Jakies polskie mamy?

[mamusia]

szukam tekstu piosenki twinkle twinkle little star po polsku - kiedys chyba swinka pepa spiewala (na mini mini) ale nie moge znalezc

The architecture
Lots and lots and lots of concrete!

a lot of Poland was basically razed though, wasn't it? Maybe it was quite pretty pre-war, pre-communism.

It was, it was lovely, lots of art nouveau, good modernism.
It's not that I'm saying it was their fault, it is simply hard to live with so much grey, when the skies are grey for months as well.

Yes, I know what you mean. I visited years ago. Rural parts lovely. Towns quite communist-grey, as you say. What surprised me (no good reason to be surprised except stock image of Iron Curtain iron rations etc) was how luverly Polish cooking is. Really delicious.

Yes home cooking is verrrrry tasty. Kotlet schabowy was my favourite thing. Barszcz zabielany. Potatoes with flavour. (And drizzled with lard.....)

Prunerz! I did the EFL thing too! When + where were you there?

I remember potatoes with flavour...and also carrots that emitted a rich aroma when you just peeled them. And Edamski cheese!

My fave foods were Pierogi Ruskie and Barszcz as well (can't recall what 'zabielany' added to it). Oh and a tomato soup recipe with rice. Yum.

95/96 MrsMH, really at the beginning of capitalism there.
A couple of hours from Kraków. (Don't want to say as there were only a few of us there and you know, small world, nothing is private any more.... [paranoid] I chose not to keep in touch with some unpleasant Brits from that time.)

Zabielany I think means 'whitened', it has cream in it, mmmmm. It came with a side order of a plate of potatoes covered in smalec (lard!) for dipping into the soup. It cost 1zl75 at the time, about 40p iirc. I ate it about 3 times a week.

That winter was SO hard (even for the Poles) that I went from a 14 to a 10 - I just couldn't eat enough to make up for the fat I was burning keeping me warm every time I went outside! It was great.

same time and place as me, then (depending on which direction you go from Krakow)! I do remember that winter - I think the snow melted at Easter and then came back with a vengeance a week later, then all of a sudden spring appeared overnight and the whole place blossomed into stunning beauty!

I understand about your wanting to keep the info private, I was at a school which had some irritating characters (some slightly unpleasant but I pretty much kept out of their way) and yes, it's ages go, we've all moved on!

I had no trouble putting on weight, though - clearly our bodies have different metabolic rates!

Do zo bacenia!

OOh see I DO want to know where you were! (THough of course there are many places within a 2h radius of Kraków!)
I don't have CAT but if you do then drop me a line
If you don't, but you understand if I say "Wor Lass" in a NE accent then I might know you!

lol@ possibility of mrsmh being one of prunerz's unpleasant brits

No she sounds lovely!
There was one in particular I had a stand-up row with and who wrote to me to keep a friendship going (?) after we'd got back to Britain. I never replied.
The others were men. Male EFL teachers are a weird bunch.

Oh, maybe we were in different places/ schools, then, as there were plenty of women in our staff room. International House?

Fraid 'Wor Lass' doesn't ring a bell, how about 'Let's talk about meeeee!' - mean anything to you? It was a classic quote from one of the nice male teachers (who looked a bit like Sting).

Mwff - I was a bit nervous about that myself, but I think perhaps I would have been one of the 'young and innocent' set rather than a trouble-maker so I can breathe easily!

Nope, not IH, so you can breathe easy
Do you remember getting back, MrsMH, after that year, and drinking in all the luxuries that we have in Britain?
We are so spoiled over here, compared to Poland 1996.

Hey you lot, love the reminiscing. I first came to Poland in 91/92 to IH in Krakow - and loved it all so much I'm still here! Not the TEFL I hasten to add, all those weird British and American (mostly) misfits seeking asylum in the unsuspecting foreign staffroom (present company and self excepted, of course )!! Wasn't here in 95/96 so am free from Mrs Merry Henry's suspicions (was it Kie*ce?? - the IH there was a branch of the Krakow one and people had to be bribed to go and teach there) but came back in 97/98 after University in UK.
It's changed so much now - loads of things you used to love to hate have all gone - the sour milk smell of food shops, the seriously leaded petrol smell, the scarily raw smell of cheap cigarettes. And you can now get tampons everywhere ! (Though the Mooncup has not yet landed...)

Aha do Mamusi - jest super stronka www pt. Mama Lisa's World, gdzie sa przerozne teksty (oraz nuty) do piosenek dzieciecych z calego swiata, moze tam bedzie.

Pozdrawiam z Wieliczki

My secrets are safe.

I remember going to a mahoosive Sainsbury's and being blown away by the ridiculous amount of choice. I nearly spun on my heel and fled.

I looooove Poland! Even though all the locals stared at me open mouthed when I'd walk down the street (I'm black, you see).

Nie bylam w Kielce, jessia!

Hmm, you didn't return and immediately marry one of your students, did you? Much younger than you? If that's you then I've lost your email address and you are apparently ungoogleable!

Ha! What, those feral teenaged boys? No chance, matey! My landlady would've loved it if I had - she was so excited to be accommodating our town's 'Czarna' that she kept trying to palm me off with her shrivelled man-friends. Somehow she thought that if she addled my liver with copious amounts of potato vodka I wouldn't notice if she married me off whilst in a drunken stupor .

I have just remembered that during the Feb holiday I came to London to visit my (now) MIL, and thought, well she's working, I'll get some dinner and a bottle of wine for us. Went to Waitrose on the Finchley Rd - it was like arriving in heaven must be!

My friend used to be feted wherever she went - I was in the market once with her and an old man literally said 'I am so happy to have seen you before I DIE' Taxi drivers automatically knew where she lived etc (in city of 300,000+)
It did all get her down after 9m though, being SO different.

Prunerz, I'm amazed you didn't pass out in Waitrose from shock!! It's so heartening to know that someone just a few miles away was going through the same thing. Much as I loved Poland, I couldn't stay, for that reason alone.

Did she get strangers asking to take their photo with her? Stalkers sending drinks to her table and turning up wherever she went? Random gypsy girls running up to her yelling 'faine Pani!!!' and shoving their hands into her hair for good luck? Bloody irritating after a while.

Ha yes, lots of that.
When she started seeing a Pole, though, things got quite nasty (for him) and there's no way she could have stayed.

I'd really like to go back and see how it's changed. I went back for work in 1998 and already big business was far, far bigger than it had been. Tescos were opening all over the place, Ikea in Warszawa, etc. And Kamembert! It had been ser zolty and ser bialy where I was, but now they had Kamembert...

for your friend and her husband. I wonder if they're still together.

I went back in 2006 - though to Mazuria, on holiday. Beautiful place; if you've never been, do go. Still got stared at, then mouths agape when I spoke to them in their own lang .

Warsaw station was exactly the same! We only passed through Warsaw on our way to the bus station so didn't see much else (though I only spent a day there back in '96).

Tesco opened up in our town in 1996, so I'm sure they've killed all the Polish competition by now. But hey - we never had Kamember! Do you remember those pretzel street vendors? And smelly men on buses? And buses charging through 3 feet of snow - and still sticking to the timetable? A-mazing.

I remember men reading porn on the tram
And being told it was sad but normal!

And the only way you could get travel information was to either GO to the station and write down train times (1996), or (by 1998) to ring and ask and the woman in the ticket booth would say 'hang on a sec' and go out and look at the huge timetable on the wall and come back and tell you, hopefully, the info you wanted...

Oh loads of stuff. Lovely random people on the train inviting me to dinner so they could practice their English and I never minded because it meant a really nice meal and I always learned something. People admiring my Doc Martens, pointing and shouting Martensy!! in the street. The smell of the little veg shops and the strings of mushrooms. Milk in a bag! etc.

OMG, porn on a tram! We never had trams, maybe that's why I never witnessed it .

Yuck.

I'd forgotten all about milk in a bag, though! . And men eating meat at all times of day in Katowice station. And I mean meat. Whole legs of lamb, it looked like. At 4 in the morning. Probably dribbling lamb juices over their porn.

Oh - just realised you said to CAT you (I do have CAT, so I'll say hi in a mo).

I really should be working, but MN is such a good distraction!