My week-long holiday in Poland and Slovakia was miraculous. It seems like it lasted eternity and is eternity behind me. Time has stretched in a strange way and was passing lazily and slowly. I have not witnessed such vast amounts of time on my hands ever since my travels a year ago. I feared that this time is going to fly so fast that before I realize, it is going to be over and I will have to go back to work without even having a chance to take a breath and relax. There is something in changing places, waking up in different bed everyday, an imbalance of space and time, that incredibly stretches the time. I enjoyed that lazy, filled with sun trip with my favorite travel companion Ivan.
I wish I could show you in photographs how much magic did these days introduce to my life, yet all I have are hazy, low quality photos from Boots disposable camera, so in terms of photography, there is a bit of lomography here. It was refreshing to challenge myself using only a simplest camera possible without any control over photos with only one chance to capture the moment as it is without corrections and readjustments. The photography has felt much more like in the 90s, when my parents would urge me to take photos in front of monuments and touristic attractions with myself standing still in front which I obviously found terribly unattractive. They were giving me shit for all the diversity I tried to introduce while taking photos of random objects such as bottles and trees. All that experiments did not work out exactly the way I wanted – in my mind I had an image of a beautiful bokeh and lack of any technical knowledge and no one to explain why it doesn’t work the way I want. These days I am coming back to them with a full awareness of what did not work out in my childish attempts to capture the moments and no parental limitations to my vision.
Daylight was for the Wawel castle, magic of the Krakow town square, walks around my hometown and conversations. After showing around the key tourist attractions that make Krakow, we enjoyed a cold beer on a bench between the buildings of a student village. Something that would have been a casual part of my reality if I decided to stay in Poland.
It felt like childhood to taste home cooked meals prepared by my mum, eating entire huge metal bowl of strawberries, cherries, raspberries, blueberries and all the other summer fruits. Days were hot and sweaty, everyone regardless of financial status, no matter if they were wearing posh clothing or hippie rags, was wet with sweat squinting their eyes to the sun. Once again I could enjoy myself jumping to a fountain fully clothed without facing judgements and enjoy the fun of the summer days. The cold walls of my old high school, all of the 10 pubs of Tarnow market square, Strzelecki Park, all these things will never cease to remind me of some best years of my youth.
During the visit we received amazing news of our friend getting a scholarship for a Masters degree, could there be a better reason to celebrate? Nights were for dancing with the flames and enjoying the grace of Kazimierz. I was back to being a teenage girl enjoying the fun of colorful shots, with friends. Locally brewed beers, sliwowica, wisniowka and orzechowka (plum, cherry and hazelnut vodkas) were landing on our table one after another as we enjoyed walks around vibranty illuminated streets surrounding Plac Nowy in the heat of the night.
Next day gave us inspiring conversation with a long forgotten friend, refreshment of inspiration and refuel of smiles.
We drove next to the forests, mountains and lakes on local roads following the meanders of river to the town of Poprad in Slovakia. We travelled to Trencin with a train admiring the greatness of Tatra mountains with the tops still covered with snow and entertained ourselves with interslavic conversations.
The festival was three nights of dancing and abracadabra, alcohol drank by youth like magic potions. Flashing lights and hypnosis was a perfect way to forget yourself. I was never more aware of the fact that the tent was filled up with the ticking bombs. Tick, tick, ticking in the rhythm of heartbeats. All of us dancing to these beats had the buttons hidden somewhere that pressing each of them would blow us all out. Emotions would explode in thousand pieces in the sky and entire crowd would become one. The live music at the concerts gave the crowds insane energy that surely we could have caused an earthquake somewhere while dancing to Bjork’s ‘Human Behaviour’.
The magnetic force in the air reached its peak during performance of my beloved Cocorosie in the middle of the last night. Blessed with music I was drifting somewhere in another universe.
We arrived at festival site at the sunset and left two days later at the sunrise. Taxi, train, plane, bus, underground, tired and nostalgic we came back to the normal life. Filled with memories of happiness, colourful tents, laid back bohemian clothing, love and friendship I cannot wait until Bazant Pohoda Festival 2016 to reunite with my dearest friends.