Poland

Ferie day 2

Not to be undone by a minor setback like "all our stuff is closed on Monday", I dragged Frank out of bed early again today and back onto the train to Malbork castle. The scene today was about the same as it was yesterday, lots of spacious, empty, cold stone courtyards. The swirling flurries of snow were new though. Completely empty of people, just like yesterday. Also completely empty of helpful signs, just like yesterday. We finally settled on the method of trying every single door we could find. Did I mention this is it he largest brick castle in Europe? Sometimes the door would be locked, sometimes it would open on to the face of a startled office worker at their desk, sometimes it would open onto a museum exhibit, each one staffed with an innately suspicious local who watches you carefully the whole time you're there. At one point, after having looked through the amber trinkets in a little gift shop, we went out the ack through a little door tha t was clearly marked "wyscie/ausgang/exit" only the be yelled at by one of the exhibit watchers for having come into her exhibit from the wrong direction. We turned around to leave by the same door we'd entered by only to find the other side of which was also clearly labelled "wyscie/ausgang/exit".

We somehow managed to find the dormitories, a major set of rooms, the only entrance to which was a small four foot doorway halfway down a long unlit corridor.

Lunch was in a beautiful period room with a roaring fireplace and little window seats. I am sure I ordered the house special, pointing it out on the menu, which was to consist of soup, pork knuckles, and like two other things. My soup came, followed by a long, long lacuna. I thought I'd remembered something on the menu about a twenty minute wait, but I wasn't sure, so I bore it patiently. We read on our kindles. A half an hour later I finally asked the waitress, "Everything? Yes? Ah, ok, can we have the bill then?". And then I paid 62 zlotys for a bowl of soup, Frank's main dish, and a beer. I'm almost sure I got shafted out of something, but who knows?

Although we'd originally planned to be back by noon, the desultory method of exploring the castle meant we didn't get back to the train station until 1:30, which happened to be right in the middle of a three hour gap in the train schedule. So we didn't get back to Gdańsk until 4:00, by which time all the museums were closed.

We finished off the day with an orgy of multi cultural ism, eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant and then watching Jet Li's "Hero" on DVD at the hostel, in the original Chinese, subtitled in Polish. Another exercise in opacity, that movie makes absolutely no sense without the dialogue.

Ferie days 0-1

Day 0: Train from Kraków to Gdańsk: I think I'm in love with sleeper trains. Endless farmyard snowscapes, makes me miss Wyeth.

That afternoon: Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers, followed by the Road to Freedom exhibition. There's an armored car covering the door, go downstairs into a concrete bunker.

Polish Months: June 1956, massive protests against the Communist government out down by tanks. March 1968, widespread student strikes coinciding with the Prague Spring suppressed by security forces. December 1970, Price increases trigger strikes in the Baltic cities, brutally put down by the army killing 42 of their own citizens. September 1980, the birth of Solidarity, the first independent trade union in a Soviet-bloc country? December 1981, ostensibly to preempt the Soviet army coming in to straighten things out, General Jaruszelski imposes Martial Law, declaring a state of war exists in his own country, that lasts for eighteen months. In round table talks between the government and Solidarity, initiated to forestall economic chaos, lead to semi-free elections, and in September the first non-communist government in 40 years is voted into office by the Sejm. What a story. And there's other stuff in there too. What a museum.

Day 1: in the morning get up early to take the train to Malbork castle, the seat of power for the Teutonic Knights, who came back from the Crusades with enough money to run this part of the world from 1200 to 1350. Biggest brick castle on the world. The grounds are open but all the rooms are closed cause it's Monday, boo! Colder than hell in there too. For lunch in the town had spaghetti pizza, which was unexpectedly quite good [and memorable, two weeks later we're still talking about it].

In the afternoon found the bus out to Westerplatte, scene of the first shots fired in WWII. A little island just past the entry to the port of the free city of Gdańsk, where 200 doughty Poles held off a superior German force for seven days, a force that included a battleship that stood twenty yards offshore firing it's guns into the bunkers. Really nice to be able to walk the whole island and read about it, excellent exhibition, inspiring. Best part of the day.

imdb fail, Róża great movie

Saw an awesome Polish film the other day.  Did you know Poland has a thriving film industry?  Róża.  The Polish word for "rose" (also the name of the main character.  The diacritics mean that it's pronounced "roo-zha", the "ż" is kind of like the "j" in "django".

Awesome film.  Makes In Darkness look like a Warner Brothers cartoon.  But I notice that IMDB has the title mispelled, they have it as "Róza".  WTF?  But I can fix that. Or can I?  Here's what they say:

 

Róża

This correction has been rejected. You need to correct this correction before it will be accepted.

• The UTF-8 character with code 380 is not allowed.

 

IMDB isn't UTF-8 safe? Oh, wow, their HTTP is "charset=iso-8859-1".  Perl *can* do UTF-8 these days, you know.  Watch TypePad do it: "Róża".  See?  So sad.

Still a really great movie you'll probably never see. 

 

 

Wisława Szymborska

 

 

  Wisława Szymborska passed away last week, one of the great modern poets of Poland.  The news said upwards of 10,000 people braved the cold and the snow to see her service in the Cmentarz Rakowicki.  One of her poems I found at random:

 

 

 

 

Cat in an empty apartment Dying - you wouldn't do that to a cat. For what is a cat to do in an empty apartment? Climb up the walls? Brush up against the furniture? Nothing here seems changed, and yet something has changed. Nothing has been moved, and yet there's more room. And in the evenings the lamp is not on. One hears footsteps on the stairs, but they're not the same. Neither is the hand that puts a fish on the plate. Something here isn't starting at its usual time. Something here isn't happening as it should. Somebody has been here and has been, and then has suddenly disappeared and now is stubbornly absent. All the closets have been scanned and all the shelves run through. Slipping under the carpet and checking came to nothing. The rule has even been broken and all the papers scattered. What else is there to do? Sleep and wait. Just let him come back, let him show up. Then he'll find out that you don't do that to a cat. Going toward him faking reluctance, slowly, on very offended paws. And no jumping, purring at first. Translated by Joanna Trzeciak

Kot w pustym mieszkaniu Umrzeć - tego się nie robi kotu. Bo co ma począć kot w pustym mieszkaniu. Wdrapywać się na ściany. Ocierać między meblami. Nic niby tu nie zmienione, a jednak pozamieniane. Niby nie przesunięte, a jednak porozsuwane. I wieczorami lampa już nie świeci. Słychać kroki na schodach, ale to nie te. Ręka, co kładzie rybę na talerzyk, także nie ta, co kładła. Coś sie tu nie zaczyna w swojej zwykłej porze. Coś się tu nie odbywa jak powinno. Ktoś tutaj był i był, a potem nagle zniknął i uporczywie go nie ma. Do wszystkich szaf sie zajrzało. Przez półki przebiegło. Wcisnęło się pod dywan i sprawdziło. Nawet złamało zakaz i rozrzuciło papiery. Co więcej jest do zrobienia. Spać i czekać. Niech no on tylko wróci, niech no się pokaże. Już on się dowie, że tak z kotem nie można. Będzie się szło w jego stronę jakby się wcale nie chciało, pomalutku, na bardzo obrażonych łapach. O żadnych skoków pisków na początek.

a first

Hah, successfully made a haircut appointment on the phone.  My Polish has to be coming along on some level.  Boosh!

Czesław Śpiewa, cool music videos

I stumbled on this the other day, poking around YouTube on my new iPad. Fascinating music videos by this Polish guy, Czesław Śpiewa.  He grew up in Denmark, and moved back to Poland to make his mark in music. I liked this initially because his diction is so perfect that I could follow the words, I actually went through and transcribed the song while listening to the video, just for practice.

 

 

Then I fell in love with the imagery in the video, and the non-pop-40 sound of the music.  I'm still not sure what the song means, or whether the images have anything at all to do with the words, and I've spent a bunch of time translating it.  I understand most of the individual words, but the gestalt as yet escapes me.

His stage name means "Czesław Sings", which means he can have cool album titles like "Czesław Śpiewa Miłosza" where he's adapted some poetry of the famous Polish poet Czesław Miłosz to music.  And I *really* like the imagery in here, the nyads in the lake especially.

 

Translating that one is on my to-do list, but it's a pretty big list right now.

Winter is here

First snowfall yesterday, finally.  It was a great release in tension, we'd been having cold weather without the snow for months, and it was like all the suffering without the payoff.  It wasn't just me either, the atmosphere on the streets was decidedly lighthearted and giddy.

Got all excited the puny old memory card in my DSLR yesterday from 512mb to 8gb (90 pictures to like two thousand).  But it looks like something got fubared, and I think I bent a pin in the memory card slot, so the camera is down for the count.  Will be going pure text for a while.  Sigh.

The Castle in Prague, The Castle of Kafka

From a distance it's unmistakeable, up on the hill, shining in the sun, the largest castle in the world.  Once you start approaching it though, you lose it in the maze of buildings.  As you muddle your way through the narrow winding streets and up the long flights of steps, sometimes you catch a glimpse of just a small part of it.  The closer you get to it, the more unreachable it becomes, it almost recedes into the distance.  What goes on inside?  Apparently the president has his office there, but how much government could you put in something that big?  How many different, forgotten governments still have their offices in there?  The tour guide this afternoon, his grandmother has lived in seven different countries and has never left her village.  Maybe they're all still in there.

If you persist in trying to get there (but why are you persisting? what do you think you will find?), you finally arrive at the top of the hill, undisputably the top of the steps, but with only a wall, an iron fence through which you can see an odd-looking garden if you press your face to the bars and look sideways, and what might be a gate during normal hours (after all, it is eight in the evening and the sun set at least three hours ago), but there's no way to tell.  Is this the way in?  Is there a way in?  At that moment I was certain that if I'd taken my cellphone out of my pocket and called the castle, I would have heard only 

a humming, such as K. had never before heard on the telephone, emerged from the receiver.  It was as if the murmur of countless childish voices--not that it was really a murmur, it was more like the singing of voices, very very far away--as if that sound were forming, as unlikely as that might be, into a single high, strong voice, striking the ear as if trying to penetrate further than into the mere human sense of hearing.  K. heard it and said nothing; he had propped his left arm on the telephone stand, and listened like that.

I think I read The Castle ten years ago, maybe twenty, but it all came back to me as I climbed up those endless steps to that unreachable goal. Literature and life came together in that moment and it was overwhelming.

Of course, moments later, Frank texted me asking when I was coming home with the laptop, because the wifi on the desktop was too slow to watch videos on YouTube, and then the street was suddenly flooded with loud, drunk German tourists who tried to argue with the street musician who'd taken out his guitar and was blowing into his harmonica.  Just to set that perfect moment into sharp relief.

I have to go to the Kafka museum tomorrow.

zezwala się: is permitted!!

From Wojewoda Małopolski: Decision....pursuant to Article blah blah...after consideration of application  for a permit for temporary residence in the territory of Republic of Poland

permitted

temporary residence in the territory of Republic of Poland from 17 October 2011 to 30 June 2012

Woot! Finally!  We can stay!  We're legal!  It doesn't get ANY better than this.  Well, some snow would be cool, but not much better.  Dammit, my life is good.

Polish construction methods

Our landlady, Pani Janikowska, replaced some of our parquet floors for us, the coal-burning stoves that had been in here and been removed had left gaps and also burn marks on the wood.  So we got to see the building construction first-hand.  There is an eighteen-inch gap between floors filled with special "dust", basically light granules of dirt.  Maybe for insulation, not sure.   Then joists, then planks, then the parquet.   This style of parquet floor is really common here.  The walls tend to be extremely thick, and brick all the way through.

They apparently don't use nails here hardly at all.  Well, though Władek did show me how he nails in the parquet pieces.   They use this quick-hardening cement foam almost everywhere.  Must make for quiet construction sites.  All the windows they're replacing one-by-one all over the country are set in with this cement foam, pianka montazowa or "mounting foam".  Władek, putting in the patch for the place where the stove used to be, used it.  I gotta find some of this stuff when I get back.

 

 

• 
•