Smoke rises lazily from the village houses in the distance. Across the fields, on this side of the river Pilica, which feeds the lake, a young deer strolls through the long grasses. We are standing on the perimeter wall that once provided one measure of protection to the Cistercian Abbey of Sulejów. Founded in the 11th century, it has been restored as a hotel, as romantic a building as you might wish to find for an assignation. The lake to the north is artificial. Constructed in the 1970’s, it made this a popular tourist spot for water sports and angling. Our huge room overlooks the Romanesque-Gothic church, which still functions, and in the grounds there is a corporate party underway, with much vodka drinking and singing. Apart from that there seem to be no other guests in this cavernous and curvaceous building.
We try to find our way on foot to the lake. An old guy at the car park says, Yes, yes, it’s that way, and we follow his outstretched arm down an old track. We pass through a small wood, expecting to see the lake soon as the way declines and becomes muddy and waterlogged, but the path then continues across an open field. Mosquitoes are everywhere. Ahead is a raised embankment, with no lake on the far side. More fields and copses, paths in several directions. We’re lost and getting bitten. The heat is draining and we decide to turn back. In the distance, a black BMW draws up in the middle of a field where four horses are grazing. The driver pulls out several bales of hay from the boot. There must be a road somewhere over there, maybe it leads to the lake? We eventually find the road and follow it. There are a few houses, though they become more and more spread out, some empty and half built. Some kids are playing in the abandoned constructions, and a weatherbeaten guy on a bike veers past us in a staggeringly drunken way. There are some bed and breakfast places here, and signs for hiking and watersports. A couple of holidaymakers sit on an upper balcony, sunning themselves, glistening with oil.
The road ends in a pine forest, and a track which finally leads us to the lakeside. Here we find some more people – cyclists, campers, picnics, kayaks. No sight of anglers seeking to catch pike, perch, bream, eel or carp. The lakes around here have suffered some poison, we are told, and the fish is no good. The sun has gone in and it’s turning a little cold. Too grey to swim. We return to the village and look for some food. No small shops are open. There is a pizza takeaway and down a side street we find a small Tesco – but surely a PRL version, as the shelves are unexplicably half-stocked. (And there is no hope of any cream to treat insect bites.) We settle for some fruit, bread and tomatoes. It’s enough.
I can’t help thinking that much of rural Poland is like this, small, depressed, lonely – even desperate – villages and townships, in between places with a fainter and fainter echo of history. As a young man, Chopin enjoyed carefree holidays in the Polish countryside with the peasant girls singing their songs of love and sorrow, old women chanting in the fields as harvest was gathered, drinking songs sung late into the night as barrels of vodka were rolled out of village taverns – all of which were said to inspire his polonaises and mazurkas. There is little of that to be found here today, just a lot of mosquitoes and the corporate karaoke.
