Ride ‘em in, Rawhide
So finally we were back in Poland and heading south,
which meant that we were back in the realms of sensible borders.
We decided to head to the nearest good sized town and find a hotel
for the night. This wasn’t as easy as it may appear. The one we’d
stayed in on the way up wasn’t too far away but it was on a different
road, and it would mean heading in the wrong direction for half
an hour or so. We decided to just head into town and see what we
could find. By the time we hit town it was pretty late, or more
to the point, pretty early and pretty much everything was pretty
much shut.
We spent half an hour driving around the town hunting
down a hotel with no success. We then decided we were just as likely
to find somewhere if we carried on along the road as we were to
find somewhere driving around the town in circles. So we moseyed
on further south, down the road further into Poland, until we saw
the bright lights of a motel that looked habitable. It was called
‘The Cowboy Inn’. Now to me, this brings with it all kinds of visions
from films I’ve seen in the past where the hero unsuspectingly turns
up to a bar/hotel/club and ends up being asked to dance by people
in large amounts of leather with exceptionally bushy mustaches.
It was however exceptionally late by now, or more to the point,
exceptionally early, and quite frankly it was the first place we’d
seen in an age that was open so we decided to check it out. Sleep
was obviously more important that any foolish fear of facial follicle
froth.
Jonathan jumped out of the van and headed in to
see if they had any rooms. A few minutes later he was back, carrying
a whole bundle of nervous energy. “Yes they have rooms” he said
hurriedly, “get your case out of the back.”
“O…..K…. “, I thought, but seeing no reason to
argue, I went with the flow, and slid out of the van to get my stuff
from the back. Just to add to my originally speculation, there was
a man there dressed in a police uniform. After a quick look around
for the fireman, builder and Indian chief I realised that he was
in fact just the security guard, and he was signaling that we should
move the van around to the back of the building. Fair enough. I
got back into the van, and we headed around to the back, where we
got our stuff out and headed inside. It has to be said Mr Security
Guard didn’t look pleased to see us. Anyone would think we’d just
made him come out of his nice warm hole and hang around in the cold
while we faffed about getting our stuff out of the van. Jonathan
continued to fret although I had no idea what about so just tiredly
followed them into the hotel where the paperwork was done and then
we were shown to the room. The room was freezing, but Mr Security
Guard came in and turned on the heating before heading back to where
he watched the world go bye in this out of the one horse town (the
village peep hole ?…sorry), or whatever he was doing before we disturbed
him.
When he was gone I figured it was probably safe
to ask Jonathan what he was fretting about. “Didn’t you see” he
said, as if I was undoubtably blind “that security guy was carrying
a gun”.
There was a slight pause while the implications
of this sank in. Then it occurred to me just how much worse it could
have been. “Is that all. Jesus you had me worried. I thought they
were going to make us join in with their line dancing or something”
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