meaningful graffiti

"remember how it was yesterday, but yesterday is gone - there is only today!"

Winter is here

The park near where we live. For pictures from a few months ago, when it was successively green, and then golden, click here.

 

Wrocław roads. Don't fall in. I've noticed a lot of holes and gaps in the roads lately. If you're not careful, you could end up in some medieval version of Wrocław, 10 feet below the surface. 

Eat, damn you

This is an exchange my brother had with our housemate Ola in the kitchen, when he was here a few months ago.

Simon (seated): That smells interesting.

Ola (standing by the stove): Would you like some?

Simon: Oh, no, thankyou. I'm not hungry.

Ola: No really, have some.

Simon: I'm really not hungry, thanks.

Ola (waving a spaluta in a threatening fashion): You should have some. Have some.

Simon: Really. Really, I don't want any.

Ola proceeds to give him some, placing a big plate of food before him.

My brother told me this story, with a mixture of bemusement and exasperation, and I just notched it up to another example of Polish Hospitality. However, there may be more to this.  

Apparently there's this custom in Poland, whereby a guest, on being offered food, will refuse -- in the certain knowledge that the host will offer again. Thus, they both fall into this kind of offering and refusing routine, until the guest will eventually relent, accept the futility of the situation, and take the food. Even if he was hungry all along. 

Thus my brother had unwittingly stumbled into the grooves of this kind of social ritual, was accidently saying all the right things, and was being channeled towards an outcome beyond his control. It's completely catch 22, there's no way out.

So in the name of social research, I'm willing to put my stomach on the line and test this. Never again will I automatically and graciously accept more food; it will have to be foisted upon me with the crazed insistence of a greenpeace activist with a clipboard.

puppy love

Dawn of the Dead in Wrocław

Like a good boyfriend I dropped my girlfriend into the airport this morning at 4:30, to catch a plane to Warsaw. I was so sleep deprived, the trip passed in a kind of delerium. It's eery driving in Wrocław late at night. Half the city is being rebuilt, so there are constant detours. Suddenly you're hurtling down some poorly lit unsealed backroad, with an unsettling feeling you're now on the wrong side of the road. Also, the traffic lights, rather than functionally normally, flash yellow at intersections. You're free to go if you have right of way. It feels as if there's been some massive power outage, possibly related to zombie sabotage, whom you half expect to see shuffling down the road, arms outstreached and groaning as you swerve past.

Ewa asked me if I thought I'd be okay finding my way back. My natural reaction was to check the fuel guage to see how long I could spend lost before the fuel ran out.

There's a disarming honesty to those who abandon all the usual pretence, and just ask you for what they want. Somehow it's become standand practice in Polish cities for young guys who want beer, but who lack the necessary funds, to just ask strangers for money for beer.

There's no carefully constructed, sympathy inducing pretext. "Excuse me sir, I need some money for beer."

It usually takes me several moments too long to process the Polish, so I find myself muttering "nie ma" (I don't have any) pretty often, but I actually feel inclined to give them some.

I never go to monster land

Something an 11 year old student prepared on a slip of paper today. We were playing an acting/guessing game, kind of like charades. She was the 11 year old sister of a 7 year old girl, who then had to act that sentence out.

język Polski stary film posters, from the Wrocław main square

The caption reads: "(the) Terrible Horseman" (Polish doesn't have articles, like the/an/a)

Be calm, this is only a power outage... (Airplane II)

 

Self explanatory! Although this is a very cool poster. 

Hau hau!

 

Polish dogs speak a different dialect to those in English speaking countries. Instead of "woof woof" they say "hau hau." This particular dog didn't know he was a cultural experience for me. I think he may've wanted a kiss, but I can't be sure. Dogs are very inarticulate creatures.

flame trees

The trees are undressing themselves, in a final burst of colour. Yellows and rusty browns. It's deceptively chilly, about 5 degrees in this photo. Winter is closing in.

Further along a group of teenagers were playing out some melodrama. I didn't know what it was, until one of them staggered a few meters away from his friends, and had a wee off the bank - without breaking conversation. A 2L juice carton on the ground was another give away. It's 1pm on Monday. But I guess teenagers take a creative approach to school attendance everywhere.

Public drunkeness is going to get dangerous soon; last year it was absurdly cold, -20 during the day in Krakow, and apparently it got to -15 in Wroclaw.

But I'm secretly looking forward to it. It's going to be my first full European winter. Lots of skiing and hot spiced wine, and just sitting around and being warm, which suddenly becomes an activity when it's so cold.

 
The park near our place. Soon it'll be back in monochrome, and the cycle will be complete. It's already quite brisk, despite the sunlight. Już nie długo do zimy.

Possibly the last round of wild mushrooms, collected from outside Wrocław. 

 

Mushroom collecting is national past time during the warmer months, and for a while everyone was fond of complaining it'd been a really bad year. But a few warmish, damp weeks and above freezing nights, and it's ended with a bang. 

 
  I stupidly left my wallet at home, otherwise I would've bought some. Katastrofa!

Gnome with a key to the city. :) He looks particularly mirthful. Maybe he's been imbibing with the piwo river gnome.

The afformentioned contender's for the ugliest apartment blocks in Poland award. This is from the top of the cathedral in Ostrow Tumski, the old part of Wroclaw.

And in the other direction; much more pleasing! The elegant looking manor house on the left by the river is the residence of the bishop of Wroclaw; not bad work if you can get it. The large phallic structure in the haze in the distance to the left is near where the rynek (main square) is. You can actually go up that building too, but it was closed that day for some reason. And the light blue bridge you can see is the padlock bridge where lovers attach padlock's with their name's on them.

Piwo matador

padlock monster of Wroclaw

pamiętając lato, summer days, drifting away....

brat w Polsce

There's a trend emerging here, I think. I DO actually like it here, cabbage juice and soviet architecture notwithstanding. My brothers coming soon, from France, and we'll sample some chocolate beer on the main square and eat zurek and pigdeons and do the whole polish thing. And I'll write about it, and it'll be ecstatically, orgasmically happy and endearing towards Poland. Something positive and cheerful coming soon!

soviet beauty

Could these be the ugliest apartment blocks in Poland? They're located in south Wroclaw, and obviously date to the soviet era. You have to wonder whether the designers were driven by strictly utilitarian principles to erect such monuments to ugliness, or whether soviet architecture was deliberately styled to invoke despair. There are several more of these buildings nearby, an unholy family of them. We went up in one when we were looking for a place. The lift had a cardboard door, and made a strange keening sound as it lurched disconsolately between floors, as if a cat was slowly being electrocuted to death on the roof. The room was spartan and souless; a young muscly guy with a gym bag was vacating it. It wasn't cheap either. It had one big thing in its favour, though, a great pizza place somewhere in those shops at the bottom.

On the train to Zawiercia

Kapusta poison

If there was ever a contender for the grossest thing ever produced, this is it. Think sweaty sock juice extract, and you'll be getting something close.

It's cabbage juice. Not only cabbage juice, cabbage juice produced in an ecologically friendly way. Does this mean that regular normal cabbage juice might be less grevious?

Possibly.

It smells faintly of sour cabbage, which is another acquired taste. Maybe you're meant to cook with it; it's something akin to fish sauce, Polish style. Or you just need a lifetime of incessant cabbage consumption to be used to it.


Potent. There's a good polish word for this. And that is "blekh."

Afterword: Ewa said I was being excessively unkind and that it was my job to be an ambassador for Poland.  Thus i should only have nice things to say about cabbage. I was being a bit hyperbolic. But only a bit. This stuff is nasty, there's no escaping it. Prosze wybaczać, Ewy kochanie! ;)

"Why Poland?"

I've lost count of the number of times people have asked me, somewhat incredulously, "why Poland?!" Why did I choose Poland. It's a valid question, and my answer is that I didn't really choose Poland, it sort of happened to me, in the form of a girl named E. At this point they smile or laugh and start nodding their heads vigorously. It all makes sense now. A girl brought you to Poland! it's always the same! And it's true, I'd be being disingenuous if I said otherwise. However, there's no place I'd rather be. Poland is like a giant riddle dying to be solved, by me. I enjoy untangling Polish culture, love polish people, fell in love with Krakow, appreciate Wrocław, get a perverse enjoyment out of learning the language, and am just very happy to be here.

Sometimes when the conversation continues for a little while, it becomes clear that Australia has some sort of mythical paradise status in the eyes of some Poles, and another question arises as "why did you ever leave?" Living in Australia is like living on life support. It's a brand new country, and everything is, well, new, everything is very orderly and comfortable and familiar, and this is for some people, but I want to... expose myself to the world, if you will, experience different things, different cultures. With this said, Poland is the sort of country I would gravitate towards, and maybe I was fated to come here. In any case, I can never complain about things being too simple or straightforward again. And that is just fine.

Baltic Sea impressions

 

If you want attention from your girlfriend, don't eat smoked mackeral. Or alternatively if you want a bit of space, rub some on your skin.

Ewa at Mason's bay on the south west coast of WA.