Life / The Best Things About Poland [24]

Standing at a freezing tram stop one night this week watching the locals:

- girls who have worked out how to both dress warmly and still look attractive. This is more difficult than it sounds and needs careful wardrobe choices, particularly if they don't want to hide their good legs

- older ladies dressed elegantly in coat, hat and gloves and as if by magic on whom the snow never settles
- earnest, sober young men with good cheekbones and looks of poetic seriousness
- the pair of swaying clochards counting out tiny coins to see if they can afford another couple of cans from the alkohol sklep

The rattle of a tram in the evening snow, the friendly bell and the politeness of all - a very civilised small experience, but such small pieces of quality are the bricks from which healthy nations are built

History / Churchill and Poland [120]


1. Churchill had already been blackmailed by Roosevelt at Quebec II, when he was threatened that unless he accepted both the Morgenthau Plan and the outline post-war partitioning, then the US would cut off all aid to Britain on VE day

2. The threat to the British Empire came not from Stalin but from Roosevelt; it was US policy to dismantle the Empire after the war, and one that Truman wholeheartedly subscribed to

3. By the time of Yalta, Germany was defeated; the Red Army had just advanced 300 miles and was within 40 miles of Berlin. The occupation of Eastern Europe was de facto

4. It is simply naive to imagine that ANY victor could have left an independent Poland sandwiched between occupied Germany and the Ukraine, with the Baltic states to the North, former East Prussia, Hungary and Czechslovakia all within the Iron Curtain. Poland's post-war fate was decided at Stalingrad.

Roosevelt's stupidity, poor judgement and naivity in trusting Stalin, and his use of the economic cudgel to bring Churchill into line, perhaps made things worse than they need have been, but once the Red Army was within sight of the Elbe Poland's fate was sealed.

Oh yes, and the dates of the wars are different for the Septics* than for the Europeans; WWI was 1917-1918 and WWII was 1941-1946 for the US.

(English rhyming slang; septics = septic tanks)

Travel / Hard Candy - Krakow, Poland - reviews? [131]


Yep - in London they're 'near beer' clip joints, serving beer under 2% ABV or weak fizzy wine, for which they don't need a drinks license. It adds insult to injury for the poor suckers that get scammed that they're paying £50 a pint for 2% ...but the tariff is on display (in small letters, in a dimly lit corner) so it's legal. As the girls don't actually promise anything they don't deliver, it's not deception, either.

It plays on male vanity and that blokes seem to lose all common sense at a sniff of skirt. Common in the 'party' destinations - Prague, Budapest - I guess it was only a matter of time before it reached Krakow. You can be fairly sure that others will follow.

While I empathise with the guys who get scammed, clipping has its funny side. I was a member of a drinking club in Soho - the Colony Room - with the entrance at the top of a dingy flight of stairs from the street, not much different from the entrances to flats used by 'working girls'. Clippers would take money from punters on the street and tell them to "Go straight up, dearie, the girl's waiting for you". As the poor punter opened the door and walked into a private bar full of artists and intellectuals and their sad little faces changed from lust to shock to realisation and to shame we couldn't feel anything but sympathy for them. The humour came from the very few who refused to believe they'd been scammed and kept asking 'where's the girl?'

Life / Do young Polish people believe in their religion and God? [155]


Yes, that's true. Growing up as a Roman Catholic in England I always felt slightly cautious, part of a minority against whom violence could break out unexpectedly. Until very recently a Catholic was still prohibited from high political office in England. One learned to,well, not hide, but not to announce one's Catholicism. And (until 1989) our churches were empty save for the old, there were no new vocations, and the church seemed as though it had come to an end here.

So when I attend mass in Poland in packed churches, with pews full of all ages, I should feel encouraged. But it merely raises a thousand more questions about the relationships between a man, the Church and the State.


The author quotes Borowik and Doktór, 23. Borowik, Irena and Tadeusz Doktór, Pluralizm religijny i moralny w Polsce: raport z badań. Kraków: Nomos, 2001


England has a State religion but is secular. Poland has no State religion but is less secular than England. Go figure.

Life / Do young Polish people believe in their religion and God? [155]


Well, this foreigner doesn't. However, reconciling a secular Poland in the manner of a secular England to what one sees and experiences does pose many questions - I'm genuinely trying to understand, not to give offence. The author writes "99% of all children in Poland are baptized, 92.8% of all marriages are accompanied by a church wedding, and between 90% and 98% of the population will answer 'Roman Catholic' when asked about their religion

Poland may be secular - but to imagine it's secular in the same way as England may be misleading? Or not?

Life / Do young Polish people believe in their religion and God? [155]

I'm currently reading 'Faith and Fatherland: Catholicism, Modernity and Poland' (Brian Porter-Szucs, OUP,)

He writes "The conviction that the state was an alien force, and that Poles needed to struggle for independence was not only a reference to the undeniable Soviet hegemony over the Warsaw Pact countries. More deeply, it was an assertion that only a fully Catholic state could be a national state. This is why many hardliners in the Church refuse to this day to acknowledge that their country is independent; as a secular liberal democracy, it cannot, by definition, be Polish. The new masters might be labeled EU bureaucrats, Jews, gays, Masons, etc., but it is accepted as a given that they cannot be Polish because they are not building a Catholic state."

This equation, Polak-Katolik, an inseparable pairing, he argues, is so fundamental, so intrinsic to Polish identity that to be Polish is to be Catholic. Yet this is a curious logic that also admits that "non-Catholic Poles are our brothers with equal rights [pełnoprawnymi współbraćmi] ... Our history provides much evidence that the Catholicism of Polish culture does not prevent Poles who are not Catholics to feel that they are its fully-endowed heirs and co-creators."

Or second-class citizens perhaps?

Food / What do non-Poles think about eating the following Polish foods? [1400]

In the early Summer of last year, on a warm and clear morning, the market produce stalls in the Plac Nowy were groaning under the weight of the freshest and best of local produce; tender spears of asparagus, fat tomatoes like rubies, new potatoes fresh from the soil. Here were riches indeed, no doubt from the market gardens and smallholdings around the city, nothing more than a day old and all with the freshness and full flavour and taste of produce not grown in an agricultural factory. Then it's bought by the local restaurants, who destroy every virtue it has.

I searched for a restaurant for lunch that day that was serving asparagus - I wanted just a very simple plate of lightly steamed spears with a sauce Hollandaise, or failing that just with unsalted butter. You can't get much simpler - nor enjoy a taste more intense. I must have walked 3km and it was 2pm before I found one serving asparagus at all - and this st the height of the season - and what they served was a travesty that made me weep. First they wrapped a few boiled-to-death asparagus spears in prosciutto and suffocated them in a thick, cloying cheese sauce. Then feeling this was not enough, sprinkled Dill all over. But the chef was still not happy - so a few shavings of parmesan were added (this was after all one of Krakow's most chic restaurants). But still he was not ready to send it out from the kitchen - until he had added a couple of quartered strawberries to crown the heap.

Now I'm on a mission to find modern Polish cuisine that uses the high quality fruit, vegetables, fish, meat and charcuterie that Poland is so rich in, and somewhere there is a chef who knows that;

1. Less is more - quality ingredients with taste and texture don't need much help
2. You don't have to add Dill to everything
3.Offal is good but only if you know how to cook it
4. Fish and shellfish is best cooked quickly 'a point' so that the flesh is just 'seized' and opaqueness disappears. Just a few minutes.
5. Likewise vegetables. And apples don't need baking to make them edible.
6. Know when to stop adding ingredients
7. Don't make bad copies of classic French dishes or repeat the mistakes of 'nouvelle cuisine' - use traditional Polish flavours (sour rye, beet, wild herbs and berries, wild mushrooms) in new dishes

8. Poles are hugely talented - every town has a Wojciech Amaro just waiting to shine