Krakow, Creationists and Khazis

The first thing I must say here is that I really like Poland. Like, madly. I was worried that I just liked Wroclaw, but now that we’ve been to Kraków I feel eminently qualified to say that I like the whole country. That’s a 2/2 success rate! It’s 0/1 for Germany. I was actually quite impressed by Kraków, because we were there for a whole five minutes before someone tried to fight us, which I think may actually be a new record. All we were doing was taking pictures of the train station like a bunch of Asian tourists, and he came over, started shouting at us in rapid Polish and trying to grab my mate’s camera. He also started moving as if he was going to throw a punch, then abruptly said “dobze (good)” when he put the camera away. We genuinely don’t know what angered him so much, but he must have been furious, because he didn’t get round to finishing his mouthful of food before kicking off.

There! On the right! Angry Man has us in his sights!

In a nutshell, Kraków is lovely, except for being full of English people who are there to get drunk. Yes, that was why we were there, but we actually wanted to see sights before we sought oblivion. We were herded into a pub immediately after our run in with Angry Man by an outstandingly aggressive rep, so we decided we’d have lunch. Turned out we were next to a bunch of fat, balding morons from London, clearly on a lads’ holiday, who spoke of either drunkenness, football or women. We, like true tourists, were talking about seeing the castle or something, when one of them bellowed, loudly enough for people in Dublin to hear, “Yeah mate, but is she FIT?!” Says it all really.

Our youth hostel was surprisingly good actually, for the pittance we paid for it, although someone should tell them that a half-hour bus ride from the centre doesn’t count as ‘close’ in my book, and that maybe they should update their website. Also, they had dogs running around, and I’m terrified of dogs. One night, when we got back, the wretched things started barking at us (surely, living in a bloody youth hostel, they should be used to people coming and going?) so we instinctively raised our hands in a 'calm down/don't bite me' way. Then, the receptionist came charging through, talking to us like we were retarded or something, saying “No! Don’t raise your hands! They think you’re going to hit them!” I genuinely can’t think of anything I can add to that. On a more positive note, I’ve never heard a better snorer than my Italian friend. It somehow managed to wake me up, which is impressive enough in itself. Also impressive was the shower, which got colder when you turned it to the hot side. How does that even happen?!

As you can guess, we have a strange habit of just picking up lunatics in one way or another, and we excelled ourselves in Kraków. We ran into a Canadian guy, who said he was a proof-reader, and had lived in Kraków for eight years, with his wife and children. Which was fine. He then proceeded to show us the sights of the Jewish quarter, which was fantastic. We asked him what he was doing, and he said that it was the one night a week where he could go out, have a smoke and relax. That’s fine, but I would love to know what his life really consists of, where the best way he can spend his evening off is to drink with some scruffy students who were leaving the next day anyway. We didn't even buy him a pint! I can’t complain though, because he took us to a place called House of Beer, and I have never before seen so much, nor such a varied selection of beer. Mark managed to find one which was livid green. Sadly, it turned out that this guy was a bit of a religious nutter. He made a few thinly veiled references to his dislike of homosexuality, then out of the blue started complaining about how the Theory of Evolution is nonsensical. Don’t know how we found him, don’t think I want to stay in touch with him either.

As a man of Canterbury, I can't help but judge other cities'
cathedrals. I find them wanting, but this is a good second.

Anyway, there are a few major differences between England and Poland. One is that, in England, the currency is always valid. The cashiers may bitch about you buying a bottle of water with a £50, but 99% of the time, they accept it. Not so here. They’re fond of cursing you if they don’t have enough change, or can’t be bothered to work it out. Not ‘curse’, actually, but more like ‘make it clear that you’ve disappointed them terribly’. Also, we have more grosze than we know what to do with. You need four or five grosze to make one English penny, so we have genuinely no use for them, and we’re keeping ours communally in a big glass until we have enough to buy bog roll or something. But everyone, in pretty much any shop, will ask you slightly desperately for any small-denomination coins. If I had the Polish to say it, I’d tell them that we have a load that we’re not using and that they’re more than welcome to them, if it’ll stop me having to scrabble about for change like a tramp. Yeah, it’s a sorry state of affairs where you have too much money, and “too much” probably means “about 47p”.

The supermarkets are different in more than just how much change they have. Maybe this isn’t a fair comparison, as we do all of our shopping in the Carrefour across the road, which is ultimately a cheap supermarket in a grim area of a post-Communist city. It doesn’t compare favourably with the major British supermarkets, though. The closest comparison I can make for it is a Lidl or an Aldi. I view both of those establishments as Trotter’s Independent Traders made into a supermarket, where you can buy all your groceries or whatever, but also a pair of shoes, a lawn ornament and a deckchair. Carrefour isn’t dissimilar, although fatally flawed in many ways, and far less cheerful than I make it sound. You can’t quite escape the grimness. No effort is made to make anything look enticing. They don’t sell fresh milk, only UHT, there are no colourful displays of reduced products, and the aisles are on the narrow side, so you can’t get two trolleys down them. Also, something that I find absolutely horrifying is that they keep the dog food in the same fridge as the people food. Now, even someone who doesn’t speak Polish can tell the difference between dog food and a chicken breast. I don’t trust the sausages, though. It’s not worth gambling and ending up with a doggy treat.

 But there are solutions! After a long, harrowing shopping trip, Jeff the Dutch recently turned to me and said “You know what? I could run a better supermarket, and I’m a mad alcoholic. For one, widen the aisles. Get rid of the shoes and tennis balls and all that shite, nobody buys those on an impulse in a supermarket that predominantly sells food. They look like they fell off the back of a lorry anyway. Then, either have a stop selling dog food that requires refrigeration, or invest in a separate fridge for it, for Christ’s sake. This set-up isn’t natural. Then, if they kept bigger floats in the till, bought proper till rolls, and hired some cashiers who weren’t rude and terrifying, it wouldn’t be such a pain in the arse to come in here.” He wasn’t wrong, I must admit.

The most annoying aspect of life here, apart from when the receptionists shout rapidly at me in a language I don’t understand, is that the Polish powers-that-be seem rather preoccupied with how we cross the road. We can get a fine if we cross when the little man isn’t green. By a fine, I think it amounts to about £20, but it’s the principle! Instead, we have to stand there, with no cars or trams visible for as far as the eye can see, like simpletons. Or, if you prefer, like animals in an abattoir. I think we could make it a status thing, where we can afford to cross the road, but I’m worried that would make me into a far worse person than I am already. Also, I’m glad we decided to get a ticket on the tram the other day, because a big fat man with a ticket-checking machine got on, and demanded to see everyone’s tickets. It was absolutely terrifying, but I don’t know why. That is why I’ve decided that if I ever get caught, I’ll just keep saying the name of the station that I want, and speak rapid Spanish, because they’re less likely to understand that than English. What was I saying about being morally reprehensible?

We've spent, I would say, a full
week of our lives here, in the past two months

Another big difference is the toilet situation out here. I’m vaguely grateful that they don’t write “men” and “women” on the doors, because that would have been remarkably hard for us when we first arrived. Sadly, though, they don’t even put crude illustrations of men and women up. That would be far too simple! No, instead they show which toilet is which with: either a circle – for women - or a triangle on the door. Yep. It’s not intuitive in any way, and the only way I can remember it, even now, is that a circle is the most basic form of Yonic imagery I can think of. How is that any more simple or effective than a stick man?! Just to add insult to injury, half of the bloody bars we go to have unisex toilets. Which is fine until you go somewhere else, presuming that they also have unisex pissers, and it turns out that they don’t, and you have to do your best non-creepy smile and explain that you don’t understand anything because you’re from England and you’ve been drinking for three months. So much for that. On the bright side, any toilet related mishaps are more than made up for by being able to smoke in a bar, and being able to get a pint and a pack of cigarettes for about £6. Speaking of which, we regularly frequent the most pretentious bar in Wroclaw, called ”Kalambur”, which is a bit like a French jazz bar from 1959 – same soundtrack, air of cigarette smoke and wankers drinking coffee. I can’t tell if drinking in a hipster bar, and feeling superior to the hipsters actually means that I myself am a hipster. The mysteries of life, right there. I’m going to ponder this tonight, whilst we wait for wigga-watch. This is what happens when the club over the road has a big hip-hop event on, and all the wiggas (or ‘piggas’ – Polish wiggas) get brutally drunk and fight each other in the street. It’s great fun to watch, especially with a cup of tea and a cigarette. Also, to finish on a positive note, my food poisoning has got slightly better! I don’t know what I was expecting from a fast food outlet, under the stairs of a supermarket, in a skanky part of Poland, but yes, I got wonderfully ill from it. Not throwing up ill: that would have been easier. No, instead I just felt sick as hell for a couple of weeks (weeks!) and gagged whenever I smelt a burger or anything. It got to a point where I dreamed someone was eating something from there, and I nearly threw up in real life. I don’t think I’ll be returning. Still, you live, you learn, or so I’ve been told.