Pióro

Martha has already written about the free foozball (piłkarzyki in Polish) at our local bar. That feature alone makes it an awesome place. But there are many other reasons why the bar is the best ever and one of the things that makes saying good-bye to Poland so hard.
For months we didn’t know what the [...]

I’ve used more French in the last nine months in Poland than I have in the previous eight years in southern Ontario. At first, the use of French was inadvertent. As most people who’ve tried to learn a third language know, the second language does not take kindly to competition. As one starts trying to [...]

So, Lviv and Ukraine is a bust. The usual culprits, time and money, have conspired against us. It’s disappointing, but we are already planning a Black Sea tour. The mantra is, of course, “Someday… someday…”
Before I leave the topic of Ukraine, I have to talk about a reaction I’ve heard from some Poles at the [...]

Working in a small town can make you feel like the man. You know, the man who walks down the street and says “Hey what’s happening?” to every second person. Or maybe it’s more like the opening of Disney’s version of Beauty and the Beast, with the main character saying hello to everyone. There’s no [...]

Yesterday was Children’s Day. The following Thursday is called God’s Body (Boże Ciało in Polish, Corpus Christi in the Latin countries). This is a good holiday because we don’t work. Somewhere around here is a holiday called “the little green holiday.” On this day, celebrants simply fry up some eggs on a barbecue because that’s [...]

This one gets my more advanced adults howling.
First, I must explain a connection between Polish and English. I promise this linguist eggheadishness is going somewhere: bear with me. This connection revolves around Latinate words like ‘valorisation,’ ‘consternation’ and ‘fermentation.’ Their Polish equivalents look and sound almost the same: ‘waloryzacja’ (remember, ‘w’ is ‘v’ in Polish [...]