Page 112 - 368603 LP250721 AWY AWY AWY Book (238pp A5)

and was offered the job so I swiftly packed all my stuff up for storage and found myself at Heathrow one hungover Sunday morning wondering what I’d let myself in for. It hadn’t been too long since the fall of communism and it was very important for the Electricity Company to establish new markets in Austria, Switzerland and elsewhere so their engineers needed to speak English. They’d spared no expense and I had a free hotel room with free meals as well as free return flights.
The F.A. Cup Final between Sunderland and Liverpool was at 4.00 Polish time on 9th May and I’d had a full teaching day as we’d just started doing Saturday classes. I’d been surprised at the beginning of my last class when the boss Jan had given me a can of beer and when I looked up, a number of students were slurping a can each. They explained that they always had a beer on Saturdays. I’d been thinking all day about where I could see the match or, failing that, at least listen to it somewhere. So much for all the talk about the F.A. Cup Final capturing the attention of the world – in 1992 Plock seemed blissfully unaware of the event at any rate. I’d asked my local connection Wojtek and some of my students if there was a bar somewhere which would be showing it but had drawn a blank. I got back to the hotel around 3.30 with thirty minutes to go before kick-off. I checked on the hotel bar to see if they’d be showing the game but it was closed. The world of communications has changed so much since then and in those days there were very few mobiles, no internet and nowhere near as much in the way of satellite TV.
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