublin to take the bus to Warschau.
just cheers from Zamosc:) visit my city again:)