I don’t usual lie. If I’m late because of traffic, I’ll say it. If I’m late because I took too long in the bathroom, I’ll say it too. I wouldn’t lie just for the heck of it but…
What should you do when the new IT specialists from India (who haven’t signed their contracts yet and are looking to do a runner back to India) ask about the weather in Poland?
You lie.
You stand in front of the big, glass windows in the conference room overlooking a –5° C day with snow that hasn’t stopped falling for 3 days and you lie.
Lie!
What? This weather? Highly unusual for this part of Poland. This is the warmest part of the country (the only truth in my sea of lies). Just ask anybody (but not Mr. Leszek who is just dying to tell you that it is supposed to drop to –11°C at night) . It’s due to warm up next week or the week after that. Really. Don’t worry about it. This is the worst it’ll get this winter. Spring’s right around the corner…
I know, liar, liar, pants on fire.
But you know what happened? It warmed up! Lo and behold a warm front has moved in to melt all the snow…just in time for my kids’ winter break. Considering the great winter-break thaw, maybe I’m not a liar. Maybe I’m a prophet. There was a rainbow (A RAINBOW!) outside my window during my last lesson today for goodness’ sake. Ok, so maybe I’m not a prophet. Maybe I’d just reached my karmic quota of lies told and the universe decided to give me a break.
Anyhow, if it is any consolation (for my deceitful ways) not one but two of my university spring breaks were snowed out. I mean real, live, bona fide blizzards. I managed to dig myself out just in time to go back to school.
Now, in honor of truth-telling, I feel I must tell you that I am going to pour myself a glass of red wine even though it isn’t even 3:00 pm. And in honor of truth telling, I can tell you that that wine was brewed in the bathroom of my student’s penthouse apartment in a very, exclusive neighborhood. And in honor of all the truth-telling, I can tell you that I had planned to cook bigos and use the wine for the bigos but considering, quite honestly, that I haven’t bought even a single ingredient for the bigos and you can’t even really eat the bigos the first day, I am just going to drink the wine. All of it.
Bottoms up to me on this cold, wintery day. Damn it! On this warm, wintery day.
4 comments:
Sorry to be so blunt but it's apparent that you're not Polish. We Poles just adore describing harsh winters to all those from India and similar places so that they can s...t their pants imagining minus 25 Celsius. :P
You can be sure Fiona, that if they'd signed their contracts already, we would have had a good old time scaring the s..t out of them ;)
Next month, I plan to tell them how the water pipes froze in my house 3 years in a row and that we had ice on the windows inside the house.
It is very easy to get used to the warm climate - we had a day when the weather dropped into high 50's and when I had to go outside, I had gloves, winter coat and a hat! Fortunately it was just one day like that, today it is full sun and mid 80's ;) Enjoy your winter!
Marek - I could definitely get used to that. Today was one of those days that fool you. The sky was blue and the sun was shining but it was cold and windy - but still better than cold and snowy, in my opinion. One of my husband's students went to college in Moscow. When the weather warmed up from -40 to -20, he said it was like summer vacation for them ;)
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