I arrive in Poland with my prejudices neatly packed. I expect chilly people who look and dress like potatoes, bunker-style hotels with bunk beds and bedbugs, joyless restaurants serving dour cabbage and stalag-style gruel. I carry scented candles; muesli bars; lemon-roasted Iranian pistachios; recherche single-estate chocolate bars from Rococo; Tabasco. Thus burdened, I journey towards Hajnowka, the village gateway to Bialowieza, Europe's last primeval forest. Straddling the border with Belarus, Bialowieza's dense dappled greens shelter wolves, lynx, three-toed woodpeckers - and 300 bison, each of which weighs about a tonne. Sweet treats for these huge zubr grow in the form of Hierochloe odorata, a lush grass that smells like fresh green vanilla. The grass is also gathered by Hajnowkans, who employ it in distilling Bison Grass Zubrowka vodka.
The undulating rural poem of eastern Poland sings of a hard life lived in soft fields. Ox carts and donkey droshkies travel at a 16th-century plod while trans-Danubian 40 tonners race from new republics to western markets. I stop at Bialystok in search of an authentic bialy, the soft-baked indigestion pretzel one suffers in New York. Hopes held determinedly low, I stalk into the first bakery to receive a just-baked bun whose thumb-pushed indentation is crusted with salty caramelised onions and a dusting of toasted poppy seeds. Winningly yieldingly comforting by itself, my first bialy was even better torn open and stuffed with lemonly lactic soft cream cheese and a crisp salt/sweet gherkin.
To the road-weary traveller, Hajnowka is a tonic. Its unpainted cottages are beautifully carpentered, their fretted verandas and dovetailed balconies varnished by extravagant arrangements of hollyhocks and kerchiefed old ladies. Hajnowka smells good, too. To the evanescent aromas of bison grass, freshly baked eggy breads and the crackle and tingle of grilling meats fill the air. I prepare for dinner by hiring a bicycle and following a forest trail down a bird-watchers' paradise under ortolans and eagles, past shadowy deer and what I imagine to be a bison, but turns out to be zubron - a cross between a bison and a cow.
Dinner that evening commences, continues and finishes with Zubrowka. Between toasting everyone from Lech Walesa to Andy Warhol (via Copernicus, Marie Curie, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Pola Negri), I eat a delicate soup of golden forest mushrooms and green forest leaves, some spectacular calf's brains on toasted brioche, then juicy slabs of rosemary-roasted wild boar. The serving staff all look like supermodels and are funny and friendly. The only cabbage is in the form of a sensational red pickle flavoured with fresh dill and walnuts. I retire to a warm, happy room full of soft furnishings, and a forlorn, redundant bag from Selfridges' food hall.
This time of year, drink Zubrowka long as tatanka: one measure of iced Zubrowka to two fresh apple juice (Marks & Spencer has a fresh apple and kiwi juice that's just made for Zubrowka!). Or make ice cubes out of apple juice and sip Zubrowka short.
Stay and eat in Hajnowka at Hotel Zubrowka, ul Olgi Gabiec 6, 00 48 85 681 2303. Rent a guide, bicycle or horse at Alternative Tourism Office "Zimorodek", ul Waskiewiecza 79, +85 681 2457.
