“I have the honour of inviting all football fans to Lower Silesia…” These are the words with which Lower Silesian deputy marshal Radosław Małoń invites fans to Lower Silesia. The sentence opens a guide that became the subject of the city council’s most recent meeting.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the mayor presented the guide to the councillors and expressed his displeasure. He called the publication an oddity and added that he did not want to use strong language. But from the tone in which he spoke, it was clear that he would most gladly have used it. “This is a guide concerning the most important events taking place in Lower Silesia in 2012. In Bolesławiec there is no Ceramics Festival; there is a clay festival, a glue festival (clay festival – editor’s note),” Roman said.
After this speech, he translated the English text from the guide for the councillors. “Gliniada is an annual event organised alongside the Ceramics Festival; it is a street festival supplemented by workshops, events and happenings,” the mayor explained, asking whether the Ceramics Festival organised by director Lijewska was intended to complement Gliniada. “And the tourist information point is listed at 34 Komuny Paryskiej Street. There is both a mobile phone number and an email address for Mr Nowak,” the clearly irritated mayor concluded.
At the Marshal’s Office, people spent more than an hour looking for the person responsible for publishing the guide. Anna Czujko, standing in for the spokesperson, called and admitted that she had checked every department in the office, but nobody knew anything about such a guide. After receiving a photograph of the cover, the search still produced no results, so she asked for more photographs of the guide to be sent. Eventually, the commissioner was found. It was Wojciech Biliński, director of the Tourism Department.
Biliński does not understand the mayor’s outrage. In an email to us, he wrote:
“The publication is not an information brochure about the most important cultural events of 2012. As its name indicates, it is a guide for fans [..]. The guide describes the most likely routes fans will take and lists places attractive from a tourism perspective […].”
Commenting on the publication of the guide, the mayor said that the Marshal’s Office had been ignoring the Ceramics Festival and had not included it in important brochures since 2009, if the mayor’s memory serves him, when Dariusz Kwaśniewski (known to everyone as the Permanent Member of the Board at the District Office) asked for Gliniada to be entered in the calendar of events in Lower Silesia.
If one were to turn a blind eye, everything would look like a conspiracy, intricately woven by the Glinoludy in cooperation with the Permanent Member, the District Office and the Marshal’s Office. We remember that in 2009 they were all playing on Tusk’s team. At that time, the Glinoludy began protests over the lack of a sign informing drivers about the exit towards Bolesławiec on the new section of the A4 motorway. Whom did they want to point Bolesławiec towards? Obviously future fans, because they had already received a tip from Tusk that we would be on the fans’ “probable route of movement”! Now officials have published a guide erasing the Ceramics Festival from human memory and are rubbing their hands with satisfaction! It is surprising they did not come up with the idea of advertising the excellent Stary Theatre to the fans.
Let us suppose that fans come to Bolesławiec for Gliniada. Surely they will not fail to notice the Ceramics Festival. And once they have watched the parade, lasting about an hour and meeting the highest European standards of culture and art, perhaps they will eat some sausage, taste bread with lard and drink some beer. Perhaps they will also want to stay longer. And here is the chance to win the fans over to our own side.
In seventy days (that is how long remained until Euro 2012), a hotel complex with a thousand beds is unlikely to be built at 34 Komuny Paryskiej Street. The city could therefore provide a free campsite. I suggest developing the area between Zgorzelecka Street and Łokietka Street for this purpose. We invest in artificial turf and stamped-earth tipis, lure the fans there and hand out leaflets about the Ceramics Festival, of which we have plenty.
But will any fan make it here if the office and its officials are responsible for the advertising?! That is an entirely different story...
(Grażyna Hanaf)