The Lake District

As I'm sure you've heard, on Saturday the Polish President, along with his wife and many other people, died in a plane crash. The whole country is in mourning - this is the biggest tragedy to occur in the country since the war. Torun has Polish flags with black ribbons flying everywhere.

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On a lighter note...

When the Easter hols arrived I headed off to the Mazurian Lake District, in the northeast of Poland.

My first difficulty came with the discovery that the hotel staff were German. The whole area has strong historical links with Germany, despite being rather close to Russia and Lithuania. The staff preferred speaking in German than Polish. Suddenly I wished I had paid more attention in my German classes at school. However, I found that I could cobble together a few sentences by combining what little I know of both languages. Eg. 'I would like to (in Polish) hire a bike (in German) tomorrow (Polish again).' It sort of worked. What do you call a mixture of Polish and German? Germish perhaps?

I visited Mikolajki, which is similar to Ambleside I suppose, but without all the gear shops. I walked back through the forests to my hotel from there, looking for deer, wild boar and any other wildlife. I didn't want to actually want to come face to face with a boar, but seeing one from a safe distance would have been interesting. No luck - they hide deep in the forests and I didn't see any sign of them.

While in The Lakes I managed to hire a bike to go further afield and also got hold of a canoe to paddle part of the 'Krutnia Route' - a very pretty river trip. I'd come across evidence of beavers so I spent some time looking for them but again - no luck. What I did come across however, was storks. Loads of them. If they set up camp on top of a pole (see pic) then the phone company has a problem.

Another thing that I came across was an abundance of beautifully decorated crosses. You see crosses wherever you go in Poland - by the road, in forests, in front gardens etc. but they were decorated especially for Easter.

My latest little language error came in my 6K (teenagers) class. Their equivalent of A levels is the 'Matura' (pronounced Mat-yur-a, with a roll of the tongue on the r) and I asked them when they will be taking it. The class fell about laughing. Apparently, I had pronounced it as 'Mach-oor-a', which is a female pig. If you ever call a Pole 'mature' beware - they might misunderstand you.

I took a short course run by my employers, International House, over the last two weeks. There were about fifty of us on the course and they were spread all over the world so the format was of various tasks to perform and an online discuission about each one. It worked very well and so I'll be going back for more soon, when the next course is run.

I've been attending a local church since about November, when I found it. It's quite similar to the church that I go to in Cheadle, the main difference being that they have a nasty habit of conducting the services in Polish. However, they also have the rather nice habit of providing me with an interpreter each week so I always know what's going on. With the songs though, I'm on my own. Many are familiar tunes but I just have to muddle along with the words as best I can. I can usually have a crack at most words but get stuck on the longer words which can take a bit of thinking about. Nobody's turned around and told me to stop singing yet. A couple of weeks ago I got involved in the annual spring clean and found myself picking up litter, raking lawns and cutting up branches that had been cut off trees. I could tell that I wasn't in Britain because we didn't have any tea breaks. That was tough, but I coped. Anyway, we finished by working our way through piles of pizza. Suited me fine.

I have begun to look for my next job. I've enjoyed living and working in Poland a lot but I still have a serious case of wanderlust so I am thinking of moving further east. China is very likely of course, but I haven't ruled out other locations. I have come across some interesting adverts; the best one said 'must be able to tolerate a high degree of ambiguity'. I don't know exactly what that means but it made me a little suspicious. Think I'll give that one a miss. Further details in my next blog, by which time I may know where I'm going...