Tuesday Night in Gliwice

Tuesday, 16th April 1985

I've made several references to Mark's planning skills, so I thought you might like to see an example. Here is Page 3 of the Draft Itinerary, which covers our time in Kraków

Plan A for Tuesday would have seen us leaving the Berlin - Kraków Sleeping Car Express at Kȩdzierzyn Koźle and then following a very detailed itinerary around some of the more obscure towns of Silesia on trains hauled by various steam locomotives, ending up at the railway junction town of Nysa.  However, at a late stage, we decided we ought to perhaps take in a bit more of the historic and cultural side of Poland, hence "Plan B", which simply says "Stay on to Kraków"!

The proprietors of the hotel at Brzeg, where the Plan called for us to stay on Wednesday night after a 14-hour journey arriving at 22.26 would no doubt hve been pleased to find that we had chosen their establishment on the basis of the "cracking receptionist" who happened to be on duty when we turned up early one morning the previous year seeking to buy some Polish currency!

In the event, having chosen "Plan B"  we had no plan at all for Tuesday night and none of us can now remember why we chose Gliwice for an overnight stop, other than it was in the right direction to allow us to salvage some of the Plan the following day.  Unlike the DDR, it wasn't necessary to pre-book accommodation in Poland before getting a visa and in those pre-internet days it would have been very difficult.  We therefore turned up in Gliwice without any idea of where we would be staying for the night. 

We soon came across the Hotel Myśliwski, a large town centre establishment that looked quite promising. But, "No", the young lady receptionist was very sorry: they had no rooms available.  "Was there another hotel in town?" we asked.  "No", she said: "Nowhere else at all!"  

This was a problem. It was already early evening and we had no map or railway timetable to help us plan an alternative. We stood in the lobby discussing options:  "Back to Kraków?"  "On to Katowice?"...  until Mark suddenly realised he had a few Deutschmarks in his wallet.  "Would these help?" he asked.

Suddenly, it appeared that they did have a room after all!  It wasn't a very good room and they wouldn't normally let it out as it needed redecoration, but if we wanted to inspect it first we could have it.  It was small and certainly needed redocoration, but it was clean and warm and in any case there was really no alternative.

The Hotel Myśliwski is still trading today, albeit under a different name, and still offers "Refined accommodation in a 19th Century hotel". I was tempted to leave a review on TripAdvisor, but I didn't think it would be fair...

The Hotel today. I think our room must have been one of those on the very top floor with a balcony.

Accommodation sorted, we set out on the eternal quest for food and beer.  Our hotel couldn't help, but we came across a large restaurant in the town centre.  It was a bit disconcerting to find bouncers on the door (on a Tuesday night!) but they let us in and we found a table and even managed to order food and beer!   Other customers had also managed to get beer - and vodka - and the atmosphere was quite "lively". We'd just finished eating and were negotiating with the waiter to pay for our meals in sterling (at a discount!) when suddenly the front door burst open and the head bouncer staggered in backwards, bleeding from a cut on the head and followed by a number of would-be customers!  The waiters all rushed to his aid and a fight broke out with punches - and chairs - being thrown!  This seemed our cue to make a quick exit, so abandonning the attempt at currency exchange we left what we hoped were enough złotys to cover the bill and got well clear.