Poland and Mushrooms pt 2

Kazimierz was the first person that I met in Poland. After one month of hitchhiking from Tbilisi, Kasia and I crossed the border between Slovakia and Poland on a scarcely traveled road in the Lower Beskid Mountains, and eventually arrived in front of an old Łemko wood cottage in the village of Nowica. We knocked on the big wooden door, and it slowly swung open to an almost identical copy of Lech Wałęsa. The frumpy white-haired man invited us in.

We later learned that Kazimierz was an eccentric liar. We sat near the fire and he told us stories about the origins of the Łemkos, or the rarity of soapstone, or the idea and uniqueness of Greek Catholicism. He said everything in Polish, and it had to be reluctantly translated by Kasia. He reveled in his stories, and had a charming gleam in his eyes. The truth was that he was there as an craftsman who was working on the stone path of the cabin, and in his spare time carved figures out of rocks that he had gathered. He showed us one of the rocks outside, the size of a large watermelon, which he planned to carve into the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus. He was a solitary figure at this cabin, a true recluse that was a tad misanthropic, but immensely enjoyed company if it was given. For us though he babbled all the time and there was no way of escaping it. I sat across the giant wooden slab that was the table and glanced back and forth between the fire and the Lech Wałęsa look alike, while Kasia sat next to me and listened intently with good intentions, translating when Kazimierz and she decided it was necessary. I was slowly being indoctrinated into the eccentricity that is Poland.

We followed him to a stream nearby where he showed us a couple of fossilized rocks. We became intrigued by the environment around us and started picking up every rock, examining it, and waiting for an explanation from our misanthropic expert. After a longwinded explanation about how soapstone becomes unbreakable when it completely dries (it doesn’t) we all headed back to the cabin. Through the woods Kazimierz spotted something a few meters away and became livid. Grunting “ohs” and “ahs” and gesticulating towards the object. Kasia and I could see it too, something creamy white and lying in the dirt. I didn’t quite understand, but Kasia told me it was a mushroom. He ran over to it, tripping over the forest floor, and was deeply disappointed to find that it was only a piece of trash. After this little mishap, when we got back to the cabin, he told us his plan to go mushroom hunting, and the next morning he went out on an expedition to find something of the same nature as his forest mirage. Not surprisingly, to this day I’ve never seen anyone as successful as he was on that expedition. It was something about his hermetic character, which made it the most natural thing to see him return the way he did.  His basket was filled to the brim with different shades of brown and orange, including a pair of gigantic koźlaki specimens that were the size maracas. He could shake them and we could start a samba band.  That night we feasted on his findings, and went to bed with full Polish bellies.

The next day we left that cabin and on foot crossed the slow-running serpentine river seven times, heading towards another cabin that was hidden above the neighboring village. We were free from Kazimierz’s eccentricities. The plan was to stay here the night with a group of family friends of Kasia’s mother, then catch a ride to our ultimate destination, Warsaw. After our seventh crossing we encountered a young man with a sturdy soviet looking UAZ trying to uproot a tree. After confronting him for directions he offered to drive us the rest of the way. We arrived, plopped into some armchairs and grabbed some ice-cold beers. Sometime after our arrival, while sipping on the pair of relaxing beers, some women emerged from the trees with big wicker baskets full of mushrooms. Unlike Kazimierz there was no variety in their collection, but nonetheless they were full with enticing wavy kurki that would be our main course for the dinner that night and our breakfast before we left the next day.

Being inspired Kasia got the bright idea that we should bring some mushrooms back for her family in Warsaw, and thus began my first experience foraging through the forest for the mythological fungi. After crossing the river, climbing up steep hills, jumping through thick wilderness, and trying my best,  I was an absolute failure, and realized I had no idea what I was doing, but Kasia surprised me every time.  With her apparent luck she found a hidden handful among some trees that I had just skeptically passed over. Every time I ran off thinking that I was going the right direction, Kasia would yell out behind me, “I found some!” I felt inept, but admired her innate ability. We gathered our crop and put it in a bag; feeling satisfied knowing that her family would be grateful back in Warsaw.

The next day we woke up to a pot full of scrambled eggs and kurki for breakfast, filled our stomachs for the long car ride ahead, and then departed.

Kazimierz with his maracas:

Read part one here

Poland and Mushrooms pt 1

I was standing in the middle of my kitchen, five stories up from Kaukaska Street in the monotonous Stegny neighborhood of Warsaw. I opened up the jar and held it up to my eye, examining the gooey maślaki mushrooms inside. A sour earthy smell came out and invigorated my senses with its pungent punch. I stuck my spoon inside and slid the slimy morsels out one by one into a small glass. Each one dripped out, splashed onto the enameled glass, and then sat there entombed in the transparent slime. I looked closely again at the alien looking creatures that had alternating smooth brown and porous cream-colored surfaces. The longer I looked, the more my fascination grew. But they were there for me to eat, and not to admire, and soon they exited from there interim resting place and into my mouth, and finally into my gut, where maybe they would sprout again.

100 kilometers north of Warsaw, on the cusp of autumn, I found myself in a small village near a town called Pułtusk. Here I was going to do something very Polish, very Slavic for that matter, in nature with my companion and life partner, Kasia. We were walking along the river Narew, a river that flows into the Wisła, which in turn then flows through the home of Kopernik’s Toruń, and out the mouth of Günter Grass’ Gdańsk into the Baltic Sea. We were on our way to pick some mushrooms, specifically kurki. Soon we broke off from the river and headed towards the wooded flatland. The idea was that later we would fry these mushrooms and eat them alone with spices, or mix them with scrambled eggs, and in my impressionable eyes this was a truly Slavic meal.  

While on this adventure, I remembered a scene that never left me from a Russian film named The Cuckoo. Two soldiers, a Finn and a Russian, have been betrayed by their countries; one left to die, and the other being taken to his trial. When things go wrong they’re both saved by an endearing Sami woman in the wilderness of northern Finland. The problem is that all three of them speak completely different languages, and so in communication there is no common understanding. This especially isn’t good when you're staring into the eyes of the enemy you’ve been fighting for the past 3 years. Things are tense, but they manage not to kill each other, mostly due to the pacifism of the Finn.

The scene I was thinking about happens when they're all doing different things, and you see the Russian picking something in the woods. He comes back home with a bucket full of gigantic dirt-encrusted mushrooms.

When the Sami woman sees him she says,

 “Don’t eat mushrooms or you’ll go loony.”

He responds,

“Don’t worry. I’ll cook them. The sergeant in my battalion cooked them wonderfully!”

Later he runs up to her with a boiling pot in his hand.

“Ma’am I need salt. Salt. Where is it?”

“I’m not mad enough to eat mushrooms” She waves her hand in a suggestion to go throw them out.

He thinks she’s pointing to the direction of the salt,

“In the house,” he says. “Ok I’ll go get it.”

Later they are speaking together.

“The mushrooms will be ready soon. We can eat. But we need some salt.”

“Yes,” she looks at him warily. “Mushrooms are bad. They can be poisonous.”

The next day he wakes up to find her standing over him. She looks worried and says,

“Do you feel bad? It must be the mushrooms. I’ll feed you some infusion and flush it out of you.”

He is completely expressionless and looks fine. She brings him some infusion soup that acts as a laxative, and he politely accepts her offer, thinking it’s just plain soup. Soon after he is ejecting everything from his rear end, and cursing the Sami woman to hell. The Finn walks outside, watches this spectacle and says,

“That’s what happens when you eat too many mushrooms.”

Despite its humor, this can be seen as a good example for understanding the relationship that Slavs have to their mushrooms. Through their utter lack of communication we find that what stands out in the Russian's mind is his mushroom culture, and what stands out in the others is their traditional misconceptions. 

I thought about this scene in Poland, far away (but not too far) from its Slavic cousin Russia. Would our fate be similar to that of the Russian? No, we had a common language and therefore there would be no misunderstanding. I asked Kasia cautiously,

“Do you know which ones are poisonous?”  

Her curt sardonic answer came reassuringly, “Of course!”

We circled the forest and scoured the soil, spying for the effervescent yellow prince’s crowns, but after an hour of not finding a sign of existence we went back home empty-handed. Apparently the weather had been too dry lately. All was not lost though, because as soon as we arrived at the cabin we were greeted by a whole clan of bulbous opieńki waiting patiently on a cut tree by the fence that wrapped around the corner of the house. Unfortunately though these wouldn’t be fried, and instead they would be pickled and kept in a jar, like the alien maślaki that sprouted up into their second life in my stomach.


Read part two here