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.