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...

So very Sevenoaks

An apparently normal scene: a child refuses to hold Mummy's hand and stomps away, hot, furious tears splashing his cheeks. Yet another frustrating blow to his fragile four-year-old dignity.

NO, Mummy! I want SUSHI!!

I don't think we're in Kraków any more...

happy post! (about obwarzanki)

oh gosh, I don't want the sad post to be the last thing I wrote! At the same time, I'm too busy to write another one.

Tell me happy things!

Or listen to the Belgian Song again.

... as I'm walking down the street, eating mayonnaise and frites...

Talking of street food...

One thing you may have noticed if you've been on board since The Poland Days is how much obwarzanki form an integral part of the Kraków diet. Especially as a student, with only fifteen minutes to eat between classes: just about time to run out to the pretzel stand and to queue by the coffee machine. I miss Kraków.
An Obwarzanek (the Kraków type, not the dessicated little pretzel-rings you get on strings in Warsaw. And indeed Brussels) is a big round bread twist, about the same size as a bagel, but without the heavy chewiness or sugary coating. It's crusty on the outside like bread and dipped in either poppy seeds (z makiem), sesame seeds (z sezamem) or big salt crystals (z solem) like a German pretzel. Some obwarzanki sellers offer versions with melted cheese (z serem), cayenne pepper (pikantny) or pizza herbs and tomato (pizzowy). I've also seen a rye version (ciemny) with oats on top, yummy.
I want one. They are stomach-filling (and possibly also bowel-stopping, since they consist exclusively of refined carbohydrates) and good.

Yesterday I plucked up the courage to ask the Pani in Kuchnia Polska on Avenue d'Auderghem, taking care to specify 'Krakowskie obwarzanki'.

- excuse me, she said, but what do you mean by 'krakowskie' obwarzanki?
- you know, the big ones, I explained.
- oh no, I'm sorry: they're like bread, they'd be awful the next day. You'd probably have to order them specially.

Proszę Panstwa, to jest dramat.

I am going to have to call the Polish Embassy...

Belgian Weird, part deux

I totally forgot Speculoos!

Not something scary wielded by your gynaecologist but rather a type of caramelised, cinnamony biscuit served with coffee. You know, the free ones that people in other countries just ignore.

Belgians are obsessed by them! To be honest, I've never seen a Belgian person actually go out and actively buy speculoos to dunk in their tea, but this may be because I live in Brussels and have rarely seen a Belgian person do.. well... anything.

It is traditionally eaten on St Nicolas' day (i.e. NOW) and the supermarkets sell it in big festive slabs.

But that's not where the obsession ends: speculoos crops up in desserts, ice-cream flavours, even a sort of speculoos-nutella.

Speculoos on Wikipedia


Gosh, isn't it great to be a Belgian?



The Belgian Song

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.

Did you know...

... that soft drinks are known in francophone Switzerland as sportifs?

You've got to respect a country that is so muesli-slurping virtuous it can make even Coca-Cola sound healthy...

New pizzeria in the neighbourhood

Following huge losses in the recent European Parliament elections, many major players in the European left-wing have had to find new employment:


'Lekka Pizza Rewolucyjna'... no wonder I only got a 3+ in my Polish history exam!


A little bad punning my friend?

... 'Dla CHE go nie?!'

Secret Lodziarnia

Walking home in the late afternoon sunshine, I passed a tiny ice-cream place, not long out of winter hibernation.

Curious, I stepped inside and ordered a scoop of borówkowy (blueberry - but don't start, because we could be debating this one for ages).

And it was actually pretty good: real bits of fruit (as well as seeds) and a delicious berry-tartness to foil the creamy dairy flavour (as opposed to the Słodkie Wenztl blueberry, which tends to be bland). It was even - dare I say it - reminiscent of the famous ice-cream on Starowiślna. Without the queues.

It's on Madalińskiego, just off Rynek Dębnicki: polecam. Smacznego!

Safety in numbers

Or not, as the case may be.

There's currently a debate going on at the obwarzanki stand outside the school (the one up, rather than down, the road). It regards a matter of some importance to the health and well-being of the students, namely how to order the famous Kraków pretzels.

You'd have thought I'd have had enough experience at this already, but it seems I may have been getting it wrong all along (this may explain the hostility of the Bad Obwarzanki Lady).

During a break between classes today we stood anxiously by the pretzel-stand, waiting for the Good Obwarzanki Lady to come back from her coffee break, or from the loo, or from getting change, or from wherever it was she had absconded to.

- You know what, said my fellow-student, I think the numbers change when you're asking for something...
- What?! Again?
- Well you see, my friend is in level B2, and he said that there's this special rule for when you're asking for one thing... you have to decline it in biernik... or is it genitive...

I was horrified. I really thought that buying food was the one area I'd got totally under control.

-Why is that? Is it the numbers? Or is it because you're asking for it?

See, I know that when you ask for something, like 'proszę o gazetę', you use the accusative, but since 'obwarzanek' and 'precle' are masculine and neutral respectively (aren't they??) the ending shouldn't change.

- I think it's to do with single objects. If it's a quantity, like 'chleb', that's different.
- So... every time I ask for 'jabłko', I should actually be asking for 'jabłka'?
- I'm not sure... maybe.

We fell silent, contemplating the elevated mysteries of level B2.


Can any helpful Polish readers clarify things for us?

Cordon Bleugh

I have a guilty, traitorous secret.

I suspect I may be the only person on the British Isles who does not like Roast Dinner.

Perhaps you are currently spending your Sunday flipping through the colour supplements in bed (it's minus four outside so I don't blame you). Go to the first (ish) page, and look for the column where they interview a celebrity of some genre about their Ideal Weekend (both the papers my parents get feature this type of article). Almost certainly, at some point during the interview, the words 'Sunday Roast' will be uttered: probably in conjunction with either of the phrases 'at our local pub' or 'with the parents'.

Please. Where is your imagination? After a good fortnight of rich, stodgy food, even the hardiest carnivores must by now be unable to stomach another slice of ropey grey beef or a sweaty sliver of damp chicken breast. Even the Christmas turkey had strings of something twisty running through the flesh.

Then, there are the roast potatoes: traditionally the only bit of a Sunday dinner that anyone actually likes (unless you live in the north, in which case, include Yorkshire puddings - a surprising hit with my French flatmate in Bath). Should you take your life and the health of your arteries in your hands and use lard? Traditionally it's the best fat for the job, but in the wrong hands can result in waxy insides and burnt skins (on the potatoes, of course). Do you go for the trendy option and add olive oil, rosemary and garlic?* Used with the wrong potatoes, this can result in clammy skins and half-baked flesh (on the potatoes, of course). Oh and it makes your kitchen smell like the back room of Mario's Trattoria, for the next 24 hours.
Goose fat is a new (or re-?) entry on the market, popular with the Nigella generation (likes posh ingredients, has less middle class guilt than the Extra Vergine crowd). It comes in a tiny jar with a silver label and the leftovers will sit in the fridge for the next six months like your Sunday Best, growing fur and waiting for another special occasion.
The safest option is to pop down to Iceland for the pre-roasted frozen version, and, if you have guests, burn the packaging.

Vegetables are really best forgotten. The cooking time of the joint itself requires such feats of mental arithmatic that whoever is acting as unfortunate chef for the day can spare few brain cells for greenery. The result is anaemic, overboiled greens, beans and carrots.
Parsnips are the only salvagable part of this sorry collection, largely because when roasted they pretty much count as potatoes, but with a higher Glycaemic Index**.

Sprouts are a Christmas treat unique to our Island. How I long - all year - for the day I can eat my fill of sprouts. That peculiar bitter aftertaste - sourish, with a note of earwax - the damply enticing dark green leaves, the elusive, slightly composted smell, hinting at digestive sensations yet to come.
Only in Britain could a population so relentlessly indulge in the ritual self-flagellation of eating sprouts.

No, the only decent thing to come out of the Sunday Roast is the preliminary thimbleful of Harvey's Bristol Cream (preceded by the words: 'I'll just get a sherry for Granny'), and Pudding.

Cut out the rest, and Sunday Lunch is a haze of boozy, cheescakey*** bliss.


Back to the vegetable soup and couscous then...


* I admit I have been known - on rare occasions - to serve diced potatoes prepared in this manner to deserving boyfriends. Deserving... make that very rare occasions.
** This is bad if you are on a diet, but I can't remember why. It may or may not have something to do with the Stock Market (for vegetable stock... geddit?).
***see 'Nigella generation' comment above. Marbled with 70% dark chocolate. It took us four days to eat it.

Bowl of credit crunch, please, skinny milk

Wow, Sterling airlines is the latest budget travel company to go... uh... into a tailspin.
I flew to Sweden with them six weeks ago, booking my ticket rather nervously on the recommendation of the group I was volunteering for and wondering whether or not my return flight would actually take off. However, when I called their UK helpline, a polite young man with polished English answered and I felt rather relieved: it looked like a case of clean Scandinavian efficiency all the way.
Unfortunately it seems a lot of their shareholders hailed from Iceland. Uh oh.

Iceland: a whole country has gone bankrupt! (it's been a while since I got my highlighter out over the Economist). I suppose that's what happens if Kerry Katona is heading your advertising campaign. Where's Mum going to go now?!

This credit crunch lark is mad! I mean - I have absolutely no idea what it's all about. Friends who work in the City are starting to cut down on the heady social life and acquaintances in accounting look a little more nervous than before, but other than that...

Here's Pinolona's guide to surviving the credit crunch:

1/ Housing crash.
Apparently lots of people will end up in negative equity. Mortgage lenders are going bankrupt. General woe abounds. The solution? Rent a flat - in Poland, with students. Or, go for the option favoured by any red-blooded Italian male and live at home with your parents. Ensure they are suitably distracted - e.g. by fitting a new kitchen - and they may not notice you are there (thereby omitting to charge you rent).

2/ Increased food prices.
See no. 1, part two.

3/ High cost of heating.
Make sure you live in a building with permanent communal heating which is included in the rent (radiator knobs not included; fiddling around with wrenches and getting covered in black grease compulsory). This will probably take you to Poland (or your parents' house, see no 1, part 2).

3/ Job insecurity.
Waves of redundancies are rippling across the City like a scythe through ripe wheat.
Avoid the fear by quitting your stable job and becoming self-employed. Hey presto! Permanent underlying job insecurity brings no nasty surprises in times of financial hardship.

4/ Interest rates.
I'm not entirely sure what's going on with interest rates to be honest, but, since I haven't been in credit since 2003, it doesn't really matter. So why not blow all your savings on a costly (and worthless) university education?! Then you won't have to worry about not making any money on them. (plus if you're a student no-one can make you redundant. Winners all round!)

5/ In the absence of any kind of disposable income, indulge in simple pleasures. Such as... watching the snow (snow?!).
Other free spectator sports include: the US presidential elections; the queue at the Post Office; counting SUVs driven by bewildered au pairs trying to do the school run; attempting to spot a happy face among the commuters returning from central London at 8.15 on a school night.

Happy crunching!

Breeding

If you are a single woman aged between 25 and 30, logically, you will want to live in a bustling city centre, where there is plenty of work, plenty of noise after 10pm, plenty of light and movement, and plenty of 24-hour liquor stores for when the company of other single twenty-somethings gets too much for you.

At all costs, you should avoid small, tranquil dormitory towns with a high birth rate and an even higher income bracket.

Like Sevenoaks.

From dawn til dusk, the assault is relentless. The minute you step onto the high street...

.... wham! A straining mass of T-shirt stretched over pregnant belly popping out at all angles!

You keep walking. Pretty smocked tunics flutter over Mummy Gap skinny jeans (with elasticated waistband).
Any shop you enter becomes a feat of navigation (not to mention a politeness contest) as you attempt to sidestep your way around the pushchairs and perambulators blocking the aisles. Do not forget to add a liberal helping of guilt for the resentment you feel towards these poor languishing ladies.
Enormous four-by-fours clog the narrow streets, tiny children perched high up in the vast cabin.
Do not even think about crossing the road.
Particularly if you live on a street with more than one private school.

Sevenoaks is where Giles and Annabelle the Private Wealth specialists come to breed.
Sevenoaks is where energetic sex lives come to die... (their final throes producing young in the Rupert, Zara and Tarquin mould).

Let us picture an innocent scene outside a café. Say, for example, a perfectly common Italian deli-style café serving pickled artichokes and lah-tay* to bored housewives and retired folk.

Two women, with identikit tots squirming on knees, sit sipping skinny latte in the shade.
The waitress arrives:
- Ooh look, Fearghus, here comes your penne rigate!
The child looks suitably excited at the sight of the revolting adult food. At the same moment, another tot - attached to mother's hand - passes, breathes in the heady waft of garlic and sun-dried tomatoes, and says loudly: 'mmmyum, yum!'

Now when I was a child, pasta didn't exist. There was only spaghetti, and you didn't eat it - because it was cold and slidey and clammy - unless it had been spewed out of a tin in a puddle of violent orange sauce.

One would certainly never touch nasty flabby spaghetti snakes if they were doused in pungent garlicky oil and sprinkled with shrivelled bits of charred courgette.

Just what is the world coming to?


*'This isn't latte! This is cappuccino!
Girl behind counter: 'It is latte actually'
Posh customer: 'well I hope you don't mind if I just scoop all this foam off into here then...' (moves to other side of counter and starts to bail foam out of coffee cup into tray of coffee machine)

Po Ukrainsku

Much as I love Poland, recent events have engendered a certain curiosity about the lands further east. Ukraine is a big country to the east of Poland. In Kiev there is a Great Gate. Also it is the name of a type of frozen chicken with breadcrumbs on the outside and garlic butter on the inside. And you should never talk about the Ukraine because it means 'the end bit' and Ukrainian people will be offended.

That is the extent of my knowledge about Ukraine before last week.

Here are a few new things I have learnt about Ukrainian culture over the past week and a half:

- Speaking Polish loudly and slowly is not the same as speaking Ukrainian, and no-one is going to be impressed (or pretend to understand you).
- Ukrainian pierogi are not as nice as Polish ones (sorry). Interestingly, the cream cheese goes on the outside. It's very confusing. Not to mention sticky.
- Ukrainian national dances are awesome. I was able to get my yearly Slavic wedding dance fix without going east of Geneva. Plus I got to have another go and the Ukrainian man-snatching dance, and managed to stay on the appropriate side of the gender gap this time.
- You can stand a knife up in borscht. Whereas you could probably swim in a bowl of barszcz.
- Ukrainians - and indeed any other non-Polish Slavic people - are Not Interested when you rave about how great Poland is. Although we managed to find common ground over kwas chlebowy (which is probably not spelt like that in Ukrainian).
- It is possible to turn a Swiss traditional brass band concert in the mountains into a Slavic wedding dance...

I realise there are some gaps in my knowledge. Must do something about that...

Weird things about being back in the UK

1/ People feel the need to use Chainsaws and Earth Movers in their gardens Every Day. This is to show that they have bigger balls than their neighbours.

2/ Cappuccino is GINORMOUS. At least twice the size of your humble Cracovian or Italian cappu. You get a) very high very quickly; b) stomach ache from lactose overload.

3/ Doorbells. People live in houses here and everyone has a doorbell. The doorbell exists to drive the dog nuts. Or the dog exists to bark at the doorbell. Sometimes, the doorbell (which has dodgy wiring) goes off when you leave the house, and then the dog gets confused. Even when the doorbell doesn't work, the dogs usually do.

4/ Carpets. Remind me again why each floor surface must be carpeted to within an inch of its life? Carpets, as far as I can make out, only serve as hiding places for fleas, ingrained dirt and dog hair. And they absorb spills of all varieties (the dog is highly strung and has poor muscular control. I think you know what I mean). My parents have beautiful wooden floors on the ground floor of their house, and yet these are covered by disgusting, smelly carpets because, as my Dad says, it would be too much trouble to polish them. And he's not even the one who does the vacuuming.

5/ 'Neighbours' is on Channel 5!! What's a girl to do?!
I ought to add that terrestrial aerials in Sevenoaks do not deign to pick up signals from Channel 5. This is to protect residents from an accidental encounter with the likes of Jordan or Denise Van Outen. The same applies in St Andrews, incidentally. I suspect they've signed a 'too posh for dross' secret opt-out clause.

6/ Free food. When you walk past market stalls in the Home Counties, the yuppie vendor - a West-Country organic farmer with French market type aspirations - will offer you crinkly fragments of sun-dried tomato on the end of a cocktail stick. A stroll around Borough Market will keep you going for a whole afternoon.
This Never happens in Poland*. You'll pay for that bit of cheese or we're calling security.

7/ Diet products fill supermarket shelves. My parents' fridge is full of fat-free WeightWatchers fromage frais. You can get Colę dietyczną everywhere. Caffè Nero, Starbucks and the like will serve you skimmed latte on request (try asking for 0.00 pro cent in Tribeca and see where it gets you). And it's not just the grown-ups: Weetabix packets recommend breakfast cereal as a low-fat tea-time snack for kids (whatever happened to Nutella and Kinder eggs?). Cookbooks have titles like 'Skinny Bitch' or 'Why French women don't get fat'**.
And yet the papers are screaming about record obesity levels.

8/ In fact the papers are screaming about pretty much everything. Obesity crises; models with eating disorders; torrential rain threatening to flood the country; credit crunch; negative equity; the Lisbon Treaty and Falling Standards Among the Young.
Gosh the country has gone to the dogs in my absence.

Better hot-foot it back to Poland...


*Except in Alma, which is a weird experimental yuppie place.
** 40 Gauloises a day and bulimia.