Best and Worst

In honor of my friend Max, whose life and writings should serve as an example to all whose keels sometimes roll sidewise, I am taking a page from his book, and pausing to ponder the best and worst things that comprise my life. Drumroll, please . . .

(Note to any and all - ok - probably any, because very few people ever read my gibberish - the followng list is likely to be under construction for some time, as I doubt I can honestly come up with 10 things in either category without a lot of thought.)

10 Best things about my life (in its present incarnation)

10. Sunshine
9. Languages
8. Travelling
7. My job(s)
6. The internet
5. Books
4. Living out of the US
3. Excellent food
2. Friends
1. Cynthia


10 Worst things about my life (in its current stage)

poking my shit with a stick every morning
Polish food
Polish students
Not having all the money I want
No scuba diving
Inability to speak Polish
Rejecting people
Making friends
No good wine
No sunshine

Gotta go - more later

Slovakia and Castle Stara Lubovna

Yesterday we went to Slovakia for the first time. Now that we have been to the Czech Republic as well as Slovakia, we have seen both halves of former Czechoslovakia, even if only briefly.

The trip was organized by some students of mine. We took two cars, and there were nine of us altogether. It took about an hour of driving to get there. We stopped to change money at one point (I had already taken care of this the previous day, and enjoyed how the 1,000 Krony note was the size of a dinner-plate,) and stopped later to take pictures of some mountains. I had been told many times about the "mountains" of this region, but never having seen them, had decided that people were probably confusing the biggest thing they had ever seen with a mountain.

But no, sure enough, they have some whopping big mountains out there, a range of sharp, snow covered peaks that gave me shivers just looking at them. (See foto above.) Apparently they are good for skiing on. Not that I ever hope to find out. The further I keep from snow, the more fortunate I consider myself.

After a wee bit more driving, we were on the Slovakian border. Everything went like clockwork until the blue passports came out. We were told to pull over to the side, so that other cars could be processed while they phoned President Bush. Well, I assume that is what they were trying to do, anyway. Judging from the amount of time it took, they must have caught him at dinner, or snacking on pretzels. Our friends in the other car had already made it through, so they had to stop on the far side, and sit and wait. In the end it was only perhaps 15 minutes before they let us through, so I have to assume that they believed me when I told them that the arms-running charge that came up was a different Matt who just shares my last name.

In all seriousness, though, it came as a bit of a surprise to our friends that holding a blue passport was not the hassle-free ticket to anywhere except the middle east that they thought it was. It seems the perception is widely shared, (and why shouldn't it be, since little here is actually seen of Americans) that we enjoy every single advantage on the planet, and not a single drawback. One of our travel companions later took the opportunity over dinner to point out that Poles are required to undergo much worse beauracratic hassling if they wish to visit our country. To which I replied that I have to undergo worse bureacratic hassling than this when I enter my own country. And this is true. I have never been treated with less professionalism and courtesy, scrutinised more and had my luggage dissassembled like in the US. And this includes prior to our catch-all-justification, 9-11.

From the border we made our way directly to the small town that housed the castle, Stara Lubovna. Stara means Old, and is a commen prefix on towns. I live in a Nowy (New) and nearby is the Stary (old) version of the same town. Before venturing up the hill, we had to stop and fortify ourselves properly by testing the local brew. I was told that this was where the world's cheapest beer could be bought. I considered this carefully, and decided that it would be a shame not to buy a pint o' the local at the world's cheapest spot, if this was indeed true. According to what I was told, the beer was 75 cents per half liter (pint = .47 liter.) The more nationalistic of our group immediately asked if I could recognise that the Polish beer was better. I told him it depended on the brand of Polish beer he was comparing it to, but I thought this was a fine brew, which made some at the table nod their heads sagely, and seemed to disappoint him somewhat.

We were repeatedly invited by a tall skinny man with a long, grey beard sporting nicotine stains under his nostrils to partake of breakfast, lunch or dinner, and he repeatedly listed all the specialties of the house. Every time he stopped speaking, our companions would inform us about his accent, or the fact that he was speaking a muddle of half-Slovakian/half-Polish, or that here they liked to eat "wet-bread" (dumplings) or some other piddling detail that the traveller often notes with wonder upon entering foreign realms, and to a large extent comprises the main joy of both classical music and travelling from place to place, which is noticing all the minor variations upon a major theme. The final entreaty to eat at his establishment was accompanied by the detail that the food was prepared by a very beautiful woman, who sadly was never allowed out of the kitchen, but we could take his word for it. Unfortunately, I never did find out the price of the beer, since it was paid for by one of our companions.

We made our way up the hill to the castle, and at the entrance lined up for tickets. I was happy to be first in line, so I could be assured of the opportunity to pay for our own tickets, (which I could already sense might require a bit of planning and foresight with this crowd,) and have the opportunity to pay for the couple in whose car we had come, as a small way of saying thank you. We received English language brochures, which one of our group happily christened "leaflets," as he had just learned the word last week, and was anxious to use it.

Other linguistic highlights of the day included the word "gutter," "thresher," and "reaper." Which leads me to a question - if a thresher is the machine that separates wheat from the stalk, which I assume it is, what is the machine that separates corn from the cob? This question, as well as the finer points which might distinguish a brochure from a leaflet, probably give you some insight into the issues that torment my day-to-day professional life.

The castle itself had been built between 1301 and 1308 to protect Polish trade roads. They have reports written from the castle as far back as the early 14th century. Apparently the area was traded to the Polish as a guarantee for a loan. As long as the Poles ran the area it was relatively prosperous, as the king liked his little frontier post, and granted the village the right to host a weekly market. However, when the Polish term expired the area was handed back. The area was neglected under its new rulers and suffered, and the castle fell into disrepair. The castle survived and was restored a number of times. Even now there are places that are still crumbling.

Mixed throughout were exhibitions of exciting things like rooms full of . . . period chairs. Not every room was as exciting as the chairs, though. There were rooms with furniture arrangements as well, depicting the best in 18th and early 19th century furniture arrangements.

Fortunately, we also found a cellar-type room, which had a board with iron hoops on it that would hinge open so you could lockdown someone's hands, feet and midsection. Naturally, I had to try it out. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that it was so uncomfortable. But I actually pulled muscle in my neck trying to get into the thing. Despite the stabbing pain shooting up my spine and into my skull, I managed to stay on rack long enough for Marek to snap a picture.

After finishing seeing the castle, we made a bee-line for the nearest refreshment stand, from whence we went to an open-air museum of sorts. It was a collection of old Polish houses made at different periods, with period furnishings. Most of them were quite reminiscent of the images that floated in my head when I read the book Heidi as a child. Small, snug, two-room log cabins, decorated with very humble craft-work items. They were, on the whole, extremely cozy, attractive dwellings. However, that opinion might change if I actually had to live there.

There were about 12 different houses all told, and in different ones they also displayed the items or decorations which would normally be associated with certain events in the lives of the folk who lived there. So in one we see the typical wedding decorations they would make, a large hanging mobile made of straight sticks bound with white feathers and colored beads. In another the bed was separated from the rest of the house by a white wool embroidered curtain, which would separate the newborn and mother from the rest of the house for 7 days. They also told of the rituals which would normally accompany a birth, such as the naming ceremony, rubbing the baby with butter, etc, all of which served to insure that the child would grow up to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.

There was also a blacksmith's shop, and a flour mill, which was interesting to see the mechanics of. And what village would be complete without a church? This church was in the Orthodox style, with the iconostasis, or wall that separates the space where God truly lived, (the holy of holies, the sanctuary) where only the priest (and helperboys under certain circumstances) should go, where the alter is located, and the vestements and such are kept, from where the believers could stand, in the nave of the church. I always find different takes on religion interesting, and the orthodox-grown version is no exception.

In this particular church an interesting circular object hung in the center of the room, which I took to have some sort of function of symbolism. Upon consulting the brochure it divulged that "the wooden object hanging in the center of the church is connected with a local legend." I thought it a bit annoying that they didn't bother to tell us what the legend was, so I asked, and our companions said that while this had hung near the front of the church, a plague had come to the north end of the village. When the priest, either by fortutituous chance, or suspecting something, moved the object to the far end of the church, the plague shifted to the south end of the village. So the wise priest moved the object to hang from the center of the church, and the plague stopped.

This story naturally led me to ponder how the lives of the people who lived in these houses and attended this church were, in the end, governed by a body of superstitions to help explain the unknown, such as germ theory. Eventually these would naturally entwine themselves with the local religious traditions, until something like a local brand of the religion would emerge. If it became popular enough, it would become a heresy, and if it survived, eventually it could become a doctrine in its own right. It came to me quite suddenly, there and then, that the dividing line between heresy and doctrine is popularity and possibly military might, and the dividing line between religion and superstition is science. What science has thoroughly debunked becomes a superstition, only entertained by the weak-minded. What cannot be explained is retained by the realm of religion, and remains sacred to the believer until it, too, is slowly and painfully dismantled by the believer's acceptance of ever-encroaching science. In other words, there are three stations on the continuum of belief, the unsubstantiated belief of the few being superstition, the unsubstantiated belief of many, religion. Once substantiation is obtained, it ceases to be religion, and becomes science.

As I left that small, wooden church in Slovakia, for the first time I understood Oscar Wilde's saying "Science is the record of dead religions."

Bicycle, Bicycle, Bicycle.

When we were in Valencia, both Cynthia and I had bikes. I was none too fond of mine, and I think it could sense this, because after a while it started trying to kill me. We lived in this state of mutual animosity for more than a year, with it developing new wobbles and problems as fast as it could, and me threatening to throw the damn thing off the roof at every opportunity, until late one night it was stolen. Frankly, I was about glad to be rid of the accursed infernal money-eating contraption of the devil.

The problem came about in the next few days as I found that, having become accustomed to moving about the city at a certain pace, walking was just annoyingly slow. Jaunts that should have taken me 4 - 5 minutes took 20-25. And after so long on the bike, walking now seemed like more exertion than it might be worth (unless we were going to the beach.) On top of all that, I missed the city-as-obstacle-course challenge that having a bicycle lent to my day.

It had taken me some time to begin to appreciate the fun that could be derived from going about town at a terrible break-neck speed, hopping curbs, dodging dogs, skidding around corners, playing chicken with cars, whizzing by right next to people and hearing them scream in alarm and dive for cover. In the same way as having a motorcycle, it fundamentally changed the way you looked at the terrain in front of you. You had to constantly gauge the narrowing distances between people and objects, the slowly increasing distance between one person and another, and calculate the quickly decreasing distance between you and the target (ahem, person, I mean) and make split-second decisions about which side of the old lady you would go on. It was a lot like shopping in Wal-Mart on a Saturday afternoon, but you're the only one with the cart, and at 50 times the speed.

So I decided I would have to buy another bike. I did, buying the cheapest one I could find, since we were out of there in a couple of months anyway. It was too small for me, not very nice, but extremely light, and it got me where I wanted to go. Upon leaving I sold it to the director of our school, who functioned as a sort of clearing-house for bikes. He would buy them up, and the new teachers who arrived could buy them from him.

When we arrived here in Poland, Cynthia made mention of the fact that I should get a bike. So did about 14 other people. I told them that it was possible, but not likely, that such a thing would happen, and when they saw a star in the East, or the Devil was seen buying thermals, that would be the sign that I had bought a bike.

Of all my classes, I have only one that is a one-on-one class. I go to the big department store, and go to the office of the store dyrektor. Three times a week He and I speak for an hour, and then I go down, do some shopping and leave. Not infrequently he plies me with "breakfast," which is normally an open faced sandwich of smoked salmon, or gives me bottles of fiery-liquids, or gives me 4 feet of homemade Polish sausage. So it was nothing unusual when he offered to get me a reduced price on a bicycle. I thanked him graciously, and told him I would think about it. After some perusal of what his store had on offer, I was thinking of declining. The cheap bicycles were too cheap, and the expensive ones were too costly for something I love as little as a bicycle.

However, a week later he handed me brochure of nothing but bicycles, (similar to a wally-world publication) which they would be receiving soon. Therein I found what looked like a nice mix of features at an appropriate cost, and acquiesced. I received 20% off the already reduced sales-price, and was told that it would be here in 4 days. He even asked me what color I would like, since he thought the advertised yellow was, in his words, "A little gay." I told him the color wasn't important to me, and so I ended up with silver.

The first thing I noticed upon mounting my new bicycle, is that my legs are OUT OF SHAPE. It didn't used to hurt nearly this much to ride on flat ground. My goodness, my legs need some work. I hadn't thought about it before, but most of my exercise over the winter months had been phenomenally good for my upper-body, (pull-ups, mainly,) and neglected my lower-body almost completely. Well, now is the day of reckoning.

I am beginning to recapture the joy of riding down innocent pedestrians, dodging cars and hopping curbs. It certainly makes the trip to work more interesting. On a side-note, this bike is different from my previous ones. The previous ones were of a traditional design, and on this one the rear wheel is a separate piece from the frame, on a hinged arm with a large spring that goes back to the frame, which makes it a lot easier to jump off of and back onto higher things, without so much jarring to the bike. On the downside, the bike is extremely heavy. However, no doubt with time I will get used to it.

Cynthia is already insisting that we must bicycle to Slovakia this summer. I counter that just because I made one mistake, (buying the bicycle,) does not mean I will be conned into making another. But she already knows who is going to win.

Gdansk - Malbork Castle

Ever heard of Gdansk? What about Danzig? One is famous for being the birthplace of the Solidarnosc (Solidarity) movement in Poland, that propelled an shipyard electrician to eventual presidentship, (which reminded many why electricians, no matter how good their intentions, are best left as electricians.) The other is remembered as a "Free City" located smack in the middle of Poland, but with mostly German inhabitants, which was a quasi-independent "Free State" under the treaty of Versailles. The Germans in the 30's were bargaining for a "Danzig Corridor" cutting through Polish territory, when they decided it was too much bother, and so took all of Poland instead. And, Gdansk and Danzig are one and the same city.

The reason the city is well-known by two different names is that the Teutonic knights, (whose self-appointed task was to spread Christianity by the sword into already Christian but-not-under-German-control areas) had the entertaining habit of giving all the places they conquered German names which often had far less resemblance to the original than that shared by Gdansk and Danzig. Thus when anyone attempted to report back to the Holy Father about any abuses, the Pope could say with a straight face "the city you mention is not listed among Teutonic dominions."

When the Teutonic Knights conquered an area, they would often often enslave the people there. One handy way to do this was to collect all the millstones in the area. Then they issued a decree that all wheat grown would be sold to them (at their prices,) which they then ground and sold back to the populace, (again at their prices.) By removing the link between a people's labor and their food, they placed themselves in direct control of the subjugated people's economic and physical fate. A captured population that bordered on Germany could expect to survive about 16 years before they would die off completely from hard labor and lack of adequate nutrition. Good Christian (German) farmers would then be brought in to work the land, and this place would now be officially Christianized.

The knights ruled the area from what was at that time their headquarters - called Marienburg, or Mary's Fortress. Today it is called Malbork. It consists of a tremendously fantastically super-duper large castle made of red brick, which was built in three stages. The first area is a square construction of 3 stories (above ground) which surround a small courtyard containing a deep well. This was the original fortress, and was massive enough that Cynthia and I spent most of the day in this relatively limited area. The second area was built later, and is an expansion of the first, that encompasses it. The last addition was mainly large additional buildings not contiguous with the main structure. All of this is nestled in about 4 rings of walls and battlements and ramps and drawbridges and portcullises that can make your head spin.

An odd thing about the fortress, from a tourist's point of view, is the lack of any signs on doors indicating that their might be an exhibition worth seeing within. The result is that you wander about freely, occasionally wandering into areas obviously under repair, and out again, until you see people emerging from some unmarked door, and think to yourself "Let's give that a go." When you open the door you find yourself standing in a tiny antechamber, which has 3 doors leading off and a staircase leading up. So you try all 3 doors. Two of them are locked, and one leads into a closet. So you go up the stairs, past some more locked doors. But when you keep pushing on random doors, always expecting to wander into somebody's office, one eventually swings open, and you are in a room full of armor, swords, old cannons, or a room with great pieces of amber jewellery, boxes covered with amber that were owned by kings, pre-historic amber jewellery across the room from very modern pieces on loan from collections. Eventually you wander out again, and go back to jiggling handles on random doors until one opens under your hand, and you find yourself in the hall where the knights held meetings. The room is lined on all sides with benches, which turn into armed chairs as you move toward the head of the room. The Grand Master's chair is easy to pick out, as it is the most impressive. In the corners of the room, interrupting the continous benches, and separating the head of the room from the rest, are cabinets with demon-like half-human-half-monster creations running down the sides of the doors. The floors are tiled in patterns, and many of the tiles show dragon motifs, or knights, or heroic animals.

Every corner of the place is loaded with detail. In corridors, in the corners of windows you find small glazed mushrooms sprouting, or a dog eating a snake eating the dog worked into the base of a column, while the ceiling has paintings and the fireplace mantel shows the heathen Lithuanians getting their just deserts from the noble Teutonic knights, who have crosses upon thars.

To cut a centuries long story short, the Pope eventually came to feel that monastic states with immense temporal holdings could be competition for the Vatican's racket, (similar business model, different methods) and so over the next 3 hundred years they slowly withered away. In 1809 they ended the military chapter of their history when Napolean told them it was over. In 1929 they became a normal monastic order.

This history explains a bit why Gdansk has two crosses on its coat of arms - the crosses reflect the Teutonic knights influence on the city. The other influence was the sea, and ships. Gdansk was a major sea port throughout its various incarnations. One of the most famous sights in Gdansk is the "Crane" which was the world's largest crane for loading and unloading ships. The crane (seen in the right-hand picture below in the distance as a protruding brown structure on the left ) was powered by people inside working like hampsters on giant exercise wheels. As a human-powered dock crane, I suppose it was impressive. The guidebooks all certainly thought so. Since the crane was just around the corner and along a canal from the Long Market street, where we and our friends spent most of our time anyway, and since we discovered a coffee shop almost next to the crane in which to have daily post-breakfast-coffee-cofee, we ended up walking by and around the crane a fair bit.

Gdansk - Long Market Street

Long Market street, like most of the streets in Poland which were the focus of some attention by the Germans and Russians in the late 1930's and early 40's, was once reduced to utter rubble. But there the similarity ends. Long Market street has been painstakingly restored to it's pre WWII condition. Some buildings could tell you the exact number of original bricks used in the reconstruction (547 out of 681.) We tended to wander in that direction every day, as it had fantastic architectural styles represented, with stunning details of in different parts of the building, and interesting (though expensive) shops on the ground floor, plus a ton of good restaurants located in the cellars.

Many of the shops on the street focused on the amber trade. Amber is a big business along the Balkan coast, as it will literally wash up on the shores after a storm. Apparently some millions of years ago, there were massive conifer forests which never had time to properly rot before they were suddenly submerged. Then as time and water and earth moved, the resin in the trees fossilized. Nowdays along the edge of the Baltic there are dredging operations to unearth it. The Russians prefer dynamiting to dredging, although this reduces the size and value of the pieces they recover, and destroys everything in the immediate vicinity with its pointless focus on short-term profits, which seems to be what defines the Russian style of doing most things.

I bought a small bit of Amber on the road to Hel. Halfway to Hel, and bordering the Baltic, is Gydnia. Cynthia and I walked along the wharf in Gydnia, and I spotted a small plastic bucket of loose, unfinished amber pieces being sold. The price was minimal, so I bought 5 small pieces. I wondered at the time what techniques there were for evaluating amber. How easy is it to make amber-like pieces of plastic? I decided to make it a chemistry project when I got home, and see if they were real or not.

We had a lot of time to kill that day, since we had arrived in Gydnia a full hour and a half before the last bus to Hel. Which was also the last bus from Hel. So if we had gone there, we would have been stuck in Hel. Considering that the following day would be Easter Sunday, and no trains would be running the next day, we might have been stranded for some time. So we decided that Hel was not for us, and passed the afternoon in Gydnia, walking on the beach, bathing my bald head in the Baltic, eating Chinese food and lounging in an Irish pub. Fortunately for me, I had bought a new book that morning before we left, and so was able to lounge and read for quite some time. It felt quite good to have nothing to do for the afternoon except catch a train back to Gdansk.

While we were futilely trying to reach Hel, our poor friends were fruitlessly trying to mount the ramparts at Malbork, having been turned back by the guards mannng the drawbridge. So they spent the afternoon wandering around the exterior walls, traipsing over bridges and taking pictures of it's brick immensity.

Our friend Sarah had planned to come and spend a few of her vacation days with us. The night she arrived, about 10 minutes later 2 other friends, Peter and Rachel, simultaneously stepped around opposite sides of a large mirrored wall. It turned out that they had been planning for some weeks to surprise us, and by coincidence Cynthia and I had booked a room in the same hostel they had! (I guess this is what happens when everybody makes a stampede for the cheapest option.)

The hostel itself was a bit interesting. It was contained in a huge brick apartment building, which was hidden among about 11 other identical buildings. To get to the entrance you had to walk through all the buildings, toward a dead-end, then walk through a narrow alley between two buildings, which then led into a wall, where you again turned the corner and walked around the back of the building, where the brick walls are heavily peppered with what could only be bullet holes, (unless we are to assume that someone climbed a ladder and went on a mad spree with a drill all around three specific windows,) to find large wooden double-doors whose thickness had been augmented considerably over time with what must have been hundreds of layers of paint.

Upon opening the door, you faced a steep staircase about 16 feet high and 20 feet wide, in a dimly-lit, dust covered, high-ceilinged entryway, which created an interesting sense of dissonance upon entering it. The architecture and immensity of the entryway made you think you were entering a museum of some sort, but the general dimness and concrete compostion of the place said it must have seen its last visitor some time ago. Once you had surmounted the very wide and steep staircase, there was a much smaller area containing some random doors and an old-fashioned wood and glass enclosed booth, in which a small, round television set threw a blue light over an old man who would sometimes fix you with a baleful glare as you went past, and sometimes pretend to stay asleep. You then go up a wide, circular concrete staircase, to the next landing, where a Kuwaiti man is lounging upon a chair on the landing, one leg gracefully thrown over the other one, smoking a cigarette, resplendent at 4:00 in the afternoon in what are unmistakably gold and green striped silk pajamas.

The clientele and/or local color dropping by were definitely more interesting than the television that burbled away in the common/dining room. If a man in shiny striped silk pajamas is going to brighten your afternoons, it only makes sense that breakfast at 8:00a.m. should be attended by Elvis. Polish Elvis. Not just sporting the grand, swept-back, magnficently black pompadour and huge sunglasses, but also wearing those ridiculous sort of driving gloves that are made of very thin leather, have no fingers, and have holes cut out above each knuckle. Why you need driving gloves to manage your large stein of beer at 8 in the morning is probably no less pertinent a question than why you would wear giant sunglasses that cover half your face while you chat with your neighbors in their sitting-room.

But reminiscent of the first 5 minutes of a horror movie or not, it was home for three days, and in the end I was glad to see the final day come. Our final full day in Gdansk was a rainy one, and a Sunday at that. We awoke, met our friends in the hall, ate breakfast together at the hostel, coffee, toast and eggs, (colored eggs, of course,) and made our way through the dank and drizzle toward the coffee shop near the dock-crane. On the way, however, we were way-laid by the world's largest brick cathedral, which was in full Easter service. We stopped in and caught the last 10 minutes of the service, which featured organ music and a beautiful voice floating down from the heavenly reaches of the cathedral, and then wandered about the building, admiring the organ and the artwork. My personal favorite depicted a saint of the female persuasion in a large pot of liquid, with a man on either side of her. The one on the right was managing a pair of 4 foot pliers, with which he was pinching her breast, with intention to remove, (it appeared.) What struck me most about the whole scene was the impassivity on the three faces - no doubt due more to the deficiencies of the artistic techniques of the particular period than anything else, but beautifully incogruent nevertheless. Across from my favorite painting was one of the other great draws of this particular cathedral, which was an astronomical clock of astronomical complication. It had figures that would dance and move upon the hours, keep track of the movements of the sun and moon and dominant zodiac sign, and give you the current date, as well as simply tell you when you were late for lunch, or the priest was running long.

We finally made it to the coffee shop, and ensconced ourselves inside with coffees, and before long began reading. After about an hour, we moved to another place down the road, ordered more drinks, and read some more. At a bit past noon we took a much-needed break from this exhausting round-robin of restaurants and cafes to follow Peter down to the shipyards where Solidarity was birthed, and had its most dramatic moments. The memorial to the dockyard workers killed by the police were three gigantic, towering concrete anchors designed to be very reminiscent of crucifixes. The names of the dead workers were inscribed in brass with bullet holes shown through their names. On a grey and drizzly day, in an industrial area of the town, we five foreigners took a moment from our cafe au lait day to reflect briefly on men and women who were born to toil, and asking for something better, were imprisoned or shot for their pains. The momentum of their will, however, created fissures in the despotic regime that had crushed them, and in the end brought it down.

Then we turned, and walked until we found another restaurant, where we sat reading and talking, until night came. I had never passed a day in this way before, and I have to say I would recommend it, but for no longer than a day. Nothing quite like enforced leisure to foment introspection.

Skola Jezycowa

Recently have been talking a lot about the work Cynthia and I do in selecting candidates for the Masters program. But that is only because it is more interesting than our regular job. The majority of our time is consumed by teaching. We spend about 34 hours a week teaching classes. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the week. In addition to this, we spend about 2 hours a day preparing for classes, grading, photocopying, finding exercises on the internet, downloading lyrics for songs, sending people advice or listenings via email, etc. So the larger portion of our life is consumed with "Skola Jezykowa" (Language school) related activities.

The building itself was built over a hundred years ago as the personal home for a locally famous architect, and really does credit to what the Polish architectural aesthetic was, and might have become, had historical forces moved differently. Inside they still retain a few pieces of furniture designed by the original owner, large, heavy cabinets, but graceful, in their own way.

Our employer bought the building only a year ago, after her business outgrew the building they were in at the time. After having the new building open for 3 months, they are once again running at maximum capacity. This is despite having remodelled the building to extract extra classrooms from all available spaces.

All the classrooms are rather large, well-lit, and gracefully apportioned. In some rooms they have preserved the original hand-hewn beams that run up to the peak of the room to support it. You can definitely see that a lot of thought went into the remodelling of the buildings and the furnishings of the rooms. And work still goes on, adding small wooden benches here and there, a bit of trim over the radiator, just nice touches that make it a more comfy place.

This carefully considered atmosphere that is seen in the rooms is also reflected outside the school. The school's trademark is designed to look like the London Underground symbol (seen hanging in the photo above,) and the billboards located at many strategic high-traffic points about town feature a Palace guard-type, with the big bearskin hats, screaming his head off in excitement about something or other. It is a bit of a disturbing image, and due to the incongruity of it, and possibly the silliness of it, difficult to forget. This image is also placed on folders which every student is issued at the beginning of the year. Thus, every time they take out their folder to do homework, they are advertising for the school. The back of the folder has the present, past and past participle forms of all the irregular verbs listed, thus providing a reason for the student to use it, rather than another folder - a built-in reference tool. Naturally, the list of verbs is superimposed over the school logo, so both sides are advertising for the school.

Obviously, these items, (the palace guard, the underground-type logo,) are all designed to evoke thoughts of England. And if this were not sufficient, she (the owner of the school) recently imported a red telephone booth of the sort normally found in London, and had it assembled in front of the school. Yesterday I even caught some kids taking pictures in front of the phone booth, in an obviously pseudo-touristic I-am-in-London manner. (I have a photo of myself in front of such a phone booth, in fact.)

All this to say that a lot of thought and attention has gone into the branding of the school, the marketing, and how to catch the public's eye.

Mystery Cheese

Cynthia and I have recently acquired a very interesting job. We must sort through the resumes, cover letters, questionnaires, and on-line applications from people who want to either join the Masters in Poland program, get a job working in Poland, or both. We currently have around 100 applicants, and get between 10-20 more each day.

To sit here, and read the resumes of people who want to be here, is a fascinating job. Not only is it a glimpse into the life and aspirations of a stranger, (with all the voyeuristic thrill which that might involve,) but only last year we were in their shoes, applying to be accepted. I remember vividly the anxious anticipation which accompanied the opening of every email, the careful wording of the questions we sent, etc. So I still feel quite heavily the responsibility to respond to people as promptly and honestly as I can. Hopefully that feeling will go away with time, and I will feel free to trample their pathetic dreams with impunity. Oh, glorious day.

What bothers me most is the sheer number of applicants with solid qualifications. We only have a few slots to fill, and so we must choose between the girl with a BA in English Education, and 5 years experience teaching English in Hong Kong, and the man with 1 year experience teaching English, but 5 years experience in Japan as a journalist, a Masters in Neurophysical Linguistics, who is also an avid diver and photographer. (Which are points in his favor, as far as I am concerned.) So who do we pick? Solid Workhorse who needs the degree for long-overdue advancement in the field they have obviously chosen, or Interesting Person with greater life experience, who needs the degree for advancement in their latest field? Many people would put their money and sympathies with the Workhorse, but the more eclectic person with a wider range of experiences in life appeals strongly to me. What if one of them is 50 and the other is 28? How does that swing the balance? Older people often have a better idea of what they want out of life, and can be more focused, but at the same time, they can also be more demanding, and seem to consistently have a harder time staying on the same page in classroom discussions. (Or, maybe I just notice it and attribute it to their age if the person in question is older, and if they are younger I just think "Idiot" and forget about it?)

There is another category of applicant, though. Despite the fact that the website clearly says we only accept applicants with experience, we receive a fair number of applications from cheerful, scrubbed-behind the ears, painfully sincere and over-motivated college graduates from Padukah, Idaho, who obviously spent a lot of time rearranging the elements on their CV and sprinkling it with inspirational quotes which they no doubt view as reflective of their deeply-held beliefs, all in an effort to distract me from the fact that they still have "Independent temporary childcare provider" on their resume. (That's "Babysitting" for anyone who didn't catch it, and when you do the math on the dates you see - yup, at the tender age of 14.) From which they moved on to other, less-impressive, jobs.

Now don't get me wrong. Just because I am mocking them mercilessly in no way indicates that I do not feel sympathy. Au contraire. The fact is, these are the people I feel the most sympathy for. I recall when I graduated college, I wanted nothing more than to get a posting teaching abroad. I wanted it so badly I could taste it. It was my DREAM to go overseas and teach. And it seemed so difficult. So complicated. So daunting. So when I read these people's resumes, I feel such sympathy for them - they sound so motivated, so eager to go overseas, so . . . idealistic.

That is what pulls me up short. I sense in a lot of these cover letters an idealized sense of what life in a foreign country will be like. They seem to think mostly in terms of what life seems like when we are on vacation - everything is new, fresh, interesting, and sipping espresso in sidewalk cafes. I practically feel like some are envisioning their life set in black and white Henri Besson photos, and there seems to be far too little recognition that their day-to-day would involve going to work, coming home, and doing the laundry in a machine whose instructions they cannot read, and having a TV on which it is only possible to watch two channels because the others can't be understood.

But that is its own small pleasure, isn't it? The fact that the options available to you are suddenly more limited means you focus more intensely on the ones that are still available. It isn't necessarily only a reduction in the breadth of pastimes offered, but also an opportunity to engage more deeply in the remaining few. And then one musn't discount the small pleasures of life that would not be so common in one's home country. For example, the adventure of purchasing groceries.

When Cynthia and I went shopping the first few times, it was a complete gamble as to what we would end up coming home with. Milk turned out to be buttermilk, Corn was discovered to be a main topping for certain pizzas, and you never really knew if you were buying flour or cornstarch.

We once bought 2 pounds of gorgeous looking dried dates, only to discover that they were smoked. Odd as it may seem, some perverse individual actually thought it a good idea to smoke fruit and then consume the shrivelled, char-flavored remains. Or maybe that was why he was selling it - he didn't want to consume it himself, and must have got a good laugh from selling to us. I ate perhaps six of them, each time convincing myself that they couldn't possibly be as bad as I remembered, before hurling the bag under the counter on the theory that as they moved closer toward rotting they might also increase in edibility. However, all such hopes were in vain, and the dates (or whatever they were) sat under the counter for about 4 months before I threw them out.

However, as the months have passed, we have become quite proficient at distinguishing cream from kefir, (both have happy-looking cows on the box) and figuring out which kind of flour is best for biscuits, and which is better for quiche-crusts. One area, however, retains its enchanting air of mystery.

The discount cheese case always contains about 20 different lumps of cheese, all different shapes and sizes, for different prices. It seems that when a piece of cheese is sufficiently reduced in size, the attendants wrap it in plastic, and put a sticker on it designating the price per kilo, price of the particular piece, and the type of cheese. You can probably guess which of those I am actually capable of deciphering. (OK, to give myself proper credit, I can also read when it says "Yellow cheese" or "White cheese," but seeing as it is wrapped in clear plastic, it isn't exactly any more informative than if I weren't capable of this astounding linguistic feat.) I would like to be able to open each one, and sniff it, but suspect that someone might say something. So we just make our selection based on price. Selecting two or three lumps of the cheapest cheeses, we make our purchases, and scurry on home.

Once safe in the confines of our house, we take out our newly acquired cheeses, unwrap them, and yes, sniff them. We cut small pieces and nibble them and stare at the label and wonder if we will ever taste this particular cheese again. Because we never know what the cheese gods will have in store for us next week.