A historian on Poles and Jews
British Police
Gotta love’em.
Someone told me the following story: some Polish people drove to the UK through the Chunnel by car. The cars were Polish as well. They came across their first roundabout in Britain, and went the wrong way around… just to see a police car. They got stopped, thought that this must be the end of the trip for them, they would spend the next ten years down for driving the wrong way on the roundabout. Not so.
Coppers have actually gone into the car, shown them how to drive on the roundabout the proper way, and let them out without any fines.
The kids are still in shock.
But – there has to be the other side of the story. It seems that the society holds the fuzz in awe – tonight for example, driving downhill, I thought that the incoming car had their lights too far up and shining in my eyes – so I signalled with the long lights.
No reaction.
Instead, the driver in front of me became exceedingly law-abiding. He/She even took to using the indicator lights! Amazing! The puzzle got solved quickly – I obviously wasn’t looking at cars around me, but my boyfriends was, and he says that the car I signalled to was a Police car.
Hehe.
OK, one polite English driver got persuaded to use the damn indicators. All is well.
Good night!
Kale – jarmuż
I was reluctant for a while to try this funny looking vegetable, but today I’ve finally given it a chance. I’ve stir-fried it and served with lamb chops, fried potatoes and followed with a chocolate pudding and a red. The pudding was cheated.
I loved it, the feeling of coolness in the stomach, the aroma – much gentler than coulifliower! And then I asked Uncle Google what was it – and it said: jarmuż…
How come I’ve never eaten it in Poland?
Thoughts on Anglican Church
I’m driving two hours every day, and I listen to the radio during that time. Yesterday I chanced upon a Bach organ concerto, which proved to be a part of Anglican Evensong service. I became really interested, can I spot any differences in an English-speaking service, being a Catholic (if a really bad one)? I knew that the Anglican Church is the official State Church of the UK, I knew that it has split off the Catholic Church in an attempt to make divorce available to King Henry VIII, and that Anglicans say that there isn’t much difference, that they consider their Church more Catholic than Protestant.
I went to see the Birmingham Cathedral once, but I felt heavily stared at and run off – I must have looked particularly Polish Catholic that day. The Church inside was much smaller than expected and a little like a theatre.
In the service on the radio, of which I only caught the last 20 minutes, there was mostly music and some prayers. What struck me was what kind of message the prayers have set out – may the music of this place lighten our lives, for example.
It looks from this small sample that the Anglican Church is much more concentrated on the congregation and their lives than on the afterlife and how we are in relationship to God. More like, how God is in relationship to people.
That might me the explanation of why the UK belongs to the rich countries along with the Protestant ones – this concentration on the material world.
I would have expected the service to be about how we are creatures and children of our Creator, both objects and subjects (hopefully) of HIS Majesty. But the Anglican Communion seems to want consolation more than anything else.
It must of course come from all the hardships though the centuries, the wars, the famines etc. It seems that the C of E responds to those needs very well, and now that the UK has made money on banking systems in London, it is gradually being abandoned.
There is even some talk of certain individuals returning to the Roman confession, but I am not sure do they realise just how nagging the little difference is. They would no longer be important.
I have to love England
Three times in a row they’ve refused to sell me alcohol on the grounds that I don’t look 25 :] I always thank them profoundly for the beautiful compliment 
Our very own red brick house
Pretty, isn’t it?
The Americanized Hussar
Jacek Komudawrote another of his many pseudo-szlachta-world books. This time about the Dymitriads. It’s a pain to read for me, because it’s really a cowboy shooting book stylized for the 1st Republic of Both Nations. All it’s about are pub fights and duels, all ornamented with boorish, rude, show-off conversations among young rascals – no noble behaviour, no old Polish culture, no particular manners. Nothing.
We are indeed a society cut off of its culture. First, after the War we’ve awoken in a Modern Dream, the communist world with women running tractors, and now we are living in a shoddy version of American dream.
Shame.
How I learned to give alms
In my Mom’s opinion alms give to people on the street are not a smart thing. Those people are reported to make more on begging in a monthly income than an average person. And they will buy alcohol anyway. And if one wants to give them all something, the purse is empty before one reaches the end of the street.
The biggest argument when I lived with my parents was that it’s them who gave me money, so I am not to pass it on to strangers, but spend it on whatever I need.
But – alms-giving is a duty. That’s from my religious ponderings. It’s not my business of the other person will use the money well, it’s my business to do my duty, to share.
And I can still have sometimes this hard time about sharing some change with others – then the way of dealing with myself is to imagine that it’s my guardian angel coming to see if I will share with him, like he shares his help with me.
Dworek – the country house
The Polish wikipedia entry about dworek does not have an English version. Dworek usually is a one-two storey country house of a well-to-do family, and huge part of our culture. In our imagination it sill looks like that:
but in most cases they now look like that:
The wiki entry states: Aktualnie oblicza się, że ok. 80% dworków jest w całkowitej ruinie. Reprywatyzacji nigdy nie wykonano. – Presently, it’s estimated that 80% of country houses are in total ruin. Re-privatisation has never been done.
It makes my blood boil.
Dworek and horses were the basics of our culture and society. Sadly – they no longer are. The last War has ruined us financially, and the Soviet colonisation had finished us off. Still, there is so much leftover beauty hidden behind the apartment blocks, but the faulty legal system gets in the way of sporting it. All of those dworki should be enlisted as national heritage in my opinion, and returned to owners – just like the Jews demand their property back, so should we.
Of course, everyone knows what is the cause of the nationalization. The Jalta system was harmful in so many ways that it’s hard to begin calculating what are the ‘lost revenues’. But if one wants to be honest, the Soviets and Communists and Socialists HAVE actually built some factories and apartments, not just robbed us. It was all an invaluable investment after the war, it provided earnings and accommodations. But despite those investments, I think we all can agree that the nationalisation had bought people more harm than good.
When the Soviet system had crumbled, once more we were left bankrupt. The war for resources ensued again: last time the Soviets were stealing and nationalizing, this time the West were doing ‘enemy take-overs’, like with the case of Siemens taking over Elwro, through making us believe that ‘nothing ever is payable’, and using PR to shut down our economy. ‘Polish is backwards, buy Western’.
The country had started from scratch, once more.
But nothing was perfect in this start – we are still burdened by the judiciary system put in place in Soviet times, our Universities had not had the good grace to reform themselves at all, and the Left is back in power with their spending habits.
And still the old lady somehow survives. I’m very proud of her.
What we need right now is a reform of Courts of Law, and a very thorough one. I would like my dworek back.
