Just when you thought it was safe...

I was going to publish a half-written post about a very eerie trip to the British Consulate, but in the meantime, I woke up yesterday morning to scenes rather like this:

Yeah, I know. Again.

Normally I'm a big fan of snow, and the incontestable fact is that Brussels under snow is a far prettier and less doleful place than Brussels under drizzle, but this is starting to get ridiculous.

Yesterday morning I went to see a man about a pension policy (I know!!).
- oh you managed to get here all right then?
I must have looked surprised because he added:
- all the buses are cancelled.

Welcome to Belgium.

Last night I went out for a quiet, mid-week beer with a couple of friends. That is, I tried to go out for a quiet mid-week beer. The place looked easy enough to find: follow the big road from the station and then turn right.

Only... somewhere along the line I took the wrong road.

The pub was less than ten minutes from Central Station and I managed to arrive there via an impressive detour which took in the Bozar, the Palais de Justice, the lift at the Palais de Justice, Brussels Chapelle station and the Eglise des Minimes.

On the way back I missed the last metro and fell over twice on the packed snow slipping and sliding my way home down Rue de la Loi.

Enough snow now. Thank you. Mamy dość zimy!

Luck

It strikes me that I am extraordinarily lucky. Firstly, to have been born and to be concious and thinking and existing at all. I mean - what are the chances of that?
Not only to have been born but to have been born in a country where there is solid infrastructure and relative wealth and freedom in a relatively well-off family in an area with decent state schools, before it became utterly impossible to get into one.
And however much I worry and complain that I am going to run out of work and out of money and be unable to pay the rent, so far everything has been fine. I am not living in a cardboard box. I - miraculously and by some incredible fluke that I still don't really understand - have a work situation which will continue to get better (unless I go deaf or get tinnitus or lose my voice completely or have a premature stroke or get permanent tonsillitis - oh my goodness the list is endless).
Come to think of it, the Student Loans company has been ominously quiet recently. And I haven't started saving for tax this year yet. Plus I have yet to get my full electricity bill for the year... so there's still time for everything to part en couilles.
I and my immediate family all seem to be more or less ok health-wise: I mean, any one of us could be hit by a bus or catch swine flu or be frazzled to a crisp in an electrical fire or discover a terrible underlying illness any day now but... all right, all right, this isn't helping.

What I mean is that there are very few places in the world where a woman can live alone and support herself and be free to go where she likes, drive what she likes (bank manager allowing - so in my case a pair of rollerblades) and not have to get married or be forced into domestic or sexual slavery.

I am very, very lucky.

I am terrified that one day it will all go horribly wrong...

Kraków in winter

Perhaps you are wondering why on earth someone would be crazy enough to go to Poland in January.
Well, it's actually rather pretty.

Here are some pictures:

Snowy saints outside the church of St Peter and Paul on Grodzka

The Wisła was totally frozen, how cool is that?!

Not actually a concentration camp, but leftovers from the film set of Schindler's List

Although Wikipedia says there was a labour camp here during the Second World War.

Interesting obwarzanki-based hanging decorations in Nowa Prowincja. Incidentally Polish Christmas decorations stay up long past Epiphany and were very much in evidence around town.

... and we're back.

I'm sitting at the laptop, trying to puzzle out a long letter with a lot of information on it. I see documents to procure and send and photographs to scan and passwords to confirm and online forms that have moved to another web address.
In about ten minutes I will print it out so I can see the whole thing at once, and then I will ignore all the extra words and extract the bits that constitute things I actually have to do and write them down in a nice long list like the tasks of Hercules and lastly I will put numbers on them in order of urgency from 'could be put off until tomorrow next week August' to 'oh holy crap should have done this yesterday last weekend shortly after graduation' with a special priority boarding category for 'oh help will not get paid EVER unless I do this!'.

Aren't lists great? The worst thing about lists is ignoring them until eleven o'clock in the evening when it's too late to do anything about them, and then panicking all night. The best thing about lists is that feeling of satisfaction when you can strike something off, done, finished, accomplished! The most frustratingly common thing about lists is coming to the bottom of the page, taking all the items which are still not crossed off and copying them onto the new list on the next page.

My lists usually start like this:

'To Do - Monday Tues Thurs Sat SUNDAY'


It would help if I could think a bit more clearly but unfortunately I've been sitting on public transport since six minutes past six this morning.

Shortly after I had boarded the Wizz Air Party Bus and snuggled into a warm corner of the back row, a group of young, largely fair-haired guys stumbled into the bus and squeezed into the remaining back seats. The flight after mine was to Eindhoven (which - comfortingly in the event of missed check-in - is probably not all that much further away than bloody Charleroi), so I guessed where they came from. The young blond guy next to me turned, wafting a distinctive odour of stale brewery my way.
- Sorry for the stink! he said carefully 'but I have an excuse... it's my last night in Kraków'
- Mine too. I replied. 'but I didn't drink anything*'
It was 6.20 in the morning. Witty replies were not forthcoming, certainly not on my side. He turned back and after about five minutes on the road fell asleep and spent the next hour and fifty minutes slowly slumping further into my lap.

I suspect I am thoroughly cured of Dutch guys.



* a shameful lie, I had one mug of grzaniec.

Encounter on Szewska

Walking down ul Szewska, face turned down against the cold, I was accosted by a man in a navy blue uniform.

- Zapraszam do rece i nogi!

-Excuse me?!


I pushed back the hood of my ski jacket and nudged my hat up a fraction so I could pull the headphone out of one ear.

- Zapraszam do rece i nogi!

- Przepraszam?!
My interlocuteur was wearing a heavy navy blue outdoor jacket and matching trousers, with stripes on the shoulders in the style of one of the many private security firms working in the city centre. He could well have been part of the Straz Miejska - a civil order service in the city. Was he inviting me to hit the floor? Was I about to be subject to a strip search?!

- Zapraszam do rece i nogi, repeated the guy, a little exasperated: 'do klubu!'

Finally the penny dropped: he was trying to advertise a club, on ul. Szewska, well known for being a party street. 'Rece i nogi' was the name.

I declined and moved on, wondering a little: nothing about the man's outfit or general attitude did anything to evoke the party atmosphere. And why on earth accost a lone girl (even that doubtful from a distance, given my thick winter clothing), wearing a ski jacket, jeans and hiking boots and listening - although he could not have known this - to Mozart. What on earth was he thinking?!

Zimno mi

Wizzair airport bus, around four in the afternoon:

Eventually the bus pulls away and, sitting in the corner of the back seat, I can see colours and shadows outside but little else. The window steams up quickly with the passengers packed so close inside and when I try to wipe it clean, I find that the condensation has frozen on the glass. Ice has actually formed inside the bus.

Somewhere near Teatr Bagatela:

My friends live in an old kamienice with high ceilings and tall windows and a storage heater system which doesn't stand a chance against the sub-zero temperatures of a Polish January. The old thermometer on the windowsill outside shows minus eleven, but it seems to have been like that all day. The cat has not moved from the top of the heater since morning.
I take my teacup in shivering hands to the window and look out, over the silent snow-clad rooftops, towards the pale echoes of the sunset. Trails of chimney smoke curl gently into the dusk. Through the blackened branches of the bare trees, the sky is a wash of soft lilac and salmon shades and wisps of dove-grey cloud.
I stare past the houses and trees and catch a glimpse of a lost winter fairytale, long-forgotten, or perhaps never told...

Off on hols...

... wearing three jumpers because my miserable Wizzair cabin baggage allowance only lets me take 10kg in a suitcase the size of a jumbo matchbox. Why oh why am I going on holiday to a country where the temperature is averaging around the minus 15 mark?!

All right, I'm going, I'm going!


did I leave the gas on??