Zieleniec – winter holiday

We are enjoying the Warsaw school holidays (ferie zimowy) in the mountain village of Zieleniec, which lies on the border with Czech roughly halfway between Wrocław and Prague (see the red A lollipop on the map below).

The journey from Warsaw was uneventful and took 8 hours including one long and one short stop. Roads were clear and easy until the very last few kilometers up the mountain to the village where it got a little slippy. We had to wind our way around a bigish accident on the road caused by people who thought their BMW’s were better in snow than they actually were. The Passat handles snow pretty well although it is a little low to the ground so when you have larger drifts it can get bogged down if you’re not careful.

Zieleniec had heavy snowfall the day before we arrived and the hotel parking area definitely warranted a “Holy Snowplough, Batman!” exclamation. When I finally found a space I had to get my handy car-shovel out and dig a car shaped hole to park in, igloo style parking. As we are planning a trip to the spa town of Duszniki-Zdrój tomorrow I suppose I’ll have to go through it all again.

I hear a lot of complaints about skiing in the Polish mountains. Most Poles I know are very disparaging about Polish ski resorts and prefer to go to other countries but this place seems fine to me. Perhaps because I don’t ski and none of the family are expert skiers we can’t see what’s missing here, like black James-Bond style runs or fashionable après-ski stuff. It’s a mystery. We have mountains, we have plenty of snow, our own language and currency, good food, comfortable rooms, ski lessons and green runs literally across the street….what’s not to like?

We’ve found quite a gathering of people we know, or half know, also staying at or near the same place. Brother-in-law with nephews just down the road, friends also close by, colleague from work in the same hotel as well as a friend of Zosia’s from her school. Quite amazing really given the remoteness.

The picture below is a view from our balcony. It is a lot whiter than the picture shows, the Blackberry camera wants to turn everything a mid-grey shade. The building in the left in front of the church is a cafe upstairs and a ski-school downstairs. Marta and Zosia have now had two days of lessons and are improving all the time, Marta is a natural, Zosia is not so excited by the whole thing. I just walk around in the -10C plus windchill giving support and providing video and photo services.

The clobber you need to go skiing is pretty mad. Even as a walker I was sporting my rubber leggings and waterproof trousers plus nuclear-bionic vest, polar explorer top, thermo-dynamic anorak, wooly hat, gloves…………

For those interested in costs. The hotel is almost exactly 100 GBP per night for a family room including breakfast. Ski lessons are 1 zloty per minute, about 12 GBP per hour and it’s roughly the same price to hire the equipment (boots and skis). The cost of meals varies but a decent sized pizza costs 4.30 GBP and a meal of meat or fish with spuds and veg is not much more than that. They are making decent money on drinks though.

Anyway, must go now. More later for sure!

The latest firm to join the ‘Hall of Shame’

Is EDEN the water people and here’s why:

We have one of those tall hot & cold dispensers that refrigerates the water. The hot part is switched off but chilled water in the summer is nice. We’ve had one for at least 6 years now and generally speaking they do a good job of turning up once a month, removing the old bottles and leaving some new ones. Where they have difficulties is when it gets any more complicated than that.

Roughly every six months they should ’sanitize’ the dispenser. This means removing the innards and replacing with a new pack. It is a simple task that takes perhaps 10 minutes. In the good old days they would remind us about this or just do it. In recent years though they have stopped doing that. I can’t think why this would be because they charge for it so it should be extra income but anyway, they have stopped worrying about it and so now we have to remind them. We did so recently and asked that they sanitize on the next visit.

The next visit came and they had forgotten about it and didn’t have the parts so they said they would make a special visit later. They eventually made that visit but botched the job so the water was leaking all over the floor. We waited without water while they got around to fixing the leak. On what was by now the the third visit they decided to renew the machine completely, not a bad idea except that the machine they replaced ours with looked like it had just done a tour of Afghanistan. Now, when you’re paying 15-20 PLN a month extra to have a machine with a pretty flower design on it, you expect that flower design to be good looking, not torn and dirty!

A call was made and we were promised that on their next regular visit, 3rd Feb, they would replace the machine again. I waited at home on the 3rd and they eventually arrived at around 10:15. The did the water bottles and then the guy said “..and we have to replace the machine, right?”. I agreed and he went to a small compartment and removed one of their tiny porcelain dispensers! Arrrggghhh, not the right machine you bunch of *@#$%.

When I get angry with companies here I normally revert to “Mr. Angry Englishman” mode and start insisting to speak to someone in English. Don’t ask me why, I just feel better. So I did with Eden, they offer parts of their website in English and deal with plenty of firms so why not complaints? I explained the problem to an increasing number of assistants until we found one who understood the details of my complaint. He said they would call later and arrange a, by now super-special, visit later that day to bring another new dispenser.

Guess what? They didn’t call and now we’re away. Ho hum. And so it is that Eden water of www.eden.pl join TPSA and Cyfrowy Polsat in my, unfortunately, growing list of CRAP companies.

I’m building up quite a list of things to get finished when we return, what a horrid thought of all that disappointment and frustration just waiting there for me like an avalanche of headaches:

• Get the Sky digital box working = do something with the dish on the roof
• Eden dispenser = fifth attempt
• Zosia’s blocked drain = second attempt
• Improving the repair of the walls where the leaks were = second attempt

Hand dryers

I far prefer drying my hands with paper towels, I imagine everyone does? It’s the quickest, easiest and most natural way but for those charged with operating the toilets the dreaded electric dryers are usually selected. I suppose it is a question of cost and cleanliness, probably theft too as employees might be tempted to take pack of towels home but not an electronic dryer.

The electronic things come in a variety of models ranging from the utterly useless to just about acceptable. The best I’ve had the pleasure of working with to date is the old World Dryer “Model A”. It comes in various disguises but combines some essential ingredients in the hand drying arena – powerful motor, hot air, well designed nozzle.

It is sad to say that after what must be at least 20 years in existence the hand dryer had not moved on but had gone backwards if anything. Well, imagine my surprise then when I found the Dyson Airblade in the public loos at Brussels airport the other day! A strange looking thing but it works and it works well. You can read all about it via the link. I wouldn’t say it is quite as efficient as they claim but it is certainly the best hand dryer I’ve used for a very long time.

So there you have it, rush off to Brussels airport the first chance you get and try out the future of electronic hand dryers. Gosh this is exciting!

Where’s my anorak?

Does Hollywood actually have anything original to offer?

We went to see Avatar recently and a short while before that we saw The Princess and the Frog. Both good films in their own way although with each the main interest was only in the way they were made. Avatar being the spectacle of 3D via a new generation of stereoscopic cameras and The Frog being the opposite, Disney going back to hand-drawn animation.

Judging by how much we enjoyed the films I’d have to say say that all this hoop-la about 3D is nonsense. It was good, sure, but the glasses are uncomfortable and not well enough made to allow an uninterrupted view of the whole screen as one would get without them. For me, while they do allow us to get the 3D effect they are simply a damn nuisance and I’d rather not have to wear them. Does the 3D thing enhance the movie experience? Not for me. It allows me to see where they’ve spent $237 million and there are a few scenes that are impressive but the overall cinema experience for me was no better than the old fashioned hand-drawn 2D of the Disney film. They need to work on the glasses, they really do.

It seems nobody in Hollywood agrees though because the number of films coming out in 3D or enhanced 2D digital is huge. It’s getting confusing though. We went to see Sherlock Holmes as well and were offered two showings one of them ‘digital’ and the other presumably just ‘normal’. We watched the ‘normal’ one and enjoyed it.What does the ‘digital’ one do differently? (PS – since when was Sherlock an expert bare knuckle fighter?)

More later perhaps on all films by way of a proper review but my point here is to wonder whether Hollywood knows it has run out of original ideas and is trying to maintain ticket sales by technology alone?

Watching any Hollywood film these days is just so damned predictable that I’m beginning to wonder if there’s a point watching any of them when you know what’s going to happen. The Princess and the Frog was a very well told and beautifully animated classic tale. It was supposed to have a twist and therefore be different but in the end it didn’t really, did it. You could all have written the storyline down before you entered the cinema. Good guys, bad guys, quest, friends, enemies, pitfalls, good luck, humour, happiness, sadness, love and a happy ending. Ho hum.

Avatar, pretty much the same things as The Frog but with blue skin and 3D. You just know he’s going to ride the big red dragon. You know he’s going to do that thing with the tree and switch bodies. You know the bad general is coming to a sticky end and you know some of the good gang are going to die. Why bother then? Why waste $237 mill and whatever Disney spent on the Frog telling the same old – age old – stories over and over again. I really am beginning to wonder.

Is there really such a dearth of writing talent in the film industry? Or is the problem with the producers and directors who whose appetite for risk is zero. Or with the film watching public who won’t understand anything complicated, who don’t want anything approaching originality? Who’s fault is it that we keep getting fed the same, perhaps five, stories over and over and over again?

To add insult to injury Hollywood now seems to have adopted a total immersion tactic to go along with the lack of storyline. Nowadays it is impossible to release just one film in any particular theme, there has to be at least three, preferably more. So we don’t get one film based on comic book characters we get ten. Watching the trailers, the most recent ‘theme’ is ‘The Gods’ with at least two films being released that delve into ancient Gods – The Lightning Thief and Clash of the Titans, I have a feeling there may be a third but can’t recall the title. So here we go again I suppose, one of their limited choice of storylines now being revamped with an ancient God theme. God help us.

Bags

I wrote at more length over on Polandian about my issues with being charged for shopping bags. So you can imagine how excited I was today when I shopped at Piotr i Paweł and found this at the end of the checkout counter. Yes folks, a choice of FREE bags to take my goods home in. I chose the paper ones in case anyone was wondering!

Three cheers for Piotr i Paweł! I was so impressed I even signed up for their discount card on the basis that I’ll be going there more often now.