Where I Live

It’s a small studio near the center of Krakow owned by a very nice Polish family. Mom, Dad, and the two boys (26 and 20) live upstairs.  Mom doesn’t understand why her eldest son Andrzej doesn’t want to get married. I’m with you, Andrzej. Fight the power.

In the interest of geekery, we’re going to try a little something different for the apartment tour this time. I’ve sloppily put together a 360 degree Quicktime file of my apartment that you can click on and pan around to have a look. Just click on the image and get your drag on (If you want to get fancy you can hold the Shift or Control button with your mouse over the image to zoom in or out.):

Be curious to hear if this works for people.

A Thursday Night in Kazimierz

A typical bar or club in central Krakow is underground. Not secret underground but actually underground. You can’t see most bars from the street and thus have to walk in to a gated alley and then down in to the cellar of a building. I was initially confused when I got here because, seeing no people, I thought everything was dead. Turns out you just need to go down the typically precarious stairs to the basement. It actually has a cool and cozy feel to it most of the time – exposed brick walls, low, curved ceilings, candle light. The Kazimierz area, on the other hand, is a bit more typical – the bars are just at street level and have plain old windows.

Polish Satan and his Girlfriend

Thursday night started in one such Kazimierz bar playing the Marilyn Manson version of “Tainted Love.” I met Polish “Satan” and his girlfriend by getting in to an argument over who did the original version. They said it was The Cure, which is what initially brought me in to the conversation. The bartender (pictured right), who Wikipedia tells me was actually correct, said it was originally by Gloria Jones. I erroneously insisted that it was Soft Cell.

Polish Satan’s real name is “Gregor.” That’s him and his lady pictured below to the left. Gregor is an electrical engineering student. However, he emphasized that as an atheist he prefers to be called Satan and/or Lucifer. Subtle. I respected his request, but was more entertained when he took his hair out of the ponytail and we all agreed that he looked the most like Jesus.

This lead to an entertaining conversation of me fielding questions about America. Satan’s girlfriend initially started this off by saying, “Tell me about you country.” I rambled for a little bit and then asked if she had any more specific questions. She did. For example, things like, “When you walk down road is all person really so fat?” or “Why is United State so crazy??”

For the first time I got to practice my new Obamafied outlook when she asked about the elections! Nice. She is an Obama fan, but I had to explain that the N word is not the preferred way to refer to a black / African American guy. Satan already knew this.

Attempting to Swear in Polish and English

We then continued by having a conversation about our respective languages. As with any typical language conversation, it went straight to the interesting stuff: cuss words. I can now say all manner of filth in Polish. Or rather, because Polish is a really difficult language, I have to actually take out my notebook, find the right page, and read the words that I have copied down phonetically in English, which tends to make it funnier due to the overall awkwardness of the process and inevitable mispronunciation. “Oh, wait, wait! I got one. Hold on, hold on… let me just find it here. … Yeah. Kurwa! Zajebiście!” Hilarity ensues.

Satan’s girlfriend had just been informed that day that she was going to be fired by her (coincidentally American) employer and was drowning her sorrows at the bar. She wanted to practice her English swear words and her inebriation made the entire conversation all the more ridiculous. The most confusing for her seemed to be the phrase, “Take a shit.” The conversation went like this:

Polish girl, “But this words I do not understand. To make, ehh, poop, to make shit — you know hhhow is this — is this the correct word? Shit?”

Me, “Yes. That’s it.”

Polish girl, “Yes. I have to go to toilet now and make shit. But that is not how you will say. What will you say? I do not remember the correct.”

Me, “I think you mean you need to ‘take a shit.’”

Polish girl gets excited now and continues, “YES! Yes, this is! Why is this? ‘Take a shit?’ I make a shit. I do not take to you when I finish. It stays and I do not take it. You know, it…” She trailed off and did her best to pantomime flushing a toilet and spinning her hands around like water being flushed.

Me, “Yeah, it’s just one of those things, I guess. Just how we say it. Take a shit.”

This was apparently very funny to her. She couldn’t stop laughing at the mental image she had by our misleading phrase. She laughed and rambled on about how she was going to “go the toilet and take back gift for American.” “I will take you my shit! Where is the bag!?” she exclaimed. Next to her, Satan laughed.

The bartender was starting to pour free shots for our group, which seems to be common here. Not wanting to get sloppy, I made my exit. Like my old man says, you can’t soar with the eagles in the morning if you hoot with the owls at night. There was a little more hooting to do, though, I just didn’t want to fall out of the tree.

Kazimierz Karaoke

From here I stopped by one of the many stands that sell cheap long pieces of bread topped with a variety of different options. I think they’re called “zwykła” but I really can’t be certain. They’re very popular late-night food in Krakow. I chose one with salami because it was the only thing I was relatively certain I could pronounce properly and avoid too much confusion with the restaurant workers who never speak English. There’s the menu pictured below.

I hung out with a group of art students outside for a little bit before making my way to a bar called “Fuego” for karaoke, which was the entire point of me heading out.

The karaoke was happening, but it wasn’t super crowded. Perhaps I got there a little bit too late. However, within minutes I met a big group of Polish people and a random French guy that ended up being fun to hang out with. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any hiphop represented in the selection of available songs. There was a pretty even mix of Polish songs and American/British songs.

This video below is roughly what it was like. Witness “Always” by Bon Jovi being belted out by a duo. When it got to the faster part of the song, the female singer did backup (or just gave up and went with a single-sound approach instead of specific words). The guy with the pony tail is supposed to be doing the other part. Apparently one girl did not approve of the pony-tailed guy’s job and actually tried to take the microphone away from him mid-song. As you will see, he did not like this. Poor form on her part.

Karaoke in Krakow at “Fuego” from Nathan Shipley on Vimeo.

Awesome. I love karaoke. I’ll be going back.

How’m I Eatin’ in Poland?

Cheap, Polish, and occasionally confused.

Going to restaurants here is even more of a crapshoot than in South America, where I would at least have some idea what I was getting myself in to. Polish menus are complete mysteries to me. I just point at something that isn’t too expensive and eat what they bring me.

My favorite staple thus far has been make-’em-at-home pierogis. Buy frozen:

Boil for 8-10 minutes in salty water:

Enjoy!

They’re fast, easy, filling, cheap, and consistently tasty. Much better, though, where the made-from-scratch ones that the family who owns my apartment invited me to share with them.

This is a Polish pancake:

I did not cook it. It’s filled with something white and really tasty. It was given to me by the mother of the family who owns my apartment because she feels bad about the construction happening in the building right next to my room. I feel bad about it too because the workers come in early every morning and are using some sort of industrial adhesive to put down new flooring that makes my lungs hurt.

Other highlights include Crack cookies:

I also seem to have a tendency to buy the wrong things. I was duped in to thinking I was buying frozen pierogis, but I ended up with only puff-balls filled with nothing. They were spongy and pretty bland, but I soldiered through them:

I purchased a strange, sour fruit-ish concoction thinking it was milk. It says “Maslanka wrzensinska” on the bottle, has an expiration date, and was in the dairy section. I don’t think it’s yogurt, but it has the consistency of yogurt, and the taste of bad. I have yet to buy more milk.

I also had to actually ask someone what was butter at the Carrefour. “Przeproszam. Czy mowi pani po angielsku?” (My best Polish phrase meaning, “Excuse me. Do you speak English?”) “Yes, I do,” replied the random girl. “Oh! Great! Hey, sorry, do you know which of these things is butter?” I was in the completely wrong section despite the fact that twenty different tubs in front of me could have easily been some sort of buttery spread. She was quite helpful and lead me to the butter. Humbling.

That’s all for now, kids. I leave you with pictures of the Krakow old guy chess spot (it doesn’t have the intensity of Peruvian Chess Culture, but it’s still good.) and one of the central plaza in Krakow with a cloud that looks like Greenland:

Here’s the Flickr gallery for this post.

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