From an email a few weeks ago, about my accidental excursion to Warsaw. It's pre-blog, so I thought I'd include it here. This is a map of my detour.


. . .

3/3/2010

I'm just back in Krakow, after travelling all over the place. Went to Wroclaw on Sunday, for a trial lesson on Monday. It went really, incredibly badly. I bombed it completely. But, I got the job anyway, cos they'd already decided to give it to me. And then I went to meet Ewa at her parents in Zawiercie (Zavyercha), which involved a changeover in Katowice, a big industrial city between Wrocław (Vratswov) and Krakow. And... ended up on a non-stop train to Warsaw. Katowice trainstation was utterly bewildering, the signs with the times and platform numbers barely worked, and everything was broken, no one spoke English, everyone was vaguely hostile. Anyway, the train went through Zawiercie, not to, and this small mistake basically meant that I spent most of Monday commuting mindlessly around Poland. I made it to Zawiercie eventually, and spent a few days there, which was nice. Ewa's family basically accused her of negligence, for leaving me alone to the Polish train system. Ewa's mum mimed a noose and hung herself, and pointed at Ewa. I thought this was a bit excessive. haha. Polish people can be very expressive.

So, I have a job. I was pretty sure I had a job about 2 weeks ago, but had to go through a few formalities, including a weeks training and the trial lesson. But I think unless I did something catastrophic they were always going to hire me. And it's not all bad news with work permits etc, there's an alternative to setting up your own company. All in all things are gradually turning out.

I'm learning Polish, slowly. It no longer seems completely impenetrable. I've learnt the alphabet, and can count to ten, and have a very primitive conversation. I think if I stay here for a year I should be able to converse in a basic way. Learning Polish has given me a few kind of interesting insights into the way Ewa uses English. For example, Polish has triple negatives; you can say Nigdy (never) nic (nothing) nie (no) razumiercz (understand), which means 'you never understand anything.' And Ewa will sometimes say things like 'no no nothing' or 'no no never,' in response to something. I just thought this was quaint, but there's a reason for it. There's probably lots of stuff like this.