Provided I don't snap in my next lesson and start bellowing "Deutschland Über Alles" as I goosestep up and down the aisles, I will pass my CELTA course tomorrow and leave Krakow the day after. I'm anxious to get out of here. Krakow has been kind to me, but I am ready to step onto a train and go someplace else, to drink coffee and brood on my own for a few days without the company of a stumbling gaggle of British lechers.
Thursday morning, I am taking the train to Berlin. I might stay the night there. Over the weekend, I have a job interview in Darmstadt. It is possible that I will be living there. Then again, a lot of things are possible now that were just a daydream yesterday.
Showing posts with label brits. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brits. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Poo-tee-weetski?
Walking home through back alleys late Monday night, I chanced upon the most encouraging graffiti I've seen since I've been here. Spraypainted across the side of some eight billion year-old mini-mall:
KILGORE TROUT PREZYDENT
I'm not sure how Jean-Jackets-and-Jesus Poland would respond to their first fictitious American pulp sci-fi writer/president, but it is nonetheless heartening to know that at least one person in Krakow possesses something resembling a sense of irony.
Wednesday night, I watched the UEFA Cup final with a cacophony of Brits. Changing the channel here is a kinesthetic art. I've never seen someone play the theremin, but I imagine it looks a lot like a drunk Englishman screwing around with the cable, trying to pick up a football game on his vintage Polish TV. After Barcelona knocked two goals past Arsenal in the last 15 minutes, the urge to riot was palpable - I readied my crowbar - but cooler heads prevailed and the Brits walked home with their coattails tucked between their legs, occasionally stopping to swat sidewalk trash with their umbrellas.
Krakow is the only place I know of where jazz is alive, if only in a semi-vegetative state. Back in the States, jazz exists as a depressing reenactment of something that will never, ever be hip again, and in that sense, it is more dead than ever. Here in Krakow, it's happening for the very first time. Poland has never had jazz before - i.e. they have never had black people before - so it's still new and exciting to them. There are dumpy little jazz clubs all over Krakow. Of course, there's nothing less cool than a tenorman with eight syllables and more than six Zs in his last name, so fat chance you'll ever find me in a Polish jazz hole.
Kod DaVinci is about to make its debut in Poland. I'd like to be far, far away from here when this bombshell hits. I've seen a few previews on TVP1 and, for a film that's supposed to incur the wrath of God upon man, it looks pretty dull. I don't know what Ron Howard was thinking when he decided to overdub the whole thing in Polish, but I guess when you've starred in American Graffiti and More American Graffiti, you're entitled to some artistic liberties.
KILGORE TROUT PREZYDENT
I'm not sure how Jean-Jackets-and-Jesus Poland would respond to their first fictitious American pulp sci-fi writer/president, but it is nonetheless heartening to know that at least one person in Krakow possesses something resembling a sense of irony.
Wednesday night, I watched the UEFA Cup final with a cacophony of Brits. Changing the channel here is a kinesthetic art. I've never seen someone play the theremin, but I imagine it looks a lot like a drunk Englishman screwing around with the cable, trying to pick up a football game on his vintage Polish TV. After Barcelona knocked two goals past Arsenal in the last 15 minutes, the urge to riot was palpable - I readied my crowbar - but cooler heads prevailed and the Brits walked home with their coattails tucked between their legs, occasionally stopping to swat sidewalk trash with their umbrellas.
Krakow is the only place I know of where jazz is alive, if only in a semi-vegetative state. Back in the States, jazz exists as a depressing reenactment of something that will never, ever be hip again, and in that sense, it is more dead than ever. Here in Krakow, it's happening for the very first time. Poland has never had jazz before - i.e. they have never had black people before - so it's still new and exciting to them. There are dumpy little jazz clubs all over Krakow. Of course, there's nothing less cool than a tenorman with eight syllables and more than six Zs in his last name, so fat chance you'll ever find me in a Polish jazz hole.
Kod DaVinci is about to make its debut in Poland. I'd like to be far, far away from here when this bombshell hits. I've seen a few previews on TVP1 and, for a film that's supposed to incur the wrath of God upon man, it looks pretty dull. I don't know what Ron Howard was thinking when he decided to overdub the whole thing in Polish, but I guess when you've starred in American Graffiti and More American Graffiti, you're entitled to some artistic liberties.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Keith 0, Poland 0
Last Friday - upon the completion of a 23-year light labor sentence served in the suburban gulags of the American Midwest - I caught a one-way flight to Krakow with no set plans to return. Equipped with six words of pidgin Polish and not a day of teaching experience to my name, I enrolled in a program to teach me how to teach Poles English. The course lasts four weeks - and then what? More than likely, I will hobo around for a few months and then instantly freeze to death when winter blasts across Poland like a liquid nitrogen cabbage fart.
For now, I live in an apartment two blocks from Krakow's thousand year-old Stare Miasto ("old city," in typically understated Polish) with two shimmering she-Britons in their early 20s. This has necessitated eliminating several personal quirks from my daily routine, such as walking around in the buff, ritualistically clogging the toilet every hour on the hour, and leaving half-empty glasses of milk sitting on windowsills for weeks at a time. By the end of my stay, I would like for my roommates to believe that America is a utopia of curly-headed mumblers who on Tuesdays and Thursdays wear t-shirts promoting bands that probably don't exist.
In the meanwhile, I have expanded my Polish vocabulary to include sixteen words, two of them profanities. This may not seem impressive considering that I've been in Krakow for nearly a week, but any linguist with an associates degree will tell you: Polish is not derived from Latin or Greek, but from the hissing and frothing of the dreaded Polish Baby-Eater, a baby-eating forest opossum whose centuries-long reign of baby eating and unprovoked pranking forced 13th century Poland - out of sheer terror - to adopt the beast's spitting cacophony as its official language.
On my fourth day here, I witnessed a massive anti-gay demonstration. Several hundred Christian soldiers turned out in the main square, marching and chanting "Krakow is not gay!" - "Man + woman = A true couple!" - "Men can't have babies!" - "Eliminate the deviants!" But even this must have gotten boring after a couple of hours, because many of the protesters skipped out early to pelt homosexuals with rocks. Long live Catholic Poland.
This weekend was Labor Day. Everyone in Poland will be drunk until Christmas. My roommate Sara and I were walking back from lunch when we were caught up in a potato farmer parade. A pair of gigantic black amplifiers two feet from our heads suddenly exploded with polka music thumping offbeats loud enough to knock Belarus into the Baltic Sea. Several men in straw hats darted past with wheelbarrows full of potatoes. A throng of boy scouts swirled around us, executing perfectly synchronized pirouettes. A herd of moped drivers sputtered about in listless figure eights. I will never understand those ten minutes of my life.
But for as bizarre as it is here in Poland, it is never hard for me to find some out-of-context American garbage that makes me want to seek exile in Kyrgyzstan. After class on Friday, my British mates and I were aching for a pint, so we walked across town to a joint called Rooster. Not long into the meal, it occurred to me that we had passed through a transatlantic wormhole and that we were eating at the Hooter's in Omaha. The waitresses were wearing lycra shorts and lycra tubetops and I'm pretty sure the burger I ate was made of lycra, too. Rusted out mufflers and American license plates hung from the woodgrain walls and if I weren't served a side dish of very oily cabbage ... if the TVs weren't playing Premier League matches ... if the name on my waitress's trampy dogtag weren't "Bożena" ... I swear I would have pulled my hair out and eaten it right there and then.
My friend Peter - in all respects a fine Welshman - remarked, "Ay, Keith. I really like the atmosphere in this place. Look at all those license plates on the walls!" I could see his enthusiasm was genuine. He'd never seen anything like this before. I nodded sadly and glanced down at the menu. Maybe I'd order a Bud Light.
For now, I live in an apartment two blocks from Krakow's thousand year-old Stare Miasto ("old city," in typically understated Polish) with two shimmering she-Britons in their early 20s. This has necessitated eliminating several personal quirks from my daily routine, such as walking around in the buff, ritualistically clogging the toilet every hour on the hour, and leaving half-empty glasses of milk sitting on windowsills for weeks at a time. By the end of my stay, I would like for my roommates to believe that America is a utopia of curly-headed mumblers who on Tuesdays and Thursdays wear t-shirts promoting bands that probably don't exist.
In the meanwhile, I have expanded my Polish vocabulary to include sixteen words, two of them profanities. This may not seem impressive considering that I've been in Krakow for nearly a week, but any linguist with an associates degree will tell you: Polish is not derived from Latin or Greek, but from the hissing and frothing of the dreaded Polish Baby-Eater, a baby-eating forest opossum whose centuries-long reign of baby eating and unprovoked pranking forced 13th century Poland - out of sheer terror - to adopt the beast's spitting cacophony as its official language.
On my fourth day here, I witnessed a massive anti-gay demonstration. Several hundred Christian soldiers turned out in the main square, marching and chanting "Krakow is not gay!" - "Man + woman = A true couple!" - "Men can't have babies!" - "Eliminate the deviants!" But even this must have gotten boring after a couple of hours, because many of the protesters skipped out early to pelt homosexuals with rocks. Long live Catholic Poland.
This weekend was Labor Day. Everyone in Poland will be drunk until Christmas. My roommate Sara and I were walking back from lunch when we were caught up in a potato farmer parade. A pair of gigantic black amplifiers two feet from our heads suddenly exploded with polka music thumping offbeats loud enough to knock Belarus into the Baltic Sea. Several men in straw hats darted past with wheelbarrows full of potatoes. A throng of boy scouts swirled around us, executing perfectly synchronized pirouettes. A herd of moped drivers sputtered about in listless figure eights. I will never understand those ten minutes of my life.
But for as bizarre as it is here in Poland, it is never hard for me to find some out-of-context American garbage that makes me want to seek exile in Kyrgyzstan. After class on Friday, my British mates and I were aching for a pint, so we walked across town to a joint called Rooster. Not long into the meal, it occurred to me that we had passed through a transatlantic wormhole and that we were eating at the Hooter's in Omaha. The waitresses were wearing lycra shorts and lycra tubetops and I'm pretty sure the burger I ate was made of lycra, too. Rusted out mufflers and American license plates hung from the woodgrain walls and if I weren't served a side dish of very oily cabbage ... if the TVs weren't playing Premier League matches ... if the name on my waitress's trampy dogtag weren't "Bożena" ... I swear I would have pulled my hair out and eaten it right there and then.
My friend Peter - in all respects a fine Welshman - remarked, "Ay, Keith. I really like the atmosphere in this place. Look at all those license plates on the walls!" I could see his enthusiasm was genuine. He'd never seen anything like this before. I nodded sadly and glanced down at the menu. Maybe I'd order a Bud Light.
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