Back then

2002

I am sitting on the carpet, leaning up against a very tatty sofa, in a two-up, two-down semi in a student town, on a tiny estate five minutes from the main street (there are only three streets in the whole place), ten minutes from the sea. When you go outside the air is sharp and salty and takes your breath away. There is a gas fire in the hearth. We are watching 'Real Genius' (an 80s film about geeky physics students). There is wall-to-wall carpet, in some garish brown-and-beige pattern. Four boys live here, two New-Englanders and two Glaswegians. The flat is littered with mouldering sports kit and there is a strange shrine in one corner built out of used pizza boxes and beer cans. I am twenty-one, and utterly - unthinkingly - in love with the long-haired American boy that I have been going out with for a couple of months. Three girls - one of whom is me - also live here, unofficially. There is something festering in the kitchen sink which may once have been porridge. I have enough money in my savings account for the whole year. I feel stable, and content, and - possibly - happy, and am aware that at some point this will end and something else will begin, but not yet...

Juwenalia

This is my third consecutive May in Poland (words like 'glutton' and 'punishment' spring to mind) and yet I've never quite got to grips with Juwenalia , the annual student summer festival.

This year, however, I'm a registered student at the Jagiellonian University (known as 'UJ', pronounced - with English spelling - as 00h-yacht) with a real legitimacja and everything, so I want to take advantage of the festive times.

I know that there have been concerts all week, on a temporary stage outside the student halls of residence - which thankfully I do not inhabit - but apart from that I've never really worked out what it's all about.

I asked a friend from salsa class.

- Well... everyone gets the day off on Friday, no classes at all.

Bonus! Although I quite like our Friday classes: they start early so there's usually not too much of a crowd, and it's conversation class: not as mentally taxing as grammar (besides which, Pani Kinga often has sweeties in her handbag).

- Ok, but what's actually happening on Friday?
- Well, the students dress up and we march to the Rynek, and then they hand over the keys of the town to us for the duration.

Interesting.

- So what does that mean?
- Students rule the town! We get to make the rules for a day and basically we can do what we want.
- Great! But what does that actually mean? In practice I mean?

She thought for a bit.

- ummm..... oh! It means you can drink from an open can of beer on the Błonia!

The Błonia is a huge triangle-shaped common to the west of the city centre. Needless to say, open-air drinking is forbidden in Kraków, with police cars regularly patrolling the banks of the river at night.

Well this is great news - and there's no more time to lose!

I'm off, to exercise my limited sovereignty over the beautiful city of Kraków.

plik! fiizzzzzzz...

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?

W domu dużego brata

Big Brother. It's still going. For the two hundredth season. Yes folks, that's right, in 1808, twelve people selected at random were thrown together in a house for eight weeks in the hope that they would get it on in front of the cameras.

Apparently, some people still watch it, rather than switching the TV off for an hour at 9pm (or changing to BBC, which is not really an improvement these days).

Being in the Big Brother house is rather like living in a student flat in Poland.

No, hear me out: all the girls live in one room, all the boys live piled up in another. The bathroom door doesn't shut properly. Everyone hoards toilet paper. It is impossible to calculate the number of actual occupants (x = y [occupants] + boyfriend A + cousin B - flatmate a(b)/c * PI r squared...). The furniture is made of MDF or plywood. However tight your budget, there's always money for alcohol.

Welcoom to the Big Broover Hoose. Sixteen housemates, one bathroom. Who goes? YOU decide...

Day 1
The housemates arrive. A massive party ensues. Nine bottles of vodka and forty cans of Tyskie are consumed and the fridge is left full of mysterious liqueurs which may or may not have been brewed in dziadek's shed.

Day 2
Housemates A and D (girls) get up early, clean up, and spend the rest of the day looking self-righteous. At 2pm, the boys wake up and sit on the sofa, drinking the remaining beer.

Day 3
A random new housemate arrives. Rumour has it that he is Agnieszka's second cousin, but this remains unconfirmed. The housemates set up an extra mattress in the boys' room.

Day 4
Term has begun in the Structural Design faculty, and the first task has been awarded to one of the housemates: create an interior space with two staircases meeting on a mezzanine floor. Model this in cardboard.
08.55: Housemate D enters kitchen, with cardboard model of room.
08.59: Kettle boils: housemate D -who has been up all night - adds two drops of hot water to 20 grams of instant coffee.
11.20: Housemate A enters kitchen. Housemates D and A hold intense discussion for several minutes. Housemate A takes hold of model, twists it several ways, scratches head, sits down.
11.23: Housemate A makes more coffee.
13.14: Housemates B and C (boys) enter kitchen in underpants. Housemate B takes beer from fridge. They greet A and D, still at the table. More discussion. Housemate C takes the cardboard model.
...
21.53: There are now nine people in the kitchen. The cardboard model is beginning to look rather the worse for wear. Housemate E (female) enters with Boyfriend A. They greet D. Boyfriend A sits on floor and begins to twist cardboard model.
21.58: Housemate A mixes milk pudding from a packet. Housemates C and B and boyfriend A eat cold frankfurters in plastic. Housemates D and E make porridge.
...

Day 5
04.17: A loud shriek is heard. Housemate D runs into kitchen, brandishing completed, sellotaped cardboard model. There is private rejoicing.
...
06.40: Two female housemates get up early and decide to do sit-ups. This sporadic burst of random insanity is never observed more than once in any Big Brother session.

...


Day 16
02.23: The housemates have now lost all concept of time. Polish winter has fallen and the exterior world is in perpetual darkness, with the exception of a twenty-minute period around lunchtime. Everyone looks at the floor. Someone has left a Coldplay CD playing on 'repeat'.

Day 18
No-one has seen housemates B and C since their Mechanical Economics exam 48 hours ago.

Day 19
Mid-term. Unfortunately, the housemates have failed in their Classic Mime task. Their food budget has been severely restricted. They are reduced to drinking Warka Mocna. The fridge is full of beer cans and free garlic pizza sauce.

Day 21
National holiday. The housemates go home for a week. The next door neighbours break in and use their electricity.

Day 28
The housemates have returned from their holidays to find a message under the door: Big Brother wants to see you in the Diary Room... at 9am...

A Song for Europe

Congratulations Poland! You know you are one of the grown-ups in Europe when you come joint last in Eurovision! Welcome to the club! Come in, sit down, have a scotch.
Have you met our fellow loser, Germany...?

We watched the whole thing on a big screen in the student halls out past Galeria Krakowska. Incidentally, students in Poland have one bathroom per ten people and you have to keep a close eye on your own toilet paper...

The problem with watching Eurovision abroad is that you miss out on Terry Wogan's brilliantly sarcastic commentary. Worse still, you find yourself trying to substitute your own gags, which seem extremely funny at the time (halfway down 50cl of Lech and a bag of paprika crisps), but which are completely lost on your non-British fellow spectators.

Mind you, it's almost exciting if you watch it with people from countries which might actually win (Croatia, Turkey, Romania...).

Depressingly enough, if I were an alien landing in Europe on Eurovision night, I would think that humans all spoke a single tongue: English, with a heavy Slavic accent, darlink. You may have won the competition, but language is power: take that, Mother Russia!

And the quality of the music?
As one of the girls remarked dryly:
- You hear 'combination, imagination, excitation' ... and then you like the song...

The Dealer

Within the hallowed halls of the interpreting school in Kraków, an undercover market is thriving.

Saturday morning. The corridor, painted a light duck-egg blue,* exudes light and space. The brand-new po remoncie linoleum gleams wryly, like threadbare satin. You couldn't ask for a more innocent setting.

As the wall clock ticks its inexorable way through ten minutes to nine, the lift doors zwoosh open and the first students begin to trickle in. With a weary 'click', the long hand shifts its weight over the hour and a gaggle of girls, freshly tumbled off the Warsaw express, burst rucksack-laden through the fire doors and stagger into the airy blue of the corridor.

But wait - something is happening...

One girl hauls the burdensome load off her shoulders.

Immediately, several other students, until this point slouching listlessly along the walls of the hall and dreaming of last night's excesses, flock around her, scrabbling for wallets and purses. Coins chink together and fresh cash crackles.

She pulls open the backpack, diving deep and rummaging blindly within its depths.

Her waiting colleagues hold their collective breath.

Moments pass - signifying hours for the fix-starved addicts in the corridor.

Finally, the dealer's head emerges from the rucksack, and then, slowly, she draws out her precious cargo.

The other students take a step back and there is a respectful pause before the distribution of goods and exchange of money begins.

Our Varsovian supplier, a visitor from the civilised world, begins to hand out...

... hard-backed, spiral bound reporter's notebooks.

Impossible to find anywhere in Poland.


Along with applicator tampons and pre-packaged sandwiches, this is one essential product that is virtually unheard-of here...



*Incidentally, Jilly Cooper's favourite colour. It's so true. Read any two or three of her novels in quick succession (guilty) and it will jump out at you.