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.