Serious Whinge

Now, while I appreciate that Starbucks, Costa coffee and the like are the Dark Angels of Globalization, at least a girl can go in on her own and drink a coffee undisturbed.
Why is it that I cannot simply sit peacefully on a bench in the Planty and eat my sandwiches without some fat old drunk assuming that I require his company? Piss-artists of Poland: Go Away! I vant to be alone. [melodramatic flounce].

Things are looking bad, very bad: even Harry Belafonte is not helping. I have had to break into my emergency HMS Pinafore supplies. I haven't yet resorted to the double Iolanthe CD, but it's coming, I can feel it.

In almost five months, I have managed comprehensively to ruin both my personal finances and my romantic life, and I still don't understand more than about the first three words that anyone says to me. And the food is Awful. Sorry, but I'm never going to be a fan of kielbasa and potatoes.

Dearly though I love the British higher education system (ahem) it is grossly overpriced for the returns you get on it. As a consequence I now spend over a third of my take-home pay on loan repayments. This hurts especially because almost all the other the British expats I've met so far are buying up land (even if only a parking space) as if it were on two for one at Sainsbury's. I can barely afford to eat meat, let alone invest in property.

A friend back in London says she looks forward to seeing me in the orange-painted EasyNursingHome in fifty years time when our scant National Insurance contributions have finally become obsolete...

Right now, I fail to see how being in Krakow is furthering my career or indeed bringing me any benefit at all. Except that I finally learnt to use the brakes on my rollerblades. But this was more a question of survival (not to mention saving face) than anything else.

Can anyone give me a decent reason not to hitch a lift (or indeed skate) back to Katowice and jump on the next WizzAir to London where I can live out of my parents' fridge and earn a fortune (in fat shiny British pounds) as a French PA to a hedge fund manager in the City??

***

It is now about six hours later. Things are ever so slightly better. I have realised that, however bad a day I am having, it can't be nearly as bad as that of the grumpy girl with the tattoos in the ex-commie grocer's (sorry...) next door. If she's not bailing yet, then I have no excuse.
Next time she's out for a fag break in our yard I'm going to strike up a conversation. I can't wait to see the look of abject horror...