The last few months

Hi all.

I realise this post has been rather a long time in coming. I got distracted by a whole range of things. Work mostly, but some fun too.

There have been several significant events during the year. There was a period of mourning after the plane crash. The centre of Torun had memorial comprising a mass of candles, photos and names ...

The other major event this year was the floods a few months ago. The river rose by several metres and many homes were flooded. Torun escaped the worst of it but still had to close a road.

There's always something going on in the centre of town. This was a musical event mainly but a load of bikers were in town as well, presumably to give the musicians some competition. Prior to coming here I wasn't aware of the fact that Poland didn't exist as a nation for about a hundred years. It's fallen victim to its neighbours many times but now that Poland exists they celebrate it proudly - flags are out most of the time. The Solidarity memorial is decorated with flowers several times a year too.

At the beginning of June I got together with a few buddies and went to Gizycko in the Polish lake district for a few days RnR (not rock & roll). My idea of rest & relaxation is doing things so we went canoeing, cycling, played badminton and table tennis and generally had a good time.

In May I went to Poznan for the weekend - a very nice city. My pal Alex had come home from Manchester and so I was given a guided tour of the city with her brother and mum. In the evening the city's museum's were open for free. This would have been a wonderful opportunity if it hadn't been for the fact that Poznan had just won the football league. There were thousnads of supporters out that night. You couldn't move. Apart from that, we had a great time.

I have been introduced to the game of Ricochet. It's like squash, but is played in a smaller court with a low ceiling and so the game is faster. It's popular in these parts but hasn't reached Britain yet. My second try at the game was as part of a tournament that I was invited to by a jolly good chap called Woytek. Single-handedly, I turned the tournament into an international event. I played two games and was knocked out but had a lot of fun trying. Wojtek went on to win it - I think I'll be asking for lessons.

As it's the end of the year I went out for a drink with my Proficiency Class a couple of weekends ago (see pic). I really enjoyed teaching them; you couldn't ask to meet a more hard-working and motivated bunch.

I have now finished at International House for this year. It's been a great year and everybody was sad to leave. I've decided to do another year though so I'll be back here in September.

I leave Torun for the summer tomorrow though. I'm heading south, via Wroclaw, Prague, Vienna and finally Ljubljana in Slovenia. From there I have to make my way to the Soca river somehow and then I'll be camping for the following twelve days and paddling, climbing ... all the usual stuff. Can't wait. I'll let you know how it goes in my next post.

Have a great summer. Enjoy the sunshine!

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.

*****

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...

Recent news

Let me introduce to a great Polish institution - 'Fat Thursday'. This is the day when you eat doughnuts. It's the equivalent of Shrove Tuesday - when you use up the fat in your larder and have a fine feed before Lent. The bosses brought in a whole tray full of jam doughnuts. They didn't last long (I only ate two - honest). Apparently there is also a 'Herring Day' but that didn't interest me quite as much.


I introduced my Proficiency (top end) class to 'Knock Knock' jokes the other day. Although their English is very good it took a fair bit of effort to get the idea across: "So I say 'Knock knock' and you say 'Who's there?' I say 'Orange' and you say 'Orange who?' and I finish with 'Orange you going to help me?' (We'd just watched a clip from the film 'You've got Mail' and a joke similar to this was in it and needed to be explained). Blank faces all round - they were having trouble with the punchline but got it after a while. When I told them that this sort of joke is very well known in Britain one student summed it up by saying, 'You English are very strange!'


That said, some British TV is very popular here - Mr. Bean & Monty Python in particular. Asia (Asha), my Polish colleague who lived in London for a few years, loves Steptoe and Son and can do a pretty decent impression.

I went skiing last weekend. Having previously thought the whole area to be totally flat I was surprised to discover a ski slope nearby. I was invited to go with Jacek (Yatsek) who is one of my students, and his daughter Marta.














I last skiied in 1989 and didn't know what to expect but it all came flooding back. Marta gave me a lesson (see pic) and even had me skiing backwards at one point. Now, the ski instructors amongst you might not be impressed with my posture, ski position etc etc. but I'm sure that you will all have noticed that my head is above my feet rather than the other way round, and that was good enough for me.




I played tennis with another student and two of his buddies last week. They didn't speak too much English but I got by. I can at least keep score in Polish.

I have been warned about a certain ruse that some Polish teenagers like to try on their teacher (my colleague almost fell for it a couple of weeks ago). Feigning innocence, they ask you how to pronounce some English words but don't tell you that this particular combination of words sounds a lot like Polish swear words. If you make the mistake of helping them with this pronunciation they fall about laughing. Fortunately, my teenagers haven't tried it, but I'm on my guard...

Talking of teenagers, we came across this game of ice hockey outside a block of flats a couple a weeks ago. It appeared to have been designed for the purpose. During the winter you often see youngsters walking around with ice hockey gear.



OK, that's all for now. I'll leave you with a short video clip of Torun in all its glory. The video was made to support Torun's bid to become European Capital of Culture in 2016.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmB3vsnLWUQ

Winter Break

Up until recently Torun remained the coldest place on the planet. There are some fearsome-looking icicles hanging from some buildings and so I've adopted a policy of not walking under the eaves; those things have got to drop sometime. It has continued to snow most days so it's piling up beside the roads in rather large mounds. We're now having a bit of a thaw but they say it's due to get cold again.

My Winter Break went well. I started by catching the slow train to Krakow - I wondered why it was so cheap (56zl - about £15 for a 300 mile journey). The next day my good buddy Bob arrived from the UK and we set off for Zakopane. We stayed out of town in a road full of unusual wooden buildings ...

We caught the cablecar to the top of the highest mountain in the area but the visibilty wasn't too good ...

We had thought of walking back down but one wrong turn would have seen us walking down into Slovakia so we drank coffee in the (rather expensive) cafe at the top instead.

However, a few days later I was back in Zakopane with another good buddy, Jane, and we had perfect weather. We went for another stroll - this time starting at the bottom and following paths to a frozen lake. The views were amazing ...


We just happened to be there during the latest round of World Cup Ski-Jumping so we went along to the first evening. It's quite amazing to watch people flying through the air just a few metres away. Britain wasn't represented and so I was tempted to become the next Eddie the Eagle but they make it look easy - if you landed badly you would give yourself a nasty headache so I think I'll give it a miss.

Once Jane had gone I spent a couple of days on my own - Monday was spent down a salt mine. It was a working mine for hundreds of years and has been a tourist attraction for ages too. It's full of carvings made entirely of salt and has a huge cathedral inside, one hundred metres down.

I followed this with a visit to Auschwitz. It wasn't a fun day out. There was a few hundred people walking around following their tour guides and not a smile on anyone's face. The stories about life there are horrific. It was about minus 16 that day and I was freezing. I couldn't imagine standing out in similar weather for ten hours' 'role call' in little more than pyjamas.

On a more cheerful note, I finished up my trip by meeting up with my nephew Simon and his girlfriend Martyna (who's from Krakow). They flew in to visit Martyna's family and to go skiing. My Polish was put to the test before they arrived as I met Martyna's mum and uncle at the arrivals gate. Being able to say 'Hello, my name is Graham, I would like a coffe with milk' is not much help when you want to hold a conversation. I considered impressing them with my ability to count to a hundred and name the days of the week but thought better of it. Once Martyna had arrived we had an interpreter and spent a couple of hours chatting over coffee and cake.

I caught the fast train home. This one cost a bit more but I was stunned when they brought free tea and coffee around. I tried to pay until a kindly soul pointed out my mistake. Now back to normal life at school, which I'm enjoying. More to follow next blog ...

I have learned a few more Polish words:

telefon - telephone

telewizja - television

radio - radio

teatr - theatre

laptop - laptop

komputer -

yes, you guessed it,

computer

Polish just seems to get easier and easier.

Christmas in the UK

Szczesliwego Nowego Roku (shcheslivego novego rokoo) - Happy New Year to you all. It seems appropriate that the first thing Poles say to each other each year is a word that is rather hard to pronounce.

I spent Christmas in the UK - I hired a car and drove 850 miles up and down the country seeing folk. Christmas Eve was spent with my buddies Greg, Juliet, Ben & Tamsin. Greg recruited me into the band for their church nativity. I was given the triangle and told to hit it at the required times. I wouldn't have worried but the whole band stopped at the exact moment that I was supposed to play my solitary note - a very exposed position to be in. Luckily, Greg gave me all the right cues and I didn't ruin the whole show.

Next stop was Christmas Day with all the family for another yummy Christmas dinner and a lot of laughs. Here I can be seen setting the right example for my young and impressionable nephews...

I also managed to visit other family members and took a few of the lads climbing. This one is of Jamie, my youngest nephew (he's getting rather good already)...

I made it to The Lakes for a jolly good new year. We went for a couple of stomps in the hills and plenty of yummy food.

The night before I returned 'home' (which is how I keep finding myself referring to Torun) I was treated to a Polish meal by Alex (who's from Poznan) who cooked all my favourite dishes and made sure that my pronunciation was up to scratch.

I've now been back for a week and was straight into the usual classes. This week I found myself discussing the grammar in a solicitor's letter with my Legal English student and later on was acting out 'sad - sadder - the saddest' with a class of beginners. It was worthy of an Oscar but just seemed to get a lot of laughs. Don't know why.

Now this may make you feel a little bit green but, at the end of next week, we have two weeks' Winter Break - another holiday. Although my blog is called 'Graham on the Road' it has felt more like 'Graham in the Cafe' up until now as the furthest I've been has been a weekend in Warsaw. No longer - I have plans for Krakow, Zakopane and, maybe, Prague. We shall see.

A few more observations to finish this blog:

Public toilets often have a man and woman symbol as you're used to, but many don't - they have a circle (for women) and a triangle (for men). Remember this, should you ever visit Poland, it'll keep you out of trouble.

The snow-clearing is very efficient:

It's too warm for some people ...

(These were taken in Torun today - there was a charity event on. It was about minus 8C in the wind. Yes, they are blocks of ice floating in the water.)

A little more Polish:

cztery (chteh'ryh) - four

piec (pyehn'ch) - five

szesc (shehsh'ch) - six

Have a wonderful 2010!

A few observations

You know it's cold when your internal organs freeze. Walking across town last night I could definitely feel my liver beginning to go. It's about -12C at the moment, with a windchill of about -15C. Popping to the shops is a life-threatening activity. It's nice to have a bit of snow though.



Well done to anyone who noticed the slight error in my last post - I missed the word 'you' from each line of the joke at the end. To check that you were all paying attention of course. I made another mistake as well but I'm not telling you what it was. All being well, I'll have a laptop after Christmas and these blogs won't have to be done in a hurry at work. Should improve the quality somewhat...

As for the question I left you with (about those rather large 'hedges') ... the answer is that Ciechocinek is a spa town; the water was pumped to the top of the towers and allowed to trickle down through the sticks. As it evaporated it released the salts and the vapours could be breathed in by people who walked through the middle of the tower. These days they're just a tourist attraction though - you can't walk through the middle any more as the structures are over 100 years old.

*****

A few observations of differences that have struck me based on my first few months here ...

All women's names end in 'a'. (Something to do with the requirements of Polish grammar.)

Jaywalking is illegal. You can get a 100zł fine if you're caught crossing before the little man turns green. It is common to see people standing at a crossing waiting when there isn't a car to be seen.

Christmas dinner is eaten on Christmas Eve and is always fish, the main dish being carp. Some people buy their carp live and keep it in the bath. I saw an advert in the cinema the other day that began with a family all looking sadly into the bath and a large carp looking sadly back up at them.

*****

Last Sunday the staff were all invited around to Romek's house (the owner of the school). We began by sharing large communion wafers - you offer as piece to each person and they offer you some of theirs. You then wish each other Merry Christmas. A very nice tradition. There then followed a range of fish dishes + salads and pierogi(!). Very nice too. After a while we did a little singing. The Poles outsang the Brits by miles. I'm sure they'd been practising. We were also treated to a few musical pieces by some of the children. They played a range of pieces entirely from memory.




















I have been practising my Polish of course. As you can see, I am studying hard. Here we are in the cafe with our textbooks ...














Your Polish lesson this time is (partly) of course on a Christmas theme:

jeden (yeden) - one
dwa (dva) - two
trzy (tsch) - three
Wesołych Swiąt (vesowych schviont) - Merry Christmas

Well, that's about it for this year. I'm heading home on Sunday and will be travelling around seeing family and friends. In case I don't see you I'll wish you ...

WESOŁYCH SWIĄT!!


Have a lovely Christmas and a very happy new year.