Denial

I speak good the Polish. I learn heem from a book.

The problem is, I don't always understand heem very well.

And this is where we enter the Denial Phase.

The Denial Phase comes when you've spent a year living in a place and making all the effort in the world to learn the language. You learn to like the food, you get hip and hang with the local kids, you drink your tea with raspberry syrup in winter, you laugh at that stupid advert with John Cleese... You can do languages. You are the interpreter (heaven help us).
You come to hate it when people speak to you in English. It makes you feel like a stupid foreigner, who hasn't been working their little cotton socks off all year to get their head round what is actually a mind-bogglingly complicated language. You don't understand everything, but you're damned if you're going to let them know that!

Below are two classic examples of the Denial Phase in the process of linguistic acquisition.

Scenario 1:
On Saturday a friend asked me- if I happened to be passing through town- to book tickets for the evening screening of The Bucket List* at Ars cinema.** I duly queued up and asked the guy for three tickets. Usually the trailers give the film's original title, so I always have to check the Polish title on the listings before I book. I hesitated a fraction of a second too long, and my pronunciation was just a little bit too dodgy, and the guy answered me in English:
- How many?
I snarled at him.
- Dobrze rozumiem po polsku!
He looked at me, taken aback, and continued in Polish (in spite of my mistakes), albeit very cautiously, as one does when there are only a few inches of reinforced plastic to separate one from a raving madwoman.
And he gave me a student discount: another bonus- everyone assumes young foreigners are here to study...

Scenario 2:
I sneak home for lunch on Monday and decide to pick up an obwarzanek from the stand on the corner of Starowiślna and Westerplatte. I order, the lady goes to fish out the required baked item with that metal prong thing, and as she bends down, she asks me a question, to which I give a neutral reply, having not caught what she said. She puts the bare pretzel in that little dish thing on top of the stand, and I go to fish out a plastic bag from the packet next to it.
- Ah, but I already asked you if you wanted a plastic bag.
- I know, but...
- Ah ha, you didn't understand (she looked so smug at this point)
- Actually I understand perfectly well! I said, crossly. 'There was a tram passing at the time and I didn't hear!'
- ah you didn't understand... (she was still tutting away to herself)
- There was A TRAM!

And the obwarzanek was stale. Which was somehow very fitting.


*A very sentimental film. But not as bad as Mała Wielka Miłość. From now on I am only going to see movies where people get stabbed violently. I have high hopes for Nadzieja.

** Pronounced the way you think it is. Sometimes hard to suppress the urge to follow it up with 'Feck! Drrrink! Gurrrls!'.

Glass half empty

At a bit of a loss with no work or school on a Saturday, I decided to try and repeat last week's activities: as far as I can remember it was a pretty happy day.
I've always wanted to see the Manggha Centre in Kraków and it seemed like as good a time as any to do it. I recommend the historical Japanese Art gallery (the one upstairs) but not so sure about the contemporary one downstairs. Although this may have just been because it was on the quiet side of the river and the concrete and clouds meant there was too much grey around.
The miso soup saved my life (not so sure about cherry-flavoured green tea, but at least it's healthier than Wiśniowka). If in doubt, go for the food.

Massolit was the next stop on the list. Culture first, then bookshop. I like Massolit because there's a series of back rooms with old-fashioned armchairs, where you can hide out. You can pretend to be in the library of an Edwardian townhouse rather than alone in a foreign country: it's very soothing.
On Sundays, they have a group which reads children's books out loud in English. I'm secretly longing to go but a) At 11am on a Sunday I'm usually more occupied with Sanctuses and Offertory Hymns and b) I'm probably too old for this sort of thing and I don't have a convenient child to borrow.
And the first title on display on the front shelves?
'How to get married after 35'
Oh God, get me out of here...

Last Saturday, I really enjoyed Reserwat: a sort of pretty cheesy film about a photographer who splits up with his posh girlfriend and has to move into the dodgy end of Warsaw. Naturally he makes friends with all the local drunks, takes the local tearaway in hand (after first rescuing the kid from a hit-and-run) and drinks vodka with the local tough-talking tart-with-a-heart. Of course his gritty images of the district are a major hit.
Pod Baranami are showing another Polish film with English subtitles, so I thought I'd continue with my forays into the Polish film industry (this all started with a pessimistic film in Wrocław back in July- I hope you haven't forgotten, there's a test later...)

Now right now, I really want to see upbeat, lighthearted, feelgood films. It's February. I think you can see where I'm coming from. This is precisely why I've been avoiding the Diving Bell and the Butterfly. It says 'uplifting' but it sounds pretty terrifying to me.
I approached the ticket kiosk somewhat anxiously:
- This film - I gave the name - is it positive? Happy? Good? (again my vocab isn't all that specific)
The guy smiled, and shrugged.
- Haven't seen it. It's good. (I suppose he had read reviews or something)

I bought a ticket.

The (almost) first line of dialogue:
- My girlfriend just died. Can you refund my plane ticket?

Fortunately the film was short.

Here's a brief overview (Spoiler alert!):
- Boy's girlfriend has died
- Boy gets knocked down on bicycle
- In hospital, Boy meets cute blonde
- Boy and Cute Blonde hang out for the day (we discover that Cute Blonde is one of those annoying whimsical heroines in the Amelie Poulain vein)
- Boy remembers that he has been kicked out of flat
- Boy and Cute Blonde stay the night in a posh hotel with the money from the ticket (by the way, the girlfriend wasn't dead: she moved to New York and fell in love with someone else)
- In the morning, Cute Blonde won't wake up
- We discover Cute Blonde has advanced stage leukaemia
- Boy visits Cute Blonde in hospital
- Cute Blonde asks Boy to put her out of her misery ...

Aargh! Enough of this Polish pessimism, stop it now!
Place your bets: which will happen first, February ends or I hurl myself into the Wisła??*

*To re-emerge in a salt mine in Hungary, enclosed in a giant ring (... no-one got that ... never do that one again ...)

Rainy Saturday

What is there to do on a rainy Saturday in Kraków? Other than spending hours thumbing through the linguistics section* in Massolit and going to the cinema?

I was standing in the passage under Pod Baranami, reading the listings, when a young British guy approached and asked me, in very careful Polish, if I knew where the Camera Cafe was. He was not wearing a coat and he carried a huge triangular paper packet with rose stems poking out of one end.
- In English? I said - and then pointed him in the right direction.
- By the way... when talking to an unknown young woman you should say 'Czy Pani zna', not 'Znasz'- I called after him.**

He looked slightly nervous: I bet those roses were for some gorgeous Polish girl. Cute.

The cinema listings revealed that I was a good forty-five minutes too early for Reserwat (Pod Baranami show Polish films with English subtitles: I recommend), so I slipped into Tribeca downstairs for coffee and to drool over my language-geek candy. Yeah ok, to use the loo.

Tribeca is a special place. Situated on the Rynek Głowny, the main square, it was Kraków's first shot at a Starbucks-style coffee bar. Unfortunately -I believe I've mentioned before that customer service is on its way to Poland via the scenic route- they haven't quite got the same split-second snap timing going behind the bar. The result is that you order, pay, and then sit and wait for half an hour until the girl at the end of the counter shouts MAłA CZARNA I CAPPUCCINO PROSZE BARDZO.
And then you can go and collect it.

Coming out of the panie/panowie my way was blocked by at least fifteen Italians who had just ordered espresso all round. I elbowed my way through and took up a vantage point in a bay window, right by the business end of the counter.
Sure enough, after about ten minutes, fifteen tiny saucers appeared on the end of the bar. They were joined by fifteen tiny cups, fifteen tiny spoons and fifteen little glasses of water.
The Italians swarmed in on them.
And here's the thing: Italians don't sit down to drink espresso. They slouch about, they lean on the bar, they gossip, they compare the coffee with the stuff back home and they generally mill about. Then they down the shots of coffee and put the cups back on the bar straight away.

This confused the poor baristas completely.

I sat back and enjoyed the mayhem, and was pretty disappointed when my cappuccino appeared and I had to go and find somewhere to sit and drink the thing.


*Yes, I did, it's about the history and phonology of English borrowings in other European languages. Seriously sexy.
**Ok, I didn't, cos I'm too polite (see previous post) but I was thinking it.

Wrocław Film Festival

Hurrah! You think. At last, this one-woman disaster area is going to pull herself together and write some thoughtful commentary on important cultural events!

I think you know me better than that by now.

It's taken me four months to start finding my way around Kraków. For the past ten days, my flatmates (with impressive stamina) have been hard at work tackling a film festival in Wrocław. Although the very thought of venturing outside the Stare Miasto gives me stomach ache (and that's not just from drinking the tap water), I drew a deep breath, threw some spare knickers in a bag and hopped on the 06.44am heading West- or North, my sense of direction isn't great at seven in the morning- to join them.

Finding my way around a new city was a very enlightening experience. I came to two conclusions:
i) All Polish cities have the same street names.
ii) I did well not to apply for a job in air-traffic control.

On to the films: when I met my flatmates they had a slight air of hostages who have recently been released from a dark place underground ('We're really tired of films'). I decided I had a lot of catching up to do film-wise, and we all headed off to various cinemas in town for the afternoon.
Being a glutton for punishment, I went for a French film called Jardins d'Automne, about a minister who loses his job and goes off rollerblading and brewing hooch in his bedroom. It was hilarious, sort of in the vein of the Italian Amici Miei trilogy.

For the Saturday late evening slot, an Art-Porn film called Destricted was causing a stir among festival-goers. My flatmates decided to brave the crowds and try to get in, despite the comment from one of their friends that there are places you can see penises without having to queue for an hour and a half (especially if you live in Kazimierz). [I think this is the same guy who refers to the cashpoint as 'The Wall of Tears'. Nice, I wish I'd thought of it]. Cue lengthy discussion about why it is easier for Polish men to talk about penises than tampons.
Incidentally, pharmacies in Poland: what about applicator tampons, hmm? Women of Poland, stand up for your rights! Demand applicators now!

This is deviation hesitation and repetition. Back to culture. Since I had yet to experience Polish cinema, I decided to forgo the best of upstanding Australian manhood and opt for a Pessimistic Polish Film instead, on the grounds that I could always meet my flatmates for a stiff drink afterwards.

Indeed, the film was pessimistic. But as compensation, my flatmates introduced me to Wisniowka (Polish cherry-flavoured vodka), and I enjoyed the best sleep I've ever had on a youth hostel floor...