Drobne.

Dziś zrobiłam moją pierwszą awanturę w sklepie... po polsku.

Walking to school after church I wanted a bottle of water, so I ducked into a newsagent's on Bracka and picked up 50cl of Kropla Beskidu niegazowana.

- Two złote

I handed over a fifty-złotych note, having only just been to the cashpoint.

- 'I can't take that,' said the guy; 'don't you have two złote?'

I left the bottle on the counter and walked out in high dudgeon.

Three paces down the street I stopped, too furious to go on.
I simply didn't have the time or inclination to spend twenty minutes traipsing around the main square looking for a civilized retailer with the requisite small change.
The accumulated effect of almost thirteen months spent scrabbling for pennies, counting out and totting up those tiny little bronze coins, and being stuck in queues behind old ladies doing exactly the same thing boiled up inside me.

Summoning all the righteous indignation (not to mention vocabulary) I could muster, I turned on my heel and marched back into the shop.

- If you're not going to keep change in the till, you won't get any customers!
I challenged him.
The guy gave a wry smile.
- No, I don't have any customers. It's Sunday. The banks are closed. I can't get change.

Now I'm sorry to make the 'what sort of a barbaric country is this?' - UK comparison all over again, but honestly! In Britain, shops keep enough change in the float for the WHOLE weekend!
Because we know the banks are closed on a Sunday!
As a student checkout girl I would have got into all kinds of trouble for not replenishing my stocks of shrapnel in good time.

Shopkeepers of Poland! We are in the EU now! And particularly, excuse me, if your shop happens to be within spitting distance of the Rynek - which is always crawling with tourists bearing big crispy 100 złotych notes fresh from the Kantor.

I exploded at him.

I can't remember exactly what I said, but I'm pretty certain a lot of the endings were wrong. It definitely included the following:

- I am the customer! The customer is right! I know it's Sunday! I just went to the bank! Yes I UNDERSTAND 'zamknięte' means 'closed'!

We parted on extremely poor terms.

I bought water elsewhere.


And finally:

Extensive long-term research has shown that in Poland it is possible to obtain two different kinds of lavatory paper:
i) wild or savage paper: thick-grained, grey, scratchy and probably a close relative of corrugated cardboard
ii) domesticated paper: pastel-coloured, two-layered, disintegrating, cloyingly scented tissue.

Researchers say these results may be significant in the light of recent observations on the courting rituals of the classic Polish asshole...