Memories. And grammar.

So I'm one of three. Belgian Waffle (right-click to open in a new tab) talked about having an odd number of kids to make things easier. I say this is wrong, wrong, wrong. The reason my parents only had three kids was because in 1986, the only option for large families was the Mitsubishi space wagon. And my Dad vetoed it almost from the start. Some parents think that having an odd number of children saves you from being the adjudicator. I say start from five. Especially if you regularly make twelve-hour journeys to Inverness in an Austin Montego. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on BBC audiobooks was the only thing that saved Britain from World War Three circa 1990.

I promised grammar. I know you love it. But not Polish this time.

Today, I went to the bakery down the road to order a demi-baguette to go with my smelly francophonic cheese. 'Demi' in French is masculine. I swear. I went to the bakery and mumbled something about 'un demi-baguette'.

- Une baguette.
insisted the baker. Une baguette!

I repeated that I wanted a demi goddammit. She offered me cheese and ham to go with.

Bad French days. They happen. However long you study the damn language, I guarantee it...

French

Oh dear, I really don't speak French at all. The tap in my bathroom has been dripping for ages and eventually I got my act together enough to email my landlord about it.
About a week later, the landlord's wife comes round with a handyman (they call each other 'tu', so I assume he's a relative or something).

All finished, they ask me for a 'torchon' and I, who learnt to speak French in France, handed over a tea towel.

Confusion and amusement.

- No, no, don't you have a mop or something? For the floor?

Oh dear, I really don't speak French at all. As French wikipedia points out, a 'torchon' is a mop in Belgium. Why can't they all just agree on these things?!

Belgian weird

I suppose it's about time for one of those '101 bizarre things about living in Belgium/Poland/a cardboard box under Pont Neuf/etc.' posts.

Here we go then.

1/ Proton: I still haven't worked out what this means. It appears to be some kind of monetary transaction management company, like Visa. Although it could just as easily be a brand of washing powder or a bodybuilding supplement. You can use it in shops which display the 'Proton' logo. I did try once: - no no - said the cashier - you haven't got any money on your Proton. You have to put money on it first. Lo and behold, next time I put my Belgian card in the cashpoint there was an option to withdraw cash to my Proton account. From there, you use the cash in your 'Proton account' to pay with your bank card. I don't understand. Why not just get the cash out straight away? Or pay directly with the bank card?
It makes no sense.
Only In Belgium.

2/ Madame Pipi: In most European countries there's a small charge to use the powder room and this may be more or less widespread in proportion to the publicness/relative cleanliness of said facility. For example, in the UK you normally only pay to pee in railway stations.
In Belgium, I discovered, there's no such thing as a free wee. In a country which produces over 8000 varieties of beer (thanks Wikipedia), this defies logic. My first encounter with Madame Pipi was in a bar near Antwerp Central Station. I tripped down the stairs to the loo, only to find a wizened little old lady sitting at a table with a tray.
- 50 cents please.
- What? oh no, you've got me wrong, I'm a customer (because normally customers can use the loo without paying, right?)
- That's not my problem. I don't work for them. Pay up. Or cross your legs: up to you.

3/ Labels: When you move to Belgium, you have to go to the commune and declare your residence. I inadvertently bypassed epic queues and frustration by ringing up and being given an appointment (albeit several weeks later, but who's counting? I'm quite happy to put off the evil hour where administrative procedure is concerned).
Once you've showed up, handed over your passport, and fielded the inevitable awkward questions about your source of income, lack of social security number and so forth, it all passes relatively quickly until they get to the

- and then the Police will come and visit you

bit.
- But I haven't done anything!
- No no, they just have to check you actually live there.
- Excuse me?!
- It's ok, you just have to make sure you have your name on the letterbox and by the doorbell, otherwise you'll never be able to register. (I have yet to work out why this would be a disadvantage)
I eventually tracked down some sticky labels in the far aisle at Carrefour, and now both my doorbell and my letterbox have crappy peeling stickers by them with my name on.
Sure enough, two days later there was a knock at the door. I opened it in my pyjamas (so what?! I'm a freelancer. 'Dressed' is a highly culturally-subjective concept), handed over my passport and resumed normal 'slumped at desk' working attitude.

4/ Bilingualism: Go to any concert or public event in Belgium and there will be two MCs. Obviously: one in French and one in Flemish. Inevitably, the French speaker will be playing the straight man while the version Flamande will have everyone in the auditorium helpless with mirth and weeping gently into their popcorn.
Everyone except you, the foreigner, because you didn't bother to learn Dutch, did you? Thought you could get away with a mere postgraduate degree in French?! Hah!
- uhhh il a dit quoi en effet?
- heheheheh mais il est dingue ce type!
- mais qu'est-ce qu'il a dit??
- mmmph *hic!* c'est trop marrant...

It's a conspiracy, I'm sure of it.

5/More labels: Belgium doesn't actually have two official languages.
It has three*.
For this reason, standard regulatory labels on food and everything really are Simply Enormous.
This must seriously cramp the style of Belgian marketing execs, who have to find room for all that text somewhere.

*****

Only five things?! Maybe Belgium isn't as weird as I thought. Must try harder...

*German! Back of the class, go on.

Coffeecoffeecoffee

In 'A Year in the Merde' * the author goes to a Parisian café on a Sunday afternoon and attempts to order coffee with milk.
Thinking logically, he orders 'un café avec du lait'.
The waitress immediately picks him out as an outsider and charges him the whopping tourist price. As he is reeling in horror at the bill, the chilled-out American at the next table leans over and lets him in on the Big Secret. When in a foreign country, it's not enough to speak a bit of the language. You have to Know the Code. French people who like their coffee with a touch of milk order 'un crème'. This doesn't mean that the coffee has cream in it but - as my French colleague pointed out in St Brieuc all those years ago - if you use that particular code, they'll bring you a nice warm milky coffee in a neat cup and saucer with a little chocolate on the side.

Wouldn't it be nice if francophones the world over used the same code?

The Belgian equivalent is 'lait russe', which still takes me slightly by surprise as I can't understand how a beverage described as Russian can possibly fail to contain a single drop of vodka.

In addition, they have all the usual Italian palaver - cappuccino, latte, ristretto, ecc. - to the extent that sometimes it's hard to tell one cup of coffee from another.

Visiting a local coffee bar this weekend, my friend ordered caffè latte while I - trotting out my best Belgian like a good girl - asked for a lait russe.

The machine hissed and thundered, steam filled the air, the clink of china was heard and the clouds dispersed to reveal our order: one tall glass and one squat little cup sitting roundly in its saucer...

... containing two identical warm milky coffees.




*a dull book in which a rather ordinary English bloke in Paris describes his attempts to get into the knickers of several frighteningly stereotypical Frenchwomen.

Art

Every so often, my flatmate and I decide that we will do something culturally improving. I mean, it's great to go out and drink beer and go dancing at Piękny Pies and watch downloads of 'How I Met Your Mother' for five hours straight, but occasionally - just occasionally - we feel that it might be a good idea to do something that is actually going to broaden our horizons, nurture our inner selves, expand our minds. Something wholesome, something Good For Us, something arty.

Unfortunately, our good intentions don't always translate into reality.

For example, in June we went to a panel discussion, with a couple of friends, on the opening of a new exhibit in Bunkier Sztuki.

After approximately thirteen minutes, all five of us - very discreetly - got up, politely shuffled our sheepish way out of the row and legged it up the stairs as soon as we were out of sight of the panel.

Then there was the book signing in Empik. Our intentions were so good: we arranged to meet inside after work at 5pm (if you actually meet inside Empik, instead of in front, the world changes in a subtle yet significant way. I have yet to write a post about meeting people outside Empik. This is negligence on my part).

Unfortunately my flatmate had to work late on a project, and I got an urgent job, so we never got there.

Once we even nearly made it to Teatr Bagatela! Having decided that our Polish was just about good enough to understand drama (although after watching Trans-Atlantyk I very quickly changed my mind), we decided to go and watch a play.
Teatr Bagatela is the theatre of the absurd in Kraków (it's also another place people meet in front of, but that's not important right now). This means - best-case scenario - visual comedy that even we can understand and - worst-case scenario - satire, ironic Polish in-jokes and utter incomprehensibility. We asked some Polish friends to come with us and looked up tickets but unfortunately there were none on the day we wanted. Then my flatmate went on holiday and I had a school trip and it simply never happened.

So when I heard about the live drawing show yesterday I was slightly sceptical about our ability to actually get there.

And yet...

Somehow at 7pm we were sitting in the cool of the gallery, facing a huge sheet of brown paper parcel-taped to the wall, waiting for the performance to start.

The artist - who is French but of Polish family - introduced himself briefly and then sat on a chair at one end of the 'canvas', looking at his feet in silence. We waited. He began to whistle a few bars of Chopin* and then - still whistling - got up and sketched a huge crescent moon in charcoal and chalk. Underneath the moon, the towers of Wawel quickly emerged, chalk moonlight glinting off the charcoal spires.

So the story began in Kraków...

He sketched the whole fairytale for us, acting through the drawing: sometimes drawing over an old episode, sometimes tearing off something to replace it somewhere else, occasionally whistling a clue (like the Marseillaise, for a French character).

And it was fun! Slightly confusing in parts, but then afterwards the artist was there so you could ask him to explain it. We were charmed. Apart from the magic of watching the picture appear on the paper before our eyes, this art was not something to stand in fear of and to be afraid to admit not understanding. It was clear, the clues were there to follow, you could watch the technique and best of all you could actually ask questions.

It turns out there's another pictorial storytelling session next Friday, so if you're interested I'd highly recommend it - Dietla 11, 7pm, at Otwarta Pracownia.

We might even go again...




*Nocturne in E-flat major.

Bees

- We're still waiting for one or two people...
began the speaker (in French) .. so I'll tell you an amusing little anecdote to get the interpreters warmed up.

Uh oh.

- I'm a farmer, I live in the country, and one day a woman from the city came to visit us. "You'll never guess what I just read in the papers" she said. "There's been an exciting new discovery for beekeepers. It's so clever. They've taught the bees to make the honey... in jars!"

There was a pause.

Silence in the hall.

The speaker stared hard at the tinted glass of my booth.* Why weren't they laughing? Was she broken?

He gave me another puzzled look and continued.

- My nephew - himself a beekeeper - was also sitting nearby. "That's nothing." he replied. "My bees have been doing that for years. Better still: my bees make honey in jars ...

... and they put the lids on!"

I held my breath and willed the sleepy audience to have just a little giggle.

Faint mirth. Not enough though. The speaker sent a Very Pointed Look in my direction.

- Now I will speak in English.

he said.

- to test the French interpretation...


*It's just me actually - times are hard and English interpreters can put away an awful lot of free food...

Brief résumé

Well, I'm touching base for all of about another four hours before jetting off again ('another suitcase in another hall...' etc.).
Here are some of the cool things I would have blogged about it greater detail if I'd had full-time internet access (sigh).

- Bastille fruit and vegetable market: this takes place on a Sunday morning and, by law, stallholders have to stop trading at 2pm. This means that if you oversleep you end up racing between empty crates to brave the crowds, with tell-tale flakes of a hastily-eaten pain au chocolat clinging to the front of your t-shirt. You'll push your way through a whole spectrum of middle-class white Parisians only to have the desperate fruit-seller thrust two crates of steadily softening pears into your arms for a paltry two euros.

- Learning Spanish: this weekend I hung out with Spanish interpreters (rather than Polish ones - not that I don't still love you guys... particularly if you're still reading me...).
I speak French and Italian but I've never learnt Spanish and there's really no excuse, especially since the other Brits there were fluent hispanophones. So I asked one of the girls, over sushi, to write down some handy Spanish phrases for me, not least:
No tengo cambio (I don't have change)
?Has estado en Polonia? (Have you ever been to Poland?)
?Que coche tienes? ?Me llevas? ('what kind of car do you have? Can I have a lift?)
and finally:
Eso no lo hacemos en mi cultura (we don't do that in my culture)

- Brussels ex-pat women's rugby team. They can hold their G&T. I can't.

- Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Any time I go to Paris I find all these quirky, cute, French things to write about, à la Amelie Poulain, and then I go home by plane and just end up ranting about the airport. I do have a point though. Terminal 2 is shaped like a very long, narrow, extended kidney-bean. It is divided down the middle into two very narrow slices, with departures on one side and check-in on the other. The check-in desks are cunningly hidden behind the last-minute ticket sales desks, you have to go through passport control At Least three times, there is only One Place to buy sandwiches in the departure lounge for gates 25-34 (and it's packed out with sweaty Brits) and there are no loos beyond security at the gate (you have to go through a separate security check for each gate).
On the plus side, I discovered that I can throw awantury in French without having to worry about case declensions.
I have a lot of work to do on my karma now.

- The mortification of stepping off the plane, slipping my jacket on for the first time in over a week, and discovering that I was Dressed From Head to Toe In Beige. Like a big toffee.
Even Paris could do nothing for my style: I'll have to bite the bullet and go shopping with my sister. Gulp.

- Plus I have half a sketch book of interpreting cartoons...

Here to help, part II

I admit that in these pages I may have made one or two disparaging remarks about Polish customer service.

I've just spent a week in Paris.

I take it all back.

For example, when you enter a shop in Poland, if you are a foreigner (and generally it's immediately apparent if you are), the shop assistant will immediately assume you are on holiday and you work for an investment bank in London (or are married to someone who does) and you have Lots Of Cash to spend. They will say 'hello' when you enter the shop, and perhaps ask you if you want to see it in your size (in English - which is considered polite by normal people).

When you enter a shop in Paris, never forget that you should feel privileged to have stepped over the threshold of this magic milieu. Try to assume a humble mien. Cast your eyes to the floor and shift from foot to foot.
However glittery your credit card, its patina will never soil the PIN reader here (although if you bank with Coutts that'd be a step in the right direction).
Best just to shuffle quietly out of the shop, under the beady eye and haughty frown of the achingly chic shop assistant.

And then there's the humble bar, cafe or bistro.

When in Poland, a small group of young foreign girls can quite happily sit down at a table and be served relatively promptly (or at least make their way to the bar, because usually there's a sign to tell you if it's self-service). It doesn't matter if you're speaking English. The waiter or waitress will probably take your order speaking pretty fluent English herself. And if you try to speak in Polish, they're not going to bite you because you have a funny accent. They're more likely to be impressed by your efforts, or, at the very least, will tactfully moderate their obvious amusement.

No such luck in your average French bar.

You'll enter and sit down at a window table with your friends. The late middle-aged lady behind the counter will blithely ignore you, preferring to go and chat up the slickly-dressed (this is the Marais after all) local boys who showed up just after you.
After about fifteen minutes, someone will come up and drop a sheaf of English menus on your table.
Another ten minutes pass, and you will go up to the bar yourself, where there's a guy polishing glasses.

Suddenly you will find it impossible to stand at a bar and say anything other than 'Proszę trzy razy żywiec i frytki.'*

Eventually you regain your composure and manage to order three large pression and a basket of freedom fries.

You begin every request with 's'il vous plait', much to the entertainment of the barman, because it suddenly seems rude not to.

After about half an hour, you will receive three small beers in big girly glasses and a tiny saucer of chips. The middle-aged waitress still hasn't even looked at you.

*n.b. at all costs nip in bud alarming tendency to say 'non' in French whilst nodding head.

Social Responsibility

Scene 1

I sat on the OrlyBus staring out of the window and tuning in to the chat of two late middle-aged Italian guys sitting behind me.
- Do we get off here or there? Is this West? No... Sud?

I think Orly Sud is the terminal that all the budget airlines fly from. As I listened to them deliberating whether or not to get off the bus, I became more and more worried for these two apparently gentle guys (probably identifying them with the father of a previous boyfriend who was largely content with life so long as there was a sofa to lie on and Fiorentina stayed in Serie A). Eventually I could bear it no more and I turned round:
- This stop is Orly West; I said
- Oh... but we don't have tickets. We did it all on the internet. Maybe it's this terminal.
- Me too!; I said, slightly more concerned; 'I got an e-ticket too... where are you...'

At that point the bus stopped at Orly West.

- Che ne so?! Dai... scendiamo a vedere...

And they made for the door before I could save them.


Scene 2

The flight was a little delayed, and announcements were made - of course - in French followed by English. I could see the younger members of the Polish families waiting around the boarding gate straining to decipher the heavy French accent weighing down the English announcements so they could interpret to their parents.
I began to feel the worry mounting up inside me again. Did they really understand? Was I the only one with all the information? Should I jump in with my francuski-polski translation?

And here's the thing. Dear Transavia France and Aerogare Orly Sud. Would it really be so hard to learn the names of your flight destinations in each of the languages in which you are planning to announce them?*
I mean, Krakow and Warsaw are really not so hard to remember. It could be worse: Moldova versus Moldavia or Moldovia, for example. And do we say 'Ukraine' or The Ukraine (cos I heard the second one would be received very poorly indeed by actual Ukrainians)? Oh yes and the perennial Bielorussia question... Just what is the name in English now? Can anybody tell me what language they speak there? Is is Belorus, Belorussian, Byelorusian? What would John Humphreys say?

Back to Orly Sud and the departure gates. Here's an example:
- Ladeez zand dzentlemen we are pleez to annonce ze departure offlight nombere XXX to ... uhh... Varsovy...

Eventually the confusion was just too much and they found someone to make the announcements in Polish.

[Don't even get me started on the security woman who indicated the seams of my skirt and then said 'neetch', pointedly, several times until I realised that she was trying to check, in Polish, that I had nothing ('nic') in my pockets. Seeing my state of confusion she then turned to her colleague and laughed about how stupid these Poles are]

Finally we were all lined up and moving, albeit slowly, towards the boarding gate.

I was a little nervous, but I prepared my little speech. I had something to say to the Transavia employee at the gate.

I took a deep breath as I handed over my passport:

- Excuse me but the English for Cracovie is Krakow not 'Cracovia' and it's important to know because there are people who only speak English and they'll miss their flights and there we go I just thought you should know these things...

- yes Madame. Don't worry Madame. Yes. Of course.

She spoke over me, nodding her head. Clearly nothing had sunk in.

It didn't matter. That niggling feeling of worry was assuaged. Placated, my conscience and I stepped onto the plane with a big grin of embarrassment. Someone had had to butt in, and it had been me.

I don't know. One random act of tourist rescue and suddenly you think you're Superwoman.

Should I have mentioned that Cracovia is a football team? Or should I leave Transavia to deal with the potential hordes of angry Wisła fans...


ps: talking of social responsibility, I thought nanny-state adverts only existed in Scotland, but no: TVP1 just played an ad urging you to avoid heart disease by not getting angry.
Does that mean there'll be a rehaul of the tax system and drobne for all and sundry??

*And seriously, how about recording a safety announcement in Polish if you're flying to Polish destinations? Surely there's some regulation that states that everyone on the plane should understand what to do in an emergency?!

Radio Nostalgie

It's cool to live alone. It's very hard to do in Poland. There's a book written by American Poles which says you know you're Polish when... you try to entertain forty people in fifteen metres squared...

When I first went to France I lived alone. It was the first time. I went a little mad. Perhaps I wouldn't have gone quite so nuts if I'd not had the radio permanently tuned to Radio Nostalgie. There was dancing. Here are some of my favourites: (good luck)


Serge Gainsbourg: Elisa


Elisa - cute. Check out the British accent on Ms Birkin. Pire que le mien...
'Cherche-moi des poux!!'

Pierre Bachelet, Vingt Ans:


I'm the one with the sunglasses on the right.
'J'avais vingt ans eternellement' 'C'etait des vacances en des chevaux!'

Edith Piaf, Milord:



'Laissez-vous faire Milord... venez dans mon royaume...'

Uhh... the song about 'ogórki'...


I know that rabbit!!

and finally Mme Sarko



Slightly concerned by the guy with the candle in the background.

Thanks for listening. It's been a good nostalgie trip for me.

I wonder what Polish songs I will be looking up on YouTube in two or three years time...

We need a miracle

Now that I know I might have to leave soon, I'm stepping the whole Polish language thing up a gear. It's not as scary as I imagined. If you try and practice French with native speakers, you are very likely to be greeted with a pitying smile, a raised eyebrow and general Gallic scorn. It's terrifying. You are aware every single minute that your mouth is simply not the right shape for all those nasal vowels and uvular fricatives and you'll never have the casual elegance of expression of the insouscient native speaker.

And you know, instinctively you know that that particular French person has also watched Tony Blair's congratulatory speech to Nicholas Sarkozy on YouTube and that that typical schoolboy British accent is exactly what they are reminded of every time you clear your throat.

Ridicule!

Polish is another matter. I know I'll never speak beautiful Polish. I'll never be trying to work into Polish or to give after-dinner speeches or to impress someone with my eloquence and wit. I have a hard time getting the right case ending, let alone using a pretty expression or developing a harmonious accent.
And nobody here expects foreigners to even try. They certainly don't expect perfection. If you can get the message across in spite of perfectives, imperfectives and a case system of Byzantine complexity, it's already little short of a miracle.

So I've started diving right in. I engage in conversation with everyone. I don't just go to the pharmacy for painkillers: I ask for precisely the perfect kind of painkillers for a splitting headache and I prefer ibuprofen not paracetamol and do you have something like that? Oh fantastic, how often can I take them... i tak dalej ad infinitum.

I am a perfect pain in the derrière.

Today, after a chilly half-hour shivering in the organ gallery of St Giles at lunchtime, my fingers gradually stiffening over plagel cadences and counterpoint, I threw in the towel* and took the key back to the Sacristan.

- It's too cold up there! I said, as conversationally as I could through my chattering teeth.
- Where? In the church?
- No... up there. Uhhh... in the mountains (my Polish is not so hot)... no, no, up the stairs.
- Ah. Well, we'll think of something. We'll have to think hard.

I crossed my fingers, hoping he was about to offer me a spare electric heater for the organ loft.

- We'll pray to God that it gets warmer soon.

- Na prawdę...

*jeter l'éponge- isn't that cool? They chuck out the soggy sponge while we choose to finish washing and get out of the bath before calling it a day. Now what does that say about the Franco-Brittanic collective psyche...

Yuppies

I don't normally go in for the socio-anthropological "hmm that's interesting" let's-observe-the-Poles type posts: 'What do Polish people eat?'; 'Weird things that Poles do on a Sunday'; 'How many Polish people does it take to change a lightbulb?"* and so on.

However, I can't seem to go anywhere without running into Polish yuppies.

Perhaps I'm just overwhelmed by all the Very Grown-up Parties, and I ought really to be quaffing pints with scruffy Erasmus students on the Rynek. So-and-so owns her own architectural design firm, someone else just bought a new car, this couple are building a house in *insert semi-suburban location outside Krakow* etc. etc. It's all too intimidating.

People seem extremely anxious to emphasize that Poles Are Not Poor. British friends and family are often concerned that I'm living in a hovel under the steel works, or scratching around on a dirt floor in a hut somewhere, and they seem to have the impression that all Polish people are longing for gainful employment as an *insert rubbish job like waitressing/taking out the bins and so on* plus the chance to practice their English and save a few bob by sleeping four to a sofa in Hammersmith.

Poland is Posh, people! Think about Karachi! Or Beijing! Or Mexico City! See what I mean?

Some people are keen to point out the various enormous houses on their street: this neighbour went to the States for four years to earn money to build his house, this neighbour went to Sweden and so on.
This is all very interesting, but really not necessary. I grew up in Sevenoaks, where, if you take your bike out on a warm afternoon in May and cycle around the wide lanes on the outskirts of the town, you'll see scores of enormous houses. At least, you'll see the hedges and the driveways. Rather than having gone to Sweden or the States for several years, Daddy (and possibly Mummy too) spent twelve hours a day glued to Reuters on four screens somewhere near St James' Square.
All this is characteristic lower-middle-class jealousy, largely because It's My Town I Was There First and because they probably bought their enormous houses from some posh yet impoverished local character that my Dad used to know, paying off their entire mortgage with their Christmas bonus and inflating the property market beyond all belief so that I can't buy a flat there.

Not unlike the bloody Brits buying up property in Kraków.

You even get yuppie students- like the ones at Durham or St Andrews. They eat sushi and buy nice wine (and recycle the bottles), watch art-house films and speak trendy English littered with London or Manchester-style colloquialisms (if you listen carefully you may hear a dropped 'h' or a glottal stop).

Sometimes it's just facade. I learnt that the guy whose posh PDA I commandeered to check the rugby results back in October is a surgeon and earns about half as much as I do**. Fortunately for him his wife has her own business and his parents own half the city. But it sort of shows something about appearances... or the fact that the most essential jobs often aren't rewarded... or about Poles relying on their parents (see Italy for details), etc.

Oops, I just realised I've copied this post from Dat Blog's musings on the Polish Bobo. I don't think that Yuppies are quite the same though. For those of you who didn't have to translate horrid dossiers on Contemporary French Culture at university, 'bobo' is short for 'bourgeois-bohème'. They are sort of faux-bohemians who have high-powered middle class professions but act all fey in a sort of mômes de la clôche way so that people think they are cool. For a taste of real Bohemia, please see any given bench in the Planty at around six in the morning. Bring your own Special Brew...

Incidentally, the French bourgeois-bohème is traditionally leftward leaning in values, while Polish and British bobos are shifting distinctly to the centre-right. As CG remarked, it's the style of doing things that's changed over here, not the content. David Cameron, anyone??


* i) I wouldn't know, all the electricians are elsewhere and the ones that stayed can't for example find their way up the stairs in our building
ii) At least four otherwise it's rude, plus a fifth person to propose a toast and pass round the orange juice afterwards
iii) Two: one to change the bulb and look henpecked and a second one to wear a purple beret and shake her umbrella until he gets it right
iv) Only one, so long as he conjugates it correctly.
vi) And for the traditionalists: CHANGE???

**i.e. not an awful lot...

*** I've realised that if you scan over the latter half of this post it looks as though it's all about BOOBS. 'Polish and British boobs are shifting distinctly to the centre-right'. In spite of all those babcia-owned bielizna stores. Don't worry, I'm on holiday from tomorrow. The system is suspended and normal, sensible service will resume shortly.

oops teeheeheehee wheeeeeee.....

Last night I went for some more Tandem action...

... and ended up liaising between some very confused (and fortunately anglophone) German and Polish students and an alcoholic socialist from Toulouse...

.... (no, really, what is the difference between la philosophie littéraire and la philosophie de la poésie?* And just how much socioloshizzle can one language geek take in the name of Native Speaker Practice?) ...

As I made my excuses- getting up early for work tomorrow- and left, I heard him saying Ah c'est ça la mentalité libérale: le travail, toujours le travail...

He's right of course: having escaped to Central Europe I ought to quit my job, write some poetry and start a band (http://www.losersinkrakow.com/).

The private doctor I saw last week told me she was unable to refer me for physiotherapy etc since only state doctors can do this (there are 84-ish of them in Kraków as opposed to upwards of 200 private clinics).
To compensate, she prescribed what Wikipedia reliably informs me are horse tranquillizers, to be combined with muscle relaxants (previously used in the vicinity of the Amazon river for dipping poison-tipped paralytical arrows).
I tried them out this morning: I was dressed and ready for work before I took them. After taking them, it was another half hour before I left the flat, since I first had to knock my tea over, fall over the clothes dryer, lose my socks and drop my keys. I felt as though I'd had krupnik for breakfast. Upon arrival at the office, something was not quite right: I realised my sweater was on back to front.

On the plus side, I can now quite safely put away a couple of grzane wino on the Rynek at lunchtime without my boss noticing the difference...

* Send in your thèse, antithèse and synthèse on 15 sheets of A4 and then report to les Deux Magots for Gitanes, manif et guitare...

First snow

This morning, as usual, I leapt out of bed at 7.30am, made coffee and scurried along bright-eyed and enthusiastic to French class at the interpreting school. Oh all right, it wasn't exactly like that.

Last Saturday, when I went through this same routine, I scrambled up the stairs at the university to discover all the lights switched off on the second floor. I switched them on, thinking they must be saving energy (the only institution in Poland to think of doing so) and marched over to the classroom door. It was locked. They all were.

I went back down the stairs and tiptoed over to the porter's desk at the front door.

- Is the UNESCO school closed today?

- Yup. Rector's day.

(n.b. for me a 'rector's day' in a university context involves dragging Clement Freud around all 32 pubs in St Andrews' three main streets on a chariot. I do hope there's a wikipedia article for that because it's a long long story...)

At least this weekend the lights were on. There was a class going on, but it certainly wasn't French consecutive interpreting. I made a hasty exit, and wondered what to do with the morning stretching unexpectedly out before me. I thought I would walk over to the language labs and check the class hadn't moved there, and then maybe get coffee and go rollerblading.

The weather, as usual, had other ideas.

To travel between the two university buildings takes about five minutes on foot. Unless of course it starts snowing on the way.

Around fifteen minutes (and ok, three or four photos) later I was battling my way along the Aleja, head down into the wind, the front of my duffle coat caked in icy white fluff.


I'm beginning to wonder whether this stubborn attitude was a little misplaced. Surely quick thinking and a good turn of phrase are more useful in the booth than resistance to precipitation? As far as I know, the European Commission are not going to bundle you into a rain booth* if you get through the first two rounds of consec to test how quickly you get soggy...

In any case, the lab was firmly locked. I dripped puddles all the way up to the ninth floor and then got back in the lift and made my way down again (not without first taking in the impressive view of the blizzard-stricken city from the top floor window).

If you ever find yourself in Kraków in the snow, I recommend hot chocolate at Prowincja. Or Nowa Prowincja, two doors down. Warning: you may have to eat it with a knife and fork.


* cabine douche in French. Brought to you by Auto-Terminology of the Day...

Here are the photos:

Tandem and telly

It's been more than six months now since I arrived in Kraków, and things are starting to become a little clearer on the linguistic front, but I'm still not able to unravel whole sentences as such. Speaking to me in Polish requires a lot of patience and repetition.

In Paris, there were a number of French-English language exchange meetings with varying degrees of formality (the most organized one that I attended used set topics and groups of four, while the other extreme involved cramming upwards of 70 people into a 60m2 apartment for mint tea and cake-fuelled carnage in whatever common language you could muster). Most of them can be found in free expat mag fusac, although you have to get the paper copy to see any of the really interesting ads. I needed something similar in Poland.

Now, I love speaking Foreign but I've found it tough here: most young, educated, middle class people (who are the ones I tend to have most contact with) speak perfectly workable English and will switch over the minute you let slip that you didn't quite catch the last bit. The important thing is not to give yourself away, so I've been working on my fake Polish (involves listening, nodding, and inserting 'no,' 'no, właśnie', 'no tak'*, at opportune moments), but ideally I'd rather not have to invent two thirds of every conversation. That kind of thing can land you in trouble. I decided to take matters into my own hands again, and on Monday night I made my way to Kraków's one and only Tandem Evening. It was held in the basement of a pub (the 'piwnica'- from 'piwo'- thus a place for keeping beer) and consisted of several tables labelled with different languages.

I sat down at the empty 'Polski' table and waited.

On the English table they seemed to be having a ball.

After twenty minutes or so, by which time I had read the 'Guide to Tandem Learning' from cover to cover, it occurred to me that all the Poles were in fact sitting at the English table, practicing away. It was time to do some bargaining.
I approached, managed to croak: 'Jestem Angielką', and promised to speak The Queen's Own provided they would let me stagger through a few painful rounds in Polish first.

And it worked! I actually got to chat in basic Polish for more than a couple of sentences! (Although it's sort of like tennis where you're trying to get a rally going and speaking English is the equivalent of dropping the ball).

I lasted around an hour before slipping away to more familiar territory: Chatting to Italian Boys.
All those years of study and tuition fees have not been in vain (never take me for pizza).


By the way: I finally have television! (thanks for the reminder, prq, whoever you are...). Luckily, Car Guy managed to locate his vehicle for long enough to drive me to Media Markt on Saturday, where we spent a good hour or so while I mulled over whether it was really worth buying a Whole New (old-style cathode-ray) Television simply so that I could expand my vocabulary by watching Kinder adverts and bad sitcoms.

Of course it was.
Now I can lounge in front of 'M jak Miłość'**, get addicted to the angst-ridden love life of Warsaw yuppie 'Magda M', (why, when there are so many beautiful letters in the Polish alphabet... śżćąęłprzw etc.), be completely baffled by high-speed news readers, utterly frustrated by the Polski lektor (a form of dubbing which involves the same monotonous middle aged guy reading the Polish translation- Nb translation Not interpretation- of the script approximately three and a half seconds behind the actual dialogue) and find myself having to forcibly evict Car Guy, who immediately stretched out in front of the screen with that glazed-over look that my little brother used to get watching holiday cartoons as soon as the thing lit up.

Right now, they're showing 'Good Night and Good Luck' on TVP2. Sadly my flatmate has an unfortunate partiality to Radio Zet, a particularly awful Polish radio station, à la Capital FM, and I can't hear a thing.


*n.b.: 'no' is informal Polish for 'yes'. Gentlemen, this is Not An Excuse.

** equiv. 'L for luuuurve' baby. Not related to the above note about no meaning yes.

Rugby

Now I don't normally follow sport all that closely, but I do love rugby because just occasionally it provides me with an opportunity to Gloat Over The French, as is only right and proper.


Imagine my delight when, tuning into the Today programme on Wednesday morning, I found myself listening to the wailing and tooth-gnashing of several New Zealanders, who hadn't even considered that NZ might be knocked out early, stuck in Paris with unwanted tickets for the World Cup semi-final.

That was Wednesday: by Saturday night, the Polish 'Golden Autumn' ('Blue Autumn' possibly more appropriate given my general hue after an hour and a half of rollerblading along the Wisla in shorts) and a rather breathless start to the school term had conspired to make me forget all about the plight of the Kiwis* and the England-France match.

It was only once I was sitting on the bed with mascara still wet, trying to keep still so as not to make the hairdryer cut out (the circuitry in our flat is ever-so-slightly sketchy, which adds a fun, surprise element to basic everyday tasks such as vacuuming, computing and having the light on) and waiting for the doorbell to ring, that I realised the Battle must already be underway. Johnny Wilkinson could be running rings around the French and I'd never know!
Polish radio was out of the question- I can barely grasp the weather forecast (probably just as well- the prospect of winter is starting to give me the serious jitters and it's possible that if I had actually known that it would be minus one on Monday morning, I'd have been on the next WizzAir to Bari before you could say 'Ambre Solaire').
I tried the Radio Five live site.
- 'Streaming in progress...
The doorbell rang.

- Results? It's terrible, Kazakhstan are beating Poland... Rugby? No, in the football, what rugby?
The Poles seem singularly lacking in concern for oval-shaped sports and the Importance of Beating the French.
As a last-ditch attempt, I sent a desperate Skype message home, but to no avail. It was Saturday evening, around Silent Witness time. I didn't stand a chance.


An hour and a half later (punctuated by two stops for provisions- both shops had the radio tuned stubbornly to the Poland-Kazakhstan match- and a long, chilly walk in the suburbs) I found myself seriously out of my depth as the youngest person at a Very Grown-up Party. Unfortunately my Polish is still not up to phrases like: 'So... what keeps you busy these days?' or 'Aren't interest rates just murder?' (or even: 'Nightmare trying to find a babysitter'- although this is unlikely to be a problem in Poland, thanks to the babcia army).
- You must have some vodka- then you'll be able to speak Polish; urged the hostess.
I have already tried this method on several occasions and as yet have no consistent set of results (although that may be more due to the unreliable memory of the researcher- me- the next morning).
I managed to muddle through a couple of questions about working in Dublin, and then took refuge in English, and, unexpectedly, Italian.

By the time I finally learnt the results of the rugby (around midnight, by bullying one of the grown-ups into looking it up on his rather swish palm-top device), I no longer cared that I was juvenile in appearance, professionally rather scruffy and distinctly deficient on the communications side of things.
Whooping and dancing seemed to be the most appropriate course of action.

ps: There will be an election here soon. From eavesdropping on Polish friends I've learnt that Donald Tusk is Our Man. Please accept my apologies for the lack of pertinent political content in this blog. Although I managed to scrape through a Government and Politics A-Level (which largely involved memorising mysterious phrases such as 'single transferable vote', plus a rather thrilling paper on Marxist Feminism), back in my jolly school days, please do not expect any intelligent comment from me. At least not until I've got the hang of the basics (crossing the road, listening to the breakfast news, telling the shop assistant I'm Just Looking and so on).


*(A Singularly Comforting proper noun because it is totally uninflectable in Polish: biedny Kiwi; idę na rugby z Kiwi; oglądam sport z Kiwi; lubie Kiwi; nie lubie Kiwi; myślę o Kiwi; i tak dalej ad infinitum...)

Tenses and Tense-facilities

The Bad Obwarzanki Lady is taking her revenge by going on a long, relaxing holiday somewhere sunny. I can just see her now, stretched out by a mountain lake, or on a beach in Bulgaria, sipping pina colada from a coconut. Her kiosk remains smugly closed.

Meanwhile, I am speechless in the face of the new vistas spread in front of me last night.
At the language school, finally, we have learnt the Past Tense.

Był rewelacja...

Now, at last, I can tell people what I did at the weekend, what I did yesterday, what the weather was like this morning, what You Did Last Summer, what he, she or it did in the Planty the Friday before last, whom Ewa Nowak met in the lobby of the Hotel Bristol, and so on.
Kraków watch out! Now I'm supplied with conversation for all situations!
Of course first I actually have to do something at the weekend, starting with leaving the house without getting my heel stuck in a patch of melting asphalt in the path of an oncoming tram. Panic all round.

On the subject of tenses, what is the matter with British phrasebooks? Do I really need to use the conditional to book sushi for two at eight thirty? (complicated enough remembering to book it for 'half to nine' rather than 'past eight': up until our arrival I was certain that we would be either an hour too late or too early). Is English the only language where you need to pussyfoot around with 'I would like to...' or 'could I please?' or 'should I?'? I'm sure for the first few weeks of my first ever trip to France (nervous British Council language assistant in deepest, dampest Brittany), the French were snickering through their Gitanes at my insistence on taking half an hour to order anything. I blame my A-level French teacher, who decided we were going to get A grades one way or another and made us squeeze extra subjunctives into our oral presentations until they were bursting at the seams with 'quoique' and 'pour autant que je sache'.
In Italy, you can happily lope across the road to your local bakery and demand Two Rolls and a kilo of schiacciata from the fornaio without anyone batting an eyelid (except possibly at your gargantuan appetites. But trust me, the schiacciata is worth it). If you start babbling out conditionals, they will assume you come from the North (or the South, depending on which end of the country you are in), or worse still, that you are taking the proverbial. Very dangerous to do in small, family-run bakeries in Sicily...

Why complicate things for us, Mr Berlitz? Especially in Polish, where you really don't need to...

And finally: we are starting to adjust to the new office equipment. There is a vast printer in the corner squatting sulkily on a fragile-looking Ikea bedside table. I have remembered how frustrating administrative tasks can be. This morning, the inky beast stubbornly refused to feed paper from the paper tray. My boss consulted the manual aloud:
- 'To clear paper jam...
- hmm?
- Please pull jammed paper out of tray.'

Easier said than done, and definitely better to watch...

[the author of this blog would like to apologise, wholeheartedly, for the awful title. She wanted to call it 'Tense and Tent-stability', but didn't have any good tent stories handy. Maybe another time]

The results of reading thrillers on a 4 1/2 hour train journey

The computer screen flickered into life, and a window opened, displaying a page of mysterious characters.
F was mystified. How ever would she decipher the code? She clicked on the browser icon and another window opened, the cursor flashing in the search engine tab. Quickly she typed (a skill she had picked up years ago on her Father's old computer), and hit 'return', holding her breath as the ancient Notebook re-paginated.

What appeared before her eyes caused her to gasp out loud. No! Surely not? Slow realisation dawned on her.

The entire text was written in French.

Of course: it all began to fall into place. She picked up the phone and dialled 'Paris, France'.
"Bonjour? Hello?" said the far-off voice on the other end of the line.
"J'ai vu le texte. I've seen the text. Vous avez le glossaire? You have the glossary?"
There was a long pause.
"Who wrote the text?"
The million-dollar question.
The other voice cleared its throat.
"The text was written by an ancient brotherhood, who have infiltrated industry throughout the world. They may not all know each other, but they are united by a common symbolology, incomprehensible to the rest of humanity. They may be recognised by their problemes de grammaire, grandmother problems, and their fautes d'ortographe, garden-drawing faults. Perhaps you have heard of them: they are known as Engineers".
Engineers! F had often heard stories of this mysterious sect, but she would never have imagined that they were active and thriving in the modern world.
The voice on the phone continued:
You have eight hours to decipher the text and solve the code. Only you can do it. Otherwise this ancient brotherhood will take over the world. You know Franklin D. Roosevelt? An engineer. Galileo? He was an engineer too. The sect is more pervasive than we ever imagined. We are relying on you.
F drew a deep breath, and began to type...

To be continued...

Interpreting, part II

'Ladles and Gelatin,

I am extremely grapefruit for the warm red-setter I always receive here and I hope as the days collapse we will have the misfortune to make one another's aquarium, but first I would like to begin with an amusing antelope...'

This is what I hope is not coming out of my mouth on the rare occasions on which I have volunteered as an interpreter since graduation.

The reason for my foray into the world of departure lounges, German and the international Financial Times was to spend a week volunteering in a gigantic fairy-tale castle perched on top of a mountain overlooking Lake Geneva. The building is a former hotel, unchanged since F. Scott Fitzgerald, where you feel you ought really to spend your evenings flitting aesthetically between the arches of the stone balconies in a wispy dress, sipping a gin fizz, or tripping a waltz underneath the chandelier in the great hall, whilst waiting for the 1930s to come crashing in. I half expected to have to dress for dinner.
Or to find a body in a remote linen closet at the far end of the east wing on the fifth floor. I am sure I spotted M'sieur Poirot at breakfast on Sunday morning, examining the relative thickness of brioche slices ('Eh bien, Mademoiselle, your command of ze French it is Most Excellent').

This last comment sadly betrayed by my liaison performance:
- 'Une minute! Une!'
hissed my colleague, demonstrating narrow-minded French conformity to gender stereotypes. Clearly the Academie Francaise is in need of a few sessions with Tinky Winky et al.

German tactfully has a neuter gender, as I was reminded in a German workshop run by a tiny yet terrifying intern who turned out to be achtzehn jahre alt. Most importantly, I learnt 'Wie geht es dir?'- 'how's it going, dear?'.

On the final night there was a talent show, which I got to watch since it was all in either English or Russian (neither of which I understand).
Out of all the acts, the hits were:
- A dignitary from a local NGO being a thoroughly Good Sport and miming the Theory and Practice of sewing on a button (incidentally, somebody miming the action of sewing their trouserleg to their sleeve is not at all dissimilar to someone trying to re-enact the action of banging their kneecap on the bathroom sink using the office radiator...)
- A part boy-band - part folk group improvising on the Titanic theme tune, complete with nerdy Japanese boy on the piano, dishy South American boy on the recorder and re-enactment of the 'I'm flying!' scene on the dais under the chandelier.
- Ukrainian 'Miss Universe' in drag: three strapping Slav chaps with cheekbones you could spread butter on, wearing their girlfriends' sarongs over their jeans. Extracts from the relay from the Russian booth: 'No, Kostya, you went first... in... the sauna this morning...' and: 'There is no swimsuit round. This is an intellectual competition.'

Near misses were any songs that were reminiscent of the karaoke on ul. Grodzka...

N.B. the author of this blog would like it to be known that she is Thoroughly Professional in all her linguistic undertakings and is well aware of the difference between male and female. Except in that club in Leicester once: that was really confusing. And occasionally when reading Jeanette Winterson.

Museums and soup

This weekend brought a particular sort of Krakow quirkiness, even by my standards. On Friday night, a mysterious free tram appeared, like the St Andrews phantom ice-cream van, to rattle its ghostly way between Huta and Wawel, carrying cultural pioneers in search of enlightenment (read "drunk students in search of free entertainment").

This was the Night of the Museums, a rare opportunity for people who don't get out of bed before lunchtime to visit cultural exhibitions in the middle of the night.
Although Friday night these days normally sees me curled up with a cup of tea (or at least beer in a tea cup) and a good book by 10pm, I decided to venture out and see if I could improve my mind at an exhibition or two.
The special tram proved to be more spectral than I thought, and after twenty minutes of waiting I realised I would have to plot my own route around Krakow's exhibitions. I started by wandering across the Rynek to Bunkier Stzuki, where I immediately bumped into the only friend of my flatmates who speaks French rather than English. With (slightly self-concious) glee we embarked upon the singularly pretentious pursuit of Talking about Art in French.

By far the most bizarre exhibit was a film of a bust of the artist's own head and shoulders in some pinky-brown, marbled stone. Only with the arrival of her cat, who set about licking the nose of the statue with a vigour enhanced by an uncomfortably loud soundtrack did the actual nature of the 'stone' become evident.

Leaving the Art Bunker behind us, we moved round to Collegium Maius, one of the ancient buildings of the Jagellionian University. The former professors' apartments, containing exhibits, but otherwise unchanged for centuries, were open to meanderers. As ancient university accommodation goes (and believe me, I know) it looked pretty cushy.

On Saturday afternoon I went to Plac Nowy for a taste of Eastern bloc life in the soup queues at the Kazimierz soup festival. The soup stands themselves were hidden by the crowds, so I (rather foolishly) went with mob rule and planted myself at the end of the longest queue. As I had already discovered at the pharmacy, queueing here is an entirely different sport. One person usually equals five plus a pushchair, and any amount of that indignant humphing- which characterises the stereotypical British single-file version- will go unnoticed.
After about half an hour, I managed to procure myself a bowl of (actually delicious) thick, yellow soup.
Queuing was an easy game compared to the task of finding an empty space at a trestle table without slopping any soup out of the flimsy plastic dish it was served in.

An interesting weekend altogether. I may not have achieved total cultural enlightenment, but I got free food, which is the second quest the eternal student.

Now where did I hear that ice-cream van?