September 1995 (continued):
From Tampa I flew to Wausau, Wisconsin, where the following day I conducted Air Personality Plus+ for John Laabs and the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association. This was the first of perhaps a dozen times I’ve worked with the WBA, and John was incredibly helpful. With 130 attendees from around the state, the WBA made a net profit despite my outrageous speaking fee and bloated travel expenses.
A few days later I left for Warsaw, Poland. (I’m thinking of titling my autobiography FROM WAUSAU TO WARSAW.)
This marked my first trip to Poland. I was the featured speaker (Air Personality Plus+, Building A Winning Morning Show) at the country’s third annual Radio Conference, attended by several hundred Polish broadcasters.
In case you’re wondering, they offered simultaneous translation to attendees; perhaps 30-40% listened to my English, the rest to the Polish translation in their headphones.
The conference was held in a building used by the Army for training purposes; it also housed the young soldiers and felt much like a college campus building.
Hotel Jan III Sobieski
I stayed in the new and very comfortable Hotel Jan III Sobieski. At the dinner buffet, the waiter brought me a welcoming glass of Polish vodka.
As it happens, I don’t drink. But not wanting to cause an international incident, I took a couple of sips. I’ll bet if I knew anything about vodka, I would have been impressed.
A 3-piece band provided entertainment for the diners. Their first song — sung by a woman and accompanied on the accordion — was “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
Dining inside the hotel, however, turned out to be 4-5 times as expensive as eating at a local restaurant. Typical entrees at the hotel cost 40-60 zloty (ZL)…But later I discovered that entrees at a typical, nice restaurant were only 10-11ZL.
GREATISSIMO!
Turning on the TV in my hotel room, I happened upon a channel from Spain…and saw a Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes commercial, complete with Tony The Tiger.
But he did not tell viewers that Frosted Flakes are “great;” instead, he said, they are “GREATISSIMO!”
(We have Spanish stations here in Los Angeles, and for all I know Tony says the same thing here.)
My hotel featured one pretty worthless innovation. I was on the fourth floor. When I would push the elevator button, a recorded voice would announce, “Your request for the elevator has been received downstairs.” When the elevator arrived, the voice intoned, “Your elevator has arrived.”
Finding myself with a rare couple of hours free before leaving Warsaw, I took a taxi to the city’s Old Town.
Most of Old Town, however, dates back to 1945; it — along with the rest of Warsaw — was almost totally destroyed by a vengeful German army during World War II.
I had planned to call home to Los Angeles at 5:00 Warsaw time…but discovered that the only public telephones were inside the local post offices. I found a post office, waited in line for one of the two telephones…and could not manage to connect to MCI. (I had been able to do so from my hotel room phone the previous day.)
Upon arriving back at the hotel I learned an important lesson about visiting Warsaw: Not all taxis charge the same rates. My 15-minute taxi ride from the hotel to Old Town cost 9 ZL. The return trip cost only 40 ZL. Same route, same 15 minutes.
Moral: When you’re in Warsaw, make sure you take one of the “919” taxis.
Next Week: One of my most exciting travel moments ever occurs in Nuremberg, Germany….
