The fact that you can work and work and work and have nothing. That losing your job can put you in dire straits, not only with your bills and bank but with your health care and your children’s health care. Not that it only happens in America, but that it shouldn’t happen in America of all places. At least that’s we think before we go.
The fact that health insurance is very expensive and not guaranteed.
The fact that your employer doesn’t have to give you vacation days.
The fact that people over a certain age can be found in all kinds of jobs, meaning that some jobs are not just reserved for the young.
The fact that there are plenty of poor people in America. That people go hungry. That one street away from the beautiful and modern city center is a street of burned out buildings with people sleeping on the street.
That people smile at you on the street.
That university is so expensive, but mortgages are cheap.
That you can wear jeans and sneakers to church.
That gasoline is so much cheaper, but everything is far away.
That food is so much cheaper and portions are so much bigger.
That people throw away perfectly good stuff and them buy new stuff.
That a person who has never been to Poland but has one Polish family member from three generations back thinks that he is Polish too and call Poland the “old country”.
That people will drive from one end of a strip mall to the other instead of just walking.
That doing business in America is like entering another mindset.Enjoy the articles. I think I will go to the new American diner in town to enjoy my Polish dream.
That nobody will steal your hubcaps and you can live a pretty calm life until the moment you get shot.
“Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him (Karski) that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale, and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself."Yes, he shouldn’t have said “Polish death camp”. It was a huge faux pas on the part of his speech writer. He has since apologized and corrected himself, I believe using the term Nazi death camp. Of course, it would have been a bigger faux pas if Merkel had said it rather than Obama. I think the acceptable term now (if there can be an acceptable term for something as awful as a death camp) is Nazi Germany death camp. Some other common (but not necessarily correct) references to the death camps in Poland that I have found via my intense googling are Polish camps, German camps, camps of Nazi Germany, Nazi camps. Obama is not the first and probably not the last to misspeak on this topic.
Apparently our homegrown celebrities are not sufficient for the city of Katowice and for the grand opening of the Silesia City Center.
Guru of hotness and not-ness, Paris Hilton, deemed Poland worthy of her catchphrase and declared Poland officially “hot”.
If only this priest knew what Ms. Hilton is so famous for.
That’s hot.
It’s 10 years since the 9/11 terrorist attack on the US.
10 years ago on September 11th, I was in the Village, at my in-laws’ to be more specific. It was a workday but Misiu and I were, at the time, apartment hunting and we needed some paperwork from “home” for the bank. I was eating in front of the TV when Tomasz Kammel came on to describe a scenario which sounded like a teaser for tonight’s movie of the week. Then he added the words –ladies and gentlemen, this is for real.
We watched in shock at the gaping, smoking hole in the side of the World Trade Center. It was early and we still had a sliver of hope that it was some kind of tragic pilot error. We went to the other room and turned on BBC. On BBC we learned that it was probably not an accident. Then we saw as the second plane hit and we knew it was not an accident.
My gut reaction was shock, of course, and I wanted to vomit. The reporters speculated about other planes and other attacks. I waited for them to announce tragedies in London, Paris, Berlin, perhaps. It couldn’t be an attack just on the US, could it? And by whom? The reporters continued to speculate.
Dinner was abandoned, needless to say, as we sat glued to the television. We learned of another plane at the Pentagon and another in Pennsylvania perhaps headed to the White House. I was worried that the plane was heading to the nuclear power plant (Three Mile Island) in PA, aware that the fallout would hit my hometown and my family. Not that I was happy that the plane crashed in a field killing all on board, but I was relieved that it didn’t reach its destination, White House or nuclear power plant or whatever it was.
My phone had been ringing and beeping for a while now, but I ignored it. We watched as the towers started to crumble. The ringing and beeping of my phone stopped. It started up again an hour or two later and continued into the next day. The missed calls, voicemail and text messages were from friends and students. One of the first text messages I opened read, “Kryśka, turn on the TV”. Another read, “Finish your lesson and turn on the TV!” The messages later in the afternoon and the next day were all of sympathy and support for America and for me. Why for me? At my in-laws’, I was probably the safest American on the planet, but for many people I was the only American person that they knew. I really appreciated those messages and I still do today.
When there were no new attacks, the reporters continued their speculation. The international phone lines were not working so I couldn’t talk to my parents. It also meant that my (Polish) brother-in-law and his son who were in NYC couldn’t reach us either. Fortunately, they were alright and managed to find their way home. We drove home and wondered what the next day would bring.
In all fairness to the idea of culture squashing, last weekend I decided to do my best to partake of other cultures besides mine.
First, we went to a City festival entitled “Europe on a Fork” where chefs were preparing dishes from different countries of Europe. I think that many of the chefs (if not all) were foreign. The whole shindig was too late for us though, starting after we had already been in the Market Square with the kids a few hours, so we went home without trying anything. Anyhow, there was a long, long line at the ticket cashier to buy tickets, but when we left the booth was still closed and the line was growing.
I also gave a fair shake to the other news outlets (I’m usually a slave to CNN International and TVN24). I checked out BBC World, the French news channel (where all the female newscasters look, well, with their messed up hair and sly grins, kind of, well, post-coital), the German news channel, AlJazeera, and the Russian news channel. I didn’t learn anything that I didn’t already know, but the change of pace was nice.
I couldn’t forget about the soaps, so I checked out the Korean international channel. People on Korean soaps look surprisingly European and like most soaps, the actors and actresses are super polished. The main plot line of the soap I was watching was that a young man’s girlfriend was thought inappropriate by his parents. The girlfriend apparently had not even graduated from high school and her parents were thought to be low class – an international problem with a Korean twist. However, I think soaps (Korean or otherwise) have to be taken with a grain of salt. I mean, how realistically does Klan portray real Polish life? And unfortunately, we are broadcasting (via satellite) all over the world our idea of sexy, the embodiment of which is…Rysiu ;)
I also checked out some foreign channels not in English. I paid most attention to the commercials just as I did when I started watching Polish TV before I knew Polish. I especially like Egyptian commercials for laundry detergent. Apparently, Egyptian women have the same problem as women the world over…how to clean their sloppy-eating husband’s shirts…or in this case - robes.
As far as music goes, I checked out the UK rock chart on MTV Rocks. I am pleased to say that I didn’t know even one song. So much for the culturally squashed music industry. Unfortunately, I am now addicted to MTV Rocks and have started to notice the similarities in the songs. The more I watch, the more the facade of cutting edge rock music crumbles.
My next plan is to watch the Russian travel channel in English if I can find it on my satellite of a thousand channels.
PS1 In my attempt to make my blog more accessible for the Polish- speaking audience, I (and when I say I, I mean Misiu) am in the process of translating the old posts. My goal is for all posts to exist in the original form in English followed by the Polish translation under the same post heading. It will take some time, so current posts will be few and far between for awhile. My apologies in advance.
PS2 Greetings to Monika and Design Patrol, two new followers of Kielbasa Stories. Welcome to you both. Thanks for joining us and thanks for reading.
PS3 Last but not least, greetings for Big Apple Ewa. It was so nice to see you today as it always is. I hope that some day we can meet in New York :)
A summary and discussion of the paper by Fernando Ferreira and Joel Waldfogel, called “Pop Internationalism: Has a Half Century of World Music Trade Displaced Local Culture?” can be found on the Freakonomics blog here.
This paper refers to the influence of a dominant economy’s culture on the domestic culture of less influential countries. The influence on the music industry was used to explore this phenomenon, examining purchasing and airplay of foreign music and the homogenous sounds of pop and rock music the world over.
As I come from the said dominant culture, I have enjoyed this phenomenon without really thinking about its possible detrimental effects. I can listen to “my” music on MTV and on the radio. Even the Polish hits are so similar to “my” music, I sometimes hardly notice that the lyrics are in Polish. A nice thing in Poland (and in Europe) is that I can hear hits from France, from Germany, from Italy, etc. all on our local radio station. Does it matter that I have no idea what they are saying? Not really.
Does it matter that many Polish people have no idea what the American hip hop stars are saying? Not really, but it does get under my skin that for 3 months straight I had to listen to the “dirty” version of Snoop Dog’s “P.I.M.P”. every morning on the local radio station on my way to work .
It is nice for me that when my teenage students get beyond annoying, I can just throw out a question like, “Who’s better? Jacob or Edward?” or “What’s up with Justin Bieber’s hair?” They know what I am talking about better than I do, actually, but I think it has something to do with age, not nationality ;)
I like it that I can watch “my” sitcoms and “my” hospital drama. I used to watch Polish soap operas to sharpen my Polish language skills and to try to get an insight into Polish culture, but since I have been able to watch “my” shows, I have stopped watching Polish shows. And as for Polish sitcoms, I never started to watch them. I just can’t get into them and honestly speaking they cannot compare to “my” sitcoms (even or maybe especially the ones that were copies such as Nania (The Nanny) and Hela w opałach (Grace Under Fire). They try to be so much like “my” sitcoms that they often end up as caricatures.
I definitely do not watch any shows like Dancing with the Stars or You Can Dance. I don’t watch the American versions either to be fair. OK, strike that, I did watch Dancing with the Stars once, when Anna Mucha was on. I couldn’t resist. Her bottom in hot pants is so mesmerizing :)
And hence the question emerges, without the influence of “my” culture, would domestic cultures create cultural products (music, television, films, etc.) which are stronger, more original and more representative of their own culture? I mean, if my students and friends could not access Dr House and Lost the day after a new episode appears in America, would Poland produce its own original shows, just as entertaining as anything available in America. My students say “no”. They say that Poland would produce the same shyte, and we would have to pretend that we liked it because their wouldn’t be any other choice.
What do you think?
PS What I like from Polish popular culture:
I love to watch old Polish cabarets, for example “Tey” from the PRL-era especially the skit explaining where poverty comes from (skąd pochodzi bieda). Sometimes on the radio they play cabarets from the 40’s and 50’s. Awesome!
I like to listen to Maryla Rodowicz’s songs from any era. She is a superstar.
One of my most favorite love songs of all times is “Nie mogę Ci wiele dać” (I can’t give you much) by Perfect. It’s corny but those lyrics bring a tear to my eyes every time.
Druga strona medalu with Jolanta Pieńkowska and Szkło kontaktowe are two of my favorite TV shows. Szkło kontaktowe (Contact Lenses) is a kind of political talk show with a sense of humor and Druga strona medalu (The other side of the coin) is an interview program where the host Jolanta Pieńkowska earnestly interviews her guests. I feel that she asks all the questions I want to ask and some I haven’t even thought of asking, not like some talk shows in America that are getting so superficial. It’s as if the interview comes in 2nd to being able to show your face on TV.
As for films, I really like Sex Misja and yes I get that they were poking fun at communism.
I could go on, but I’ll give it a rest. I mean it is a national holiday today. I should be resting.
A Village Weekend
Our house
A City Weekend
The Zoo
A picnic in the park
The mall
a little bit of America
the peaceful co-existence of America and Poland
the Polish corner - Krakowski Kredens and Wedel
Wishing you a summer full of nice weekends!
I have an American neighbor. Actually, he is Polish, but he lived in America for more than 20 years before he and his wife came back to Poland to retire. By looks alone, it is difficult to distinguish them from any other Polish retired couple... unless you look deeper…
I noticed them first by their American car. Not that the sight of an American car on our street is anything unusual as I am the owner of 2 American cars. I guess I wanted to see who was treading on my territory. Then I noticed their unmistakably American Christmas decorations visible from the street. As my investigation deepened, I noticed that their clothes were not exactly Polish. They are more similar to those my parents wear which is a bit different than the Polish retired folks style (think marchewki jeans and white sneakers, not that there is anything wrong with that). Finally, I knew something was up when I saw that the man picks up his dog’s poo, every time, without fail, even when no one is looking (Well, when he thinks no one is looking- I’m very discreet). They had to be American. Further observation was warranted.
For investigatory purposes, I was glad to have run into the whole family in the corner shop when their son was visiting. The shop is very small so I easily overheard their conversation. Their son asked, “Czy oni mają good pastries?” “Tak, kochanie,” his mom reassured him, “Oni mają.” Oni? Chyba my a nie oni. I got riled up for a moment thinking that they were questioning Polish pastries asking if “they” have good pastries wondering why obviously Polish people would say “they” and not “we”. Then I chilled out from conspiracy theory mode and figured they were probably talking about the shop as “they” not the whole darn country.
I had to talk it over with the flower shop owner who is no longer the flower shop owner as she has leased out her shop space to another establishment -but that is neither here nor there. She and her husband also lived for about 20 years in the US and during that time built a house here in Poland and bought their shop. But that was back when one dollar was 4+ zloty not the 2.9 zloty it is now. The flower shop owner and her husband with their unique blend of Polish and Long Island accents confirmed my suspicions that the new neighbors were in fact Polish-American. Investigation over.
The flower shop owners agreed that they themselves had come back just in time to cash in on their stay in the US. Many people who are doing it now are finding it more difficult financially than they originally expected. In addition to finding the move more costly than expected, some of the people coming back can be surprised by the Poland that they find now. Still many people in Poland are poor and cannot make ends meet but more and more “normal” people are coming into their own and can afford nice cars and homes and summer vacations in exotic locations without having to work abroad.
If I were one of those Polish people who went abroad to make a better life for myself and my family, I might be a little resentful of Poland’s success. The whole justification for my sacrifice abroad is that it couldn’t be achieved at home, right? I mean I’d be happy for my country and its people but still a little pissed off that I am not returning the rich “American” to the poor Poland. You can be happy and pissed off at the same time, can’t you?
Of course, I know some people who made the move fully aware of the changes which have occurred in Poland. I also know some Polish people aware of the changes have decided to stay in the US indefinitely or to stay in the US longer to save up more money. I also know some American people who live in Poland who act like it is deep PRL here, but that is another story.
I met up with our neighbor the other day at the corner shop. He entered with his Vote Obama winter hat on and inquired as to the price of Black Smirnoff. When he heard the price he said, “No way! Idę do Żabki.” Ahh, the free market at work.
PS About the dog poo - If you are Polish living in Poland and you pick up after your dog, please forgive my generalization, but you know it is true. To be fair, I decided to count how many individual poos I encountered on my way from the parking area to the company where I taught today. The rules- too be counted the poo had to be in my line of sight at a distance no more that 3 meters away. I counted 32 individual poos…and 2 empty bottles of Wiśniowka. Not bad.
I like to read the newspaper everyday, actually several if I can find the time, in Polish and in English. Spending a lot of time with two little kids, I need to keep in touch with the outside world for my own sanity. In Polish, I usually pick up Gazeta Wyborcza because it provides general news, and I like Thursday’s supplement Duży Format and Saturday’s magazine Wysokie Obcasy. You could say that I am regular reader. That said, I have never grabbed my copy, looked at the headline and thought oh my, I have to read that, until today (which was actually last week) with this headline: “Już nie kochamy Ameryki” (“We don’t love America anymore”). Why not, I ask, why not?
The article has data from a research study to back up the claims that, in fact, it is true (sniff, sniff).
The article:
http://wyborcza.pl/1,75248,7018159,Juz_nie_kochamy_Ameryki.html
The research institution:
The German Marshall Fund of the United States http://www.transatlantictrends.org/trends/
President Barak Obama is said to be more popular than former president George W. Bush was, but considering that W. was hugely unpopular that is not saying much, and the general fall in support of the US which started during the George W. era remains in effect today. I think that maybe the fact that Poland and Polish soldiers have supported the US in Iraq and Afghanistan and have died there while Polish citizens still need a visa to visit the US may also have something to do with our weakened relations. Misiu says that being treated as a second class citizen/poor relation is getting a bit irritating. According to this article, military participation in Iraq and Afghanistan has also increased pacifist views among Poles. What, WW1 and WW2 weren’t enough? The article also suggests that the difficult negotiations between Poland and the US concerning the US’s request to build an anti-missile defense system on Polish land may have contributed to the worsening relations and that generally Poles (I almost wrote we!) are losing faith in both the US and in NATO.
I am American and I have a healthy patriotic attitude. I am not fanatical, but I am proud. I remember as a school girl praying to God (it was Catholic school) to give our thanks that we had not been born French or German or Spanish. Seriously.We thought that it must be just plain awful not to be American. After saying the daily Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, at my school we added the phrases “God Bless America and keep it safe”. That is a nice sentiment but it was a kind of “screw you” to the rest of the world, just keep us safe. Ok it was the cold war time, and I think our teachers were a bit revved up. We also had to do a lot drills at school like the fire drill (close all the windows before exiting the classroom), severe storm drill (under your desk and hug your knees), and nuclear war drill (under your desk and hug your knees…they forgot to add, kiss your arse good-bye). My husband who was a Polish school boy at the same time felt proud to be Polish, but he was aware that there was something wrong with the system, that they weren’t free. His small protest was to listen to the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. They didn’t have fire drills or severe storm drill or even nuclear war drills. After the Chernobyl Nuclear Reactor meltdown, Misiu and all the kids of Poland were given Potassium iodide liquid to drink to protect their thyroids from the radiation and hopefully prevent thyroid cancer. Let’s pray that it worked.
If Poland has fallen out of love with America, that means that at one time Poland must have actually been in love with America, but why? Just because we think we are the best doesn’t mean that everyone else has to. Maybe it is because just about every Polish person has got a family member or members in America. According to wikipedia, there are about 10 million people in the US that identify themselves as Polish American, one of them being my father whose grandparents (my great-grandparents) came through Ellis Island in the early 20th century. Misiu says that it can be because America symbolized a true, free democracy when his country was not free. Maybe it was also the role of Ronald Reagan and his talks with Pope John Paul II (who was Polish) in helping to bring down communism in Poland. It can also be the idea of the American dream that through hard work you can achieve success because during PRL the best success was to be had by being clever not necessarily by working hard. Maybe it was because $20 was a whole months salary and when your wujek (uncle) from America sent you a ten-er you were a gość, a real somebody and you could go to Pewex (shop selling western goods paid for in western currency only) and buy yourself some jeans.
It can also be the soap opera view of America that we broadcast all over the world. Dynasty and other American soap operas were a window into an American life that for most American people did not exist. (Do you mud-wrestle your romantic rival in designer duds with humongous shoulder pads? You do? Oops, my mistake.) Polish soap operas also depict America as the promise land. A common plot thread is that you go to America for 6 months and come back mega rich and successful. Ok other plots have been that you go to America and get killed (quite possible) or that you go to America, get tricked into working in the porn industry and come back gay (difficult to blame that on America) and then later go to America a second time and become rich and successful and not gay anymore (hey, it could happen). Now I know why everyone is so disappointed to find out that my family’s life in America is less than soap-opera like. For example, my mother in her early 60’s has only 6 vacation days this year and my father at the height of his career had 2-weeks which means 10 days. They don't take exotic vacations around the world. They don't even come to Poland. My parents don’t know how we live, what are home looks like. They have never met our children, their grandchildren, because it is pretty difficult to do it in 6 days. The worst part is that they think that having basically no down-time is normal. You can gather that I disagree, but I’ll save that for another post.
I have felt the Polish love of America first hand. When I was teaching at high school in a small town, one nice young man from the town hunted me down to make me his own. It didn’t matter to him if I liked him or he liked me or that we could not communicate. The most important thing was that he had to have an American girlfriend. I declined even though he was cute and had a car. Come on, that was something back in the day. Misiu was only cute.
I felt the love, well, kind of, in the local government office when I was applying to renew my stay in Poland. I asked if my application would be accepted for sure. The reply, “You are American. Of course, it will be accepted. It’s not like you are Bulgarian and you came here to work at the bazaar.” If you are Bulgarian, I apologize on her behalf. At least she didn’t say brothel.
I also experienced it at the American Embassy of all places. After fighting my way in (One person waiting in line grabbed me and asked what right I had to go ahead of the line. I flashed my passport and said, “This gives me the right!” I know, it was stupid but I couldn’t resist.), I was surprised to find everyone speaking Russian to me. When the third person in the American Embassy started speaking Russian to me, I almost shouted, “Do I look Russian to you?” whatever it means to look Russian. Then I noticed a distinct lack of Polish or American people for that matter (in the waiting area). The American Embassy in Warsaw must have served part of Ukraine as well then. While waiting in line at the kasa (cashier) to pay for my husband’s immigrant visa, I observed the treatment of the Ukrainian people ahead of me. Shouts from the lady at the kasa, “Please do not ask me! Can’t you read? Kasa does not give information! Can’t you read? Only one at a time! Can’t you read? Stay behind the yellow line!” And then it was my turn. I was afraid. I stayed behind the yellow line. I approached the window alone and I didn’t ask for any information. What did I get? This, “Oh hello. Welcome to the American Embassy in Poland. Is this your first time in Poland, sunshine? (Yes, she really said sunshine. The other people were not Polish either but she didn’t ask them about their visit.) Are you adopting?” I answered, “Something like that. It’s for my husband.” The cashier replied, “Oh ho ho (fake laugh) here you are. Please take this card to window XYZ at 3:00 (this was the information asked for by the people before me) and have a nice day.” Come on, she had to say it - it was the American Embassy…which by the way has American toilet paper in the bathroom. That’s when I realized that that kind of love is just as arbitrary as hate. It is meaningless.
The American Consul official that we met with at the Embassy treated everyone politely and fairly. I did find it odd that she could speak neither Polish nor Russian and Misiu was perturbed by a neon-flashing error in English, her own language. I didn’t care about any of that. I was just waiting for her to stamp our papers which would allow my husband to become a US resident. I was especially worried because the Embassy had been sitting on our application for 2 years. That’s how we came to stay in Poland. We didn’t have a choice. When the official realized that the fault had been on the side of the Embassy, she immediately stamped everything and said to me with a beaming smile, “Now you can go to America!” There was no doubt that she was feeling the love for her country. I answered that I could always go to America because I am American but of course she meant that Misiu and I could finally go together. Next came the hard part. “What should we do if we don’t want to go?” I asked. Her face couldn’t hide her surprise and I’m sure that somewhere in her Embassy rented apartment she had a calendar with the days until she returned to America numbered in red. “Well, you kind of have to. The visa documents must be presented in person by the two of you,” she explained. So we did go to America a month or two later and then came back to Poland where we had jobs and a mortgage and everybody loved us (Did I go too far with that part?).
I also felt the love or maybe it was the sympathy on September 11th. I’ve never had so many phone calls in my life expressing concern and sympathy and asking if I am alright. Physically, I was alright. I was at my parents-in-law’s in a small town in Poland. I was probably the safest American girl on the planet that day. It was another story for my Polish brother-in-law and his son, my nephew (it’s weird to call him that ‘cause we are the same age) who were stranded in Manhattan and couldn’t figure out how to get home above ground. They usually hopped on the subway. (That’s why I like trams. I can see where I am going.) When the phone lines were finally opened, we tried to set them off (separately) in the right direction home among the crowd of people. Can you believe that they were able to find each other in that crowd of hundreds of thousands of people? If physically alright, mentally, I was not alright. While glued to the TV fighting off waves of nausea, I expected to see the next attack on London, then Paris, then Berlin. When I realized that it was an attack just on America, I was in greater disbelief. You see, despite my university education and travels, I was still very naive. Somewhere deep inside me, I believed that not only Poland loved America, but that everyone loved America. So now that Poland doesn’t love us anymore, who have we got left?
