Happy New School Year

1 September: the first day of a new year at school, so its time to get soppy and think how quickly children grow up and sentimentalise over old pictures. So here goes.

Misia this morning, now (aged 12) a young lady - she must be, she has her first proper bra for school.


So slip back: 1999, 1 year old.


In 2004:




2005, with Babcia Stella (my mother) in Necton, Norfolk


2006: in Jelonki, Warsaw, dressed for a wedding:


2007: modelling her first communion dress:


2009, in Gdansk:

Kabanos- Polish Manipulation of Wikipedia

Kabanos is in the news today, which started me thinking about writing something on my difficulty in knowing if I will like the ones on the supermarket shelf - sometimes excellent, but usually not. It was due to say something about them being "pork, fowl or just foul tasting" - salmon kabanosy are rather disappointing too - and the extent to which they are dry and/or smoked or not. I wasn't sure whether smoking was a standard feature, however, so I looked on Polish Wikipedia. However, this seemed to be incorrect and surprisingly short. I figured it was just my ignorance, but then I noticed that it was updated yesterday at the time when there are arguments about the Polish origin of Kabanosy. So I looked at the English version to see what it said: the difference was so extreme that I then looked at other languages (with the help of Google Translate).

The background is the attempt to make Kabanosy an EU registered Polish product, which helps protect producers from competition. I now strongly suspect that several Wikipedia versions, including Polish, have been rewritten in line with this application, omitting anything that might conflict with it. Google Translate gives the Polish version to be:
Kabanos - thin, long sausage, prepared with cured pork , carefully dried and smoked. The name comes from the Turkish word Kaban (commonly used also in the region of Białystok ), a hog.
Poles seek applicants for a determination Traditional Speciality Guaranteed for Kabanos.

Only pork? "Carefully dried and smoked"? Pull the other one ...

The English and Italian versions were last amended in April and are virtually identical to each other. The former is:
Kabanos (plural: kabanosy), also known as Kabana in Australia is an Eastern European sausage made of pork. They are most commonly dry to very dry in texture and smoky in flavour. Typically they are quite long - 30-60 cm (12-24 in) but very thin, with a diameter of around 2 centimetres (0.79 in), giving them a very characteristic appearance.
The name comes from the Turkish term (later on also used in Ukraine and some parts of Eastern Europe) "kaban", which means hog (male pig). A similar product is known as cabanossi elsewhere in Europe.
Kabanos is often seasoned only with pepper. Currently, kabanos (the type sold in many delis) is made of pork. Up until recently kabanos was made of different meats, including horse, beef and lamb. Although these kabanos variants can be found in rural parts of Poland, the majority of kabanos remain a pork product. Kabanos, unlike other meats such as sausage, are typically eaten alone as an appetizer, and often served with cheese.
Versions made of turkey are a staple in kosher meat markets and delicatessens.
Kabanos are commonly used as hiking food because they do not spoil as quickly as many other sausages.

The German version was also updated this month and has kabanos as a solely Polish product, but is more informative than the Polish version. The Germans oppose the Polish traditional product proposal as they also claim it as one of their sausages, but there is no reference to a German product. A reference to Pan Tadeusz suggests a Polish source. It is difficult not to suspect judicious editing here too.
Kabanos (plural: Kabanosy) is the name of a traditional Polish sausage , from the marinated pork and prepared hot smoked is. A Kabanos is relatively thin and usually has a length of about 70-80 cm. For smoking it is in the middle hanging on a pole, so there are two approximately 35-40 cm long sections with adjacent ends which are connected by an arch.
The meat for Kabanosy is from specially fattened Polish pigs. Kabanosy stand out among others by their brittleness at the same time, relatively high fat content. In its current form, the sausages were in the 1920s in Poland developed. In the EU request, is to register as a TSG before.
The name "Kabanosy" refers to the much older, in northeastern Poland and Lithuania expressed kaban use for mainly with potatoes fattened pig, which is particularly lean meat mixed. The term is also found in Adam Mickiewicz - such as in Pan Tadeusz (1834) - and is probably South East origin.

You can check the Israeli and Swedish versions for yourselves.

The English version much more reflects reality in Polish shops, but may need updating if the EU decides that it is a Polish traditional product made of pork. If that happens, it will also be interesting to see if the Polish authorities start legal proceedings against the Polish kabanosy producers who will not then be making kabanosy. Getting them "carefully dried and smoked" will presumably be beyond anyone's powers though.

Polish Building Sites in Bloom

At the end of July, the colour of the season was white. The local pair of white storks can just be seen in the top right hand corner of the photo.

From 2010 07

Perhaps it doesn't look like a building site, but the ground is part of the Belina Estate in Młochów (see www.belina.pl). However, building has been in abeyance after completion of the first phase of development at the end of 2008, just in time to miss the housing boom and get caught by its collapse. Houses can be seen below.
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Last year, the earth from building work piled to the left were more obvious and host to a bright display of red poppies.

From 2009 06 Mlochow

To be honest, the colour of the season over the last few days has been closer to grey, but when the sun shone earlier last week it was glorious yellow.

From 2010 08

I think the predominant flower is called goldenrod, but I could be quite wrong. There are other yellow flowers in abundance, though.


These pictures were taken when walking down Middle Road (ul. Środkowa) in Rusieć, pronounced Rooshets. Calling this a 'building site' is a slight exaggeration, although it all seems to be land ready and waiting for private house building. There are already a scattering of houses built and in the process of being built. Some are visible below.

Smolensk Plane Crash Fiasco

I don't want to get involved in political comment: I have never had the sympathy or understanding to be able to decide on other people's heartfelt responses. However, strong elements of farce are starting to emerge.

I don't trust opinion polls. They are often wrong for a very wide range of reasons, not least respondent unreliability and the difficulty of getting simple unbiased questions. This is made worse by what we see in the news. The polling company produces a press notice and summary designed to be interesting: they want clients to pay for the company's output. The press notice is then edited by journalists, if only for space reasons, who exaggerate the interest element, whilst often failing to understand what the results mean and with no idea how to present it. Finally headline writers come in with the task of making the whole item worth reading or listening to.

thenews.pl - smolensk-cross -the president should decide is an example of this. The headline says the Polish president should decide/have the final say (70% of people polled), with this as the headline and put in bold in the first paragraph. The following text has about 67% for the Warsaw President, 55% for the families and 53% for the church. Since this gives us 247% of pollsters' having an opinion, it is clear that something has gone wrong.

My guess is that individual people polled have chosen several options out of a list they are given in the poll. The question may well have been about which one should make the final choice, but the result shows clearly that there should not be one person, but there should be a representative group ie that the Polish President, etc should not be allowed to decide on his own. The article should really about who should be represented in the group deciding on the fate of the cross. I don't know whether it was the polling company or the journalists who did not expect this or who simply did not think it interesting enough. However, competent journalism should tell us this, rather than leaving us to figure out what they are talking about. The headline is one of those that completely fails to tell the truth, whilst not telling a single lie: the sign of a great headline writer, but the article creates it in this case.

Those of you used to translations of Polish into English might have expected me to add the incompetence of translation into the list of reasons for resulting inanities. However, thenews.pl is exceptional in normally having excellent English. The author of the English version has his initials at the bottom so you can trace the competent translators. Although I only looked when a short period of low competence - holidays? - was followed by good English, I think it was pg who particularly impressed me:, indeed, sufficient to wonder if he was English.

Driving in Poland

There are a couple of items on improving road safety in Poland on www.thenews.pl this morning. One is a about a blitz to improve the quality of roads over the next couple of years. There are some dreadful roads, but more amazing to me is the extreme rapidity with which road improvements are already taking place. When driving on roads in Poland that have been transformed beyond recognition from just a couple of years ago, I remember the years and years it took to build wide enough roads between London and Norfolk to deal with the traffic, and still not covering the entire route to Norwich and the north coast.

The second item covers concern that local councils are using road cameras to maximise income rather than to maximise safety. My own impression is that speed cameras on local roads are much better placed than on the national road system; perhaps this is just the nature of the local councils in the areas I tend to drive. Speed limit signage is roughly equally awful.

The extreme speed of Polish driving is a routine matter for comment. Following an item on W-wa Jeziorki, I tried to get an impression of Polish speed compared to Czech, Austria and Italy - the latter including quite a bit of urban driving. Trying to drive at the speed limit, I am normally one of the slowest on the road in Poland, but I was one of the fastest on the road in the other countries. This was especially clear in areas with low speed limits. I was very disappointed to find that the legendary appalling driving of Italians was nowhere to be seen. I think the difference is that people in these countries drive with full consciousness of the speed that they should be driving at, even if they decide to ignore it. In Poland, people drive at the speed they consider themselves to be appropriate for the conditions with no concern for what the authorities have decided is right - speed cameras are an obstruction, irrelevant to safety.

Having done all the speeding bit for years, I decided for various reasons some years ago to drive within the speed limit. I found this extraordinarily difficult in terms of getting the general feeling that I wasn't driving absurdly slow. However, I wasn't always sure what the speed limit was and people in the car with me never seemed to know either. Having driven across the border, I noticed the standard border speed notice by the road and was surprised to see that the daytime speed limit in built up areas was 50 kph, not 60 kph. I was so surprised that I doubted what I saw and checked with the regulars in a local bar. This resulted in a very heated argument around me, with one stubborn customer being assailed and insulted from all sides for daring to argue that I was right. He and I were right - it is 50, but just try doing it. Despite regular efforts to achieve this, I keep going back to 60. Even this has a queue of frustrated drivers behind me on single lane roads - I try to let them pass when I can, whilst on Warsaw's large 3 lane roads, I get the feeling that bicycles could pass me by - buses sometimes do.

From thenews.pl's article, it seems clear that the government is not trying to encourage driving at safe speeds generally, but just wishes to reduce the worst effects of this at the worse places. I wonder whether this is the right approach.

Christmas Lights in August

We went to my sister-in-law, Ilona's flat on Saturday for her Name Day celebration. She lives on one of the Warsaw tower block estates in Gocławek (Gots-wa-vek) on the east bank of the Vistula. Standing on the balcony in the dark, I was rather taken by the focused concentrations of lights from the flats and streets against the ambient dark and light contrasts of sky, shadows and buildings.

The photos do not do it justice - my little snapshot camera does not have an effective night setting, but you can get a rough idea from them. A view to the left:

From 2010 08

And to the right:


The overall charm of the peace and calm, leaning on the balcony on a quiet Warsaw Saturday evening, was something worth simply standing there and absorbing. The sound of distant explosions enhancing the sense of relaxation. Then Babcia (Grandma - my mother-in-law) came out and said "shooting" and started to get worried. It was just a firework display, though, out of sight.

It's August - It's Autumn

What do I know? From city life in London, August was high summer. A couple of years in the Polish countryside and I am beginning to have my doubts. Last year the early days of the month had beautiful misty mornings - archetypal autumnal weather, but, I thought, it was a very wet year so this was just an oddity.

By the middle of August this year, leaves on the trees were starting to change colour and shed. Perhaps this was just young trees in an unsheltered position.

From 2010 08

The grassland is going brown, but that is quite normal in a hot dry summer, although this one was wet and hot.


The trees in the background all seem to be green, but when we went down Chestnut Avenue (Aleja Kasztanowa) there is quite significant browning of the trees when looked at from the road. Driving into Warsaw later, this was even more evident in a number of places along the road.

Mind you, house martins have returned, although in limited numbers and with different behaviour patterns. Perhaps they are from further north and stopping here for a rest.