I Am Served a Stale Croissant

In a very few but nevertheless significant ways, I am a patient and long-suffering person.

For example, I have been slaving away at One of the Most Difficult Languages in the World (TM) for six and a half years.  

I can also put up with Continental argumentativeness from which the average  English- or Scotsman shrinks. 

Furthermore, I can stuff money in a wedding envelope with a cheerful shrug while about me fellow Anglo-Saxons quietly wail or simply refuse to do it.   

Even more impressively, when an extraordinarily rude Polish wedding guest twitted me on the plight of those in Canada whom she called "Indians", I did not name the ghastly pogrom that jumped immediately to mind. (Not that one; the 1946 one.)

But there is a limit. Yes, my friends, there is a limit to what I will put up with on the Continent, and a stale croissant is it. 

This morning  I decided I would go and visit my favourite Krakow art gallery, which is in Plac Szczepański. There is quite a nice French-style bakery-cafe named "Charlotte" nearby. I have happy memories of "Charlotte", having been there with my husband in January.  Then it was full of beautiful Polish young things with rucksacks, all looking hopeful and happy and full of potential. B.A. and I were clever enough to be at the doors when it opened for the day, so we were served promptly 

However, this time "Charlotte" was full of English-speaking middle-aged tourists clearly bored with their spouses/travelling partners, for they struck up conversations with complete strangers, and what was worse, the servers were not as interested in serving today as they were back in January. I stuck it out for awhile, but then decided I had wasted enough time and went across the square to "Tribeca u Sołayskich".

That was a mistake. 

This time I didn't mind the wait because I was outside under an umbrella this time, not in a humid building listening to Canadians starting friendly relationships that would last five minutes. However, when the young blond server brought me a stale croissant with chocolate sauce poured over it, I was outraged. 

I mean, it was stale. STALE. 

Stale. 

I'm not going to pretend Edinburgh is a croissant paradise. To my knowledge there are only three businesses in Edinburgh where the croissants are worth eating: Twelves Triangles (Portobello), The Wee Boulangerie (Clerk Street) and La Barantine (The Bow; Bruntsfield; Stockbridge). But however boring and unbuttery croissants are in other establishments in Edinburgh, they are not STALE. 

Without even pondering "What Would Polish Pretend Son Do?" I was suddenly possessed by the  combative spirit of Polish Pretend Son. Grabbing my handbag with one hand, and the plate in the other, I stormed into (remember this name for avoidance) Tribeca u Sołayskich.

"Excuse me," I said, in Polish. "This croissant is stale."

"What?" said the waitress and some other stuff I did not understand.

"Stale. This croissant is stale."

"I do not understand," said the waitress, so I repeated my complaint loudly in Canadian English, and now that I think about it, I wish I had added a whole lot more, so that she would have to contemplate her lack of  fluency in English and how it had led her to be shouted at by me instead of safe in a cushy job at a bank in London like her cousin Marysia. 

Scowling, she told me that I would have to wait for a fresh one, and I said that was fine although now I wish I had flung down the money for my cappuccino and informed her that at 10 AM there was no excuse for not having fresh croissants ready. 

I wish this for when the fresh or, I suspect, baked-from-frozen croissant appeared it had the overly sweet chocolate sauce poured on it, which I had forgotten to mention was disgusting. 

As a denouement, the museum bookstore was shut, and I suspect the museum was too, as it is Monday, but at the sight of the locked bookstore door, I quitted the Place Szczepański in a very bad humour indeed. Yes, it is June and, yes, Kraków is a tourist town, but trying to palm off stale croissants on foreigners is unforgivable, which is why I am indulging in internet revenge. 

I thought sadly of the Cranky Lady Cafe, and how the lady behind the counter may be cranky--and charge an extra 50 groszy for milk in the coffee--but at least she doesn't serve stale food.

It was particularly galling because I avoid tourist traps, but ended up at two yesterday, thanks to a Russian acquaintance who doesn't mind them. First we went to the Cafe Noworolski, which is actually in the Cloth Hall in the Main Market Square, and according to guide books Lenin loved it. Presumably the staff bothered to serve Lenin, whereas the server the Russian Lawyer approached inexplicably said he had already approached us and would be back in two minutes. 

The waiter lied on both counts, so after a quarter of an hour we abandoned Noworolski went to the "Sioux" steakhouse instead. This had a wooden representation of the face of a First Nations person over the front door, but the wait staff (wearing checked shirts) was kind and attentive and spoke English to the Russian Lawyer and Polish to me, and so as tourist traps went, it was okay. Besides, I cannot think of anything more Central European than a First Nations themed restaurant so un-PC it would kill a member of the Ontario English Catholic Teacher's Association to eat there. 

That said, in future I will avoid setting foot in the freaking Główny Rynek, to say nothing of (remember to avoid) Tribeca u Sołayskich.

To cheer myself up, I went browsing in "De Revolutionibus Books & Cafe", and when I found a  book in the children's section subverting the notions of "man" and "woman", I sought comfort in the Catholic "Logos" bookshop across the street. This had a smaller selection, but I was greatly cheered by the sight of Antonio Socci's Ostatnio Proroctwo: List do Papieża Franciszka. 

Your correspondent's spoken Polish is a complete mess this week, but at least she can still read.  

Update: Of course, having heard this amazing reflection by Matt Walsh, I now feel rather petty.

Postcard from Krakow

It's a warm and sunny morning in Krakow. I am in my friend the Giant Economist's* top-floor flat in Grzegorzki, a neighbourhood beside the more tourist-travelled Kazimierz. The three-storey block was built in 2006, but it has a nice old-fashioned balcony from which to watch the neighbours.

Many of the neighbours get up quite early and go to the bakery and other shops, returning home with plastic shopping bags. Presumably nobody is being charged extra for plastic bags yet. Because the sun rises at four AM, many of the older buildings are both Italianate and painted ochre, and church bells ring the hour, the neighbourhood resembles towns in Lazio. One of the shopping-bag ladies was stocky, wearing a black dress and sandals, which also added to the illusion that I am in Italy.

Naturally the biggest visual difference between Grzegorzki and Italy is the Polish names on the signs, and instead of celebrating various Italian Freemasons (at last my highly trad blog mentions the Freemasons), the streets are named in honour of various priests with very long names ending in -ski (or, since they are in the genitive case, -skiego).

Yesterday I woke up too early and too little rested to really appreciate the Główny Rynek, or main market square, which is really one of the most beautiful urban sights in Europe. It is even June, so my heart should have leapt like a lamb, but no. I surveyed the sunny square with jaded, baggy eyes and made straight for the Cranky Lady Cafe where Benedict Ambrose and I habitually go to be scowled at while I order coffee and cake.

After a good hour's note taking, I decided that I have too many unread Polish books to justify buying any new ones, and so after an aimless walk around the Planty (gardens encircling the Old Town), observing all the priests and nuns striding hither and thither, I walked back to Grzegorzki to read the Catholic news and start reporting on some myself. After that I could have been anywhere, except that almost all the books on the Economist's bookshelf are Polish and there is an ashtray on the balcony. Oh, and the internet, presumably mistaking me for the Economist, started feeding me adverts for Polish football betting sites.

Eventually the Economist came home, worn out from a day of helping keep the New Polish Economy going, and made supper while I transcribed Jordan Peterson's peppery lecture for PragerU. Conservative Poles love Jordan Peterson as much as Conservative Canadian (Brits, Americans, et alia) do. The difference is that these conservative Poles had to have splendid educations to understand Peterson's Canadian English in the first place, naturally.

This reminds me that my grasp of Polish has not been stellar this weekend. I hope I did not jinx myself by looking the celniczka (woman customs officer) square in the eye and saying "Hello" instead of "Dobry wieczór." For once, I was actually rather nervous of a grilling, since having to explain why I was returning to Poland (on a Canadian passport, too) after having left only a week ago would be complicated, as is this weekend's groom's surname, which after eight years I realised I didn't actually know. (I had to study the invitation on the plane). So I said "Hello" to the celniczka and she hurriedly sent me on my native anglophone way, and that was that.

The Economist went out to watch Spain v Portugal with friends, and I elected to stay behind and finish my JP transcript, not only out of duty but because I didn't want to stay out drinking until 3. Instead I watched episodes of "The Suite Life on Deck" over youtube and went to sleep on the Economist's pullout couch. Oh, the romance of life in Kraków.

This morning I did rather better as a travel writer: I went out in pursuit of coffee and buns at 7:15 AM, passing various Poles with their laden shopping bags. I found a cukiernia (bun shop) beside the famous Hala Targowa (covered market) and ordered a double espresso with milk and a yeast bun in idiomatically imperfect Polish. The word for yeast in Polish is outrageous: drożdże. This means a bun made with the creatures is a drożdżówka. Try saying that before your first coffee of the day.

But I managed and had a lifesaving coffee and a yeast bun with marmalade before returning to the Economist's flat to consult a map. The Economist was still asleep, so I merely plotted a route to Kazimierz, slapped on some sunscreen and went out again. The journey past lovely old houses, a disappointing new American-style mall, and the ivy-bedecked walls of the Old Jewish Cemetery was better than the arrival, as once I got to Kazimierz I realised that there was nothing I really wanted to do there. After an abortive attempt to buy hairpins/Kirby grips/spinki in "Jasmin", I walked back to the Economist's flat.

The Economist had awoken by this time and texted "Where are you?" just as I was climbing the stairs. He made us scrambled eggs, but I perceive that he has now fallen asleep again, so much did he enjoy yesterday's evening out with the boys. I shall have to make some noise so that he wakes up and drives me and my bag to the Market Square, where I am to meet this chap, who is also going to this wedding.

I am reminded of the duelling travel writers in Rose Macaulay's The Towers of Trebizond, since I suspect my escort may write about this wedding. Remember how I neglected to write about Polish Pretend Son's wedding so I could use the details later? The next thing I knew, it featured in this  piece in First Things. Fortunately Jozef was less interested in the details than he was in the politics. I see he used the expression "social cohesion." Every time I type "social cohesion," I lose another left-leaning reader.

When I was a young thing of twenty-two, I longed to belong to a "school" of writers, and now I perceive that I do, only it isn't strictly literary or artistic but more academic-journalistic, composed of people who go to the Traditional Latin Mass and write about it and other conservative/traditional/restorationist topics.

It's thanks to that, that I am safely housed in this nice Polish flat, but now I must stop pondering my social ties and go and put on a wedding guest dress.

*The Economist says he doesn't like being called the Giant, which suggests a miscommunication with Polish Pretend Son, who told me he liked it.

Update: I am now in a rustic hotel, suitably if warmly garbed.

*Update 2: I have returned to Grzegorzki, and the Economist says that there is a tax on plastic bags in Poland. This shakes my faith in the thrift of elderly Poles. Perhaps they are bringing old ones from home?  

After the Wedding

Polish Pretend Son’s Silesian wedding lasted the traditional two days. On Monday I sat outside the countryside hotel’s separate restaurant and admired the formal gardens and Germanic palace opposite while trying not to mind the sun too much. It was blazing away again, and I feared that no matter how often I slathered myself with sunscreen, I would wrinkle into an apple doll before my time. 

Eventually PPS himself emerged from the palace and wound his way around the formal gardens. 

“Beautiful day,” I remarked.

“Beautiful day, beautiful life,” declared the newlywed and went in to breakfast. 

That was the last I heard from PPS. Eventually he and the bride disappeared completely, driven away by the best man, I believe, bound for the airport and Paris.  

There was some confusion as to how his car-less guests were going to get back to the railway station, a repeat of Sunday’s struggle to get 20 people to Mass. There was also a long delay for the Schola had befriended some of PPS’s other traddie friends and planned to return to Wrocław with them. One Trad—the one who looks like a pre-war Austrian officer, being slim, straight-backed, dark-haired, dark-eyed and moustachioed—has a long morning grooming regimen.  

“[Austrian chap] doesn’t do formal,” explained his plump Polish-Canadian pal. He was wearing a T-shirt and smoking a cigarette. Eventually he strode off to the village shop for more tobacco. I tagged along for the exercise and to see this village shop. It was very small, with a friendly lady behind the counter and “Balkanica” thumping over the radio. The Polish-Canadian pal chatted with her fluently albeit with a Toronto accent Polish-Poles at the wedding told him was funny. 

When we returned, the Austrian appeared looking cool and fresh and prepared for a garden party. The village taxicab was summoned, and it was decided that it would take four of us away to the railway station and then return for B.A. and me. It turned out that the cab driver who had charged us double had poached us from this taxicab's driver in an act of inter-village piracy. 

The formal gardens, by the way, had box hedges, and they threw off a wonderful perfume. Wrocław smelled wonderfully, too, thanks to the linden trees. One of the Schola explained that in Scotland it never gets hot enough for our linden trees to fill the air with scent.  As the weekend was simply roasting, whenever we set foot outdoors, we were wrapped in delicious smells. 

After a half hour or more, the legitimate village taxi returned and took us to the railway station, it driver chatting gaily all the way. The little cafe in the railway station had run out of sandwiches, so the lady behind the counter cheerfully allowed us to leave our big red suitcase with her while we walked to that, rather bigger, village for lunch. Sadly, I was still wearing my wedding hat, and so looked rather ridiculous. The hat even inspired a Polish cry of “Look, she’s from England.” However, it was worth it, for we swiftly found a bakery and bought some cheesy pizza bread to eat on the railway platform. The sight of the big Germanic/Polish houses and the romantic Post Office, so conveniently near the railway station, was also satisfying. 

To my joy, the train was one of the old-fashioned ones, with a long hallway and compartments. Even better, as we raced towards Wroclaw, I saw a shirtless young farmer turning over hay with a pitchfork. Such old-fashioned country scenes I see only from Polish trains. I will never forget spotting a farmer, somewhere between Kielce and Krakow, following a horse and plough. (Nor will I forget the Astrophysicist's look of acute embarrassment when I told him of this.) 

The orange castle that is Wrocław Główny railway station swung into view, and before long B.A. was rolling our suitcase towards the Market Square.  We checked into an old-fashioned hotel different from the last, for  I had decided it would be fun to change. B.A. wanted coffee and ice-cream, so after a bit of book-shopping, we found a chocolate shop with tables and chairs on its pavement on a side street. Somehow we both ended up with ice-cream, and it was very good. We enjoyed very much looking at the ochre 18th century buildings and puzzling out the odd chocolate-themed slogans painted on the chocolate shop’s front. 

At the appointed time, we met the others at “Pijalnia” in the Market Square for beer. Our friend the Astrophysicist, who is getting married next weekend, also appeared and, when the Austrian and the Polish-Canadian left to visit the latter’s grandparents, he led us off to classier drinking establishments. 

First there was “Przedwojenny” (Pre-war, i.e. 1930s style), where we ate a number of traditional appetisers and snacks: beef tartar with raw egg and onions, cottage cheese and pork jelly, for example. Then there was a dark and shiny cocktail bar with a glass-enclosed whisky-and-cigar room. Then there was a very long walk hither and thither, around this palace and that monument, as the Astrophysicist led us to a 'Scottish' pub that turned out to be closed because of the lateness of the hour.  I was a bit drunk after my cocktail, so I am unsure as to whether or not we went to two bars after this or just one. I think it was two. 

The Astrophysicist was very eager to buy us a variety of drinks at a variety of places. There was really no stopping him. I recall drinking sweet kriek, which is a Belgian fruit beer, and giving half of it to one of the Schola when the A’s back was turned. The others also drank sliżowicz, which I thought was spiritus and thus a bad idea for non-Slavs. By midnight I was really very tired as well as drunk. When we finished up at “Pod Lantarniami”  (Under the Lanterns), I would drink only grapefruit juice, and when I discovered it was 12:45 AM, I finally made good on my threats to leave.   B.A. came with me, and after a comedy with some gates that seemed locked but weren’t, we returned to our hotel room. 

Alas for your correspondent. B.A., as he invariably does after a (thankfully rare) night of drinking, snored to make the ceiling fall. Also, sad irony, the grapefruit juice was one too much for my tummy, and I was sick. However, the old-fashioned chamber had a door between the bedroom and the vestibule, and the bed was really two singles pushed together. Thus, I was able without waking BA to take my duvet and make a nest beside the loo. The good thick door between the bedroom and the vestibule almost completely stifled B.A.’s snores, and thus I eventually fell asleep.   

Conversations in Silesia

Our Polish Pretend Son got married in his native Silesia last weekend, and naturally his British Fake Foster Parents were there.

I am not going to write much about the wedding, however, as I have the vague intention of borrowing from various Polish parties and adventures to write a heartwarming comedic thriller tragedy set at a Polish wedding.

THURSDAY

Three members of the Men's Schola and I flew to Wrocław on Thursday evening via RyanAir, all sitting apart from one another in "allocated" seats to save money. Going to Poland from Scotland with RyanAir is rather like travelling for 2.5 hours on a crowded bus. It is squashy but mundane. Before you finish your book, you have landed and are standing in a queue to have your passport inspected minutely by an unsmiling customs guard.

Although I know my passport will be scrutinised a lot longer if I speak Polish, I always do. It's daft, for it's not like anyone around is going to yell "You're in Poland: speak Polish" in Polish at me. Meanwhile, the reward for my beautifully articulated "Dobry wieczór" is a look of dark suspicion and the observation that I am in Poland a lot, as if I may have been sneaking into the country to work for zl instead of working decently at home for £ or even $.

Excitingly, this time the Customs Conversation was enlivened by B.A., who had gone before me, not being able to get through the gate.

"Bramka nie działa," I pointed out, which was probably even more suspicious than "Dobry wieczór."

The next conversation was the Bus Ticket Conversation, in which I successfully bought tickets from the young bespectacled driver and accurately answered his "where-to?" His radio was tuned to, apparently, the "Wa-Wa-Wrocław" station, and so the cheerful thump of Disco Polo music accompanied us all the way to the historic centre.

Wrocław used to be Breslau and was flattened near the end of the last World War. However, the historic centre was rebuilt, so it is very pretty.  Well, most of it is very pretty.  The Plac Dominikański, where we alighted, is ugly and modern, flanked by an ugly modern Galleria (indoor shopping mall). However, after I led us all in the wrong direction, the Master of the Men's Schola discovered the way on his phone and we soon found ourselves in our shabby chic turn-of-the-century (i.e. 1903) ex-German hotel.

It was 11 PM, but naturally the Schola was gasping for beer, so we dumped our stuff and found the Main Market Square, which is truly impressive. It is actually a square of buildings within a square, so that one can sit outside one of many bars in the middle and look at the beautiful facades around the periphery. We found a bar called "Pijalnia" ("Open 24 h"), with little tables and chairs outside. It was a very warm and dry night, so we sat down at once and looked about for a server.

It quickly dawned on us that there might not be table service, so the MMS and I approached a waitress coming out of the bar. To my horror, I completely forgot the word for "to order". Dear heavens, the Buying Drinks Conversation was awkward. However, it wasn't a complete failure, for the waitress caught my meaning and told me to order at the bar, which I successfully did.

There followed a lot of drinking of beer, of remarking on Polish girls wearing microscopic skirts, and  of discouraging a Romany beggar. I was longing to get up and look at other parts of the large and lovely square, but B.A. was afraid I'd be stolen. How happy I was when we finally went back to the hotel to sleep.

FRIDAY

The next morning I bounced down to the dining-room before the clerk got there and so breakfasted clandestinely. Then I rushed out to see all the square and the square next to it and further around and about. Although it was only 8:30 AM or so, the sun blazed away fiercely. Fearing sunburn, I scampered back to the hotel and had breakfast with B.A. This time I was stopped and checked off the list by a clerk. Polish breakfast clerks are so anxious about their clipboards, there must be a serious breakfast-stealing problem in Poland.

After breakfast the Men's Schola went off together to look at churches, and I went to the Galleria to book a manicure. The Galleria looks just like an American or British shopping mall, only with such Polish shops as Empik (books) and Sowa (cake) mixed in with H&M and Sephora and the entire staff and clientele being white, European and Polish-speaking.

After some difficulty and two short conversations (Mall Security Guard Conversation, Information Booth Conversation), I found "Mani-Pedi" and my brain froze again because I had no idea how to say, "I would like an appointment for a gel manicure, please."

When I resorted to asking if she spoke English, the young lady behind the desk looked like her brain had frozen too. The poor girl called up Google Translate on the computer to find the English for "Do you have an appointment?" She lacked the courage to pronounce the words, so she motioned me over to look. Poor sweet. I knew exactly how she felt. We both had failed the Beauty Shop Conversation.

But the upshot was that Mani-Pedi had no free slots until Monday, and I went to PPS's wedding with bare fingernails. They were tidy, at least, for I bought a package of nail files in the Galleria's Rossman toiletries store.

My feet got blistered during my morning's walk, and although my self-confidence was low, I knew I had to buy some hot weather shoes. To my pleased surprise, I knew all the necessary words, including "I take a size 38" and "I don't need the box", so my Shoe Shop Conversation has vastly improved since that October day I had to buy emergency snow boots in Kraków.

I was due to meet the Men's Schola outside St. John's Cathedral for lunch. As it happened, we met on the way, and after rejecting a restaurant opposite a church as too expensive, we found ourselves in a cheap and cheerful joint outside the old market hall. There I had a Food and Beer Ordering Conversation, which was redundant as the server clearly spoke English.

I should stress that none of these conversations were as fluent as I would have liked, and my ego was getting as blistered as my poor feet. Every week in Edinburgh I have an hour long conversation with a Polish graduate of Linguistics, and I usually natter on comfortably about anything. In Wroclaw, however,  I was having an awful time---until the Railway Ticket Conversation.

Wrocław Główny railway station looks like a long, low orange castle. It has a couple of Polish cafes, a Starbucks, a Costa Coffee, an Empik, a Biedronka grocery store, a McDonald's and a library. It has no ticket machines, so everyone has to queue up and buy his ticket directly from a person. Sadly by the time the Master of the Men's Schola and I got to the front of our queue, it was our person's break time. At the dot of 5 PM he was out of there. Alas.

MMS and I queued up again and eventually approached a middle-aged lady behind a glass window.

"Does Madame speak English?" I said politely in Polish, for this is my great get-out clause.

"Only a little," said Madame in Polish

"No harm done," I said. "We will try in Polish."

Fluency kicked in. Hooray! And what made the Railway Ticket to PPS's Village Conversation particularly sweet was that the Master of the Men's Schola was right beside me and heard it all.

There followed soon after the Coffee-and-cake in Costa Conversation, the Ticket Inspection Just-as-our-station-approached Conversation and, most gloriously, the Very Chatty Taxi Driver Conversation, although we discovered later he had charged us double the going rate. Fortunately, 70 zl is only about £14, so we were ripped off only £7, and presumably he needed it more than we did. Besides it was worth £7 to hear the cowed silence of the back seat. For the first time in history the Men's Schola shut up and listened to me for a solid 15 minutes.

Polish Pretend Son's wedding reception was in a country hotel. Originally a German Schloss, it is now a Polish pałac. PPS, looking slim and elegant (if a little frazzled), greeted us as we got out of the cab and then ordered me to register in Polish. Thus I had the Registering at a Hotel Conversation Polish hotel clerks usually conduct with foreigners in English, actually.  Then, after B.A. and I had taken possession of our luxurious 19th century suite, we went to the hotel dining room to chat with other English-speaking guests, including a priest.

PPS then took all the young men away to his bachelor party, leaving me to dine with the priest, for whom I ordered (Ordering Supper Conversation), as he speaks no Polish. This was quite easy, as the priest had been in Silesia for four days and developed a taste for both chłodnik and pierogi ruskie, which I like, too. Also, both are meatless, and it was Friday.

I was very tired, but after supper with the priest I managed one more Polish conversation. Polish Pretend Son's war-survivor grandmother was dining at a table near us with a blond lady. I recognised Babcia at once for, as it happens, PPS brought her, his father and one of his sisters to the Historical House one day. Instead of sensibly catering for Polish tastes, I had made an enormously complicated, sweet and British simnel cake, complete with marzipan decorations. Babcia had thought it a very strange cake and said so, eliciting giggles from her grandchildren and blushes from me.

I have been afraid of Babcia ever since, but I thought that it would be rotten not to acknowledge her at her grandson's wedding.  I gathered up my courage and, addressing the blonde lady, launched into the Polite Introductions Conversation. The blonde lady was, I believe, PPS's great-aunt, and it soon transpired that Babcia didn't remember me at all.  

SATURDAY

The next day, wearing meticulously correct English morning dress, Polish Pretend Son married a beautiful, tall, slim, dark-haired young radiologist. She wore a lace dress, a traditional floral wreath, and a floor-length veil. Half the female population of Edinburgh committed suicide, and t The happy couple returned to the hotel from the famous shrine in a vintage white Corvette.

The Joy of a Truly Free Press

"Listen," I said. "I come from a small country, too, a country with a big neighbour,  and so I understand. And yes, Poland got squashed several times by its big neighbours. But you mustn't care so much about what other nations think about you. You should concentrate on your achievements."

This advice did not seem to console my interlocutor one jot. Living in the UK, she bears the brunt of other people's misconceptions about Poland and the Poles. The misconceptions come mainly from the media, and I am not talking just the Daily Mail here. I am talking about the oh-so-correct Guardian and all the rest of the British establishment media. The woman who told me that Polish must come in handy for speaking to workmen at the Historical House does not read the Daily Mail.

Reflecting on what the western mainstream media has published about Poland, the woman sitting beside me seemed to be on the point of tears. Therefore, I was once again glad that last November I was able to publish this.  If I never again write anything of any importance, at least I wrote that.

One of the problems with contemporary journalism is that most newspapers can no longer afford to keep offices in several foreign countries. That is one explanation for the scandalous and appalling fake news about Poland that was foisted on the British, the Canadians and, especially, the Americans about the 2017 Polish Independence Parade in Warsaw.

There are other explanations, of course, and I remember when I first lost my touching faith in mainstream media: it was while watching a Toronto TV station's coverage of a pro-life demonstration. I had been there, and I knew that something City-TV said about it was not true.

I also flinched at the unmistakable contempt in newscaster Mark Dailey's universally beloved voice. The fake news I don't recall, but the contempt left a permanent scar. By the age of 18, I knew that lots of Torontonians despised pro-lifers, but it hadn't occurred to me that Toronto's big-voiced sweetheart did, too. I thought the press would be like, you know, neutral.

Goodness knows why I thought that after years of reading Doris Anderson in the Toronto Star. Anderson was a famous feminist, but that did disturb me until I came up with a bang against her sneering prediction that Pope John Paul II's play would bomb on Broadway but be a hit in church basements. Somehow I remember that and not all her abortion apologetics, probably because the slam was just so bizarrely petty.

I recall asking my mother about it and my mother saying something about Anderson being from out West (where anti-Catholicism presumably festered). But the objections of the lady columnists of the Toronto Star also included the saint's Polish birth. (I forget which one it was, exactly, attributed John Paul's alleged dislike of women (!) to being Polish. It probably was Anderson, but it might have been Michelle Landsberg.)  "Polish jokes" had recently been banned from the schoolyard,  and I was surprised to see such an obvious ethnic slur in the Star. 

As a matter of fact I had very little interest in Poland, but things I heard about it in childhood did linger. For example, I still cannot shake the impression, formed in 1977, that Poles (all Poles) are desperately poor. The beautifully paved road from the John Paul II airport to Krakow was, therefore, quite a shock.

I'm not sure if there's a moral in that, other than that one needs to be intelligent and be cognisant of historical changes in the countries one visits or one risks sounding stupid or even offensive.

My real point in writing this post is to celebrate the existence of a truly free press--which in English-speaking countries may mean the online press--that interrupts the unjust or merely craven narratives of the mainstream press.

I don't mean to abjure all the MSM. As long as The New York Times continues to publish Ross Douthat I will have some respect for The New York Times. But I am highly suspicious of any British, Canadian or American MSM narrative about Central and Eastern Europe right now.

Meanwhile, I am deeply contemptuous of how the British mainstream press swallows the abortion industry's lies about the British pro-life movement. (It really astonishes me how an obvious INDUSTRY has the British press in thrall, but I don't discount the role of blackmail. In Canada, abortionist Henry Morgantaler  blackmailed Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.) That, however,  is a topic for another time.

Update: The Spectator is good value, though. See this article from January, for example. It looks okay to me.

Wedding Guest Dress Found!

Polish wedding attire

Trigger Warning: Post almost entirely about women's apparel.

“We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality,” said Oscar Wilde, who was wicked but nevertheless would have been fun to go shopping with. 

That said, I am not so sure finding a nice dress for Polish Pretend Son's wedding is so trivial anyway. 

First of all, I have only one Polish Pretend Son (so far). Second, there will be photographs. Third, Poles are very blunt, so there is always the danger that some other wedding guest might say "Who is that frightfully frumpy lady?", meaning me, and in my anguish I will once again forget how to speak Polish. 

So as devoted readers know, I have been popping in and out of Edinburgh shops looking for a splendid wedding guest dress. Until today I had only got as far as buying a navy blue Jacques Vert hat on sale. In the UK, Jacques Vert is the tried-and-true label for the aunts-mothers-and-grandmothers set, but his line-up this spring does not thrill me. There is also the problem of British women's wedding clothes looking a bit odd on the Continent. If you've ever happened upon an English destination wedding in an Italian church, you may know what I mean. 

That said, Polish Pretend Son and his Narzeczona are romantic about the UK--or Poland's glorious, hat-wearing, pre-Communist past--so the N. has asked her female friends to wear hats, and I snapped up the JV number. The £ to $ calculation would have made my frugal mother and grandmother (great-grandmother, great-great-grandmother et alia) blink, but I inwardly argued that the hat was large, tipped at a jaunty angle, and half-price. Also, I told my roiling Scottish-Canadian conscience, it is navy blue, and therefore highly practical, as navy is basically a neutral, my dear.  

Its purchase meant that I would have to find a dress to go with it, which was a worry because the shops are full of on-sale navy blue shift dresses and white dresses with navy blue large floral prints, and the wedding is in June. Does one want to wear a navy shift dress (or large floral prints) to a June wedding in rural Poland? No, one does not.

To improve my chances of finding something more exciting, I went to the charity and consignment shops of Morningside. Alas, I found nothing. I also looked online (and thank you to Alias Clio for suggestions) and scrolled through images of bright bohemian maxi-dresses. They did not suit. This morning Benedict Ambrose and I went to a very modish ladies' tailor shop and examined an azure tweed suit. Although value for money (£500, cough), it was totally inappropriate for a Polish wedding.

But then B.A. and I went to that Mecca of high-end charity shops, Stockbridge, and BEHOLD, we found a delightfully embroidered pale blue gown at the Red Cross emporium. As a denouement, we also found a beaded midnight-blue-lace-over-"nude"-slip shift dress at Oxfam. It was only £15, and B.A. said I ought to get it, so we went back to the Historical Shelter with two wedding dresses.

To my surprise, the navy JV hat goes better with the pale blue gown than with the midnight blue lace, so the pale blue gown wins. I will wear the midnight blue to the second, non-hat, Polish wedding I'm attending in June.

B.A. will be wearing a kilt to PPS's wedding. My sartorial drama is over, but B.A.'s continues because he has only a Prince Charlie jacket for the evening and still needs a jacket for the day wedding. B.A. has literally skipped a wedding ceremony because he does not own a day jacket. (Wearing an evening jacket before 4 PM is apparently akin to stabbing your own mother and dancing on her corpse.)  But he is not allowed to skip Polish Pretend Son's wedding ceremony, and so the hunt is on.

The Mini-Break Part 3

Bust of Jan Matejko, Painter

To my surprise I received an email from someone impatiently waiting to hear about the Sunday of our  mini-break in Kraków. That was encouraging, so I will consult my travel journal.

Means

Sunday was a little stressful, actually, because I knew we would be squeezed for time between Mass and our flight back to Scotland, some of which would be taken up by me explaining to Polish security guards that B.A. can't go through metal detectors.

There are no shortage of Sunday masses in Kraków, which is probably the most devotional big Catholic city in Europe, if not the entire world, but B.A. insisted on going to the Traditional Latin Mass, and the only one before our flight was at 10:30 AM. According to my calculations, we had to catch the airport train at 12:07 PM.

However, I mapped out our morning to be as relaxed as possible. We had already pruned some belongings so as to fit my new books and "Red-is-Bad" white eagle shirt into our bags, and we checked out of the hotel at 8:40 AM. We took the enormous birthday bouquet of tulips to the Church of the Holy Cross, which was already open, and B.A. laid it on the Mary altar. People were coming in for the 9 AM Mass, and a recorded version of Lulajze Jezuniu  (a traditional Christmas carol) was playing softly through discreet speakers.

Beans

Then we headed back along the Old Market and down yet another mediaeval street to Szczepański Square and "Charlotte", which is a French-style hipster bakery, bistro and cafe. "Charlotte" is kitty-corner from the Szołayski House National Museum---I realise that that that is the second "SZ" in a row there, but bear with me.

(Polish SZ is not that scary--it's just like the "sh" sound in "shower." CZ is basically like the "ch" in "Charlotte." SZCZ is sh'ch. After two years of practise, you'll be able to say Szczepański and Szołayski in no time.)

Szczepański Square had a dozen or so big many-sided posters in its middle, celebrating the heroes of Polish Independence because 2018 is the 100th anniversary of the end of the Partitions. We had looked at them the night before; helpfully the captions were in English as well as Polish. So what really drew our eye that morning was the little crowd of 20-somethings patiently waiting outside "Charlotte" for the door to open. It opened on the dot of nine, and I was very happy we had been there in time to get a good table with a view of the Square, or at least of the bust of painter Jan Matejko looking across at the Szołayski House National Museum from his perch in the baroque facade of the "Palace of Art."

I was also very happy I had done my research and picked "Charlotte" for our pre-church destination because it was big and bright and hipstery, with walls painted white or left rough stone, a cathedral-ceiling, variated levels, and really, really good croissants. The music was French and nostalgic, by which I mean it was a mix of French 1960s pop,  French war-time and 1950s music hall songs, and French jazz. (The breakfast room at our hotel had played horrible cheesy American and British rock/R&B/whatever at a high volume, so after Friday morning, I avoided it except for coffee, which was bad.) The coffee at Charlotte was very good indeed.

It may have been sunny; yes, I think the sun came out and lit up the gold painted panels flanking Jan Matejko's head. Benedict Ambrose ate a plain croissant and read a copy of the Spectator; I hoovered an almond croissant, a piece of quiche and two cups of black coffee while watching the bistro fill up with twenty-somethings. Although some had big, travel backpacks, these were, for the most part, Polish-speaking twenty-somethings. There were also some married-with-children Polish twenty-somethings, either heading for tables downstairs or waiting in the queue for loaves of fresh French bread.

Teens

Kraków always strikes me as a city full of young people. This may be because of the universities, or because the young of the region flee there from their villages for work and variety, or because Poles of my generation had rather more children, and at a younger age, than my generation in general, and now these children are in their teens and twenties. Whatever the reason, they are a pleasant and cheerful sight, almost always slim and usually attractive. Well, the girls are usually attractive. The boys run the gamut; the Astrophysicist once sweepingly denounced his countrymen as ugly. You should hear what he said about English girls in Plymouth, though. Ouch.

Church

After an hour or so, we headed back to the Church of the Holy Cross, hoping to find a coveted back pew so as to slip out early, if necessary, for our train. Ha, ha, ha. When we got there, we saw people, and their baby carriages, crowding in the door and when we jostled our own way in, we saw that the church was packed and that the only seats available were ancient wooden boxes on the sides of the nave or up in the very mediaeval choir section between the High Altar and the communion rail.  B.A. objected to not being able to see the altar---"Or there's no point!" he hissed heretically--and so we ended up on two chairs set up in the aisle between choir stalls.

I was wearing my faux-bear fur hat, as everyone could see, so I jammed it further down my big head so as to take up as little of the view as possible. There were no mantillas in the choir stall; Continental  Trads are not as wedded to mantillas or even hats-for-women-at-Mass as women in English-speaking countries are. The younger men were wearing suits (or, in case B.A. objects to this word--jackets and trousers that may or may not have matched) and ties and looked keen and a bit ferocious.

In a country where over 90% are Catholics, of whom 40% of go to Sunday Mass*,  and the priests and bishops largely orthodox, strict, and (as far as I've seen) straight-looking, it takes a Very Special Kind of Person to go to Traditional Latin Mass in Poland. I think I overheard on Friday night that the vast majority of young men to go to the TLM are hyper-patriots or, not to put a fine point on it, "alt-right", but I highly doubt there has been a scientific study done.

Anyway, the TLM at the Church of the Holy Cross was said by a friendly- and fatherly-looking Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter priest in his late forties. The choir led hymns instead of singing the propers, which disappointed stickler B.A. There was a very lovely Christmas tree, even though the purple vestments alerted us to the fact that it was Septuagesima, and the priest highlighted the contrast in his homily. At least, I think he did.  He definitely commented on how nice and homey the Christmas decorations all over Krakow were, and he definitely talked about our fallen state and  warfare of some kind.

TLM enthusiasts will be interested to know that there was no incense, both the Epistle and Gospel were read aloud in Polish after they were announced in Latin, and there was no Second Confiteor.

I was grateful for that shortcut because time really started speeding up after the homily. I had planned our exit for 11:30 AM, but we were trapped behind the communion rail, and B.A. refused to budge until the last communicant had received. I was in agony of fear lest we miss our train, miss our plane, and generally have a financial disaster. Originally we were supposed to fly home on Sunday night, but RyanAir upped and cancelled hundreds of thousands of flights last autumn, and after getting a partial refund out of them, I had to book EasyJet's 1:30 PM.

However, when we left at 11:40 AM, eyes cast down to the floor to avoid the curious gaze of Polish Trads, I discovered that it didn't take as long as I thought to walk to the railway station, and when we found the platform, a man on it told B.A. we could buy tickets on-board.

Lurch

Unfortunately, I was down to our last 15 zl in cash, and tickets came to 18 zl, so I really should have ignored Mr. Excuse to Speak English and found a ticket machine. For, to my utter humiliation and horror, when the young ticket collector came by, we discovered she did not take credit or debit cards.

For some reason, I found this unbearably humiliating and promptly forgot how to speak Polish, and as the now extremely uncomfortable and irritated ticket collector sat down across from us, waiting for me to come up with the 3 zl (i.e. 75 p) we didn't have, a kind-hearted duo of Polish women on the other side of the aisle voluntarily paid them. I found this so unbearably humiliating that I wanted to DIE. Even now I have to remind myself that although in 1990 everyone was painting their Easter eggs with the juice of onion skins, nowadays Poles of working age usually have a few zlotys to throw around, even to bail out foreign morons. B.A. smiled and said "Dziękuję" a lot as I descended into a black and wordless gloom.

Delight

Anyway, we got to the airport in plenty of time, and I managed to make my special speech about B.A.'s "tube in brain" and not to take it amiss when the security guard, after asking me if my husband spoke Polish, switched to English to address B.A. directly. One of my spiritual/psychological goals on this trip was not to be disappointed whenever Poles switched to English, and so I never was. That said, outside of hotel staff, most Poles I spoke to were happy to stick to Polish.

And that is that, except that when I got through Passport Control--the border guard successfully suppressing a smile when he asked me what I had been doing in Poland and I said I liked Poland very much--I found Benedict Ambrose in an animated conversation with Polish Pretend Daughter and French Pretend Son-in-Law. They had been visiting her mother for a week.

Our Flight

On the airplane, we had more good luck, for there was no-one in our window seat, and so I slid into it to continue reading Siostrzeniec Czarodzieja (The Magician's Nephew) and The Art of Travel. The same noisy drunk British woman whose laugh had so irritated B.A. on the way over was also on our flight, but perhaps she didn't drink this time, for I never noticed her.

*If 40 36.7% Mass attendance sounds low for Polish Catholics, you should know that of the 15% of the residents of Scotland who are Catholic, only 19% of them go to Sunday Mass. This is about the same figure for English-speaking Catholics in Canada; I won't depress you with the numbers for French-Canadians.

The Mini-Break Part 2

  Is it still hyper-patriotic if you're not actually Polish? Hmm...

On the second proper day of Benedict Ambrose's and my mini-break in Krakow,  I didn't leave our hotel until ten to noon because, as you may remember from yesterday, I had one of the three worst hangovers of my life. It was a truly epic hangover. Unlike those other two hangovers, however, I came to the conclusion that this hangover was a price worth paying for the revelries of the night before. It also provided two men with opportunities for heroism: the Astrophysicist imparted his knowledge of hangover remedies, and B.A. went out and got me one.

START

By the time the church bells rang the Angelus, B.A. and I were scurrying through the Old Market  back towards Ul. Grodzka and I felt well enough to make the Angelus responses and even to look forward to eating lunch. This was in Balaton, a Hungarian restaurant recommended long ago by the Astrophysicist, who knows many useful things. There we found him, blond and resplendent in an excellent suit* and tie, and we embraced or shook hands and then sat, and I praised him for his grapefruit hangover remedy.

We had only just ordered when Polish Pretend Son, dark but also resplendent in suit* and tie, and Polish Future Pretend Daughter-in-Law appeared. There was more greeting and then congratulating back and forth, as the Astrophysicist, too, is getting married.

The conversation was largely about weddings until the Astrophysicist asked if we had heard of Jordan Peterson, which naturally we had. And I think it very interesting, and glorious for Canada, that five different people, three of them Poles, sitting in a Hungarian restaurant in Krakow, all knew who Jordan Peterson was and how he had greatly discomfited a British interviewer on the UK's Channel 4.

PFPDiL was wearing a T-shirt from a hyper-patriotic Polish clothing store, which I recognised, having perused their website during the January sales and concluded that few were suitable for non-Poles. The T-shirt, featuring Pacman about to swallow Karl Marx's head, was a gift from PPS.

Meanwhile the Astrophysicist, B.A. and I ate enormous helpings of goulash with potato pancakes and  PPS and PFPDiL helped us drink a bottle of red wine. Then PFPDiL took a photo of us all (and my splendid fake bear-fur hat, which hitherto I have forgotten to mention), and off the happy couple went for their train north.

MART

After the Astrophysicist paid the bill, we entreated him to come with us on our book-buying expedition, and sure enough he found for us a bookstore that carried the book I wanted before toddling off to meet a Krakow friend for coffee. This bookstore is called De Revolutionibus Books and Cafe, in honour of Copernicus, and it is extremely cool. Indeed, I felt extremely cool perusing the Theology section, so glamorously near the Philosophy section, as in Oooooh, look at me, hanging out in the intellectual Polish bookshop in Krakow; I am soooo cosmopolitan, y'all. You would think that at my age I would be beyond such posturing but, sadly, no.

Then, clutching my intellectual copies of Książę Kaspian and Podróż "Wędrowca do świtu", I wandered happily through the back streets of the Old Town with B.A. until we came across the hyper-patriotic Polish clothing store. There was a sale rack. I was terribly tempted by the T-shirt illustrated with a lurid scene from the Battle of Jasna Góra, but B.A. thought it was too lurid, which left a lot of shirts stating firmly (in both Polish and Magyar) that Hungarians and Poles are brothers or that Poland is OUR country, or depicting various battle-weary soldiers or an elegant if enormous White Eagle.

I decided for the Eagle. The very pretty salesgirl beamed and said something complicated about sizes, which I didn't quite understand, but there was no way I was going to speak English to a Pole in the hyper-patriotic Polish clothing store, so I stuck with the size in hand, which does indeed fit.

"Happy birthday," said B.A. whose present it was. (We had agreed beforehand that I would choose my own present.) And then we toddled along with our rather political shopping bag until we came across our favourite grumpy lady cafe.

TART

There are many pastry shops--called cukierni--in Krakow, and many cater to foreign tourists. Our favourite grumpy lady cafe does not. It is entirely authentic, which means the women behind the counter have no customer service skills, charge extra if you want to put milk in your coffee, and have a door to the loo that can be unlocked only with coins. But authenticity also means that the cafe is scrupulously clean, that the coffee is excellent, and that the pastries are good. Elderly Polish ladies sit huddled in corners under mohair berets and scrawny Polish men in caps wander in accompanied by strapping sons to order cakes to take home. We love this cafe.

Sure enough, the woman behind the counter was true to the spirit of the place, for she refused to sell me a piece of makowiec (poppyseed cake) as it could not be cut and served in the shop but only sold by the gram to be taken away. This made no sense to me, but at the first sign of conflict my Polish dissipates like a cloud of vapour and the only English word the sprzedawka knew was "No", which was itself confusing as "No" in Polish means "Well ..." or even sometimes "Yes".  In the end I had a sweet cheese tartlet. B.A., as always, had kremówka in honour of St. John Paul II.  The coffee was excellent.

ART

Afterwards we went to the National Gallery of Art in the Old Market for its last hour of the day, where we happened upon the Astrophysicist on his way out, and admired various classics of Polish national art, like Wanda committing suicide, Nero watching Christians being burned alive and storks conspiring darkly together. We then went back to the hotel for a rest before venturing out for some cheap pierogis at a back street shop popular with the young of all the world.

ATHWART   

B.A. was not very hungry, so I bought just 10 pierogis and a small glass of beer, and to my surprise, B.A. enjoyed both pierogis and beer enormously. We got there at a lucky moment, finding a central table before the young of all the world arrived en masse and stood in a queue in front of the old fashioned counter. The two languages of this restaurant, the Koko Tavern, were Polish for the Poles and English for everyone else, including the couple beside us. The female half sat down while saying, "Not even a smile", which suggested that Koko Tavern was also very authentic vis-a-vis customer service. The male half complained about trying to learn Polish after studying Russian, and the words getting confused in his head. He himself had a Mediterranean accent of some sort, possibly Greek.

RAMPART

And then B.A. and I, having paid in advance, went out and had a slightly damp walk in the romantic drizzle, enjoying all the romantic Italian renaissance architecture, the expensive menus in the restaurant windows and the Christmas decorations hanging gamely on until, we assume, Candlemas. We returned to our hotel at about 10 and went straight to bed.

*B.A. says they weren't wearing suits but jackets and trousers. I say the word "suit" denotes jackets and trousers in Canada. At any rate, they looked splendid as usual. B.A. was wearing trousers, a pullover and a tie. The Giant, when he was on the scene, was not not so formally dressed, I seem to recall. I believe one word to describe the Giant, in comparison with our other Polish men friends, is "normal."

The Mini-Break Part 1

We are back in the Historical House after our weekend trip to Kraków. There were no major mishaps, a blessing for which I am truly thankful.

FLIGHT

We even had good luck on the airplane--on the way there B.A. had an empty seat beside him up in Row 5 and I had an empty seat on either side of me down in Row 31. On the way back, when we were allocated seats together, there was no-one in the window seat, and I could slide over. Thus, we were as comfortable as you can be on the cheapest airlines.

Well, on the way there, B.A. had to listen to the loud cackling of British women who'd had too much to drink. I, happily, was entertained by the rather limited, and therefore comprehensible, conversations of young Polish families, saying such things (in Polish) as "Look! Look! What is it?", presumably while holding picture books, and (near arrival), "There isn't much snow, but there are Christmas trees" and "We're landing!"

BLIGHT

I exulted in the cold, dry air that greeted us on the train platform, for it reminded me of proper Canadian winters. And we were both pleased by the baroque luxury of our hotel, which we nevertheless left at once to find something to eat. This is easier said than done on Thursday night at 11 PM unless you're willing to go to McDonalds or a kebab shop, and B.A. wasn't. We ended up in a "Carrefour" grocery store on Ul. Grodzka (Grodzka St.) and bought supplies for a hotel room picnic.

There and back we crossed the Old Market Square, advertised as the biggest piazza in Europe, and to our consternation heard a gang of Englishmen howling "When the Saints Come Marching In" and a gang of Scotsmen baying "Flower of Scotland." Kraków is still a favourite destination of stag parties, for which the British are, unfortunately, notorious. For a long moment, I bitterly regretted not having gone to Wrocław instead.

SIGHT

However, joy came on Friday morning when we set off into the cold towards Wawel Hill, via Planty, so as to avoid touristy Ulica Floriańska (Florian Street), but also because the tree-dotted park surrounding the Old Town is so pretty, even in a snowless late January. There were rather sobering posters posted here and there saying, in Polish, that a certain Piotr had disappeared during a night out in Kazimierz, and if anyone had seen him, please call, inform Facebook, etc. Real life was front and centre in Planty.

Benedict Ambrose was much more interested in Wawel Cathedral than in Wawel Castle and pointed out that there is no admission fee to the Cathedral proper. However, I decided to splash out and purchase tickets to visit the massive Sigismund Bell, the Royal Crypts and various Cathedral chapels closed to the non-paying public, plus electronic guides in English (for B.A.) and Polish (for me).

My Polish electronic guide, I later decided, was my Friday penance, for it definitely showed up my inadequacies, not only in Polish, but in the operation of electronic devices. (Climbing the steep steps to the Sigismund Bell was another penance, for I have developed a fear of heights in the past twelve years.) We spent three hours in Wawel Cathedral, with prayers in the curtained-off Chapel of the Most Holy Sacrament, which was my favourite part.  But I was very impressed by the sarcophagi of Polish writers, like Adam Mickiewicz, and generals, like Władysław Sikorski. Sikorski's sarcophagus is right beside that of Jan Sobieski III, which rather blew my mind. Everyone who has any interest in Polish history really ought to buy the tickets for Wawel Cathedral and not just toddle in for free.

After a quick and cheap lunch on Ul. Grodzka, we walked across the bridge over the Wisła River to Kazimierz and found the Ethnographic Museum. We had never been before, and I thought it was stupendous. On the ground floor are reconstructions of Polish peasant huts, a 1930s village schoolroom, mills, an oil press, etc. On the next floor are examples of every tool and craft known to local countryfolk up until mass production arrived--cheese moulds, tridents, bear traps, fox traps, bird traps, horse brasses, looms. The exhibit gave the impression the local farmers were still using all that stuff, made by themselves by hand on long winter evenings, until 1967, but this surely cannot be true. At any rate, the latest-looking exhibit was a photo from a village wedding in 1967.  Most of these objects were labelled only in Polish, so I greatly enjoyed translating them for B.A.

There were many fascinating photographs of pre- and inter-war village life, and a room lined with folk costumes from all the regions around, plus examples of embroidered jackets that filled me with admiration for the needlewomen who made them. There were also such interesting objects for entertainment and revels as masks and animal heads for New Year's Eve shenanigans, which were obviously pagan and definitely creepy, painted eggs for Easter and "szopki"--elaborate manger scenes--for Christmas.

As traditionalists know, the Christmas season does not definitively end until February 2, and Kraków still had her Christmas decorations--include szopki in many a restaurant window--up. Meanwhile, the Ethnographical Museum had a third floor, but Benedict Ambrose was exhausted, so instead of finding it, we went back to the hotel so he could nap before the BIG EVENT of the day: my birthday dinner.

NIGHT

For, lo, at around 6 PM a little party of beautiful young people, comprised of Polish Pretend Son, Polish Future Pretend Daughter-in-Law and their friend The Giant, appeared in the lobby of our hotel. They bore an enormous globe of red tulips, tied with red and green ribbons, a box of chocolates handmade by PFPDiL, and a hardcover copy of Father Jozef Tischer's Short Handbook for Life, which was highly flattering to my Polish-reading skills. There was some delay as the hotel found me a vase big enough for the bouquet, and then we went out to dinner in a traditional cellar restaurant.

The Giant could not bring himself to eat meat on a Friday, which I thought showed a lot of integrity. The rest of us ate masses of pig, preceded by grilled oscypek cheese served with cranberry sauce. I was delighted to have real Poles to consult about such important cultural question raised by the Ethnographical Museum as to what chocioły (see photo) are or were.

Afterwards we went to a local beer aficionado bar, and then we walked through the bitter cold to Kazimierz, me displaying my vast improvement in conversational Polish to PPS.  Our goal was the famously hipster cocktail bar Alchemia, which was full of young people and the more adventurous of foreign tourists. One can smoke in Alchemia, and B.A. complained that it was like being transported back to the 1970s, but PPS and the Giant happily smoked cigars and I happily downed hot chocolate (real, thick drinking chocolate) with bourbon. Then, B.A. feeling weary, we all walked back to the Old Town and said good night to B.A. in the lobby of our hotel.

Then there was a magical hour, I think, in which the four of us wandered up and down the cold mediaeval streets visiting vodka bar after vodka bar. There was a truly festive atmosphere as many other people, mostly young Poles and Ukrainians, were out doing the same thing. With B.A. away, my young companions switched to Polish, switching back to English only when it was clear I couldn't understand. A mysterious and romantic mist hovered over the scene despite the cold. The feeling of otherworldliness I experienced must have been compounded by the vodka, but I didn't feel drunk until that last walk back to my hotel. I suspect the refreshing cold air between shots is the explanation for my wrongful belief I was sober.

TIGHT

Long, long ago, I took it as a life lesson that I must never match Poles shot-for-shot when they are drinking vodka. Unfortunately, I forgot this lesson on Friday night. It was all so merry and companionable that it never once occurred to me that there are consequences to knocking back several shots of vodka within a single hour.

"I am so drunk," Benedict Ambrose (a light sleeper) says I told him. And I definitely was. I fell asleep clutching B.A.'s hand and woke up a few hours later to be violently sick in the loo.

The next morning I was horribly, horribly, horribly ill, and had to cancel a morning coffee meeting with another young Polish friend, the Astrophysicist. Feeling utterly desperate, I asked him over the phone how to cure hangovers, and he sympathetically advised grapefruit juice, tomato juice or, if I was feeling adventurous, the juice from a jar of sauerkraut. Water, he assured me, was useless.

I was already beginning to suspect this, so I put on my coat to go out with B.A. to get some grapefruit juice, but then felt so ill again that I merely collapsed into bed. B.A. bravely went out for the grapefruit juice by himself. Fortunately "grapefruit juice" in Poland is called "nektar grejpfrut", so B.A. found it without any trouble. I got some into my stomach and then slept, facedown, in my coat for an hour, and then woke up and was miraculously able to head out with B.A. to our noon lunch appointment.

To be continued...

Coming Up for Air

Does anyone want to read about someone who works all the time?  Hot Fuzz, the famous British comedy about workaholic cop Nicholas Angel, was brilliantly funny. It is one of the few films that has literally made me weep with laughter. But in reality....

Perhaps not that interesting.

Nevertheless, my parents still read my blog, so this is what my weekday looks like:

6:50 AM --Wake up, thinking about work.

7:15 AM -- Check Facebook, thinking about work.

8:00 AM - 11:00 AM -- Language study/get groceries/laundry/housework.

11 AM - 7 (or 8) PM -- Work.

7 PM or 8 PM -- Make dinner and eat it with B.A. Think about work. Take breaks to check work. 

8 PM - 11 PM -- Try not to think about work. 

It's Saturday, and I don't want to think about work. Shortly I will close the computer and look up Polish words instead. One brilliant thing about language study is that it is all-absorbing, which means it prevents me from thinking about work. 

Of course, sometimes I translate something for work, which means I am doing language study and work at the same time. 

While I work, Benedict Ambrose sits in a chair between the radiator and the empty fireplace and convalesces. He is slowly gaining weight, but his eyes are still sunken in his lined face. He reads a lot of Catholic news, so when I ask him at supper what he's done today, the conversation becomes about work. 

The change from writing (tops) an article a week to writing up to three articles a day has been nerve-wracking. It's an entire different discipline. In fact, the first activity isn't really a discipline: it's just fun. Well, maybe not ENTIRELY fun.

When I wrote this article, I spent several hours in my guesthouse room or in a cafe reading and translating (with dictionaries) various Polish news articles. Since I had been at the Warsaw Independence March anyway, out of sheer curiosity, it made sense to write it all up the next day and send it to Catholic World Report. I was a year ahead of my time; the western media took more of an interest THIS year, when I wasn't there.

Not being there made it a bit frustrating to write THIS article, but it was morally necessary to write it because of all the fake news in the English-language press. This time I had to contact people who WERE there and would both talk to me and consent to their names appearing in LSN. And now, of course, I have set deadlines, so I usually need people to talk to (or message) me at once. 

Another frustration is that Poland (not just Polish) is hard for the English-speaking world to understand, and the English-speaking world is hard to explain to Poles who don't speak much English. It's like trying to explain the Second Amendment to the American Constitution to Swedes, and Swedish comfort with nudity to Americans. 

One of the problems papered over by the Agents of Diversity is that people--peoples--actually are really diverse. It's not just their foodstuffs, or their religious traditions, or what women wear. It's also their relationship to the physical environment in which they live, and their attitude towards politicians, and their concepts of manhood or womanhood, and their histories, and their borders. 

Diversity is not changing dresses on a Barbie Doll. Sometimes diversity is almost all people in a given area sharing a multi-generational experience of the same place, language and history. That's not how it is in my hometown Toronto, but as much as I love Toronto, I don't think the world is or should be a giant Toronto. 

With the exception of conquest of the Channel Islands by the Nazis (which is almost never spoken of), Britain hasn't been invaded since 1066. Perhaps that's why the English* allowed their borders--mental, religious, cultural, personal, sexual--to have become so porous, whereas the Poles--whose borders have been erased and redrawn dozens of times in the past thousand years--have firm and distinct borders regarding Poland and Polish life. 

Complicating this, are internal Polish battles over what these are or should be. From a conservative Polish point of view, a left-wing Pole (still absolutely furious that the conservative PiS party won the last election) would sell his grandmother on the streets of Brussels, let alone write a whiny article in the Guardian about how awful Poland is. 

Anyway, so much for my attempt not to think about work on a Saturday. Maybe I will flee the Historical House and take refuge in a hipster cafe.

*Update: Britishness, by the way, is by its very nature multi-national and multi-ethnic. Canada has never had colonies--being made up of former British colonies--but it too has always been dramatically multi-ethnic, starting with three major groups: First Nations peoples, French-speaking Canadians (mostly descended from the French) and English-speaking Canadians (mostly descended from, or born in, Britain). 

Mullarkey Strafes the Poles

Jezu, ufam Tobie.

Dear, dear, dear. Artist and critic Maureen Mullarkey thinks the image of the Divine Mercy is girly and that Sister Faustina was a self-aggrandizing rival to Saint Teresa of Avila. I'd bet my growing collection of Polish dictionaries that Mullarkey has never read Sister Faustina in Polish, let alone in the context of Polish culture, but fine. If Mullarkey thinks the Divine Mercy image is "an astral fetish"  and that Sister Faustina is not her cup of tea, good for Mullarkey.

However, one (one) reader protested Mullarkey's post, pointing out how Catholic Poland still is, and so now Mullarkey takes obvious joy in quoting Time magazine, Der Spiegel and Telegraph---all undisputed friends of Polish Catholicism, no?--articles that suggest Polish Catholicism is on the skids. There's a big difference in disliking Sister Faustina and reveling in a people's sins. One is a matter of taste, and the other is a nasty old sin in itself.

From an intellectual point of view, Mullarkey also makes some unfounded claims about the Divine Mercy shrine, claiming it is meant to rival the Jasna Góra shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa. Really? Evidence? Quotes? Polish sources?

Polish sources?

Polish sources?

I would not bother writing about this if I didn't think it was a gift to Polish readers who enjoy a good fight. Personally I don't enjoy fighting with Poles, and when the Catholic Register gave my piece on Gdansk a particularly tone-deaf headline ("Poles Need to Learn Meaning of Freedom"), I burst into horrified tears.

Meanwhile, I'm also writing about this because I am hyper-sensitive about anti-Polonism, which has been in the USA as long as German migrants have. Among them were branches of my own ancestors, and apparently my Irish/German-American granny was not above yelling "You stupid Po**k" when cut off in traffic. Ah, Chicago. What a lively place you are, or were.

 Whack fol the diddle lol the dido day.

Chicago's Irish Catholics (from whom I more obviously spring--see face -->) were NOTORIOUS for shoving the Italians and Poles off the archdiocesan sidewalks, as it were. This is why St. Patrick's Day in Chicago gave rise to massive St. Joseph's Day celebrations. Speaking as a Cummings regarding a Mullarkey, I raise my left eyebrow slightly.

I am also hyper-sensitive about people spewing nonsense about Poland because I know from six years of graft how difficult it is to understand Poland, never mind Polish. You cannot just mouth off about it after reading freaking Time magazine. When I visited Warsaw in 2011 I was absolutely amazed that a church on Marszałkowska Street was packed to the rafters for daily Mass. When I returned to Kraków, I told my publisher's head of sales this, and he frowned in confusion at my amazement. "But it was First Friday," he said.

William Hunt, "Light of the World"

I'm not saying that Polish devotion hasn't dropped off somewhat; I'm merely pointing out that Mullarkey hasn't done her research. And I would suggest to Mullarkey that as much as she dislikes the Divine Mercy image (which is no worse, and the Kazmirowski version is certainly better, than William Hunt's "Light of the World", IMHO), she should refrain from mouthing off about Polish Catholicism, about which she knows clearly knows little or else she would not be going cap in hand to Der Spiegel for information.

I will end this by relating an anecdote about an exuberant Polish homosexual party boy I know who teared up over a statuette of the Divine Mercy. The statuette was a gift from Polish Pretend Son to a trad Catholic, who was unsure if PPS was joking or not. All we sophisticated liturgical purists looked solemnly at the kitschy thing while PPS smirked darkly and the exuberant  Polish homosexual party boy perked up.

"Ah, the Divine Mercy," gushed the latter. "Jezu, ufam Tobie!  [Jesus, I trust in you]"--and tears sprang to his eyes. If I remember correctly, they actually dribbled down his face. Then he stopped himself, laughed and said, "I am crazy, you know?"

Since that day I have prayed to the Divine Mercy, a devotion to which I was hitherto indifferent, for that exuberant  Polish homosexual party boy.

***
Squirrel Diet-Vocab Pact Day 5: Squirrel ate fewer than 400 calories yesterday, and I disapprove. She is supposed to eat about 800 calories a day. If she wants to fast all Friday as a penance, that is swell, but this is this the 800 calorie a day Blood Sugar diet, not a frat house dare.

Here are her stats:

Weight 10 stone 12 (152 pounds)

Bust 36

Waist 31.5

Belly 35

Hips 42

Thigh 24

As for me, I compiled a list of 15 words at 11:30 PM and studied them before I fell asleep. This was not ideal, but it was a very busy day. I got all but one when I woke up.

Learning Language with TV

Oh the spongy, fresh, language-learning brains of children. When I was a child, new children from foreign countries occasionally appeared in my classroom. One was intensely secretive about where she came from, which may have been habitual to kids who had escaped from behind the Iron Curtain. She was from what was still called Yugoslavia. There was also a boy who came from Romania. Both of these children showed up speaking fluent English.

I don't know how the Serbian girl learned English so quickly, but I do know the secret of the Romanian boy. He sat before the television set  all summer and binged on "Happy Days." He literally learned English from the Fonz. Well, we all know  (or anyone over 40 knows) what the Fonz would say to that.

"Eyyyyy!"

Learning language from television shows is now recommended by various pop polyglots including Paul Noble and Gabriel Werner. Their suggestion is to watch shows you already know and loved--wildly successful shows including 50 or, better yet, 100 episodes--dubbed into the language you are learning.  Noble, whose super-easy Italian materials I am reading, suggested Friends.

I never watched Friends.  Squinting into the past, I see that the only shows I watched even semi-regularly were X-Files and Babylon Five.  From 1996 to 2009 I didn't own a television, and when at my parents' I deplored my mother's love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and other gorefests, shutting my bedroom door firmly upon the shrieks and moans of horror and pain coming from the living room TV.

But in the 1980s, my show of shows was Scarecrow and Mrs King, and to my joy, I have found it dubbed into Italian on youtube. I haven't found it for sale as yet, but Youtube fits the bill.

Polish is more complicated because the Poles do not dub foreign-to-them shows. Traditionally they have a reader (or lektor) reading a Polish translation over the original dialogue. Meanwhile, unlike the Italians and the Germans, they never developed a love for Scarecrow and Mrs King. This is without doubt because of timing: a show in which the baddies are usually Soviet spies was never going to be shown in the People's Republic of Poland.

The Wall came down in time for the Poles to see Friends, however. Here is a lektor reading along to Friends.

You may perceive the problem. It's even worse here with Big Bang Theory:

Thus I am as yet unsure as how to best improve my Polish by binging on television shows. It is all their fault for loving lektors so much and turning up their noses at the wonderful art of dubbing, which was perfected, I'm told, by the Germans.

Update: I have been reminded that Disney films for children are dubbed into Polish. This may be the way forward. There may be a Polish Disney Princess binge-viewing in my future.