pierogi and pronunciation

Aaaahhh ... pierogi (see pic). Dumplings stuffed with various fillings. Truly yummy. They come in the baked or boiled variety and may be sweet or savoury. The pierogi shown contains cabbage. You can get chicken & mushroom pierogi too and I've had one of those to make up for the lack of chicken & mushroom pies around these parts.

The other pic is a beetroot soup with ravioli in. Not something you can order at the local cafe in Manchester.

I have had a few problems though. I'm not always sure what I'm buying and so I got home the other day and looked at a tin I had bought. It was cat food, I was sure of it. The only doubt I had was due to the lack of a picture of a hungry cat on the tin. Once I'd opened it I was suddenly convinced again. I sniffed and poked and decided that I wasn't prepared to risk it. The tin went in the bin. Turns out it's quite a popular sandwich spread...

I have warned not to buy Flaki (but came close once because it looked rather nice). It's tripe.

Pronunciation is another tricky matter - Polish might appear to lack vowels but many letters work in pairs and once you've learned the rules for them you can pronounce any word. However, the tricky part is the apparent need to pronounce several consonants all at the same time and the large number of syllables in some words. The numbers are a good example - I've been teaching myself to count because I'm determined not to be out-counted by a toddler. It gets interesting though; twenty nine is spelt dwadziescia dziewiec (a few accents are missing).
It is pronounced: dvah dj'yehsh ch'yah djyeh vyehn'ch Try saying that without your teeth in.
Anyway, I practise things like that by saying them to my students during the break. Any stand-up comedian would be envious of the laughs I get.

I was in Warsaw last weekend visiting Jan, a friend from Bolton who's on her hols here. We had a good look around the 'old town' - it isn't that old as Warsaw was totally destroyed during the war. The rebuilding took 30 years and is amazing. There are also several moving monuments to the uprising that took place - an attempt to rid Warsaw of the Nazis by fighting them from the sewers. It lasted a little over 60 days.




















Throughout Poland millions of people went to visit their family graves over the weekend for All Saints' Day. Since I arrived there have been candles on sale everywhere. I finally found out why - they are put on the graves which are cleaned up and tended to, often being covered in flowers as well. One chap I chatted to estimated that two thirds of the country follow this tradition.







OK - have to go as I've got some lessons to prepare. I'll tell you more about work in the next thrilling instalment of this blog ...