Poland's English-language blogging community get-together

To Warsaw for the half-yearly blogmeet. The last one was in Kraków in May, now Warsaw plays host. Venue is Legends Bar, ul. Emilii Plater 25, a British eaterie with goodies such as All-Day Full English Breakfast (below, 30 złotys) bangers-and-mash and chicken and leek pies on the menu.

The entire Polandian team, 60% of which is Kraks-based. Island1 and Scatts (from the UK) who got the blog up and running, plus Decoy (from Ireland), Brad (from Oregon, USA). As well as contributing to Polandian, Scatts also runs 20 east, while Student SGH does his Politics, Economy, Society blog.

A big welcome to two new Warsaw bloggers, Kolin (Borsuk na Pradze, who hails from Canada)and Paddy (Pozdrowienia z Ursynowa), as well as Pan Steeva of the re-activated Młochów (Mwo-hoov) blog (two more Brits). And me and my two blogs, this one and Grey Jumper'd Childhood. Plus our regular blog readers and commentators Adthelad (a UK-born Pole like me) and Bob from Colorado (US) to whom thanks for the brilliant suggestion of venue.

And the Muses (below from l to r: Mrs Decoy, Mrs Island1 and Mrs Scatts with daughter Zosia).

So in total there were 15 of us, nine regular bloggers representing seven English-language blogs about living in Poland.

After enjoying Legends for several hours, we moved to Scatts Mansions for more ale and wine and cultured debate (anyone know why we don't eat turkeys' eggs, for instance? Or whether a carp could beat a turkey in a pre-Xmas fight?)

Fish and chips in Warsaw

It is now held as conventional wisdom that Britain's national dish is chicken tikka masala. Whatever happened to fish and chips? A seafaring nation (once) surrounded by nutritious cod, and land admirably suited to the growing of potatoes... Decent fish and chips are becoming ever harder to come by in England (though there still are some excellent places around). But in Warsaw? Late last year, a traditional British fish & chip shop opened on ul. Koszykowa 30 (just off Pl. Konstytucji), but it was only today that Martin Oxley and I gave the place a first visit.

WOW! Unbelievable. The atmosphere is so authentic, you'd think you'd just been teleported a thousand miles to the west!

Above: waiting for cod and chips with mushy peas twice with salt and lots of vinegar. For anyone homesick for Glasgow, deep-fried Mars bars are also on the menu. Sausage and chips also available. And vast amounts of British brands, comfort food largely unavailable anywhere else in Poland (Kuchnie Świata in Złote Tarasy does HP Sauce, Worcester Sauce and Branston Pickle, Fentiman's soft drinks and a few others, but this selection is amazingly wide).

Look at this parade of iconic British brands! Yorkie bars! Marmite! Twiglets! Cadbury's Dairy Milk! Fuller's London Pride! HP Sauce! Branston Pickle! Kettle Chips! Jammy Dodgers! Ribena! Fray Bentos Pies! Jacobs Cream Crackers! PG Tips! Tiptree marmalade! Rowntree Fruit Pastilles! I have NEVER, EVER, in my ENTIRE LIFE, seen such a magnificent line-up of British comestibles in one place, outside of the UK. Brilliant.

This place being a takeaway, we rushed back to Martin's car and devoured the fish & chips in the office. Nathan, another Brit from the next-door office came to join us and attest to the food's total authenticity. Looking at the huge variety of comfort food brands on offer, he observed that much of the above is a contributing factor to the visible weight difference between Brits and Poles.

Still, for the occasional treat (and what a treat!), Fish & Chips on Koszykowa is a superb place for those hankering for an authentic taste of Britain.

Fish & Chips, ul. Koszykowa 30, telephone orders +48 692 240 804; email: info@fishandchips.pl; website www.fishandchips.pl

Polandian's beaten me here by four months - link to Scatts's review here.

Into Poland's former heart of darkness

A meeting this morning in a most remarkable place; this is the Centrum Bankowo-Finansowe 'Nowy Świat' (Banking and Finance Centre); until 1989 this was the headquarters of the Polish communist party, the PZPR. The meeting was not just in the building, but along the very corridor where the Central Committee would hold its deliberations - and indeed in the very room from which the First Secretary of the Party made plans for the nation.

   

A joke I remember from the early 1970s, when Edward Gierek had just taken over the job of Poland's top communist: "Gierek drives the world's largest car. The driving seat is in Warsaw, the engine in Katowice (i.e. his coal mining power-base), and the steering wheel in Moscow".

  Above: I was disappointed by the lack of five-pointed stars, hammers and sickles in the decorative motifs on the floor. But then even the Palace of Culture lacks them.

Left: from this very balcony, First Secretaries of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) - Bierut, Gomułka, Gierek - would address Party workers. The Dom Partii, as it was originally, was built in 1948-1951, designed by Kłyszewski, Mokrzyński and Wierzbicki. Opened four years before the Palace of Culture, it still looks remarkably modern and does not at all reek of Socialist Realism.

 

Above: the reverse-angle shot. After 1990, the newly-created Warsaw Stock Exchange moved in after the PZPR fell apart. It's now in a purpose-built building on ul. Książęca across the way. This symbolic ousting of communism's central planning by the visible manifestation of the invisible hand of the market is made more poignant by the fact that Poland's first Ferrari showroom is now in this complex (indeed, you can see a white Ferrari in the top picture, just left of centre).

  If you are visiting this place around lunchtime, it's worth popping into the stołowka (buffet restaurant, above) on the ground floor (entrance A). Called Komitet ('Committee') it's suitably decked out in old-school communist finery, the menu is delightfully old-school too (schabowy, kluski śląskie, buraczki smażone, sos grzybowy) at attractive prices (12-16 złotys for a main course, 3-4 złotys for a soup). Ah, and a propos of food and drink: Poland's English-writing blogging community will be knocking back a few beers at Legends Bar, ul. Emilii Plater on Saturday from 2pm.

The local elections: what they mean

On Sunday I shall be going to the ballot box to cast my vote in the local elections. Voting for Poland's president, one is voting for how our country will be perceived abroad. It also gives you the chance to determine whether the ruling parliamentary majority needs a veto-wielding counterbalance. Parliamentary elections are more important. Poles may moan about our current 'do little' government, but just think of the alternatives from not that long ago - a coalition that included LPR and Samoobrona, or a post-communist government rotten to its very core.

But local authority elections in Poland, though not accorded the same degree of media coverage as the presidential and parliamentary ones are also important, and, I think, not clearly understood. I've spoken to many Poles about the mechanism of Sunday's elections, but no one has been able to tell me precisely what local government positions we will be voting for.

The Polish National Electoral Committee (PKW) has an excellent website with pages in English too, setting out the facts and figures behind Sunday's local government (or as they have it here, 'self-government') elections. Mazowieckie province, which includes Warsaw, is home to over five million Poles, of whom over four million are eligible to vote. Mazowieckie is one of 16 Polish voivodships (provinces). Each one is run by a voivode (wojewoda or governor) appointed by the Prime Minister, and a chief executive (marszałek or marshal) elected by members of the provincial parliament (sejmik) who themselves will be directly elected by popular vote this Sunday.

Here in Jeziorki, we will be voting for the mayor of Warsaw (prezydent miasta) and for councillors (radni) for Ursynów district (dzielnica - one of 18 that make up the capital). And for the provincial self-government (sejmik) of Mazowieckie. The provincial 'little parliament' is elected by inhabitants of Mazowsze's 37 powiats.

So who will I be voting for on Sunday? Well, I had my rant a few weeks ago about the lack of pavements and drains in Jeziorki. Since then, we've been informed that the drains are on the way (maybe in two years time, says one neighbour). Another neighbour tells me that people living on ul. Karczunkowska have been informed that a pavement is due, and that plots running up to the asphalt will have a strip of land compulsorily purchased so that paving slabs can at last be laid. Eventually. So then - the Warsaw mayoral race is between Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz (Civic Platform), Ciesław Bielecki (Law and Justice) and Wojciech Olejniczak (Democratic Left Alliance). The latest polls (published on Monday) put Gronkiewicz-Waltz on 50%, Bielecki on 20% and Olejniczak on 13%. Three other candidates including my protest-vote pick, Katarzyna Munio, are on 1%.

It is worth noting that whereas not a single national government has ever been re-elected in Poland since democracy was restored in 1989, local authorities - in particular popular mayors - routinely get re-elected for successive terms. Three-term mayors are not a rarity. This leads to continuity in local government affairs; a good gospodarz (host, householder) delivers the infrastructure, wins respect and popularity by doing so and gets re-elected again and again. In its annual survey of foreign investors in Poland, the state inward investment agency PAIiIZ finds year after year that multinationals setting up in Poland rate the quality of local government as being superior to that of central government. My guess is that it's for this very reason; continuity.

Moving on the the district council election, my children and I have dreamed up a fantastical conceit of how Nasz Ursynów, a local electoral initiative, might turn out in practice. Though its hyper-active website reveals little, our joke is that this party is not so much ultra-nationalist as ultra-localist. Their demands will no doubt insist than non-Ursynauers who cannot a prove a pure Ursynite bloodline be sent back to the Żoliborzes, Mokotóws or Saska Kępas from whence they came; that the gyppos camping out amid Jeziorki boglands in their squalid detached houses be kept out of Ursynów proper by a ghetto-style wall running along the east side of ul. Puławska, and that armed guards inspect passengers' residence permits on the Metro between Służew and Ursynów, turning away anyone who cannot offer proof of being an Ursynauer. Torchlight parades down al. KEN, bricks thrown through windows of shops owned by Radomites or (heavens forfend) even people from outside Mazowsze province and the impounding of all cars not on WN plates (starting with those wretches with WPIs).

Fantastical conceits notwithstanding, I'm not convinced by Nasz Ursynów's arguments, and will despite everything, in the end be voting once again for Civic Platform. Resignedly.

Dream highway home from Dobra

What a shame we couldn't have stayed another day in Dobra; the morning was utterly perfect. The wind had died down, the sky was cloudless. Still, The Road beckons.

Above: The DK 28 leaving Dobra, on the way to Limanowa. From there DW 965 over the hills towards Bochnia. Shortly after leaving Limanowa, the 965 starts climbing steeply over a mountain pass at Rozdziele. From the road here, on a day like today, the Tatras are clearly visible. We pulled over to the side of the highway to catch this spectacular view (below).


Left: Time to get that long lens on for a good look at the familiar ridges of the Tatras on the Polish side of the border. Those peaks are over 60km (40 miles) away!

The road continues hilly with serpentine windings up and down over two passes (one 538m above sea level, the other one 401m) all the way to Bochnia, after which the landscapes flattens out to that to which we are accustomed in Mazowsze.

Above: The 965 between Bochnia and the Vistula takes on an entirely American 1940s/50s air. This I love. Flat land. Straight road. Hank Williams, Bob Wills, Chuck Higgins, Glen Miller, Frank Sinatra on the car stereo.

Is this not the Texas Panhandle, Oklahoma borders? That eerie sense of familiarity of somewhere it wasn't.

Early afternoon today +18C. Ain't that nice?

"From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska/
With a sawn-off four-ten on my lap/
Through the badlands of Wyoming/
I killed every thing in my path"

Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska

Śnieżnica in autumn

Strong sunlight and strong winds howling through the trees. Clouds moving rapidly across the sky. Ideal weather for climbing Śnieżnica (1,006 m above sea level) to the top.

Above: Looking east from the lower slopes of Śnieżnica; to the left the northern flanks of Ćwilin, beyond lies Łopień. Below: In the distance, beyond the slopes of Ćwilin, Mogielica's peak; the observation tower visible at the summit of the highest mountain of the Beskid Wyspowy. (Click on photo to enlarge.) We were up there yesterday in winds even stronger than today.


We reach the top of the chairlifts that take skiers up Śnieżnica from Kasina Wielka in winter, and mountainbikers up on summer weekends. Warm up the top; +15C.

At this time of year the mountain was deserted, just a handful of hikers and a rather sad parade of 4x4 drivers using V8 engines to drag themselves to the top. What a waste of time, petrol and machinery.

Below: view from the very top of Śnieżnica, obscured by a crown of trees. A shame, for on the horizon from here one can see Kraków, 40km/25miles away, its buildings picked out in the distance by strong sunlight.


Right: On the way down, sunshine still with us. Walking conditions most comfortable, footpath not too slippery, trees screening us from the worst of the gales.

Sabina and I were both properly equipped with decent walking boots; Eddie however left home in a pair of branded trainers and yet still managed to set the pace, sure-footed over the rocks.

Gastro heaven or hell?

After coming down off Śnieżnica, Eddie, Sabina and I popped into Bar pod Cyckiem in Gruszowiec for some light refreshments before returning to Dobra. Sabinka spotted these delicacies (below), tucked away in a corner of the menu board above the bar. Apologies for poor quality photo, taken in a dark room without flash. Between 6 and 7 zlotys a bowlful, complete with six slices of bread, these dishes work out at around £1.40 - £1.70. Good value if you can stomach er... stomach, heart, tongue or lung!

This led to a debate about how to translate menus. I am sensitive to cultural as well as linguistic differences (I will never forget zestaw surówek translated as 'set of rawnesses' in the Orbis Hotel, Tychy, in 1989). Literal translation does not work here...

Goulash of Heart

Tongue in Sauce

Lungs, sour-style

Poultry Stomachs

Little Liver

No. None of the above work (or do they?) Maybe we should reach for French culinary designations?

Goulache de coeur

Langue de boeuf en sauce

Poumon en sauce aigre

Estomacs de volaille

Petit foie

But this would entirely deviate from the idea of suggesting hearty Polish mountain fare made from locally-obtained offal.

Anyone care to have a stab? Idea is to convey what the ingredients are, while somehow keeping it sounding appetising...

Incidentally, one of the guests staying at Dobra, Pan Andrzej, remembers Bar pod Cyckiem being called that back in the mid-1960s, when he was a student hitch-hiker travelling the DK28 route. And when Pope John Paul II visited these parts, a local priest decided that the Bar's name may well offend the Pontiff's eye, and so the 'y', 'c' and 'k' were painted over, replaced by dots which are still visible to this day,

Setting sun in the mountains

After descending Mogilica, we drive to Mszana Dolna. I need to buy an SD card reader (I left mine at home, and without it, I cannot upload my pics to the blog). Next door to the computer shop is a Tesco - and yes, they have (or rather had) these excellent Chilean and Australian red wines I've been raving about. At 8.35 and 7.99 złotys a bottle, too good to ignore; I'm stockpiling these bottles, buying them wherever they appear. (Back in Dobra, with our hosts and other guests, we compare these wines and they stand up extremely well against wines costing more than double.)

The drive into Mszana Dolna takes us over the pass at Gruszowiec; we're in for a spectacular sunset. Below: Between Kasina Wielka and Mszana D. A photo that captures the essence of The Road; the DK28. From Gruszowiec, one can put the car into neutral and roll all the way, a full 9 kilometres, into Mszana D on 'Aberdonian overdrive', as British wags put it. (Aberdonians being legendary for their tight wallets.)

Below: returning to Dobra over Gruszowiec pass once again; I pulled over to the side of the highway to catch the klimat.