Black Madonnas, scarlet women and Jewish blues

We have been to Czestochowa, the religious epicentre of Poland and home of Jasna Gora, an enormous monastery and basilica which is, in turn, home to the Black Madonna. This place has been a religious magnet for God-botherers for centuries. Way back in the 14th Century, the monks who reside here were bequeathed an ancient painting of the Madonna (Christ's mum, not the queen of pop) which over the years, after a bad varnishing job and exposure to
burning incense, became discoloured to a dark hue – and has subsequently become known as the Black Madonna. To the faithful it's got healing powers and is a protector of the monastery, if not Poland itself. To me it's a dirty old painting swathed in gaudy gold trinkets. And it is revered at extreme levels – there are queues of tourists who walk a circuit of the thing on their knees. I seem to remember something in the Bible about not worshipping false icons, being selfless and loving thy neighbour – all of which seems to get forgotten by the stampede of women (and it is mostly women) pushing, shoving and elbowing to get the best view or to be able to kneel a tiny bit closer to the knackered old portrait when they unveil it twice a day. One old woman physically pushed us out of the way so she could wave some sort of banner at it.

As you may have picked up on, the whole place made me a bit cross: this supposedly sacred sanctuary has monks at the gate selling CDs; in most Catholic churches we have visited they have candles that you can light in prayer, here they have a coin-operated bank of candle-effect lightbulbs; in the toilets, and I swear on all that I hold dear this is true, they were playing Like A Prayer by Madonna (the queen of pop, not Christ's mum); and where the rest of Poland has a justifiable pride in the late Pope John Paul II, here he is as Mickey Mouse is to Disney – there are JP2 souvenirs in the nun-run gift shop, there are billboard sized pictures of when he visited this religious theme park, there's a whacking great statue of him in the grounds and there's even a stained glass window of him looking down on the chapel of the Black Madonna. It's all a bit over the top.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, a curious phenomenon has come to our attention. As we drive down the rutted motorways and potholed A-roads of Poland, we have become aware of young women, dressed provocatively, loitering by the side of the road, often in heavily wooded areas and we have come to the conclusion that these women are prostituting themselves to lorry drivers. "Forest Tarts" we have christened them. I don't know for sure that that's what they are, but I can think of no other reason that a young woman would be standing in the middle of nowhere in high heels and fluorescent mini skirt – unless it's some sort of glamorous, extreme Polish rambling club. I'm not entirely sure of the stopping distance of a lorry either but by the time we've spotted a "Forest Tart" it is usually far too late to get the camera out (hence only one picture so far of a quite conservatively dressed example). Also, how do they get there? Is there a pimp with a minibus? We'll try and get more pictures without being arrested for hard shoulder crawling.

Currently we are in Krakow. When we were in Vilnius we'd met a guy called Charlie and had a fun night out with him at the Summer Solstice Festival – and when we arrived here at the Krakow campsite we bumped into him again. And our lucky streak of stumbling across local festivities continued too as the three of us joined in the 21st Annual Jewish Culture Festival in Kazimierz, Krakow's Jewish quarter. It was a great night of singing, dancing and a big concert of Jewish acts. One was Abraham Inc, an American jazz and blues ensemble with their very own rapper and an odd chap on accordion. The band is fronted by Fred Wesley who apparently used to play trombone with James Brown's band. They were ace and really funky – although one song about breaking bread went on for about half an hour too long. Then there was a West African group called Yemen Blues whose Israeli singer had big hair, elastic legs and a frightening vocal range which threatened to shatter glass at one point. They too were excellent and employed a dazzling array of strange instruments. We met a group of exchange students from Australia and South Africa who were experiencing Europe for the first time – so Claire showed them her foolproof method of getting to the front of a gig by crawling through the crowd's legs. They were astonished to be able to pop up three rows from the front. Almost as astonished as the people they popped up next to I imagine.

After the gig the students had to dash off to beat their midnight curfew, so Charlie, Claire and I went for something to eat and then hit the Krakow club scene. Well, we actually staggered into a basement hip hop club populated by locals thinking they were American. One guy, whose attire suggested he supported the New York Giants, tried to show us how to do some of his moves. Unfortunately we were quite drunk, and he was even drunker, so the display that followed resembled three epileptics trying to stand up on a trampoline. We left with what remained of our dignity around 4am and got into a cab driven by someone who obviously learnt to drive playing video games. I don't know if he beat his hi-score but we got back to the campsite very quickly.