Back to the Computer

Hello again. The days are getting shorter, school has started (which gets me up early) and I'm anticipating the lovely warm autumn to turn wet and cold. I am therefore steeling myself to sitting at the computer again and writing. (For those who work in offices, it's a bit like the first Monday morning after a wonderful holiday away from everything, with your eyes completely adjusted to not looking at a computer screen. )

I was going to read the other blogs I have on my list as a warm-up (like looking through the immense pile of paper/list of emails in your in-boxes on that Monday morning). However I saw a comment on my last post from Philipp von Plato, co-founder of InterNations– the leading international online community for expatriates and global-minded people, as the comment describes it.

It reads like spam, but I guess it is serious. However, I'm not going to send Philip my email address as my impression of the site is that it is the complete opposite of how I have decided my self-image should be.

I dislike thinking of myself as an expatriot, no matter how true a dictionary definition it is. It sounds incredibly negative, focusing on leaving, dwelling on the past, and being in a strange place. Internations' Polish page describes it quite well:

Cześć and a heart-felt welcome to the InterNations community for expats in Poland! Our international network caters to your specific needs and supports you in relocating to and putting down roots in Poland. Living abroad in a foreign country is definitely a great intercultural experience, but typically brings up a lot of questions for expatriates Poland: ʺWhat is the best international school for my kids in Poland?ʺ, ʺHow do I find a job for my spouse in Cracow?ʺ or ʺWhere in Warsaw can I meet fellow expats and compatriots from my home country?” Just to name a few examples…

InterNations aim is to help you, as an expatriate, in becoming part of the Poland expat community and exploring the Polish way of life in all its aspects: From enjoying the traditional bigos to celebrating Smigus-Dyngus Monday.

I would rather describe myself as a 'newpat', if anything, but the real truth is probably that all I have done is move out of the crowded, ugly London city streets to a leafy, rural suburb. That it happens to be in Poland rather than, say, (non-suburban) Norfolk might be traced back on my side to a bar discussion in Westminster when I was called a Sophist (in the sense of someone who always twists their arguments), which when I objected, was itself twisted to the alternative meaning of a teacher. (My style was more modelled on a less assertive version of Plato's approach in The Republic - widely available for downloading: when speaking to a person with strong opinion's, ask questions designed to show the inconsistencies within the opponent's own point of view. I voiced no opinion of my own.) That she didn't happen to come from London was just part of everyday living and quite inconsequential. In other circumstances this might be Necton: Life and Times outside London, with pictures like this (of Mildenhall War Memorial):



I'm much too locally focused to consider myself globally minded, as I understand the term. I don't know if there is a good description. 'Self-centred' implies too much of a focus on me: maybe I flatter myself, though. 'Narrow minded' implies too much bigotry: everything is new and wonderful. There have been times when I have been manual labouring in the garden during the summer when things such as 'narrowly focused' seemed apposite, but I'm not sure its right more generally. I have worked in jobs where that really is true. "When two Structural Funds practitioners get together all they do is talk about the Structural Funds" is, in my limited British, Polish, French, German, Danish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Latvian, Italian and Brussels community experience, a European-wide truth. What spouse would believe that four adult men would sit all night/early morning in a pub with music and pretty girls around them speaking about Structural Funds. This should make even more sense if you have no idea what they are, so don't worry about it. (Piotr and Michał - who never figured out why - later divorced, Lionel's wife was at home in France and I left early...ish ... comparatively speaking that is.)

Thanks to Philip for giving me a focus for reintroducing myself. It may not seem to say too much, but I suspect a psychological profiler will have pretty much figured me out. If Philip reads this and his comment was not just advertising spam, I would pleased to reconsider if he wants to comment again: please explain what you want. I might be able to give some gardening tips: "Asters are an essential autumn feature of the Polish garden, both for their own colour and for the flocks of butterflies they attract. Chrysanthemums also provide autumn colour, but are less hardy and, perhaps more importantly, they are often considered to be grave plants and unsuitable for the home". Probably not ...

I wrote "I'm anticipating the lovely warm autumn to turn wet and cold". It was dark at the time, so I didn't know and the thunderstorm last night - very little rain - seemed more a hot weather phenomenon.

Peace in Unclean Times

6:30 in the morning, sitting in the garden on a warm sunny morning, listening to some music through the earphones. Everyone else was asleep ... a complete sense of calm. I thought I'd try to record the atmosphere:



The music, though ...? I wanted it to be Polish, but most of my music is disconnected from the computer at the moment. I didn't have anything calm and soothing, but I did have something in complete contrast: 'Unclean' by 'Lost Soul' from 1999/2000. The Band's website (www.lostsoul.metal.pl) and a related site (www.metalpromo.com), one of which I had downloaded it from - legally I'm sure - have both disappeared, so I thought it would be good advertising for an obscure Polish band.

I did find the words to Unclean, however, which are in English. Did you notice?

It's a sin
Blasphemy and sacrilege
It's a sin
A sin is to call it in that way

Shine with your might, oh insolent Wisdom
Your messengers sow pestilence
Thoughts in chaos, without a shelter
No supports point

Ignorance, made ignorance
Impotence - powerless as always

Eager souls
Condemned minds
Confirmed in conviction
Flourishing decay

Angels, devils faithful and obedient
Devils, angels waiting for their shepherd
Frightened crippled creatures
Worthy to each other

No trial of strength
Devoured by fire
A puppet in a crown of thorns

I also found that Lost Soul have made it big in the last couple of years. See the new Lost Soul website for loads of English language reviews and eight other downloadable tracks. It also includes this video, 'If the Dead Can Speak':



The words to this are:

I stand at the altar of the liar
And I can see his bleeding face
So tell me now
(If the dead can speak... ?)
How long can you plunge in hypocrisy

Your plastic eyes
Watch the universe
Burning with the heat
Of fate soon to come
So show me how
(If the blind can see... ?)
How you walk your lambs
Through the Tiber's deadly streams

Old man,
You look away, you don't want to see
You hide your face when I say:
"please, look at me"
I'm just a spotless child
Who can really feel...
That your prayer is just like you
You shall burn in your lies!

After the changes,
When you leave your hideaway
I will meet you at your field
Don't tell me now
"lord, please forgive me"
'Cause for ages you've had freedom of will

Old man,
You look away, you don't want to see
You hide your face when I say:
"please, look at me"
I'm just a spotless child
Who can really feel...
That your prayer is just like you
You shall burn in your lies!

The website of Lost Soul's record company, Witching Hour has playable tracks from lots of their other groups with English language information. Heavy Metal, in its various forms, used to be very popular around 1999/2000 and, if it ever went away, seems to be popular again. I can't recall it being on the standard radio or TV at all, however. The sites I knew which had lots of free, legal downloads seem to have gone. I haven't searched for new ones, but they may be there somewhere.

I'm not really a fan of this type of music, although I suspect that I might have been if I'd grown up with it. Lost Soul's type of singing - 'vocalising' might be better although I don't like the word, seems to help define it as "Death Metal', but I don't like it, preferring more normal singing/rapping styles. Maybe it would be better if I had had the words in front of me. However, musically they seem proficient: indeed, better than some of the big name Polish bands. (By the way, a behemoth is a big, monstrous animal, possibly originally a hippopotamus, not the devil. Get it right, lads! It is/was a good name for you. Get well soon.)

"Unclean times", though? The big shock about the riots in England is that they were a big shock in Poland. I thought they were a routine part of British life. I even started to wonder whether my mind was starting to play tricks about their frequency, but someone from Birmingham, I think, compared this week's events with the riots there in 1993, 1998 and 2005 or something like that. It's all part of life in England as far as I'm concerned. People in Poland may talk about alienated immigrant groups, but I'd be surprised if white kids weren't involved in the organised rioting, if not the spontaneous one. (Wasn't internet co-ordination part of the football, pseudo-fan - Anglicising the Polish term - arrangements?) I'm even old enough to remember the Mods (on scooters wearing green anoraks with hoods - hoodies?) and Rockers (on motorbikes with leather jackets) going to the south coast for their routine, bank holiday punch-ups - preferred weapon a bicycle chain, as I was told.

OK, to be fair, there is one surprise in the current riots: I haven't heard about the kids knifing each other. Perhaps these guys are just too soft - they don't seem to have the level of personal violence of a standard Saturday evening mass fight outside the pub. I even saw one video where several kids tried tried in succession to rip a TV off a wall and didn't even try to smash it when they failed. Youngsters these days ...!

Driving across Poland: Videos

I came across a You Tube site for a Polish international trucker, Damian because he had made a video going to and through Młochów. It starts a bit further down the Katowice road from the south-west, reaching the road to Młochów village at traffic lights by the Volvo centre. It ends alongside Młochów park.



He has loads of videos from Poland and around Europe. I was particularly taken by the following night drive, which makes it all seem very relaxed compared to the sore, strained eye experience that I find it to be in practice.



I wondered where it was, but wasn't even sure if it was in Poland until he reached the Nevada Center, which I can best describe as being something like a US style truckstop, as seen on TV. It's just after Świebozin on the (non-motorway) road to Świecko and the German border. It always seems to be full of articulated lorries, with a seemingly non-stop stream of them turning into and driving out of the Centre. It is the one of the few places where road courtesy by lorry drivers is automatic: lorries driving past stop to let others enter or exit. I have never stopped there though as, the one time I decided to do so, a lorry had broken down outside causing a huge traffic jam in the German border direction going well back onto the motorway. Fortunately I was headng the other way. There is a hotel/motel there, but from the website its prices are much higher than I would have thought possible on this route.

There are more sensible alternatives. We saw the Motel Marco in Torzym, dropped in and stayed the night. All we wanted was a place to sleep as part of the Młochów-London journey. Although not in any sense luxurious, it was fine for this. Since we arrived late and left early I didn't even notice any of the other facilities. The website suggests there's a restaurant, but it may be being rebuilt. In any case, it is easier and quicker to drop in at the petrol station to fill up with cheap Polish petrol and eat something there. The price was 45 zloties per person (ie 135 in total, compared to Hotel Nevada's 250).



Much nicer, however, is Motel Paradise, also in Torzym. Once again we just dropped in to see if they had room and stayed. We had a room for four, which raised the normal three person price of 170zl. to 180zl., but that included buffet style hot and cold breakfast. I recommend it as a place to stop for the night and I am told that the restaurant is very good, although from a website review there can be a long wait when there coaches stop there.



I wonder what will happen to all the businesses when the motorway opens. It would be very helpful to drivers like me if signs could be put on the motorway when it opens to direct us to the old hotel and services route: "Torzym to Tzyciel - Motel heart of Poland".

Finally, back to Damian's videos. The maniac driving antics in the first video may just be high spirits, but it has been routine to see lorries that have driven off the road. Just a moment's distraction and ...

Flowers, Birds, Butterflies and Things

The garden and around from April 'til now:

Zamość

Just the name of the town of Zamość immediately raises connotations from Polish historical romance literature. I was very pleased to have a chance to visit when it was suggested that we took the coach to Lvov from there.



It was a damp and dull day and, arriving about 5:00 in the evening, we had little chance to see much beyond going to and round the town square.



There are some individual splendid buildings, such as the Town Hall.



This row of houses beside it were ornately decorated.



The buildings around the town square all have English language plaques explaining who built them. The main single group of builders seems to have been Armenian Merchants. I have seen reference to these in various places in Poland, but I know little about their position in old Poland or their influence on its development: a task for the future.

There was also a plaque on one building commemorating it as the birthplace of Rosa Luxembourg. Although I knew her name and that she was friends with fellow communist Józef Piłsudski, I hadn't realised that she was Polish.



I guess she is (understandably) out-of-fashion in today's anti-communist Poland, which is rather a pity as she is Poland's other most famous daughter for me - along with Marie Curie. Her political position seems particularly interesting within the context of the development of both communist (as it was) and socialist (as it is) thought. More English information is available here. I was told while I was there that she was Stalin's lover, but I suspect that that results from Polish anti-communist propaganda. Her birthplace is the house in the centre of the picture below.



The style of the house is much closer to what I consider to be the standard Polish old town design, with it's limited decoration. (Hence, my pleasure when walking around Lviv. It was also noticeable as soon as crossing the border into the Ukraine that even modern private houses are often built with a much more individual, non-rectangular design than is normal in Poland.)

If I lived in Zamość, I would already have produced a rather fuller history in English than is available on Wikipedia or elsewhere on the internet as far as could find. It may still be a future project, as it provides links into Polish history that are missing from my two local towns. I did, however, find this pdf document on the Jewish perspective of Zamość.

We had tried the internet to book a place to stay over-night,but the few places we found all seemed to be full. We therefore quickly booked in to a small hotel (hotelik) a little out of the centre on the Lublin road side. It is definitely not recommended unless you want to experience an 'ex-communist' hotel. Still we only wanted beds for a few hours (leaving at 5:00am), which were fine and it had warm water. I suspect that there would actually have been plenty of empty accommodation in or near the town square.



If you go back to the picture of the Town Hall, you'll see a small group of people around a blue umbrella. It was 1 July and the first day of the Polish EU Presidency. I've worked through loads of different Presidencies (including British) as a British civil servant dealing with EU issues and it hadn't mattered who had been in charge except in very minor, short term ways. If I hadn't been working on the EU, I probably never would have known about them. I have therefore been incredibly impressed by the way the Polish media has taken it up as a domestic promotional EU campaign.

I have also heard about attempts to use it to promote Poland abroad, which I hope is successful, but I must admit to being sceptical about it reaching much of an audience. Thenews.pl introduced me to the promotional video, although I can't find their page which described it as being metaphorical, related to such things as the economic collapse. Unfortunately this immediately led me to relate the dancers to Nero fiddling while Rome burnt. It also reminded me of the English business lobbyist on CNBC Europe's statement (paraphrased) that "People don't understand that politicians have virtually no influence on what really happens... and the worst decision they made was to join the EU". If you haven't seen the video yet ...



I don't know if we've still got Misia's Barbie animated films, but the animated characters look incredibly familiar and I think that's where the association comes from.

Well-mannered People Say Please

I heard Ferdek say this in the Polish comedy series The World According to the Kiepskis. His wife told him to get out of the way so that she could put things in the washing machine and he replied that "kulturalna" people say "please". I'd long wondered about this element of Polish good manners, but I don't take it as firm evidence; it's only a comedy programme, after all. In any case, the immediate reaction in the home was that "he speaks just like" me and I have no empirical support for it.

I must have enthused about the series before, as I do consider it the best programme on Polish television: unquestionably the most intelligent general entertainment production. The Google translated (I think) Ukrainian, Wikipedia page says "The theme of the series is the ridicule of such defects as selfishness and laziness, and the lifestyle of Polish families, for whom these inherent traits". I wouldn't go that far, but perhaps it's meant to mean "those Polish families.

The Ukrainian page also seems to suggest that the original director is local ("neighbourhood'), but Okil Khamidov actually comes from Tajikistan, although he now lives in Poland: the only Tajik(istani) I know. Maybe his independent, foreign influence helped shape the unique character of the programme.

I couldn't even have placed Tajikstan on the map, so Wikipedia, as usual, came to my assistance. It borders with China and Afghanistan.

Lviv: Veni, Vidi, Vicit

It's probably wrong, but it's supposed to mean "I came. I saw, It conquered".



To ask about Lvov in Poland is to be enveiled in nationalistic, patriotic and ethnicity mystique. I therefore went with a completely open mind about what it might actually be like as a place, with, if anything, a fear that it would be rather austere and dull.



I was completely smitten. It felt very much like an old Italian town, with the ornately decorated grandeur of the buildings stretching back into the more decrepit parts of the old area. It was unlike so many old cities where, to the extent they exist in such quality and quantity, these quickly disappear outside the main central area. Much more Paris than Warsaw or Krakow. (I thought I was just being fanciful, but I was relieved to see that Wikipedia describes it as the "Little Paris of Ukraine".



Being on a Polish coach trip, the visit was oriented as part of the pilgrimage to what used to be part of the homeland. First stop was at the Lychakiv Cemetery. I long ago gave up trying to withstand the pushing and shoving to get close enough to hear the tour guide - with the added hazard this time of a couple of old ladies constantly pushing their umbrellas into my head to get through the space I had left outside the mob, but it largely seemed to be about legendary Polish characters (all obscure to me without prior research) plus the Polish war grave area. However, it is a beautiful cemetery and a non-aligned guide would make it worth visiting. The busts representing the dead in this particular part gave a particularly strong impression of real people being there - the picture fails to do it justice. They were Ukrainian and didn't even warrant a moment's pause for the tour.



The Italian feeling extended even to the ordinary cafe bars that were plentifully sprinkled around the city - a feature I very much miss in Poland (and was disappointed not to find in Amsterdam old town). Our first stop after the cemetery was to climb to a popular viewpoint, but on a very wet, cloudy and misty day, I couldn't see the point and we went into an ornate tourist cafe at the bottom. It was beautifully decorated inside, but having got up at 4:30 and by now it being afternoon, the first cup of coffee of the day was well overdue - any place would have done.



There was the inevitable church tourism, but Lviv does have beautiful church interiors. The best, at least in overall impression, was the Armenian Cathedral. (Google translated Polish link, as the English version is not very good.) We only had five minutes, but I was completely struck by the painting of the Burial of Saint Odilon, who established All Saints and All Souls days - researched only now. The spirits of the dead walking beside the bier come out more clearly in the picture than when I was there looking at what appeared to be strange unrecognisable lines. I was told that it was an ancient painting that had been restored in the 20th Century, but the features of the middle character immediately drew my attention by being completely modern. Looking it up now, it is an early 20th Century painting by Jan Henryk Rosen. (Indeed, although the immediate impression is of ancient artwork, it may all date from that period - an amazing achievement.)



Chruches still have their monasteries and places of refuge beside them for people like this wild haired and bearded man, standing at least half naked looking out of the window - every inch an eccentric (mad?) holy man.



Our final destination was the Opera.



The Opera is the perfect size for both intimacy and effect (although one of the chorus seemed to have a set of false teeth several times too big for her). La Traviata is not really a wise choice for me, as a non-opera lover, where my greatest fear is that I start to snore: fortunately, I didn't, even though I had had little sleep in the previous 48 hours. Julia Lysenko was excellent in her lead role and the costumes and scenery were impressive.

All in all, it was worthwhile attending the performance. (I'm not allowed to show pictures like this, but I love it.)



I'd love to have time to stay in Lviv and get properly acquainted with it. I completely recommend it to anyone, especially those of us who consider it a rather exotic destination primarily known from Soviet times. (I don't know how English language friendly it would be, but it can't be that difficult to manage.) However, I don't expect to go back in the near future. Although one hears of the politics of opening up the borders, the aim when going by road seems clearly to discourage visitors. It was described to me as the border guard caring only about themselves and not travellers - closing the border for shift changes and booths shutting while the guards go off for a break. However, this can only happen when people in charge don't want it to be any different. (Both sides will explain why the other side is to blame, but that just shows that political willingness to overcome problems has failed.) I've never seen border guards anywhere - even at Dover in the bad old days - try so hard to match faces to passport photographs - Polish and Ukrainian both. (Photo of the closed border for the Polish morning shift change.)



Actually, I was quite looking forward to a long delay at the border. I thought I would be able to sleep in the coach a bit before driving from Zamość to Warsaw. Unfortunately, a nearby passenger, having finished off his large half of a bottle of Ukrainian vodka, got into extremely load discourse/ prompted monologue on the problems of Poland, etc, lasting from around 9:00 in the evening to past 1:00 in the morning. Although he was asked a couple of times not to speak so loud, this had little effect. He just wouldn't shut-up ... until a very rude Englishman told him to: first in Polish and then, when asked, in English. On his prompting, I finally asked him to "please be silent", on which he finished, muttering little more than "shut up" in English to his mate, which was actually what I first heard him doing in the morning when we were first in the bus (and hence my choice of words). Actually he would have been great fun over a few beers in a pub. I would have like to hear more about his view that life is and the people are much better in Zamość than Warsaw. It's also fun when I find that I know more about Poland than the person talking: in this case about the creation of Polish towns. Who else could have created a town but the great Jan Zamoyski? Hundreds of Polish nobles, as it happens. The completely unknown Jan Rusiecki (or something like that, I haven't rechecked my facts) created local Nadarzyn ... under Chełm Law and all that stuff.

Try flying instead.