in all honesty: first of all, learn pronunciation (and the polish-specific letters). polish is a good language in the aspect that the pronunciation is consistent. no word should surprise you. maybe you won’t be able to get it 100% right, but you’ll know what it should sound like.
listen to polish music. the older ones, especially, they sing more clearly in them. you’ll get the rhythm of the language. there’s a polish playlist i made, i’ll link it here later when i’m on desktop. edit: here it is!!
read, if you can. contemporary, if you can. lots of people translate english fanfiction to polish – you can read both and compare.
if you want help or just chat a bit, feel free to hmu! and good luck. polish is a tough one, but a beauty.
stop talking to me about Halloween. I’m Polish, all I get is arguing with my family at the cemetery over where to put which znicz
This post is looking for a parking spot erasure
other fun activities include:
– freezing and getting soaked
– warming your hands over the znicze (preferably the sea of them put under the main cross)
– getting blamed for forgetting the matches even though there’s seven other people who could have remembered to take them
– listening to your family complain about the quality of flowers bought by other members of the family
– listening to other families complain
– meeting people at the cemetery that you haven’t seen for ages
– they want to chat but it’s cold and you just want to go home
– listening to someone scolding others for being too loud
– “I swear this must be the right alley I have no idea where the grave went”
– traffic jams and three police cars next to every cemetery area
“- why did you bring the yellow znicze?? – you said the yellow ones- – no i said the orange!! the yellow go to your grandparents’ grave! – but the orange would go better with the wiązanka! – oh so now you’re worried about the colors!! i swear to god-”
also one time in Bodzentyn a guy almost hit my head with a giant wooden cross, bc he was carrying it on his shoulder and did not care at all where the long end was.
also there’s always people selling those little obwarzanki on a string that children put around their neck for some reason, even though the bread is so hard that not even pidgeons want to eat that
having a drawer full of plastic bags and storing plastic bags in another plastic bag
uncomfortable family reunions for every single holiday where everyone brings ridiculous amounts of food and several 2 litre bottles of soda
having to finish your food every time because you or your parents paid for it and if you paid for it you have to eat it
CABBAGE
homemade wine from plastic bottles that your family or your uncle’s neighbours’ wife’s cousin made in the countryside
cheap alcohol and cigarettes
foreign men always coming to your country and declaring ah yes i heard that eastern european women are beautiful
that one relative your mom hates and who she always makes polite but slightly salty conversation with at reunions but then after a few glasses of homemade wine you know they’ll get into an argument
your parents’ and grandparents’ revolution/war/army stories that you’ve heard a thousand times before
those red plastic candle holders that melt with the candle but everyone is still buying to burn underneath a picture of jesus??
crochet placemats everywhere
‘persian’ carpets that have been in the family forever. everyone always trips on them but there are always the persian carpets
your grandmother has at least one plastic statue of virgin mary in her house somewhere and at least one wood painting of jesus
tiny pocket-size, laminated pictures of saints that your grandmother always buys at church and give to everyone every time they visit
potatoes
the eternal fascination of every adult with the news on tv. one news hour ends? switch to another channel for the exact same news
the group of old women gathered outside on a bench, there is always a bench and there is always old ladies and they always tell you that you’ve grown so much since they last saw you even though it was just last week
the cars are parked on the sidewalks, the cars are parked on the street, to the point where you’re not exactly sure where you’re supposed to be walking
there is always a queue and it’s always eternal
growing tomatoes
a bowl of plastic fruit??
your grandparents giving you money for your birthday ‘to buy yourself some cakes/sweets’ and you having to pretend you don’t want it ‘no come on you don’t have to’ before inevitably accepting it ‘you really didn’t have to thank you’
spending that money on cheap alcohol
as soon as it hits 24 degrees everyone is out grilling food, in the back yard, in the park, in the cemetery, on top of a soviet-time apartment building…
SAUSSAGES
these plastic things on every table always in godawful floral or fruit patterns
There is a boat in the coat of arms. There is no sea nor large river anywhere near. Ex navicula navis. You wonder where would that boat go if it weren’t land-locked.
In winters air turns to pure poison. You breathe in, air feels fresh. Woman next to you wears a gasmask.
Derby is coming, so you don’t leave your home. From the window you observe police cars pass by, you stop counting at eight. The monsters are out, bloodthirsty. They hunger. You double check the locks.
There is now a tunnel under the city. You peek inside. You wonder if those that enter, come out the same. When you drive through, you try to not look. Lights slide against your eyelids.
Old ruins is where hipsters run, or at least they look like it. What crawls under their skin, you don’t know. Soon their colourful nest will be gone, it is on attractive grounds and some see a skyscraper here. You wonder where will creatures resembling hipster go.
Trams and buses pass you by. The older the vehicle is, the further away it will take you. Away from the city, into the unknown. Sometimes you see the tram that could just as well be functional during nazi occupation. Where is it going to take you, if you were to enter?
Magenta, Cyan and Yellow flood your senses. Everything bleeds in primary colours.
An old railway station got rebuilt. It’s now always empty. There is an empty bus that circles between this station and the airport. The airport is empty as well. Ghosts need to leave this city, but this privilege is not for you.
There is art on walls. You don’t understand, but such were always things with art. Somehow it doesn’t surprise you. The colourful splashes help hide the rot.
Everything was a factory once. You walk the city. You wonder if you were part of a factory at some point in the past. Sound of tram passing by resemble sound of old machinery and you feel calm.
There is man standing at the Freedom Square . His stare is judgmental. You can’t escape it. You were never free anyway.
Old woman at the bus stop shows you photos. Black and white, of bad quality, you barely recognize your own city, and yet you know. This is it. The Past, such strange concept, as how can the past exist if you live in it?
Cranes are rising above the rot. They must feel so proud, trying to raise above all the crumbling buildings, reducing them to dust.
There is no Old Town. What people call Old Town is barely seen, doesn’t compare at all to glorious Old Towns of Kraków or Wrocław or Gdańsk. This city is not old at all. Towns surrounding it are much older. There used to be more, but anything younger got devoured by metropolis. Only old ones still stand, borders pressing against each other painfully.
Once upon a time you could go into the market and buy anything. Now the witches that traded their fares here are caged in glass and steel. You miss old times, when you passed by an old woman selling things you never saw before. You dreamed of those things for weeks, but now all of this is gone.
You sometimes ask yourself what would happen if Nazis stayed a little longer. You fear the answer. When new tram tracks were set, workers found bodies of Jews from occupation times.
On cold autumn evening, lights flash across buildings. The Museum of Archeology and Ethnography crumbles in front of your very eyes. It rises again. People grin in the darkness and leave. There are lifeless lights hiding in the park on this very day. You are not sure if it’s safe to look.
Unicorn Stable, they call it. You never saw any unicorn, and yet rainbow falls on your irises. Here, many just pass by, it’s a mere tram station. Maybe if one were to wait a little longer, one could see something otherwordly. More people get in and out of trams, cars around you move slowly. Nobody stops to look for unicorns. Maybe that’s why they are gone.
You walk in the park, between your feet goes the line that once separated world of living and dying. Litzmannstadt Ghetto Border. You are straddling a thin line between world of living and the dead, as you know no one survived life on the side your right foot stands on, dying in gas chambers or out of overwork. You glance to the right and shopping mall greets your eyes, another old factory remade.
The city is dying and you can feel it. Years earlier it has been second largest city in Poland. Now you don’t even want to check. The rot is everywhere, but you’re not sure if it will ever truly die. “Promised Land” will live, even when all the citizens will be dead.
starry-eyed 