Pióro

School’s over. Martha and I have gone from students to travellers again. We both passed the course and are fully qualified to unleash linguistic havoc in un-English places around the world. With the passing of the course, also came the passing of our cool apartment. Yesterday, we trudged quite a few blocks with our backpacks once again. This time, though, we also had two huge plastic bags each. It’s amazing: you’re sedentary for a month and you accumulate so much shit. We’re going to have to ditch it before we leave. Mom and Dad, expect a big package in the mail in a few weeks. The new digs are pretty frickin’ humble compared to our last place. It’s a two room flat that Martha and I are sharing with Toby, one of our classmates. We’re in it for the street-cred. It doesn’t have a fridge so our perishables are down the hall in our landlady’s icebox. Yes, not the convenience we’re used to, but the landlady and her wrinkly old mom are very nice. I figure I just need to stumble through a few more Polish phrases and they’ll be inviting us over for pierogi.

So now we’re doing some post-course chilling in Krakow. Takin’ ‘er easy for a few days. We’re thinking of heading south to the mountains (Yes, Poland does have mountains and some dirt cheap ski hills to boot).

We’ll see.

In my previous class, I taught a segment on English slang. After all, what words are more ubiquitous than “cool” and “wicked?” I must admit though, I nearly lost my composure when I found myself correcting the students’ pronunciation of “hork” and “zonked.” These are essential skills I’m teaching them!

Last class tomorrow. Very excited. Then we’ll be in Kraków for one or two more weeks looking for work.

Martha and I have been quiet of late ‘cause we got school. Yup, we’re are in Poland learning how to be English teachers. That confuses some of the Poles I’ve met.

“You’re in Poland to learn how to teach English. Shouldn’t you have done that where you come from?”

School is tough. We teach two to three times a week. It doesn’t sound like much, but damn, it keeps us busy. We started out with half hour lessons, then moved to hour long lessons. Martha has been teaching beginners for the past two weeks; I’ve been teaching intermediate students. For our last two weeks we switch classes. There are also instructional classes for us, teacher observation and essays too. I’m really missing those Mediterranean beaches.

There are five other teachers-in-training in our class. They all talk funny ‘cause they’re British. But now I’m saying ‘random,’ ‘spot on’ and ‘sorted’ a lot. And ‘pants’ has become a derogatory term. In fairness, some of them are starting to pronounce the r’s at the end of words. (Say ‘letter’ in your Austin Powers voice.) Chris, Matthew (yes, there’s another Matthew, I had no trouble remembering his name) Vicky, Paul and Toby all know how to party. Friday nights have been about catharsis. Ask me sometime about the damage we inflicted on Kraków one night.

This just in folks: Martha behind the invisible axe. Yes, that’s right, Martha did a bit of air guitar in Oulu. Head on over to Pics for more. Dig.

A few days ago, I had a moment on the balcony of our flat in Kraków. Let’s call it a balcony moment. It was late evening and there was just enough sun getting through to create a red patch in the clouds ahead of me. Our building faces a courtyard formed together with two other tenement-style apartment buildings. Tenement. I don’t like that word. It sounds derogatory and overly slummy, but I can’t think of a better word to describe big, long apartment buildings with a few gangly antennas littering the roofs.

Our flat is on the eighth floor, the top. Marek, a guy from the school and former resident, told us our floor used to be a bunch of artist studios. Now it’s not as glamorous. But for us, it’s the perfect place to chill before school starts. After three and a half months, we finally have a space that’s ours. As Martha said, we no longer have to get dressed up if we have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Luxury.

Our building is on a street called Racławicka. We’re north-west of the Old Town. Like most Polish words over seven letters (like most Polish words), it takes me one or two passes before I can say the street name correctly, and that’s only if it’s in front of me. If you came up to me in the streets of Kraków and asked me where I lived, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell you. I should write it on the back of my hand. Just the other day, Martha and I started labelling things in the apartment, right down to electrical plugs (wtyezki) and bread (chleb).

We bought a radio. It was Martha’s idea. She’s from a big family and needs some background noise in her place of habitation. When we got home, we couldn’t wait to try it out. Imagine begin excited over a radio. I’ve chatted real-time with friends on the other side of the planet and I’ve been broadcast over a live Web-feed; yet, I was stoked about the radio. It was as if it was 1969 and we were the first ones on the block to get a colour TV. The radio’s got short-wave. BBC is cool. Radio Canada International is comforting like Kraft Dinner. Unfortunately As it Happens isn’t broadcast to Europe. There’s a local radio station that’s hype. One day it was playing DJ Rob “The Nipple Tweaker” Warren’s record collection of seven months ago. Lots of good blips and bleeps. And Polski hip-hip too. There’s a female host who’s no Patti Schmidt, but she wonderfully mispronounces English artists and song names. It makes me wonder for the umpteenth time why it is that accented English from the Continent tends to sound so musical. Conversely, why is it my accent and that of other anglos has the same lilt as a lawn-mower meeting with a rock?

So, the radio featured in my balcony moment. Martha found the Chopin channel. I’m serious, All Chopin, All the Time. It was the perfect soundtrack. I could see a train heading towards the station Kraków Lobzow to the north. Birds cut paths across and over buildings. There were a few people walking down-below and the occasional car went down nearby the ulica Mazowiecka. It was one of those moments when you are hyper-conscious of where you are, of when you are. It’s not déja vu. That’s too surreal. This feeling is more cinematic. If you allowed yourself to get carried away, you might say the moment had meaning or participated in some wider reality. But these claims are too lofty. After all, this is only a moment.

Ever get the feeling you are being followed?

Ok, I know this, you know this, we all know this.

But we’ve been in Warsaw three days now, and his asshole-ness just keeps hitting me like a bag of frozen pierogi to the head.

I should stop being silly, because it really isn’t silly.

The night we got here, we went to the huge KINOPLEX, and saw Polanski’s The Pianist. We tried to see it in Gdansk, but torrential downpours kept us from leaving our room. And it was way more appropriate to see it here.

The movie really made me want to walk around the area of the former Ghetto, but of course, other than a few powerful monuments, there was nothing to see.

Today, in the History of Warsaw Museum, we watched a 20 minute film on the history of Warsaw. The footage and photos, by both Polish and German (Nazi) photographers and filmmakers, were of Warsaw from the 30’s to the late 40’s. Polanski actually used some of the same footage at the beginning of his movie. And I imagine that these same images were also invaluable to the architects and builders who rebuilt the Old Town after the war. It’s amazing what they were able to accomplish given the utter destruction.

Although it did cover the reconstruction and ended on an up note, the 20 minute film concentrated mostly on the razing of the city and the massive loss of life. Both Matt and I felt more like crying after watching this short film than we did after watching The Pianist. “Real” footage will do that to you.

I really wanted the movie to continue, to talk more about what it was like when Warsaw gained its independence on the 17th of January 1945, and when, as our free The Visitor guide book says, “the Soviets intentionally forgot to return home for the next 45 years…”. It seemed that this was not to be part of the coverage, but they did at least mention how the Russian army sat on the other side of the Vistula as the Germans, under Hitler’s order that there will never again be a Warsaw, blew up block by city block.

Assholes.

In the bus shelters and on the lampposts around Warsaw are loads of letter-sized posters. They generally advertise one of two services: English language instruction and karate lessons. I was pretty happy to see these signs as it looks like I’ll be able to put my skills to work here in Poland. It seems all those Bruce Lee movies I watched in my youth will be of some use. I definitely remember seeing Enter the Dragon and The Chinese Connection Parts I and II. There were also a whole host of ninja movies like Enter the Ninja (what’s with all the ‘entering’?) and the one where the American white-clad ninja kicks the wonton out of the Asian black-clad ninja. Oh, and that TV series featuring two good American ninjas and the evil Asian one (I see a trend here) who was constantly pursuing them. I think it was called Masters. I watched that a bunch too. So even though I may not be as flexible as I used to be, I figure I have a lot to show the Poles.

Epiphanies are not always that profound. I think if you ask the Catholic Church or James Joyce, epiphanies are supposed to be life changing. But something can hit you and when you tell someone else about that something, it sounds retarded. Mine goes like this… Mar and I were walking around the Old Town of Gdańsk. It was our first day in Poland. And then it hit me… everything here is Polish. Deep, huh? K., lemme explain. All things Polish have been pretty localised for me. Roncesvalles, Toronto, the Polish Church in Ottawa, family gatherings, a babcia’s house, my parents talking aloud about something they want to keep hidden from my sister and me—these are the times I’ve heard Polish. Suddenly, I’m surrounded by that crazy consonant heavy language. The same babble is coming from everyone and it’s as familiar as it is incomprehensible. For all I know, they are discussing my behaviour and whether it merits a trip to the movies this weekend. Either that or it’s pierogi for dinner tonight.

An additional 343 pictures have been added to the site. These pictures take you from Greece all the way to Poland. I haven’t added a legend yet, but the deets are coming soon.