FAUNA OF POLAND: MY GUIDE
“We have no rabbits in Poland” said our guide gravely as Isabel enthused over our pets back home (thriving, thanks for asking). Despite this obvious flaw the country boasts a rich natural fauna as follows.
WILD BOAR: I was totally impressed by the wild boar because they looked exactly like the wild boar you get in Asterix books. Since I am rapidly approaching the physique of Obelix I wondered about lifting one above my head but there was a big fence between me and the animals so I decided best not. (Tim Hopkins has voiced his doubts about whether boars seen behind a big fence can really be described as ‘wild’. Fair comment alas.)
BISON: This was the main event as far as Polish wildlife goes. The European Bison had died out in the wild after World War I but has now been reintroduced thanks to the hard work of the National Bison Reserve, where we went. It is a grand animal alright, slow-moving but dignified. The nearest we came to seeing some in the wild was a TV ad for Bison Beer which featured bison lowing the praises of same. We also found a big clump of hair hanging from the bark of a fallen tree – “Bison passed this way and scratched themselves here” said our guide. I asked if Isabel could keep the discarded fur. “No, no” the guide said hurriedly – the forest was sacred. But what a happy coincidence that the bison had scratched themselves so recently on the main tourist route!
WOLF: Lonely wanderer of the European forest!
ZUBRONIE: I think that’s how this was spelt. This beautiful yet freakish beast was an example of science gone mad – an offspring of a bison and an ox and yet BIGGER THAN EITHER. It looked like a bogglingly huge cow and had to be kept behind three different fences. They are always sterile apparently – just as well else mankind would be under their hoof.
BEARD ANT: This was a kind of ant that makes its home in beards and I will say no more about it.
FROG: To be quite truthful the only animal we saw in the wild bit of the forest was a very small frog, everything else having wisely fled from our galumphing presence. It was quite a nice frog as these things go.
ELK: The surprise hit animal of our Polish trip. They are big deer with extremely dopey expressions and big jowls. The specimen we met was extremely friendly and let Isabel pat her often – watch for her placid face on next month’s FT front page!
Tom in Proven By Science • No Comments
IS FOR…..MAN-ETA
Or Man-Eater, 1982 smash hit for Daryll Hall and John Oates, who when they performed together hit upon the clever band moniker of Hall & Oates. Two men who were not so much a band as finalists in the worst haircut in the world competition. Man-eater comes from the cleverly titled H2O album, and is indeed the most watery kind of eighties rock. Woman hating from the start, examining the lyrics of Man-Eater is a tragic explaination as to what happens when two people with really, really bad hair have money. The only women who are after them are actually after their money. And one can only assume from the bitterness displayed in the song, that at least someone got their Oates. Watch out boys, she’ll chew you up. I’ll spit you out though.
Tanya Headon in I Hate Music • No Comments
I especially like eating the ends of the bar. YUMMY! I have been trying in vain to search for a picture online. Instead I arrived in choco-heaven!
Stevie Nixed in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
Cheapoh Food part III
I seem to have the same attention span for food as I do for music. Last year I was knee-deep in Japanese cuisine, this year I am trying to learn all about Italian pasta. But there’s still a few Japanese recipes I adhere to, like the quick ‘n’ easy stirfry veggies ‘n’ chicken noodle concoction. You basically take a bag of stirfry noodles and a cut-up chicken filet, throw it in the wok. You stirfry it for… oh… ten minutes and then you spash a gallon of thick soba sauce. (My friend prefers Bull Dog Sauce.) To top it of, you throw in two bags of Blue Dragon udon noodles. You mix this for a few minutes until the noodles are warm. I usually pour some more soba sauce on it.
Stevie Nixed in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
Cheap Food I Love (Polish Special): BIGOS
The guidebooks struggled to say much about Bialystok. A large Eastern Polish town, the last big place before the relative wilds of Belarus, it carries itself half like a seedy frontier outpost and half like a respectable suburban nowhere. A smiling taxi driver picked us up from Bialystok’s business hotel, for instance, and took us to the station, where his next passenger was a young girl who got into the front seat and started showing him wads of banknotes. Bialystok was our stopover between Warsaw and the bison-filled forests, and it was also the first place I ate Bigos.
Bigos is a sauerkraut-based stew which is (apparently) constantly reheated over a period of several days – if not weeks – with new meat continually added. Nobody in Poland makes this authentic Bigos for sale anymore, though it may still be eaten in homes: the snack bars and pubs that do offer it presumably make up their stock each morning. Our guidebook was sniffy about this but the bar-snack Bigos I ate was glorious – tangy gravy, lovely stodgy cabbage, chewy meat. We’d been nibbling peanuts on the Warsaw train and hadn’t eaten properly since breakfast, so stumbling into a basement student bar and finding Bigos on the menu was a treat. It cost about 45p. I had happier moments in Poland, and ate better and more unusual food, but I don’t think I ever felt more contented.
Tom in Pumpkin Publog • 1 Comment