Ogrodzieniec, castle

When I began travelling in business some five years ago I had a sense of excitement prospect of getting about brings out in people. With time it turned out most trips taken as part of my duties are kind of tiresome and involve more hassle than pleasure. And frequent sightseeing which I thought would be the order of the day, turned out to be impossible to pursue, due to tight agenda of the day, tiredness and priority of travel companies to return home possibly quickly.

An ideal business trip if I am do take a detour to draw some pleasure from visiting new places most often needs to meet three conditions:

1) actual destination should be a place hard to reach by train, so that using the private car is justified – this gives flexibility and saves time when moving about (does not apply to main cities, such as Poznan, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Krakow),

2) the agenda should give some headroom for spare time for leisure,

3) I take the trip on my own, or have companions who at least don’t mind such sightseeing.

The three conditions are all met on average twice a year, sadly…

Last Thursday I took such detour when return from a conference. Conditions 1 and 3 were met, however necessity to catch up with work accumulated during the previous day of the conference left me hurrying to make my way to Warsaw. Despite this I ventured to Zamek Ogrodzieniec, one of the magnificent sights in Jura Krakowsko-Częstochowska, one of Poland’s still underrated pearls. I turned up there at nine o’clock, but the ticket office was… closed despite being scheduled to be opened at that hour. I hang around for a quarter, took delight in the beauty of the place, picked up a few phone calls with workmates urging me to handle the stuff I was meant to deal with, thus had my impatience stirred and eventually I marched back to the car. A shame to admit it ended up like this. Looking forward to visiting those regions again.

Since tomorrow I’m setting off for holidays, to take some rest and think some things over, the next posting will be due in early July. Over the coming days I will be keeping my fingers crossed for the Remain option and if my hopes are dashed, will turn my smartphone on to watch the rollercoaster… Take care!