Clinging on to summer

In most people's minds, summer ends on 1 September, when schools go back. Astronomical summer ends this year on 23 September, when the sun, having spent the bulk of its time shining over the Northern Hemisphere, retreats back across the equator. At this time of year, within a month either way of the equinox, we feel the day shortening at a noticeable pace. Every day, the sun sets two minutes earlier, and rises two minutes later; as a result the day shortens by four minutes, or around half an hour a week. Frightening.

Still, the weekend was as the meteorologists had predicted it - hot and sunny. As I write, I can feel the effects of the sun's rays on my face, having spent most of the day out and about on my bicycle.

Indeed, most of Warsaw was out and about on its bicycle. The cycle path along Przyczółkowa was like a bicycle motorway. It attracted a wide range of cyclists - from very young to very old; mountain bikers, road racers, trendies on their sit-up-and-beg amsterdamki, riders of old school Polish Jubilat or Wigry bikes, parents with their little ones in kiddie seats or trailers. In fact, the only tribe of cyclist unrepresented on the cycle path to Powsin were hipsters on fixies. This is not a place to be seen - unlike the forecourt of Złote Tarasy, where fixies are piled high, chained to the railings. (The way to mount one, by the way, is to swing your leg over the handlebar).

Above: the cycle path from Wilanów to Powsin; very busy indeed - as it should be. A cloudless day.

No rain all week, yet the water table is still high, puddles abound and with them and the heat - the midges/mosquitos (call them what they are: komarzyska - culex pipiens). In the midday sun, there are few about, but around dusk they are still a total nuisance.

While the sun shines, we have got to make hay. Within a few weeks, the weather will have changed; darkness will have replaced light as the dominant mode; summer clothes will have been put away and replaced by thick, heavy coats. Make the most of every sunny hour.

This time last year:
Compositions in yellow, blue and white

This time two years ago:
When the Z-9 used to run, temporarily, to Jeziorki

Phrasal verbs: zmora, Panie

Over the past month, I've worked out* why Poles are so fond of long verbs of Latin or Greek derivation. It's not that they want to show off their learning. It's because phrasal verbs are so damned difficult.

If you're a native English speaker and not involved in language teaching, you will pause here to ask (as I did one day in my late 20s), what a phrasal verb actually is. In English, they are as natural as breathing and so are not even taught at school. But for non-native speakers they are fiendishly difficult, and if you wish to use them correctly, as native speakers do, there's no alternative but to learn them by heart.

I had my eureka moment this month, doing phrasal verb tests with some of my top students, who are generally very good at communicating in English. But in this test, they were scoring two or three out of 15.

So then.

A phrasal verb is one where a preposition or adverb (or both) added after it changes its meaning so it is no longer literal. So, for example, to run - verb. "I run to the shops" In this sentence "to run" is not a phrasal verb, because to preposition "to" that follows it doesn't change its meaning. But "to run across", ("I ran across an old friend in the street), "to run up" ("I had the tailor run up this jacket for me") or "to run up against"("I ran up against a serious problem) most certainly are. "To stick" - lepić; but "to stick out"? Wystawać, odstawać - but where's the association with lepić?

Phrasal verb roots are generally short, simple verbs that even the smallest native-speaking child will understand and use naturally; to go, to get, to take, to do, to look, to put, to bring, to give.

English being an 'onion language' of many layers (Celtic, Germanic, Latin, French, global loanwords) is a language rich in synonym, so many phrasal verbs have perfect or close-matching synonyms. These are usually Latinate in origin.

"I can't endure this any longer" - to endure = to put up with.
"This is a skill I acquired in my last job" - to acquire = to pick up.
Note in the last example the impossibility of direct translation into Polish... To jest umiejętność którą ja podniosłem w mojej ostatniej pracy - a direct and incorrect translation. Incorrect, bo nie można podnieść umiejętność, raczej ją nabyć/ zdobyć/ uzyskać. (A correct translation would be: Jest to umiejętność, którą nabyłem w mojej ostatniej pracy). And hence the difficulty for Poles.

How about some tests then?

What are the phrasal verb equivalents of the underlined words?

1. I know him too well to be deceived (__________) by his stories.
2. Their children were raised (__________) in the Catholic faith.
3. Golf occupies (_______) most of his free time.
4. The air show was cancelled (________) because of bad weather.
5. The application was rejected (__________) because it wasn't completed (_______) properly.
6. He raised (_______) the subject of his promotion again.

Can you offer synonyms for the following phrasal verbs?

1. He came down with __________ malaria while working in Africa.
2. It’s about time we threw away _________ those old brochures!
3. I found out _________ that one of my colleagues has a criminal record.
4. We will be shortly handing out _________ landing cards.
5. One of our top spies had gone over _______ to the Russians.
6. She needs to break out of __________ that boring routine!

These are no-brainers for native English speakers. For non-natives - they can be extremely hard. So I intend to concentrate on teaching phrasal verbs for the next few months. As I said, there's no alternative to just learning them all by heart - and there's thousands of them out there.

This also raises an important point in the management of multinational corporations where English is the main language; should native-speaking managers be made aware of phrasal verbs (especially ones used idiomatically) and be asked to avoid them?

Incidentally, the problem works the other way too. I still have problems in Polish with prefix + verb structures such as wnosić, wynosić, przynosić, donosić, zanosić etc, which function similarly to phrasal verbs. Indeed, this makes for a good introduction to the subject for Polish students of English.

* To work out - to reach a conclusion (dojść do wniosku); to calculate (kalkulować).

This time two years ago:
Putin writes about Molotov-Ribbentrop

This time three years ago:
Summer in the city

This time four years ago:
Last bike ride to work

More fun in the Anglo-Polish linguistic space

Two interesting threads came up in my English classes today. "What's the difference between 'regardless' and 'in spite of'?

Consider the following two sentences:

"I'm going to the seaside regardless of the weather"

"I'm going to the seaside in spite of the weather"

In the first sentence, I don't know what the weather will be. It might be storm force nine; it might be cloudless and still. One way or the other, I will go. I will go without regard to the weather, whatever it will be.

In the second sentence, I know for sure that the weather will be awful. And yet I will go. I will go despite the weather.

Getionary gives "regardless" as bez względu, niezależne (od czegoś). "In spite of" is given as pomimo, mimo czegoś.

Stanisławski gives "regardless" as nie zważając, nie bacząc, nie licząc się (z czymś); to pomimo as "in spite of" he adds wbrew (czemuś).

I think it's clear in both languages; no need for confusion between the two (phrasal verb alternative: no need to mix up the two).

I shall write more about phrasal verbs tomorrow, having made a massive discovery in this area of the Anglo-Polish linguistic space.

Before then - what's "to tell off" in Polish? A phrasal verb that every primary school child knows: "The teacher told me off for talking in class". Stanisławski has wyznaczyć (kogoś do zrobienia czegoś); wojsk. odkomenderować; z/besztać, z/rugać; nagadać (komuś). Getionary has kogoś zkarcić / zganić. Goodness! None of these are words I'd have associated with being told off at Polish Saturday school! Can anyone suggest good Polish translation for "to tell off"? Or do Poles not tell off their children?

UPDATE:
It occurred to me as we were cycling along ul. Kadetów; a woman driving the other way yelled at us to use the cyclepath provided. She was right - indeed there was one. What was she doing? Not so much telling us off for riding along the roadway, more a case of, yes, zwracać uwagę. To tell off - best translation - literally - 'to turn one's attention to [something]'.

This time last year:

Summer slipping away

This time two years ago:
Late summer dad'n'lad bike ride

This time three years ago:
Tuwim's Lokomotywa in English

Bad car day

I try to use the car as rarely as possible during the working week. Bike and bus/metro/rail suffice admirably for day-to-day commuting. Today I drove to my first meeting at Platan Park and then onto the Park+Ride (P+R in Polish, not PiJ - Parkuj i jedż). En route from Platan Park to Metro Ursynów, I hit upon a monstrous traffic jam, caused not by a massive return to work, but by a four-car smash on Puławska. Horrendous wreckage; someone had changed lanes too fast without noticing a queue of stationary traffic hiding behind a slow-moving bus.

Returning for the car after work, I beheld yet another smash at Ursynów (below), another instance of travelling too fast without due care and attention. According to TVN Warszawa, the driver of this car ran a red light.

Below: Some people are proud of being piraci drogowi ('road pirates') who drive like complete fools. 99 times out of a hundred they get to their destination without a problem. Then one day they cause a fatal accident. Should people displaying such an attitude be allowed on Poland's public roads?

All around me mad drivers, bad drivers... the driver of a Volvo V60 on Piaseczno plates pulling across three lanes of traffic, into the right-hand filter lane to dodge back into the left-hand lane, just to be able to jump two cars ahead of me - while speaking into her mobile phone and steering with one hand... the driver of a Lotus Elise revving up furiously and tearing through Ursynów at an obscene speed... the driver of a Maserati Quattroporte using his laptop in slow-moving traffic on ul. Puławska...

And then, as I drove down ul. Trombity, not far from our house, I drove into an improbably deep hole in the road, full of water - result - a puncture and, for the second time on our street, a ripped front spoiler. All at less than 30 kmh.

(Incidentally, if you own a Toyota Yaris and want to know where the jack is, don't bother phoning Toyota Polska's "help"line. It's under the driver's seat (yes!). Thanks to Lacrosse's Andrew Nathan, who googled it for me while we were talking business. He didn't have to; but Toyota's useless call centre operator, who was there to help in such cases, showed zero initiative or real willingness to help.)

And all this on the day when Poland's infrastructure minister was facing his third no-confidence vote... [What's the TIME, Mr Nowak? It's TIME for you to QUIT. Just look at your watch.]

Poland should erect a momentously huge statue to all the infrastructure ministers that held office since 1989, and place it near Stryków, where the motorways run out. Cezary Grabarczyk (PO)... Jerzy Polaczek (PiS - remember him?)... Marek Pol, (Unia Pracy - thanks Sportif)... Tadeusz Syryjczyk (AWS)... A vast 50 metre high human figure representing them all; eyes scanning the horizon; rolled-up plans in hand; purposefully striding forth in Wellington boots and hard-hat...

"Look on my lack of works, ye Taxpayers, and despair..."

This time last year:
Dragonfly summer

Same as it ever was

Ul. Nowoursynowska, a sunny Sunday afternoon in late summer. Five Dominican friars, out for a stroll in the vicinity of their Abbey. The sight of five young men in flowing white robes looks most incongruous against the background of the newly-finished thoroughfare, now widened to four lanes with cycle path, and the modern housing.

Past posts from the Abbey here, here and here.

May the monks remain here for centuries to come.

This time last year:
Late summer moods, Jeziorki

This time two years ago:
The next one hundred years

This time three years ago:
"What do we want? Early retirement!
When do we want it? NOW!"

This time four years ago:
Twilight of Warsaw's greenhouse economy

To Hel and back in 36 hours

As a small child in Polish Saturday school in London, I'd pore over maps of Poland looking at places called Łódź and Lwów, Bydgoszcz and Białystok. Less confusingly, there was this dangly thing over Gdańsk called 'Hel'. No map of Poland is complete without this feature. What's it like?

As a young person visiting Poland with Montserrat (two coachloads of 15-20 year-old boys and girls of Polish parentage going to the fatherland for a religious pilgrimage organised by the Polish parish in Ealing) I visited Hel in 1976. Back then, the place was of strategic military significance for the Warsaw Pact. Our guide told us in no uncertain terms to keep all cameras hidden as penalties for Western spies were severe. Passports were checked; paranoia total. Our coaches made their way along a narrow spit of land, at times so narrow we could see the sea on both sides of the road.

Hel is a textbook peninsula at the end of which is an intriguing town. Hel is a place you have to visit if you are ever to have a complete mental picture of Poland and its diversity - from Zakopane to the Mazurian lakes, from the Białowieża forest to Wieliczka's salt mine and dozens of fascinating historic cities in between.

The night train tourism concept is now proven; a concentrated dose of travel experience crammed tight by doubling up on transportation and sleeping time. Board a train in Warsaw on Thursday evening, wake up on the beach Friday morning. Spend one intensive, never-to-be-forgotten, day there. Then board a train home on Friday evening and wake up in Warsaw on Saturday morning. This way, you still have the entire weekend free. The cost of the train ticket is little more than the cost of a night's stay in a hotel, with the added bonus that this particular hotel transports you 547km as you sleep.

Above: arrival at Hel of the night train from Warsaw, eleven and half hours after leaving the capital. It's just gone nine in the morning so time for a cup of coffee.

Above: one of the oldest buildings in town, dating back over 180 years; Maszoperia, once the HQ of the local fisherman's guild. Inside, it's full of nautical horse-brasses, reminding me of the Tŷ Coch in Porthdinllaen, North Wales and pubs of this nature all around Britain's shore.

Compared to my day trip to Międzyzdroje last month, this time, it was perfect beach weather; even the Baltic was warm, so at the age of 53 I took my first swim in morze nasze morze. It being the end of the season, the clothes shops were busy depleting their stock, so I bought a decent pair of swimming trunks for 19 zlotys (£3.75). I use the word 'decent' advisedly, for at their last outing a few summers back, my pair of silver-grey Speedos purchased in 1983 were deemed by my own children to be too, er, skimpy for a middle-aged guy.

Like most beaches on a hot day, it gets crowded around the entrances; but wander off down the sandy beach and the crowds soon thin out. Indeed, by late afternoon, the beach was quite empty. The clean, soft sand reminded me of Porth Oer in North Wales, a beach also known as Whispering Sands; as you walk along it, it squeaks. Above: the Baltic sea gets very deep very quickly. Notice how close to the shore the trawler is sailing. I was surprised by the lack of tidal amplitude; the low tide mark is just a few metres from the high tide mark, so unlike the British Isles, where the difference can be hundreds of metres.

On a day like yesterday, the beach at Hel is perfect; pure sand stretching for hundreds of kilometres. From here, the very tip of the peninsula, one can walk to Jurata, Jastarnia, Kużnica and Chałupy to Władysławowo on the mainland, 35km away. Past the port, then onwards, westwards, past Łeba, Ustka, Kołobrzeg, onwards past Międzyzdroje to Świnoujście and the German border. Essentially, Poland's Baltic coast is one endless sandy beach punctuated by port towns and fishing villages, and of course Gdańsk and Gdynia.

Compared to Międzyzdroje, slightly snooty with its Promenade of Stars, classy hotels and German tourists, Hel is unpretentious, middle-market, with a stronger smattering of historical authenticity.

Night train travel offers spontaneity and intensity of experience. Check the forecast. Unnecessarily, I took wet- and cold weather gear that merely served as rucksack ballast. (But can you trust the forecasts? New.meteo.pl got it right this time - pure sunshine, hot, no rain, few clouds. Yet the website forecast no rain for Warsaw for either Wednesday or Thursday - and on both days it poured in the afternoon.)

The Hel Peninsula was important militarily to pre-war Poland, guarding the approaches to the country's only Baltic port, Gdynia. As such it was turned into a fortified zone in the mid-'30s. In September 1939, soldiers and sailors defending the peninsula held out against the Nazis for a month. After that, the Germans re-fortified the area, and after the war, the Warsaw Pact strengthened it further still.

Above: Hel was ready to defend itself against a seaborne NATO invasion that never came. To this day, a vast network of bunkers, observation posts, command posts, look-out towers and communications centres is scattered along the peninsula. Most objects are now open to tourists to visit.

Above: a local trawler takes tourists for a spin around the bay. In the background, a ferry headed for Scandinavia.

When in Hel, eat locally caught sea food and sample the nautical culture. I can recommend cod in beer cake here. Sea shanties were being played at Chëcz, above (Chëcz is Kashubian for 'house'). Poland's sea shanty tradition goes back to communist days, when the authorities, wanting to give its youth something to sing other than songs coloured with religious, patriotic or martial overtones, stumbled upon English sea shanties, had them translated them into Polish, they were sung on training vessels, yachts, canoes or around camp fires. Wild Rover, The Leaving Of Liverpool or What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor in Polish? Why certainly! Ależ prosze bardzo!.

Left: the lighthouse (built by the Germans in 1942) at the very tip of the peninsula. Strolling back from the beach towards the end of a Most satisfying journey, the sandy forest that covers the area between the town of Hel and the beaches puts me in mind of childhood holidays in Stella Plage in northern France. Back in Jeziorki, I'm looking over the photos taken that day, listening to Brian Eno's On Some Faraway Beach...

Below: it's eight in the evening and time to board the night train back to Warsaw. A memorable day out; my taste of the Polish Baltic far exceeding my expectations. On returning home, Moni, who spent part of her lengthy holiday with friends on the Hel Peninsula, asked me why anyone should want to vacation anywhere else.


This time last year:
Poles, stretch your facial muscles

This time two years ago:
Honing the Art of the Written Word

This time three years ago:
Of castles, dams and brass bands

This time four years ago:
Late August cultivation

Fresh fruit top-up - eat 'em while you can

In early June strawberries, then come the cherries in July, plums, blueberries and then raspberries; available everywhere - street corner fruit stalls, local shops, hypermarkets - and very cheap - prices as low as 6 zlotys (£1.30) a half-kilo punnet. It behoves us to eat them, indeed guzzle them in huge quantities, while they're here, to build up the immune system with natural vitamins before the onset of the darkness and the cold.

Full of Vitamin C, antioxidants and dietary fibre, raspberries are very healthy. And I am amazed to discover that Poland's the world's fourth largest producer of raspberries, just behind the USA.

Sold in deep papier-mâché punnets and with a short shelf-life, raspberries will often go mouldy from the bottom up. The consumer cannot see from the ones on the top what the bottom of the punnet looks like. I must say, that since Poland joined the EU, the quality of raspberries has improved, and the implementation of HACCP by fruit growers has meant one can fairly safely eat unwashed raspberries. If you wash them, they go off much more quickly. Other fruit I always wash - but raspberries rarely.

Above: A novelty on the market - punnets covered in cling-film. Stops customers picking at the content, but also I'd guess the greater humidity within the punnet leads to dampness and faster mould growth. I've picked out three mouldy raspberries; many more would be lurking beneath.

We're at the height of the season, but although prices will rise and there will be fewer street vendors selling them, we'll still have raspberries on sale until the first frosts of late autumn.

This time two years ago:
Molotov-Ribbentrop 70 years on

Raymond's treasure - Part Two

[Part I of the story here.]

Raymond was about to leave the small sack with his treasures on the table, and walk out of Lord Arnaul's hall, wholly crushed, when some laughing voice behind him cried: "Give the villein a drink, in the merciful name of the Blessed Virgin Mary!" A crescendo of laughter burst forth to support that suggestion. A large goblet, brim-full of a fine Lotharingian wine, was passed to Raymond; in his nervousness he gulped it down like water. It was the first noble alcohol he'd imbibed since he broke his homeward journey from Jerusalem at Malta; his usual drink was watery ale. The wine went straight to his head.

"Tell us about Antioch, brave soldier!" someone shouted. Emboldened by the alcohol, Raymond started rambling with increasing confidence about the Crusades, about his valour, about how he had fought at the side of Tancred of Hauteville himself, Lord Arnaul's uncle. Though not an educated man, he told his story well, with passion, full of convincing sound effects of steel against steel, and the death-throes of mortally wounded infidel warriors.

"Valiant fellow!" called out some knight seated close to him, passing Raymond another full goblet, this time with mead. A roast leg of piglet was thrust into his free hand, a chair found for him. Raymond then burst into song - a drinking song popular with Crusaders at the time. This went down very well with the retinue.

Bemused by the attention, befuddled by drink, Raymond was consciously still trying to work out the chances of getting home to his wife with his treasure; the sack was lying on the table within arm's reach, between him and Lord Arnaul. He decided then he'd drink no more; the content of the next goblet passed to him he poured discreetly into his lap. He ate more fatty pork and white bread; each subsequent goblet of mead was disposed of in the same way.

As night fell and the candles burned out, the company of knights passed out, one by one. Lord Arnaul's head was slumped on his massive forearms. Raymond's hand moved forward slowly, reaching out for the small jute sack. No one observed him as he pulled it forth, placing it within his tunic, he made his way towards the doorway of the great hall and past a somnolent guard at the gates.

That night, as he returned home, he recounted what had happened to his extremely worried wife. Before they retired to bed, Raymond and Mathilde went out to their back garden, and in the dark, moonless night, they buried the sack in the cabbage patch.

Mathilde had learned her lesson. She could see that turning Saracen treasure into a currency that could be readily spent would not be easy. She imagined passing it on to her eldest son on her death-bed, only to leave him with the self same problem.

But as it happened, fate had decided to give the couple a second prize. For Lord Arnaul, waking and finding the treasure - and half his retinue - gone, was convinced that one of his knights had taken it. He felt intense guilt - guilt at what he'd said to a man who was essentially a good and faithful villein, a man who'd fought bravely with his uncle - and at the fact that the treasure had been stolen by some Christian knight whom he'd once considered trustworthy.

So Lord Arnaul, overcoming intense personal discomfort, in the company of his white-bearded Father Confessor, made his way to Raymond's cottage. Mathilde welcomed in the Lord of the Manor while Raymond, seeing them coming, fled to another room. But soon it became clear who was the petitioner and who was being petitioned; "Raymond; I have come to apologise to thee for the behaviour of my knights; one of whom must have behaved in a most un-Christian manner. As their lord, it behoves me to compensate you for your loss. I should like you to accept an offering of ten livres for your stolen treasures..." Raymond looked at Mathilde; neither's face betrayed any emotion. Raymond gladly accepted the purse held out by Lord Arnoul; this should be the end of the matter. Though the sum was not one half of what Isaac the Jew had offered, it would keep Raymond, his wife and their three sons fed through what would be a hungry winter. And the treasure remained.