Tick Tock

The clock is ticking on my year in Poland, well 9 and a half months to be precise.  On Friday I booked my flight home for the 25th June, so I have just less than 5 weeks left here.  Time really does fly when you're having fun.

I'm happy thinking about going home, I'm looking forward to seeing my friends and spending more time with my boyfriend and my family, but thinking about leaving pains me!  I will so miss Poland, I love Torun, I like my life here (bar work of course :-)) and I've met some great people who it will be very hard to say goodbye to.

I have no idea what the next year will bring but I expect I'll be back here a few times getting my fix and maintaining my language learning, I've gone too far to go home and forget it all!  I don't know if I'll ever fully leave Poland.  Whatever happens I'm determined to make the next 5 weeks 5 of the best, and to all my friends in the UK - I will see you soon!

Kruszwica

Lake Gopło from Mice's Tower

Today I have spent an absolutely lovely day in Kruszwica, a tiny town of only 9,000 people.  It's famous for the 'Mice's Tower'; the only remaining part of the castle that used to stand there, and the legend of the mice who ate the cruel Prince Popiel after he murdered his relatives in his (failed) bid to stay the ruler of Poland.  The legend says that when he sank his poisoned relatives in the lake, the bodies bred thousands of mice which sought out their murderer who was hiding with his wife in the tower.

Kruszwica is situated on the huge Lake Gopło, which is surrounded by sporadic sandy beaches and home to the Polish rowing championships, but today there were more speed boats, kayaks and pedalows.  The weather has been lovely; really sunny after yesterdays storm, although my chest and shoulders seem to think it was maybe a little too hot.  We climbed the tower to admire the view, paddled in the lake and dozed on the beach, then enjoyed a picnic and a burnt off the calories with a long walk round the lake.  The beaches were busy and I expect the lake will be full of people come summer, this is a lovely little town to spend the day if you're not too far from the area.

Wrocław

Wrocław is apparently known as the 'Venice of Poland.'  Well I went to Wrocław a couple of weekends ago and I've been to Venice and I can't see the similarities, for a start, I liked Wrocław.  I guess it does have one canal and a couple of islands but the similarities end there; there are no (or few) Italians, no gondolas and for a major city full of tourists, quite reasonably priced.  


For me recently it's been weekends away galore, two weekends ago a few of my lovely friends from home came to visit me and we met in Wrocław.  It took me 5 hours and 70zl by train to get there, it's over 300km from Toruń.  I arrived late so headed straight for our apartment for a catch up and sleep.

We spent Saturday and Sunday walking round the old town and exploring the centre.  It's a beautiful place, as far as Polish squares go, this one is big and beautiful and buzzing, and very colourful, definitely one of the nicest in Poland.

The atmosphere was fantastic, lots of people, lots of sunshine, lots of ice cream.  There was even a chess table set up in the middle of the square for passers by to come and play, and lots of those quite annoying still people.

We went up the church tower (the one by the square) for a great view of the square and all the city, it was worth every one of the 293 winding steps that we climbed to get there, later we went up the cathedral for, er, another good view, thankfully though this time by lift.

Nordic walker

One of the highlights for us was trying to find Wrocław's krasnale; loads of little dwarf statues all over the old town and surrounding area, we found them hanging off lamposts, passed out outside pizza hut, drinking in the park etc etc.  There's also some kind of lovers bridge, full of padlocks proclaiming couples will be 'zawsze razem.'  They made really nice and unique additions to the place.

On the whole I was really impressed, the city seems so live-in-able and friendly and I hope it isn't too long before I'm back there again.  It's big enough to have loads to offer but the centre at least felt small enough that you would never feel really lost or intimidated there.  Of course, first you need to get the pronunciation right which was a real problem amongst my friends; v-rots-wav, v-rots-wav.......

A tribute to Maluchy

Maluchs are the best cars in Poland.  Fiat 126's but known as Maluchy which means 'little one'.  I love seeing them, they're so little and old and rubbish.  I think they look really cool but they're known for being quite unsafe, they say if you crash a Maluch the crash will end at the engine, but the engines are in the back of the car where modern boots are, so you have to put your shopping in the front.  I think you can pick them up for a few hundred zloty, pretty cheap as they're no longer being made, they'll be collectors soon enough.

It was my dream to drive a Maluch but it's looking less and less likely with only a few weeks to go before the end of the year.  If anyone in the Torun area has one that they want to rent out for an evening, leave a comment :-)

Making Mistakes po polsku

I've been learning Polish for a while now and of course living here and using it regularly I like to think that I've made a lot of progress.  But I still make lots of mistakes, and sometimes they're hard to forget.  I'm always a bit embarrassed when I'm speaking Polish because I'm not completely sure of it and realising I've made a mistake when I'm trying to pretend I know what I'm talking about sticks with me, especially when they're so stupid.  Here are a few of my favourite mistakes, thankfully only the first 2 of them are mine, but the other 2 were too funny to pass over.


1)  Coś jeszcze? - Tak, to wszystko.  (Anything else? - Yes, that’s everything) - cringe.

2)  When I was in the Ukraine a couple of months ago I took a bus from Lviv to Lublin.  The driver put my suitcase on at the back of the bus but when I went to sit with it a woman told me to sit further towards the front of the bus (I later realised she was reserving space and privacy for what I think were her smuggler friends.)  So I said to her ale moja szafka jest tam (but my bag is there).  The most embarrassing thing was that I was so proud of my perfect and fluent Polish I thought she would definitely think I was a Polką.  I only found out a few weeks later that szafka is actually cupboard, not bag :-(

3)  Before the Easter holidays a woman asked my friend in their block of flats if she knew if the post was coming over the holidays, she mentioned something about free days.  My friend, so excited by the prospect of a couple of days off and hearing the words 'free day' said to her 'I'm free tomorrow thank you.'  She was so enthusiastic in her response that the woman had no idea what to say, and it wasn't until later that she realised what she had actually been asked, nevermind.

4)  Ordering a meal in a restaurant, in English... 'I'll have the pork and chips... DZIEŃ DOBRY!' instead of dziękuję (Good afternoon instead of thank you) haha :)

I'm sure there have been thousands more but I can't think of them right now.  Has anyone had similar experiences?

Weather Update

Over Easter the weather was lovely, around 24 degrees, perfect weather for ice creams and going out without a jacket on.  Just a week later over the long May weekend it hit 4 degrees, it was quite a shock going back to that temperature.

Even more of a shock was the freak minus 7 we had in Torun a few nights later - I heard it's the lowest recorded temperature in May for the whole of Poland.  It even snowed in some parts of Poland and we were all back to wearing hats, scarfs and gloves... in May!

Thankfully once again the sunshine is back, it was 27 degrees today and just lovely.  It's so nice going outside and being hit by a warm breeze, fingers crossed it will be summer dresses and sandals all the way now.  Bring on Summer :-)

Tolerance

It was recently Poland week in the UK based Guardian newspaper.  As part of this ongoing feature the newspaper published a daily stereotype about Poles and Poland, for example that the women are beautiful (generally true), the roads are rubbish (most definitely true) and that they drink lots of vodka (..of course!).

Another one of those stereotypes was that Poland is a nation of homophobes.  From my experience I disagree, although the people I told about it gave mixed and surprisingly lukewarm responses; whether or not they agreed it didn't seem like such a big deal - perhaps that is telling.  On the topic a local man has recently taken it upon himself to march around the town centre waving a placard about homosexuals being evil and going to hell and handing out leaflets about it.  While of course this doesn't apply to all people, I have heard that in Poland there is a train of thought that homosexuality can, and perhaps should, be cured.

Thinking about this brought me to tolerance as a whole and I'm happy to say that as foreigner I've had nothing but a warm and friendly welcome from Poles since I moved here.  Unfortunately I've heard a few stories of people who haven't had quite the same positive experience and that seems to be connected with skin colour.  Ethnic minorities are few and far between and I expect that any problems are largely due to that fact; in Torun it's quite uncommon to see non-white people walking around so I guess they attract some attention, sometimes that's negative.  At the weekend I overheard a guy shouting at a black man asking him where he was going, using the 'n word' and telling him he was hungry, I guess that you can expect a black person is a tourist in Poland so they could be an easy target for beggars.

I don't for a second think that Poles generally are racist but I do think that racial awareness is quite low among some people.  In time as more people visit Poland there will be much more ethnic diversity and I expect some things will change.  Poland is a great place and I hope everyone that visits it is welcomed the same way I've been, a few bad eggs could leave a bad impression.

Giżycko

Hurray for another long weekend in Poland!  The combination of May day (the 1st) and Constitution Day (today) gave us a lovely four day weekend to enjoy.  I spent the weekend in Mazury, the polish lake district, in a little town called Giżycko.  I'd heard great things about Mazury, one of the most beautiful areas of Poland and the perfect setting for an activity weekend.  The weather has been fantastic lately and I was looking forward to getting outdoorsy; canoeing, cycling, maybe a bit of sunbathing and lots of walking.

Well the weather had other plans, when we arrived on Saturday it was lovely.  Giżycko is a resort town on a canal that joins two huge lakes which were busy with sailing boats.  We could see some kayaks and pedalows that we'd decided to rent the next day but on Sunday it rained all day and the temperature dropped by as much as 20 degrees, the lake was too choppy for us to rent the boats and we didn't see anywhere to rent bikes.  It seems unless you're a sailing fanatic Giżycko is a place that needs good weather.

We had a fun weekend but unfortunately in spite of the location rather than because of it.  My outdoorsy weekend became one of table hockey, man challenges, card games and breakfast pizza; bardzo fun but not what we went for.  I'd give Mazury another go but not without an iron clad weather forecast and a bicycle.  Weekend fail.