Leaving Torun

...just for a couple of weeks, but I'm already very sad to be leaving.  Christmas has come around so quickly, and while I'm happy to be spending Christmas with my family and friends, I'm gutted that I'm going to miss out on a traditional Polish Christmas and New Year.  There will be other years.

Wistfully thinking, it strikes me how quickly the next 6 months will come and go too, my contract runs till June and it's going to be very hard to walk away.  I can already feel it.  I imagine I'll always be in and out of Poland, who knows what the future will hold for me.

I'm off to Berlin for a few days holiday and Christmas market shopping before going home, so my blog entries will be on hold till the new year.  Hope you all have a good one!  Happy holidays, merry Christmas and all the best for the new year!

Wesołych świąt i szczęśliwego nowego roku, do zobaczenia.

Wigilia dinner

In Poland, the traditional Christmas meal is served on Wigilia - Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas Day.  Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a traditional Wigilia dinner at the bosses house for the schools annual Christmas party.

First the host made a short speech and then opłatki; large, white, thin wafers, were given out to everybody.  In the Polish tradition, everybody goes around giving good wishes to each other for Christmas and the new year and breaking off a little piece of each others wafer and eating it.  I think this is a really nice tradition, very personal.




Next... food!  No meat is eaten on Christmas eve, lots and lots of fish instead.  There are traditionally 12 dishes which represent the 12 apostles, although I've heard that it's months of the year too.  Carp is the main dish, there's also a greek fish which is white fish covered in peppers and spices, different fish in jelly which I believe were spinach and salmon, smoked salmon and another variety (I never made it past the jelly) and a cold fish salad.  Mushroom and cabbage pierogi and mushroom with noodle soup was served too, as well as a few other types of salad.  I enjoyed the meal but it is mostly served cold which doesn't really suit my taste, thankfully the soup was hot and it was delicious.  We had cheesecake and poppy seed cake for desert, and plenty of helpings of mulled wine (unfortunately I'm on antibiotics for my extremely resilient cough so I had to stick to juice).

After the meal there was lots of singing, the Poles and us Engles took it in turns to sing a traditional Christmas Carol, I think the Poles really put us to shame, the songs were lovely, and they knew the words...

Finally, Swięta Mikołai made an appearance and dished out all of the presents under the tree.


Really lovely night, I'm glad I was a part of it.

Price moan

I've blogged about prices before, but after spending the weekend in England visiting Sean I really can't believe how expensive some things are in the UK.  For example...

I took a train from Torun to Poznan on Friday morning, it's 141km distance (maybe 90 miles), and it cost 23zl, it converts to about £4.85.  I arrived in Bristol and took a train from there to Yeovil, this is a distance of about 40 miles, and how much? £26.80!!!! It's about 10 times more expensive per mile!

Swięta czas

It's Christmas!!!!.. nearly - at least it's the Christmas season.  There's a huge tree at Nicolas Copernicus statue, festive lights lining the streets of the old town and sporadic angels made with Christmas lights.  Overall though I'd say Christmas is quite understated here in Poland, at least in comparison to the UK where Christmas is thrown in your face from October onwards; the radio stations aren't flooded with Christmas songs and I haven't seen a single tacky house that looks like the Christmas spirit has been sick all over it.  There are just a few subtle little touches reminding us of the time of year, a very happy medium.

I was told that the shops don't over advertise at Christmas, the people don't appreciate it and it would more likely turn them away than encourage them to spend.  The only big difference I have noticed is in the amount of chocolate on display in all the supermarkets, there are millions of chocolate santas!

I'll be back in the UK for Christmas, I can't wait because I really don't fancy the Polish traditional Christmas meal of cold fish.  I'm looking forward to the turkey dinner, being flooded with Christmas songs and of course the tacky decorations!  Merry Christmas all... Wesołych Świąt.

Learning Polish

Lubię uczyć się polskiego, myślę, że jestem coraz lepiej.  Mam polska lekcja w tygodniu, i my rozmawiamy, ale nie lubię gramatyka.

Here are a few of my most used phrases...

Nie pamiętam - I don’t remember

Nie zapamiętam - I won’t remember

Nie mam zielonego pojęcie - I have no idea

Jestem zmęczona - I’m tired

Jest mi zimno - I’m cold

Jest mi bardzo zimno - I’m very cold - often followed by

Masz grzejnik? - Do you have a heater? (To Lucyna on a Monday and Wednesday in Ino) and most recently,

Nie przeszkadzać - I can’t be bothered.

Seems I am a glass half empty kind of person, oh well at least my Polish is improving.

St Andrews Day

This is a day of superstition and fortune telling in Poland, but perhaps only for young unmarried girls seeking their future husband.  There are all sorts of traditions, for example melting wax and creating a shape out of it using a large key with a hole, then seeing what the shape might represent, maybe the shape of a country or the face of a man... also peeling an apple in one, then throwing the peel and seeing which shape it lands in to reveal the initial of the girls future husband... lining shoes up in a room and seeing whose shoes make it to the door first, that girl will be the first to marry in her group... the list goes on.  It sounds fun but I wouldn't bet my millions on any of it coming true.

It's also name day for all the Andrzejki out there, (name days are celebrated on the same scale as birthdays in the UK) so Happy name day Andrzej!

Pada snieg!

It's snowing!!! Weather forecast: -9 for Friday and snow all week.

Bring on winter, I'm excited!

(I'll still moan about being cold though.)

Anti-social behaviour

Being sat on a train for 3 hours with a group of wasted lads making a lot of noise, playing songs on their mobiles and standing in front of people trying to get past them is something that I expect to happen in Liverpool, not in Poland.  They were getting progressively more intimidating and as time went by more and more people left the carriage to find seats elsewhere on the train, we were all relived when they left.

Since coming to Poland I have been surprised at the level of alcohol fuelled anti-social behaviour; of course I knew the Poles enjoyed the occasional vodka... but I thought they could handle it better and I really believed that drunken yobs were a product of the UK.  On a number of nights out I've seen teenagers carrying their mates around that can't walk, people squaring up to each other, bloody noses, people being sick in the street and so on.  Of course it isn't on the same scale as anything like I've seen in Wigan or other places, but it does exist here.

My impression was that in Europe people drank more, but they could take more, and just enjoyed alcohol socially rather than as a tool to get completely drunk like many people seem to aim for at home.  So, I was wrong about the Polak's, turns out alcohol has the same effect on us wherever we happen to drink it.

Pracuje pracuje pracuje!

Work, work, work...  It's difficult to do anything blog worthy during the week, I work full time teaching English at a private school in Torun, it's hard work and long days, so week days are pretty much a write off.  My weekend was pretty quiet too, I went climbing at the local indoor wall on Saturday afternoon and walked to Chełmża on Sunday, its about 15km away and took 4 hours, but I needed the exercise!  Chełmża's a very small place and quite run-down, not really a tourist attraction, and we couldn't even find a coffee shop in the entire town, thankfully we found the bus stop so we didn't have to walk back.

There's nothing too exciting happening at the moment but my day to day life is getting fuller all the time.  Climbing has turned into a full-blown hobby which I hope to progress at; I have weekly Polish lessons that I really enjoy and I'm due to start salsa classes on Thursday.  (And Harry Potter is out on Friday!!)  The last 2 months have flown by and I can't believe Christmas holidays are so close, I'll be back in England in just 5 weeks time, I can't wait for a good Chinese!
(And of course to see all of my family and friends.. ;-))

Independence Day

11/11/10; fallen soldiers are remembered all over Europe.  In Poland, we are celebrating Independence Day.  On this day in 1918 Poland regained independence after spending 123 years divided by Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary.

There are a lot of Polish flags about; on buses, hanging from balconies, and from every lamppost and many of the buildings in the old town.  I went to a memorial service at the Józef Piłsudski statue; he's the guy responsible for reclaiming Poland's independence and he became the Head of State at the time.  Despite the awful weather there was a really good turnout, I enjoyed watching the parade and being among so many people commemorating their history.

Soup number 4

While I'm in Poland, I'm determined to work on my cooking skills.  I really like Polish food and it'll be good to be able to make it at home, and I think that reading recipe books is going to be a good way of improving my Polish.  The first thing I'm tackling is soup!  Poland is famous for it's soups, but traditional żurek or barszcz is a bit out of my league at the minute so I'm making some standard veg soups to hone my skills before I tackle them.  First there was the infamous carrot-water soup, not so yum.  Soup number 2 was the mushroom mud soup, tasted like mushroom but looked like mud, not really the best.  On Sunday I made tomato and red pepper, it was ok, if you like eating tinned tomatoes.  Finally, soup number 4 happened, and it rocks!

Smoke-free Poland?

News has it that Poland will be smoke-free as of 15th November.  Coming from smoke-free Britian it's still strange for me going into smoky pubs here, and I really don't enjoy inhaling second hand smoke whilst eating, but smoking seems so part of the culture here that I wonder if the ban will be enforced.  Many people don't really believe that it will go ahead, or that it'll work, but I guess we'll find out next week!

Baby News

I just want to say a massive congratulations to Sarah and Pete and welcome to the world baby Michael George Stephen Brookes.  I can't wait to meet you!

Cemetery follow up

Following extensive research (Sarah asked her students about it) I can confirm that Poles do indeed rent the plots of land that they are buried in.  It's not for a maximum of 40 years but this is about standard, the families of the deceased can opt to pay more and keep the plot for longer.  This implies that when the time expires graves are dug up, but I don't have any more info on this.  When Sarah and I walked around the cemetery a couple of weeks ago, we did notice that very few graves were more than 40 years old, and those that were tended to have another family member buried in the same plot more recently.

Długi weekend

3 day weekends are ace - fact.  You get to run around for 2 days, and have a second chance at a relaxing Sunday.  This weekend of course was made even more fantastic by the guest appearance of Sean, who arrived on Thursday.  We ate so much Polish food; I finally tried Bigos, I enjoyed it but the flavours are very strong and I found it a bit overpowering.  I also tried some Kvass which is a fizzy pop made from rye bread and tastes a bit like Dr Pepper, it's fermented but not alcoholic enough to be classed as alcohol.

Sean rented a car (a beast) from the airport so we were able to get around a bit this weekend, on Saturday morning we headed up to Malbork Castle for the day.  We decided we'd drive to Poznan and stay there on Saturday night to save a long journey early Sunday morning.  On the way we stopped in Bydgoszcz for a trip down memory lane for me and some food, I love Sphinx!  Sunday morning brought a mad rush to the airport, we couldn't understand how we had overslept by so much.  Eventually we realised that the clocks had changed and we had a whole extra hour in the airport waiting.

I only got back to Torun at 11pm last night, of course as today's free we had to make the most and go out.  I was already tired so I really wasn't planning on being out till 5, but it was fun and I discovered Zubrowka apple pie!! The classic Zubrowka z sokiem with a twist, a sprinkle of cinnamon and some vanilla syrup, and it really did taste like apple pie!  Lovely stuff!  Unfortunately I'm still feeling the effects of it's loveliness.

Today has been very quiet, what with my hangover and everything being closed, I've spent most of the day in my room and eating the beautiful Cadbury's dairy milk Sean brought.  I'll have a walk round the cemetery later, it's not to be missed today, and that will conclude my weekend.  Back to work tomorrow... :-(

All Saints Day

Today is a very important day in Poland.  While kids across the UK are just coming down from their Halloween induced sugar highs, the Poles will be spending the day visiting their relatives graves.  Today is All Saints Day, this is referred to as a national holiday but there is no holiday spirit in the air, everything is closed and tonight the bars were empty.  What's important here is people paying their respects to the dead.  The cemeteries are full of flowers and even more candles than normal, not a single grave is forgotten.  

The photo really doesn't do it justice.  It's difficult to explain how I feel having just walked around the cemetery, seeing so many candles, bunches of flowers, so much care taken over every detail, so much love, so much sorrow.  One grave in particular stood out, a young man only 22, his grave covered with flowers and surrounded by over 80 candles, he died in July.  I feel sad thinking about the losses of so many people and their effort to do something for their loved ones even now.  I also feel elated, overwhelmed, excited; it was an incredible sight, emotional and traditional.  

I couldn't recommend strongly enough to anyone visiting Poland at this time of year to come and take a walk through a cemetery.

Malbork Castle

Malbork Castle

Malbork castle is absolutely huge!  Not only is it the biggest castle in Poland but it's the biggest castle of this kind in the whole of Europe.  We didn't go inside but walked round the perimeter, the grounds and across the bridge to get the best view.

Malbork itself is a small place, but very pleasant and it seems like an affluent area, although there aren't enough restaurants - it took us a while to find somewhere for our Żurek.

A bit of history; it was built by the Teutonic Order in 1274 and named as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997 - it's one of two World Heritage Sites in the area, the other being Toruń :-), which also has a number of sites of Teutonic Castle ruins.

Poznan

When we arrived in Poznan yesterday evening I was immediately struck by the size of it, this is a real city! It's quite Manchester-esque, big and busy and modern, lots of trams, lots of people and seemingly very good nightlife.  Outside the old town square it doesn't feel massively Polish, in my opinion cities generally don't.  To me, Poland is little and quaint and pretty and colourful, Poznan is a city like any other, but with a really good feel to it.  But as soon as you step foot in the square, wow!

Old town square

It is huge, but it is also pretty and colourful and quaint, there are a number of statues and fountains making good use of the space available, a big church with a huge spire (as is usual), and lots of little decorations to be found on the many buildings around the edge.  Sean and I walked around the main area before heading back to the hotel for the night, a bargain at 135zl for a decent twin room - less than £30!

This morning I met Sarah and Jen to continue exploring Poznan.  We had a quick walk round and went to a bar mleczny for some food.  These are canteen/restaurants introduced under communism to provide cheap food for workers, and it was cheap!  Although Jen wasn't overly impressed with her hotdog sausage wrapped in a pancake, it was only 50p; Sarah's meat croquette and chips 75p; and my apple filled pancake was the ultimate bargain at 35p.

We went to an art gallery (art really isn't my thing so I wasn't too impressed overall but I gave it a go), had a look round the Cathedral, went for a couple of drinks and then met Sarah's brother who flew in from Paris today.  We were planning on heading straight back to Torun but found that the train was 3 times the price than it was earlier in the day because it was an inter city express; 75zl is a lot of money here, I couldn't believe it.  This was clearly a very good opportunity to head back into town for a(nother) nice meal before journeying home on a cheaper, but much later train.

Listopad come early

Listopad in Polish is November, but it also means leaves falling.

In fact, all the months in Polish have a literal meaning, as do the days.  Check out the links...

It's not quite Listopad, but there are leaves everywhere!!

Toilet trouble

I went to the toilets at the cinema earlier tonight and was a bit puzzled by the circle and triangle markings on the doors.  No stick man and lady around to guide me, I was a bit stuck.  I thought about it for a few seconds and decided the triangle must be the woman's toilet, us having a triangle shaped womb and everything (that really was how I came to the conclusion) so I opened the door and a man walked out.  Oops.  I'm glad he came out just then or I would've gone right in.  Thankfully, it isn't a mistake I'm likely to make twice.

On the subject of toilets, the toilets in pasta i basta in town are also a bit odd, they are unisex but with a different cubicle for men and women.  The weird thing is that they both have a transparent glass door.  When you go in and turn the lock the door frosts over slightly, it's not very reassuring though.  You have to be as quick as you can and hope noone catches you!

My weekend

As much as I love travelling and getting out and about at the weekends, sometimes it's nice just to chill out and take a couple of days off!  I started the weekend with a nice meal and a couple of glasses of wine on Friday night, and then went bargain hunting on the market on Saturday.  The market is huge and you can find all sorts; food, clothes, flowers, make up, electrical goods, etc etc... people here say that if you can't find what you want on the market, there's no point looking any further.  I had a quiet night in on Saturday with a girly film and a couple of Zubrowkas.

I've spent today chilling out in the flat and doing some housework, it's good to know that I'll have something to eat off this week, and something to eat with.  My flatmate Sarah and I intended to visit a photography exhibition in town this afternoon but we turned up just as the museum closed, so we had a walk round some castle ruins on the other side of the bridge and down to the river instead.  I finished the weekend with some strawberry filled pierogi, not the best I've had, and the social network, which turned out to be a good film even if it is about facebook.

Unfortunately the weekend always ends too soon, at least the next one is only 5 days away.

Money matters

Before I came to Torun, I thought I'd struggle to make ends meet on my 1600zl (£350) a month wage.  I had previously been offered 2500zl pm by a school in a small town in Southern Poland, so even though I opted for Torun for the location, I thought things would be tight.  How wrong I turned out to be.  Poles earn an average wage of around 1000zl pm, and rent and bills could come to half of that amount or more, leaving them just £100 a month to spend.  An unemployed person in the UK gets £280 a month in benefit and doesn't even have rent to worry about.  Of course some things are cheaper here, but some things are the same price making them effectively 5 times more expensive in proportion to wages.  Out of my 1600zl wage, I only have to pay for the internet and my phone bill, and the school covers the rest of my bills and pays my rent too.  Turns out I'm rich in Poland, but only because I'm English, which doesn't exactly feel like an achievement.  Anyway, please excuse me while I throw my money in the air.

Polish food

Here are a few of the more traditional Polish dishes;

• Pierogi is a filled dumpling; they can be boiled, fried or baked and filled with anything you can think of.
• Pierniki is the famous Torun gingerbread, delicious!  Even better is pierniki flavoured ice cream.
• Lard on bread.  (That's right)
• Naleśniki - filled pancakes; sweet or savoury.  I think savoury pancakes are almost like a folded pizza, I prefer sweet, especially chocolate and banana.
• Bigos is a pork/sausage/boczek/cabbage stew - I haven't tried it yet but it is supposed to be very good on a cold day.
• Boczek is very fatty pork, or even a porky fat.  It's mostly fat with just a slither of meat on top.
• Soup - worthy of another post altogether.  There are too many different soups to mention here, but they are very popular in Poland.  Barszcz z uszkami (beetroot soup with stuffed pasta) and żurek (sausage and egg soup) are two of my favourites.
• Kapusta - cabbage goes with everything.

Polish food is quite stodgy and often fatty, but looking around very few people are overweight here.  Part of that may be due to genetics or perhaps that Poles traditionally haven't had the money to be gluttonous; however I do think there is a healthier lifestyle here and the sense that food/dieting is just not an issue here like it is in England.  

Unfortunately, despite all this lovely traditional food Poland has to offer I've been eating nothing but toast for a couple of days while I eagerly await payday.

Gniezno Part 1

Old town circle - car boot sale

Gniezno was Poland's first capital city, and if you are to believe the legend of Lech, Czech and Rus, it was the site of the very beginning of Poland.

It was quiet when I arrived in Gniezno this morning, I realised that about 90% of the population were in church with it being Sunday morning, and the other 10% were hosting an antiques/car boot sale in the old town circle.  Oddly enough there was also an avon cosmetics stall there, which served to remind me of the Western influence right across Poland.

St Adalbert's reliquary

I wandered down to the Cathedral which is Gniezno's top tourist attraction.  It's a real treasure-hove, with so much to see and everything made with such intricate detail - the famous bronze doors and St Adalbert's reliquary are definitely worth seeing.

Gniezno town centre is quite small but packed with churches and a few nice parks.  After walking around the centre I took a walk round Jezioro Jelonek to find the Museum of the Origins of the Polish State but unfortunately it was closed for refurbishment.  I think there's plenty more to see in Gniezno and I'll happily go back and see it.

One hair cut please..

When you're new to living abroad, and haven't mastered the language of the country in which you live, you find challenges in the simplest of tasks.  I was quite nervous about getting my hair cut in Poland for the first time; obviously any miscommunication could lead to a complete hair disaster, so I rehearsed the phrase chciałabym obćiąć włosy in preparation for my first trip to the hairdressers.  Obviously, after telling them that you've gone to the hairdressers for a hair cut, there are still plenty of things to say to make sure you get what you want.  My first problem was that I didn't know the word for appointment, so I told them I had a reservation for a hair cut at 11 when I got there, then there was all sorts of pointing and scissor gestures and me saying things like wszystko tutaj and tosamo długość which seemed successful enough.  Still, when she started chopping away I was quite apprehensive but I thought it's too late now!  I emerged one hair cut later, pretty happy with the result.  Mission accomplished.

Pogoda

Whenever I told people at home that I wanted to move to Poland, they would often say 'isn't it cold there?'  Poland is well known for it's freezing winters, but it also has lovely summers with temperatures often reaching 30 degrees or more.  September is usually a good month in Poland too, but this year it was apparently the coldest September for many years, and it's only getting colder!  It's already regularly hitting 0, -2, -4 degrees out at night, and we're expecting snow next week!  Not only that but I've been told this year it's going to be -20 as early as November, when usually it would be late December/January that it gets so cold.  I've already found myself saying jest mi zimno more and more so I've no idea how I'm going to cope; I need to man up, and go winter wardrobe shopping!

P.S. I came out of Piotr i Pawel last Friday and thought wow it's gone foggy all of a sudden, but it turned out a car was on fire in the car park!!

Happy National Teacher's Day!

Today is National Teacher's Day.  One of the students told me that in 1773, King Stanisław founded the 'Commission of Education' on 14th October, and this has been celebrated ever since.  For kids and teachers across Poland this is a very welcome day off!  For me, working at a private school, I still had to go to work, although I did get a lovely red rose and two bars of chocolate from some of the students, which was a really nice surprise and made me feel very appreciated.  Dziękuję bardzo!!

Polish cemeteries

In Poland, cemeteries are much busier places than in England; graves are tended to on a daily basis.  Every day the local cemetery is full of people polishing headstones and replacing flowers, and there are always people selling flowers and candles from stalls at the entrance.  A walk through a Polish cemetery at night is really a beautiful and peaceful experience, nothing but a sea of candles twinkling in the dark all around you, that said, I still wouldn't like to go alone.  I read that in Poland graves are rented by the church for a maximum of 40 years, then they are dug up and rented to someone else.  I haven't looked at the headstones yet to find out if this seems true, and I have no idea what must happen to the bodies that are dug up but I'll do some (uh hum) digging...

Ciechocinek

Teżnie

Ciechocinek is a small spa town about 25km from Toruń.  It is well known for it's several huge teżnie, a word that won't translate into English because there isn't anything like it in the UK.  Teżnie are huge, thatched walls that carry salt from the salty water at the top, to the ground and into the surrounding air.  It is considered extremely healthy to breathe the air around the teżnie, so most people visit Ciechocinek for health reasons and stay in one of the many spa's here (it's full of old people).  You can see the salt glistening down through all the hay, and shining all over the floor.  We found some big foaming chunks of salt falling off the teżnie and drank some of the dripping salt water.  Besides the teżnie there isn't much going on in Ciechocinek.  Still, it's a relaxing place with a few cafes, parks and a tourist market, good for a walk round.

Klif bar

Klif bar is my newly discovered local pub, 20 metres walk from the flat.  I don't think there have ever been women in there before, let alone English women, so the girls got lots of free drinks when they went in!  Unfortunately, I wasn't there then :-( I was out having some traditional zurek i naleśniki for tea; soup with sausage and egg and pancakes with banana and chocolate, smacznego indeed!  I was happy to find I can now drink my Zubrowka and apple juice for only 5zl, so will be going in there again, although I think I smoked about 20 cigarettes in second hand smoke.  At the end of the night the owner even gave us 6 free cans of lager so we could keep drinking after they kicked us out, na zdrowie!

Barbarka

Barbarka is an area of forest on the outskirts of Torun, a good hours walk away from my flat.  There is a lake, little cafe, football field, volley ball pitch and even a high ropes course.

Considering my attempt at becoming a runner went so badly it's good to be able to get out and about, get some fresh air and do some exercise at the same time.

I would recommend it for a Sunday morning stroll/hangover cure.

Dog Tax

It's always difficult when a lesson isn't well received, and today my lesson on global warming went down like a lead balloon!  I was told 'if you want us to discuss global warming, you will be waiting, we aren't interested in this.'  Talk about blunt! Harsh especially considering the previous lesson I had asked what the group was interested in, and global warming was mentioned.

So somehow, we got onto the topic of taxes, and I found out Poland has a dog tax.  If you own a dog, you pay between 30zl and 100zl tax every year, and you pay for every dog you own.  I don't know how they decide if you pay 30zl or 100zl, but my suggestion about it being down to the size of the dog went down nearly as badly as the topic of global warming.  Silly me?

Prices

It's currently 5zl to £1; here is a run down of a few of the things I've found cheap, and not so cheap....

1.5l bottle of water - 2zl
Meal in a restaurant, with drinks - 15 - 20zl
Classical concert - 20zl
Unlimited climbing (at the indoor wall) - 17zl
Zubrowka and apple juice - 6 - 9zl

Bargains all round.

Postage cost to England - 58 - 67zl?! Nearly fell over, it cost less to buy something than to send it home!
Rectangular pillow - 100zl - worth every grosze!

Pillow Hell

It's nearly 2am, I couldn't sleep last night, and then I worked a ten hour day, I'm tired! So, why aren't I asleep?!  These bloody pillows have to be the worst thing about Poland! Great big square things, 80x80cm, that completely deflate as soon as your head gets anywhere near them.  I can't find 'normal' sized pillows anywhere, no nice rectangular ones that fit into a pillow case and don't take up half your bed.  These rubbish pillows aren't confined to Poland either, I've come across them in a few places in Eastern Europe, me no like! I've heard there's a Swedish place nearby that is something similar to Ikea, so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping the Swede's have the right idea.  In the meantime I will be listening to Take That until I drop off or have to get up, not all bad I guess.

Style

Polish girls are pretty stylish, Polish boys, well... Nie rozumiem! 

Toruń

Torun is really a very interesting place.

I'm currently living in Torun.  It's a great city, smaller than I expected but it is a beautiful place; it has one of the few completely authentic old town's left in Poland, as it was largely undamaged in WW2, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It's also famous for being the birthplace of Nicolas Copernicus, and it's the home of pierniki; Polish gingerbread - yum!

If you're interested in reading about Torun, check out www.torun.pl

Piotr i Pawel

Piotr i Pawel is the Polish equivalent of Waitrose; the prices are high but they sell good quality food and a good range of things that I haven't found anywhere else.  I went in for the first time tonight for a wander round and found tortilla wraps, lots of continental sauces and even Cadbury's choclairs (eclairs)!!  I'd rather sample Polish food while I'm here, but it's nice to have some home comforts and I treated myself to some Walls ice cream :-) Saturday night sorted!

Mozart and more

Tonight I've been to a classical concert at Dwor Artusa in the main square; a performance of Mozart's overture, Chopin's opus 11 and Schumann's 3rd symphony by Torun's symphony orchestra.  Chopin's piece was accompanied by a special guest pianist who got lots!!! of applause at the end, he went out and came back 5 times to more applause, I thought he was really enjoying the attention - but apparently it's expected, and he was given a nice bunch of flowers, I've never seen a man receive flowers before.  The whole night was really fantastic, conducted by Tokyo's renowned Mitsuyoshi Oikawa! Nic nie wiem about classical music (so obviously I've never heard of him) but apparently he's very famous, he's involved a lot in the British proms, and he was presented with a special gift by the concert hall, plus more flowers (3 bunches!) and a good slow clap at the end - however, he disappeared from the backstage area when they were trying to present it to him; I enjoyed the presenter's dig at him in English 'you were easier to find in Tokyo than Torun!' 

Good music followed by good food and good company = a good night!

The search

C&A and McDonalds

I can't count the number of times I've heard the words 'when Poland was a real country.'  Sean studied in Czestohowa for a year in 2001, before Poland was infiltrated by tourists and globalisation.  Apparently things have changed!  In the 3 weeks I've been in Torun, I've ate in a cafe owned by an American guy, found the local Indian, been shown the English speaking travel agents and met scores of English folk.  Not only that, but even when I use my (somewhat limited) Polish on an unsuspecting taxi driver, shop worker or passer-by, the response invariably comes in English.  Torun is a very progressive place, and from what I've seen much of Poland is too; it's fantastic, but it's always a shame to see a country's ways and traditions erode under the influence of globalisation.  I thought living in Poland would be quite a challenge, but after just 3 weeks in I've settled into a very comfortable normality.  Too easy!  Real Poland certainly does still exist, I just need to find it.

The move

I've wanted to live abroad for as long as I can remember.  Since I first came to Poland in 2007 I was hooked and decided that it was the place for me; beautiful buildings, rich history, great people and good food.  And now, finally, here I am.  I quit my job, took the infamous CELTA course and got a job in Toruń.  I made it! 

Blogging

Blogging is hard work, I need a Żubrówka z sokiem jablkowym!!!