I want to olac it all.

Me and language are having it out. A big stand-off where I'll probably end up throwing in the towel and retreating to my new life as a mute monk on the island of Avon. Yes, it's that bad.

It's been a long time coming. For months I have been entertaining Polish and English separately; spending long, nurturing quality time with one only to pike on it for long beer-infused jaunts around Warsaw with the other.

This may sound like a simple excuse for a blog post, but dear readers (yes, all five of you), it's so much more than that. I am going through a linguistic crisis; a crisis that I would love to share with you if only I could find the words in the appropriate language.

When Polish and English kept their distance from each other I was happy to gaily skip between them and stay for as long as they would have me. In hard times, I would give myself up to one, happy for the prepositions to fix me in time and space, until I was ready to emerge from my chrysalis- like state to be betwixt and between once more.

But the bastards must have been slowly, insiduously ganging up on me because today I found myself standing on the balcony, in minus eight-degree fun, unable to properly phrase a simple SMS. The recipient was patiently waiting several hundred kilometres away as I dumbly tried to translate jestem pod wrazeniem into English.

Jestem pod wrazeniem could be transliterated to mean I'm impressed. "Aha!" you say, "That makes complete sense in English. Where's the gin?"

BUT. IT. DOESN'T.

It does nothing to convey the nuances of meaning that come rushing forth as soon as the phrase is uttered (whether you be the utterer or the utteree). Jestem pod wrazeniem means I am under the impression (not to be confused, however, with the stoic way anglophones use it).

It rather evokes the feeling of being coldly knocked down by the full weight of something's fantasticness. Or maybe it's more that you are labouring under history, life and death; EVERYTHING that matters. Maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but you certainly have been rendered stupid and can probably only manage whispering a respectful "wow".

Or, my favourite: zeby przezywac. Apart from being the name of the best Hole album released, (to) Live Through This, is the closest I can come to approximating the above meaning. When I say ja to przezywam, I mean that I am crawling through the mud of some post-apocalyptic landscape looking for what's left of my family. Of course, I usually only use this when my local shop has run out of my favourite rolls.

Then there's pretensja. I come up against this word often, as my mother does a good job of being it. As I can't hyperlink (ho ho) her into this post, I'll just have to rely on the assumption that mothers are the same everywhere. Zeby miec pretensje is not dissimilar to to have a gripe with someone. But to have a gripe with someone doesn't remind me of middle-aged woman incessantly whining and interfering with everything sacred in my life. This meddling middle-aged woman doesn't have a gripe with someone, she has pretensja.

Perhaps it has something to do with Poland's "problems", that the above are imbued with such extreme emotions; that they can floor you, that they can stupify you, that they can lead you to have embarrassing tantrums at the age of 22. Centuries of rising and falling, of struggling to assert Polishness, of the constant threat of the other, tends to colour your language more vibrantly. The quotidien has known times when buying those rolls really was something zeby przezywac. I am impressed, on the other hand, sounds like it should be served up with tea and a conservative smattering of bonmots.

In any case, all I know is that when I am standing out on the balcony, having a cigarette, I don't want to have deal with this sort of shit; I just want to write a message to someone. So from now on I will type jestem pod wrazeniem in Polish, select SEND and go inside to have a nice, quiet cup-o-tea.

Paulina 1
Language 0.

A play on words with gratification of the baked kind

So it appears that in times of crisis I do the following:

-Eat biscuits that I bought to present as a gift to someone (who is not me).
-Walk around in circles making puns TO MYSELF. ALONE.
-Dust off my deserted and poorly-named blog.

The crisis is as following:

OH MY GOD I'M MOVING IN WITH MY FRIEND BUT I DON'T KNOW WHERE TO START WITH THE PACKING WHY DOESN'T THAT GUY AT FOLLOW UP ON THAT OFFER OF BEER THAT HE ONCE AWKWARDLY MADE WHEN I WAS OFF TO A DATE WITH SOMEONE ELSE WHO IS DREADFULLY BORING AND ONLY WEARS WHITE T-SHIRTS WHAT SHOULD I DO WITH MY LIFE WHERE ARE MY STOCKINGS WHY IS IT SO COLD WHAT SHOULD I CHOOSE FOR MY MA I MISS MELBOURNE WHERE AM I GOING TO STUDY WHERE AM I GOING TO TRAVEL TO NEXT. Etc.

As for the poorly-named blog....I didn't ever expect to have any commitment to it past Vietnam. My boyfriend at the time said it was a stupid name. It is, but well WE ALL MAKE MISTAKES KIDS AND NOW WE HAVE TO GRIN AND BEAR IT (at least two of those mistakes are acknowledged in this paragraph).

In any case: goodbye Ulica Zelazna (Iron Street). Your spiteful stove and vermin have been good to me.

Love,

Paulina

Funnies

A joke that don't translate well into Polish:

Q: What is the theory of rapativity?

A: E=MC Hammer

-----

A joke about Poland:

There's an Italian, a German and Pole. The devil approaches them and says, 'I am going to take the lives of you all, save the man that amazes me the most.' So he locks them up in individual cells and gives them two balls, once more saying "the life of the man that amazes me the most will be spared". He comes back to the Italian's cell and sees that the man has developed some sort of impossibly intricate juggling act, and emerges thoroughly impressed. The devil moves onto the German. Here he sees that the German has arranged the balls in a very organised and orderly fashion, in a way he could never have imagined. So, once more he is pleased, and moves on to the Pole.

Here he finds the Pole slumped on his chair, looking sheepish. He's broken one ball and lost the other.

The Pole was spared.

------------

Poland as a joke:

Everyone is encouraged to recycle here now (it's really a new concept), and there are even dumpsters that so thoroughly segregate rubbish, that I'm sure they're close to splitting the atom. So, you've got one for glass, one for plastic, etc etc. After all this, one big clinky-clanky truck comes and throws them all into the back together.

There is a labirynthine building at Warsaw University. Apparently, you go down all these corridors and emerge in a musty hall where the only way you can get out is to go upstairs. Except the stairs, inexplicably, stop three feet off the ground. So, because obviously this is a OHS issue, somebody has placed a chair there. Bless.

-----------

(I just moved into my new apartment. Yay!)

Greenery

Today I had to repent my sins to farewell my Great Aunt Stefania. Or so I was told by the bitter priest, as we lingered in the middle of the altar presiding over her coffin. I was also reminded that she was pious, gave money to the church, and generally didn’t move outside of the institution’s good opinion. Through all this naval-gazing, there was not a hint of nostalgia or romance; of the hundreds of revered dinner parties she threw in her gothic mansion. No mention of the fierce intelligence this statuesque, blonde woman possessed; of the real impact she, a Doctor in Radiology, and her husband, a Doctor in something even more impressive, had on their community (outside of the sober Christian values that lay claim to such benevolence). No one understood the secret anxiety I harboured when I was eight, splayed amongst my Leggo-forts in her attic, waiting for the moment she would tear in with a wooden spoon and lament the mess that had befallen her stately home.

It had all been soured when we went to visit her before the service. I was supporting my sobbing grandmother, when some retard in waist-high ADIDAS pants and an Iron Maiden T-shirt burst in on Speed (seriously) and demanded we show our IDs. He was the care-taker, and in Poland, official documents take precedence over tact, romance, life and, obviously, death. Later, the nonchalant pallbearers, perched against the wall and puffing on their cigarettes, assured us, ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be going in a pretty awesome car. A Bentleigh is it, Michal? Yeah, I think so.’

So when some bustling hag, in charge of something, clumsily half-opened the coffin in the middle of the church, assaulting me with a view of late aunt’s waxen hand, I directed all my grievances into a locked gaze with the priest, making him understand that I reviled everything that he stood for . It wasn’t his fault, or that of Catholicism, but it was easy to just blame him. If he picked up, I’m sure he would have appreciated my logic.

And now, my mum, my dad, my uncle and I are all sitting in the annex of the house, surrounded by the thick greenery she nurtured for so long. We’re having a jolly good time. Especially my mum and her brother who are, apparently obliviously, carrying out an animated conversation through a closed window. There is a slightly hysterical undercurrent, as the will is lying nearby, and no one knows what to do with a rambling old house in the middle of nowhere, suddenly now in their possession. Unable to acknowledge the house and its emptiness, we end up breaking the matter into constitutents. Maybe it could be a summer house? Maybe we could lease it? Who needs a fridge? No one wants to think of the tomato plants dying, of the ivy enclosing in on the shutters, or of the clinking and clanking of the pipes that no one will be here to hear.

But for me, closure will come quickly by way of yet another train journey. The locomotive’s arrival on the continent, the world and in literature, was resented for its assault on time and space. I must be arrested in the late nineteenth century, because I quite enjoy the gentle chugging of the Polish regional trains, as they struggle to cover five-hundred kilometres in ten hours. I endure all sorts of minor inconveniences like, sweaty armpits, chain-smoking men with slicked hair, nuns and direct sunlight filtered by greased-streaked windows. Instead, I doze, read Arendt in Polish, and smile gaily at all the commuters being elbowed by fat people. And tomorrow, I’ll do similarly, as I am slowly bundled back to Warsaw. Or as I like to think of it...a drawn out farewell.

Epic

This morning I woke up dead on 10am, wrapped in somebody's crochet rug, with dill in my teeth. Far from flying into a panic and desperately pulling at my cocoon, I shuffled in deeper, watched the summer rain trickling down the windows and pleased myself with idle contemplations of Russian novellas, French boys and that accordion I'm going to buy.
This was the lull in the best twenty-four hours of my life, that started in the evening, some twenty-five hours ago.

I must be the devil, because I'm reading The Master and Margherita, and the chaos that has promptly followed has been very good to me, actually. On page 136 the Master reveals Satan. On page 136, my phone shrillingly delivered this message (in English, with French/Polish grammar): "I m next to you. Where are? David".

Now, this would have been a nice surprise if my apartment wasn't such a large, curtainless beacon, there wasn't a storm thrashing the city's walls and I wasn't reading about the devil. Adrenalin coursed through me as I nervously watched a lone figure walking the street where I had left David a few days before, but that person didn't have the same gait, nor did he appear to be expecting my appearance on the balcony. Anyhow, he soon was consumed by the fog, and I was left watching the blinking lights of the buses and the yellow silhouette of the Palace of Culture

David didn't message me back.

I made myself a cup of tea and listlessly rifled through my clothes, until I was satisified. I do everything very slowly nowadays- it makes me happier. There was much rain, but it was warm, so I left the building wearing a skirt and t-shirt and headed for Ulica Dobra. Somewhere along the way I ended up at a party with Natalia. There I patiently waited for some guy to get my joke, before floating off down towards the river, Wisla.

On Dobra, there was dancing and laughing and photos of people's abdomens. When I dropped The Master and Margherita, I think Radek was taking photos of people's feet. I crawled under the table, dumbly sifting through gravel to find the novel, then dusted it off. Drunk and curious, I turned to page 136 and read two sentences. When my concentration lapsed I found Natalia in tears and Szymon looking really pissed off. Hours of tentative diplomacy failed, so exhausted, I collapsed at a table, knocking the sausage off some guy's plate. He looked up, with pretty brown eyes, and the next two hours were spent in French, interrupted only occasionally by tears and hysterics.

This table quickly became the transit table. Every half an hour or so, people would awkwardly shuffle onto the bench, at first apologetic at having encroached on our little tete-a-tete. Before long we would all be collapsing into fits of laughter, effortlessly moving through language and time, swapping numbers and parting as firm friends.

This is how Renata, who I knew for all of ten minutes, and I came to be on bus 167 in the brilliant six-am sunshine. We were en route to her apartment, the bus's belly slowly curving with the bends, making a general nuisance of ourselves in front of wholesome folk. At six am we were on the bus, at six-thirty we had prepared an elaborate dinner for two: chicken schnitzel, mashed potatoes with dill and a salad. Carefully selecting the best plates and cutlery, we settled to our meal of Polish fare, discussing the pedagogical differences in approaches to Anthropology. At seven am, I was wrapped up in somebody's crochet rug and asleep.

And so, at ten am, I wriggled my toes and admiring the vibrancy of the elms after the morning's shower; pleased with the seamless way the night had moved from one curious encounter to another. I checked my phone: David still hadn't offered an explanation. Secretly pleased, I allowed myself to indulge in this little mystery a while longer.

At 14:00 I was standing in a queue at the main railway station, one person away from being served. It was 14:00, my train was at 14:05, and I was still all bleary and drunk. I was investing a lot of energy into hating the scrawny teenager in front of me who had so nonchalantly squeezed passed me at 15:32, but he didn’t seem to notice. At 14:03 I was skidding across the main hall, my pack clumsily following, having just remembered the possibility of buying tickets on the train.

After getting confused I ended up in the dining cart. I appropriated a roll with limp lettuce from a rather jolly man, who didn’t mind when the intertia of the carriage threw him into the dishwasher or stove. Later on, he sold me an orange juice, and merely chortled when sent flying with a cup and saucer, which made me like him a lot.

I moved towards the one table that wasn’t patroned by a drunk man with a shaved head; but, rather, a quiet man absorbed by his book. My cumbersome load meant I made quite an announcement of my arrival, and probably made some sort of quip in Polish because the guy smiled dumbly. I turned to page 139 and disappeared for ten minutes. The devil was still wreaking havoc in Moscow, but when I returned to the rhythmic shuffling of the carriage, we were cutting through virgin wheat; the sun invoking an intensity of yellow I’d never seen before.

Between Warsaw and Krakow, Matthew and I became chums. He was an English teacher from Washington DC, quietly tracing his Jewish roots from the barren wastelands of the Ukraine, to the more obvious ancestral villages of Poland. Together we agonised over the admininstrative principles of all the teaching institutions in Warsaw, clutching at our heads at the horror stories we exchanged. I gave him anecdotal evidence of really bad pick-up lines from Polish gents, whereas he offered that an ‘English gentleman was the holy grail for Polish women...or so I’ve been told’. Finally, we shared a moment when on mentioning his German Shepard, Zooey, I inquired of Franny’s welfare. The perfection of that personal joke lead us to fall into contemplative silence, and when we arrived at Krakow station, and bid each other goodbye, I knew we were friends.

Elation made me to skip around Krakow for six hours, followed by my father, somewhere behind. On the corner of Aleja Dietla, some man was guffawing loudly. On Ulica Felicjanek some girl, wearing a wreath of violets tripped over her feet, and burst into tears of laughter. Near the old square three elderly women screeched greetings from their windows onto the street below. Everwhere, accordions and violins were being tuned in anticipation of the Jewish music festival. And the rain that had woken me that morning in Warsaw descended with all its wrath on the city of churches, ruining my red suede shoes. But I didn’t care- because I was going to have cake.

At sunset, we approached the synagogue on Ulica Miodowa. It was not the largest synagogue in Krakow and possibly not the prettiest, but tonight the most revered kletzmer band, Kroke, was going to play within its walls.

The atmosphere inside was a buzz. Somehow Matthew found his way to a seat near me, and we easily slipped back into our talk of literature . I opened my mouth, said something about The Master and Margherita, then a buffeting BOOM resounded through the synagogue, and the lights went out. Technical difficulties, they said, but I knew otherwise and smilingly reached into my bag to stroke the Penguin Classic that lay therein. Nevertheless, all we could see were the dim lights of the outside world, so we opted to talk about Kerouac and how he ruined literature for me.

With another BOOM the audience, the stage, and finally the synagogue were spectatularly brought back to life and the band, to raucous applause, entered the stage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG3QO57mOd4

There was such subtlety and humility to the violinist’s song that I cried for a very long time.

And that's that, five hours later of travel later, back over half of Poland, I'm safe in bed. I’m now on page 157....

And David still hasn’t written back.

My mum is great.

Me: "MUM, can you get me some toilet paper? It's in that cupboard"

Mama Pusia, barging in: "Sorry, what? Did you say you wanted to borrow money?"














What did she think I was doing in there? Playing poker?

Giggity-giggity-goo-ski.

Today, I had the pleasure of getting sun stroke on a Polish beach. The beach, I might add, looks like St Kilda, but boy are they proud of it. Salmonella aside, I skipped over to the gentle waves with the hungry eyes of an Australian in a landlocked country. Three seconds later, I retreated to the blanket of refuge, having lost all feeling in my toes. So, what's a girl to do but read sweeping epics that make her cry and be pleased with her new navy blue polkadot one-piece?



I now look like a smoked eel.



Anyway, I'm in hiding now- but not because I look like a smoked eel. I'm in hiding because I just spent ten hours with this person:









I didn't quite peg him from the start. It was a slow process of elimination- crossing out every arrogant, guffawing, sweaty lothario I had ever shared a tram-ride with. I didn't understand where this feeling of familiarity was coming from. I mean, I didn't really know that many people that unabashedly scanned the beach for flopped-out titties, and who then turned to their party and suggestively wiggled their eyebrows.


Then there was the inane rambling, the nervous jerks, the toothy grins this person would thrust into your line of sight so that you would vigorously nod and pretend you really cared about the time they weren't forty and bald.


Then, in an explosive realisation (cold, white shock) I came to understand that I was sharing an armrest wth Quagmire. So I quietly retreated, and haven't been seen since.


*

Until tomorrow, my friends. Because tomorrow, our Georgie Pie comes to town.

Poland. Is. Weird.

Anyone who has known me for more than ten minutes knows that I'm Polish and, when drunk, may get hysterical about its plight.


But now that I'm here, I understand.

1. Everyone is obsessed with guns and swords.

2. The EU is a topic best broached in controlled circumstances: like a vacuum.

3. You don't refuse alcohol.

4. If you are a woman, there is no way you will be allowed to walk home on your own.

5. If you are a woman, all the men in your family will quarrel, decide upon and toast your fate.

6. If you go to a pub patroned by philosophy students talking about their theses, you will inevitably be privy to at least four punch-ons. If you start taking photos of these punch-ons, you will be threatened by shirtless men with shaved heads, until your male friends arrive to defend your honour. Maybe later, once the cops/hysterical girlfriends/sober talk of Nietzche has broken up the mood, you will all indulge in a jovial spitting match.

Gaffe No. 273

My friend Tessa reminded me of my superb gift for putting my foot in my mouth.

A party a long time ago.

Me: something something (don't remember)

My friend the lesbian: "That's because I'm a dyke."

Me: "Yeah, you are a dyke."

My friend the lesbian: 'I said, "That's because I'm in the dark."'

Smooth.

What loud, obnoxious and unattractive Americans stop you on street corners for.

I harbour a deep distrust of my memory, so I scrambled up some stairs to write this post. I now have a big bruise on my knee. Bless.


I was rushing through the labyrinth of Hell-noise that is Hanoi when this giant of a tourist, rudely and expertly, manouvered his belly into my path. He was dressed in khaki with a bum bag of matching hue, that did little to compliment his girth.


Man, in American twang: "OMG, you were sitting next to us at that cafe around the corner!!"


Me: *Dumbly trying to locate this remarkable place in recent history*


Man: "It's the one with marble tables , near the cathedral, I mean, it's like POW here *arm gestures* and the cathedral is POW here."


Me: "Ok, well yeah...I was there a few minutes ago"


Man: "Yeah, the one that's listed as an Australian hot spot in the American Lonely Planet, you know?"


Me: *Panicked and wondering how he had known I was Australian*


Man: "What are you doing here? Studying or travelling?"


Me: "Travelling."


Man: "REALLY? Wow!"


Me: *Uncomfortably* "And you?"


Man: "I'm American."


Me: "Oh"


Silence.


Man: "Have you seen the big cross in dedicated to all those fallen Australian men? You know, it was such a tragedy. POW- two-hundred men in a couple of hours. Real tragedy. I was there with them in in my 20s. Good guys, good guys. They had....


*Man pauses and reaches arm towards the sky in invocation*


....they had great morale. They liked a good drink, good laugh, no BS, you know. They were...they were real Mel Gibson types, you know..."


Me: "Oh yeah, yeah...he's a great ambassador.."


Man: "He's a great guy, Mel...


*Man stares off into the distance in contemplation of this fact*


"...You know, he got into some trouble recently. He was drunk, that's all. They say he said some anti-Jewish, anti-semitic things, but it was a stitch-up, you know? They were just angry because they made this film, Passion of the Christ. Total stitch-up.......


Me: ....uh....


Man: "But yeah, I agree, he's made some great movies"


Me: "Have a good day"


Man: "Yeah, you too, you too! God BLESS. GOD BLESS."
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War is bad, guys- it turns out people like this.

What to think about on a 16hr train when you are lying one foot below a fluroscent light.

- Which colour yellow is better- duckling or lemon? Answer: duckling.

- Is private philanthropy a good idea?

- Is the nappy lying two metres away from my face soiled, or just a practical gesture from the people at Reunification Express?

- Hippies- yay or nay?

- Is there a U.S. state that begins with the letter 'b'?

- Is my headache and nausea malaria-related?

- Do I have malaria?

- Is calling your pet, 'Dogstoyevski', going too far?

- What am I doing here?

What loud, obnoxious and unattractive Americans talk about in hostel foyers.

Best repeated in a New Joyzee drawl:

"Nah , I gotta get a soft-sleeper...I don't wanna hurt my delicate faaanny"

You can't sell Hanoi in a book.

Being in Hanoi is an assault on the senses. At once there is noise: revving motors, punctuated by impatient horns. A heavy humidity carries the smell of beef vermicelli to my hostel window, and leaves behind a whiff of Vietnamese mint. Visually, it's just colour and powerlines. I think I'm hallucinating.

I fell down the stairs of the hostel because they were wet. I'd seen the women silently mopping the floors and had stupidly assumed the threat of litigation would keep me safe. So, silly I did feel, as I rhythmically slid down the stairs on my arse to arrive, dumbly, in front of a full-length mirror. The women gasped with concern, and then relief, as I peeled myself off the landing. My thoughts ran the full gamut of relevant emotions; hot flashes of shock, embarrassment, pain, and finally, resignation.

In Hanoi, it is you who falls down the stairs, and it is you who gets yourself hit by a moped.