Things to do in Poland in the rain

After two weeks of complaints about the oppressive heat, Poland has finally answered all of our prayers: on Sunday the heavens opened and rain has been pouring down ever since. It's dark, everything feels permanently damp, and I am constantly chilled to the bone, having packed only flimsy summer clothes and shoes.

For the umpteenth time, I appreciate what inspired the Slavs to invent vodka.

But before I drown my sorrows in apple Redds and chocolate, I'll share a little list I've been mentally compiling, of Things To Do In Poland In The Rain.

Here goes:

1/ Complain about the weather. It's a well-known fact that complaining (narzekanie) is a national sport in Poland. Roll up your sleeves and get stuck in.

2/ Drink. I think this needs no further explanation. There's nothing like a few shots of ice-cold Wyborowa to make the world feel like a better, warmer, altogether more glowy place.

3/ Eat. Especially stodgy food, like pierogi, bigos, and other things that contain lard. This is to coat yourself with a nice layer of fat in preparation for a long, long, hard winter.

4/ Pretend your pop-out umbrella is She-Ra's sword. By the Power of Greyskull! Sword to Shield! (Na potęgę Posępnego Czerepu, mocy przybywaj! - ok not exactly the same thing, but the only one I could find on Wikipedia)

5/ Do your Polish homework. Brush up your biernik. Dust off your dopelniacz. Polish your Polszczyzna. No, you're right... I'm sure we can think of something else to do before it gets to this stage.

6/ Go to a museum. Poland's history is a long krwawy kalendarz of violence and tragedy. This has had a significant impact on present-day Poland... notably in the form of lots of cool museums. Try the Galicia Museum in Kazimierz or the Warsaw Uprising Museum in Warsaw for a start.

7/ Go to the optician, have your hearing tested, make an appointment at the dentist. It's cheaper here than in the UK or Belgium, and you get to learn new vocabulary for free. What's not to love?!

8/ Watch the entire first series of Teraz albo Nigdy on Onet video on demand. Or Magda M. Or Kasia i Tomek... you get the idea.

9/ Go and watch a pessimistic Polish film. You probably won't enjoy it as much as Teraz albo Nigdy, but you will feel more virtuous.

10/ Hide in the back room of Massolit, drink coffee, and read books you have absolutely no intention of buying, from sections you would never normally dream of checking out, like World Religions, or
 Sociolinguistics.

11/ Sit at home and listen to Coldplay. Pour another shot of vodka...

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.

Poland discriminates against foreign children

Phew that's an eye-catching headline. At least that's the idea. I was thinking either that or 'Tourist kids exploited by Polish rail' or 'Full fare for foreigners!'

I was sitting on the Balice Express, waiting for the ticket inspector to come around and trying to block out the sound of two Sun-In blonde, skinny-jean-clad English teenagers singing a brassy mixture of Lily Allen and Marsz Dąbrowski.

- Two adults and two children please.
said an English voice somewhere in front of me. The ticket inspector looked a bit puzzled.
- It's the same, said a Polish man, also in English
This seemed a bit strange, particularly as she'd just sold a reduced-fare ticket to a Polish mother and child up ahead.
A Polish woman sitting across the aisle from me explained to the ticket inspector that the Englishwoman was asking for half fare for her children.
The ticket inspector shook her head, and replied, in Polish, to the Polish woman.
- No, no. It's only for our children. They have to have a school ID.
The Polish woman interpreted for the English family:
- No, there's no discount.

To my shame, I didn't interrupt and explain the actual situation.

When the ticket inspector came around I said very pointedly that in England both foreign and English children rode half-fare on trains.

- Not in our country; said the woman, curtly.

Now come on, Poland: here I am, explaining to all my friends back home how great you are, what a fantastic country this is and how nice the people are - not to mention pouring scorn on any suggestion that this might not be a normal 'civilised' (disclaimer: the author of this blog uses the lexeme 'civilised' with very particular associative connotations which she hopes make it evident that it is in fact a citation and not attributable to her own personal use of the connotation-less word in its full Empire-era ... uh ... glory) country where you can't buy Weetabix or Marmite in the corner shop - and you go and spoil it all with this child fare discrimination business! How am I supposed to fight off the Daily Mail crowd now?!

Why on earth does a child need a school ID to prove that they are child enough to pay the reduced fare? Surely the size of the child is evidence enough! In the UK, kids under 15 pay half fare and it's that simple. It doesn't matter where you come from: in fact I'm pretty certain it would be considered racial discrination to differentiate between English and foreign under 15s (n.b. a quick look at the Transport for London website indicates that 11-15 year olds do indeed need to carry an identifying photocard).

Come on, Kraków! Think of all the revenue generated by foreign tourism every year! As a gesture of goodwill, surely it makes sense to treat foreign children on an equal footing with Polish children? Now that we're a grown-up member of the EU and foreigners actually do come to visit and all...