A domofon is what an English-speaker would call an entry phone. Domofons are ubiquitous in Polish towns and cities where almost everyone lives in apartment buildings of one kind or another. I’ve had a domofon in every place I’ve ever lived in Poland. On the face of it they are handy devices that allow people outside the building to let people inside the building know they want to come in. In fact they are instruments of the devil.
For British readers who are unfamiliar with the concept (few people in the UK have them) it works like this. On the external wall of the building, by the main door, there is a bank of buttons. Each button is labeled with the number of one of the apartments in the building and the name of its occupant. At least that’s the theory. In practice most of the people on these labels have been dead for 30 years, or have emigrated to Australia, or are serving long prison sentences. According to the label on my domofon button I am Joanna Kowalska; no idea who she is but I’m fairly sure she’s not living here with me.
Domofon entry buttons. Not the world’s most accurate source of information.
By pressing the button you cause a telephone-like handset in the relevant person’s apartment to ring. I say ‘ring’ when in fact it’s usually more of a heart-stopping shriek. When that person has recovered their composure sufficiently to climb down from the table they can answer the handset, ask who’s there and press a button to let them into the building, or not. A friend of mine who’s a Police officer usually shouts “OPEN THE DOOR, IT’S THE POLICE” which he thinks is hysterically funny. He may be right.
A typical domofon handset. Instrument of the horned one.
British cities are very unlike most cities in Europe in that we don’t tend to live in communal buildings. There is a very different concept of public space in an apartment building. When I open the door to my apartment there could be anyone outside on the staircase and there are all kinds of nefarious reasons why they might want to be there ranging from burglary to leaflet posting, the latter being by far the most common and heinous. If I didn’t make a weekly effort to clear the pizza delivery leaflets that arrive hourly I would have been smothered to death long ago. The trouble with the whole apartment-building-domofon concept is that there are all sorts of people who want to get into your building and the easiest way for them to do that is to ring every damned domofon in the place in the hope that somebody will press the ‘enter’ button without bothering to see who’s there first. My domofon rings (read ’shrieks’) at all hours of the day and night. About one time out of a thousand it’s somebody I actually know. And no, there is no way to turn it off or down short of ripping it out of the wall. And yes I have been tempted to do that very thing on numerous occasions.
The chief culprits are as follows:
The pizza people
As I’ve mentioned, pizza delivery offers settle on my doormat in exactly the same way that January snow didn’t this year. They get into the building by pressing all the buttons and waiting for some sucker to hit the enter button. And while we’re on the subject why does every restaurant in Krakow serve Italian food? I’m sick of pizza and pasta.
The lazy button-presser
Hoody-wearing teens coming home to the parental nest habitually jab at the domofon buttons with fists or open palms causing them to press seven or eight buttons around the one they are actually aiming at. This is constantly and intensely annoying.
Drunken Brits
Brits who aren’t used to the domofon thing find it hugely amusing to press buttons at random in the middle of the night and then stand around guffawing when some rudely-awakened pensioner answers. I tell them to consider the opportunities for love-making with the self, but I know it does no good.
The potato man
Some oddball tries to sell me potatoes over the domofon at least once a week. I have no idea who he is and I have never bought any of his rotten skanky potatoes, but this doesn’t stop him asking me at some ungodly hour of the morning week-in and week-out.
Everybody else
It seems that pretty much everyone in Krakow has had a go at ringing my domofon at one time or another. Go away! I’m not letting you in! I’m letting no one in I tell you! I’m considering installing a boiling oil cauldron on my windowsill.
i agree they are bloody horrible. i make it a rule never to answer mine. in fact, i never answer my door either….not unless someone calls me first on my mobile.
the reason for this is that it’s usually a jehovah’s witness. for some reason there are troops of them operating in my area. they always bring an old lady with them so no one will be too rude.
i wish i could be rude sometimes.
Ah, domofons. Are domofons really that rare in Britain? They seem to be quite ubiquitous in Ireland, especially in the apartment buildings… Anyways: in Wroclaw we do not answer the domofon if it rings only once or if we do not wait for the pizza delivery; if there is someone who really wants to visit us, he/she will ring again or use the cell phone. The primary users of the domofon include the usual assortment of leafleet people, ‘epraaa-szam, oooomył-ka’, ‘Panie powróżyć’, some more-or-less traditional beggars and one mysterious guy announcing ‘jaja z Wróblowic’.
Flowers On A Friday: you can always try to scare them a little; e.g. pretend to be a satanist (‘I’m terribly sorry, but I’m a satanist’) or a member of the first reformed druidic church (reformed, i.e. since last annual congress not performing any human sacrifices). A factual but concise lecture on translation errors, especially using the original Hebrew terminology, mentioning correct translation along with the incorrect one used by J.W. could be quite successful too, as I’ve heard.
On the other hand, J.W. are quite harmless. You could be harassed by scientologists.
My place, I don’t have either a domofon or any doorbell, or doorknocker. In fact, my snail mailbox is a few weeks old. But people come and go regardless. Metal waste collectors, recently. Pizza delivery people. (There are three houses with the same number, which calls for a comedy of errors.) And stray cats. Or neighbour dogs. JW’s came once and are long forgotten. (“I’m a satanist” thing worked, only changed to “I was a satanist”. It confused them even more. The thing does not work on some American preaching nicely-dressed young men I ocassionally meet downtown.)
Pizzas.
Pizza being one of the two things I could eat day after day, I(‘d) have other feelings: anger that delivery people whet my appetite in vain and envying my neighbour their taste.
Leaflets.
So is it as dumb in the UK as it’s in Poland? I’d rather think no one should flood more leaflets over your threshold seeing your not having collected the previous wave. They should not pay them leafleters by the quantity, but by some item-hour-efficiency. On the other hand, I used to envy men complaining (?) about escort agencies’ or massage parlours’ ads stuck in various parts of their parked cars. I never got one. Had to go to London to see ads of some Polish Blonde Blomb (among other nationalles, in a phone booth).
Lucky enough not to have this problem as we’ve got security who keep away all of the potato sellers and only let pizza guys in that you really have ordered for your apartment.
We weren’t looking for security, I don’t think it’s needed (aside from cutting down domofon activity) but it just happened to be part of the place we wanted to live.
Just in case you thought I was a scaredy-cat foreigner or something!
fresh potatoes, anyone ?
Suprise, surprise – I do like my domofon, perhaps because I live in a detached house and, for a number of reasons, I tend to keep the main door open most of the time (please, do not ask me what my address is). That domofon of mine is the only protection I have against unexpected / unwelcome visitors.
The ziemniaki people use it very rarely; they prefer to shout “ziemniooooki” at the top of their voice so that everybody hears them.
I sometimes take a bunch of leaflets from the leaflet people and put it straight in my “makulatura” (waste paper) box which I later take to the nearby paper bank /container. It saves them the bother (and I can be sure that the paper is not thrown away)
Jehova witnesses are an infrequent sight; perhaps because in the past, on a number of occasions, I sent them straight to my neghbour who is a talkative religious fanatic of a harmless kind. I used to see them leave her house after 2-3 hours and they were on their last legs. They do not like our little street any more.
Twice a year we also get … manure people. They sell manure, compost and – unfortunately – peat. I am looking forward to buying another dozen of manure bags this spring.
The beggars and metal collectors here are very polite and never enter the property when I open the gate by mistake. They wait patiently by the gate, which I appreciate. I never give them money but, occasionally, I provide them with what they seem to like most. I do not feel guilty about it because I am sure they would drink anything with some alcohol content so giving them a bottle of some sweet liqueur (likier) is not such a sin after all.
J.
ROTFL, this post is Jamie at his best:))
Maybe I’ll join you lot and share my domofon experiences.
There was a time long ago, where there were absolutely no domofons, no pizza leaflets, and only Jehova’s witnesses. In those days, were I was a kid – getting other kids to play outside was a major task. one had to climb miles of stairs to get all their friends out. This was no longer an issue when spółdzielnia installed the domofon. Therefore everyone was naturally quite pleased.
Then came the times when we moved to a detached house. We didn’t have a domofon there but something like a gate-bell. Someone pressed a button at the gate, and a nice ding-dong travelled through radio frquencies to be heard in the house. One look out the window and we instantly knew whether we want to let them in or not. The downside was, that there was nothing to press to open the gate. Someone had to acutually walk (1500 m) and open it – or it could alternatively remain open at all times (which wasn’t an option for us, since when we were at the backyard someone might welcome themselves into the house – not a thing we were particularly keen on).
Six years passed, I’m the centre again in another apartment building. But this time – listen everybody – I can actually see the entrance through my kitchen window. What a blessing! Whenever domofon rings, I go and see whether it’s someone I know, someone I need to let in, or someone rude who didn’t bother to telephone before coming. But I do let the pizza people in. I need to keep up with telepizza;)) I totally love their ‘biesiada serowa’.
As far as religion people are concerned, there is another kind of them that tends to send shiver down people’s (those living in apartments) spine: priests visiting every January for ‘kolęda’. It’s a traditional thing when priest comes to your house to ask about your private life, sing a carrol and take money for it. I never got to have them in my place (as neither my parents are religious, nor am I), first time I saw kolęda when I went to see friends in akademik (dormitory). These were gay friends, two guys living there together as a couple, one of whom is a conservative devout Catholic. They did receive the priest, who was actually nice and fun, and thankfully didn’t sing.
But I’m getting away from the subject. All people with domofon – get your landlord or spółdzielnia do install videofon!
I got me an idea:
Let’s make Domofon using this technology. Alternat[iv]ely, we could adjust individual domofon buttons to ages of respective dwellers’ hearing.
Patent impending?
=> Paweł
So, would what you’re saying be: “shrinks are priest who don’t sing carols”? Btw, Island — or anynativeone — you could write a post about how UK people deal with stress professionally (whisky treats excluded): is the instituiton of shrink in demand and supply like it’s in Woody Allen’s movies? I’d guess the Polish way had to be cheaper: maybe that’s where the local idea of some everyday general complaining came from.
[Sorry, just a by-thought.]
Kolęda is also something to write about.
This year the kolęda people (the priest and two altar boys) announced themselves by putting a piece of paper in the letter box on the evening before. In effect, nobody knew they were coming. The next morning I saw them leave the house a few numbers away and warned my father just in time. I was determined not to welcome them and it is actually very easy when you have the domofon and see the gate as well (I never meet the priest because of my long-term, well, yhm, yyy, common-law marriage which I do not intend to discuss with the holy man) but my father insisted on letting them in. And so they came.
They spent circa 7 minutes together, then the priest and the boys took the money and left.
J.
Nobody rings my domofon. Except the Jehovah’s witnesses who tried to persuade me that they were setting up an English-speaking club for foreigners when I first arrived (how did they Know? I’ve always lived with Polish flatmates).
And one very late set of carol singers who lost a bet in January.
And the two guys I went to uni with who were on holiday in the Tatras while on leave from the army, found my address on facebook, and showed up at my door one Saturday morning.
Actually it’s kind of comforting that the British army can find its way around a Polish city with only facebook to help…
Funny really making it such a ‘cultural’ thing. Let’s remember the fact that English people defend their garden fence like nobody’s business. Same process, different object.
I seam to remember some earlier post about the deplorable state of repair in your apartment… so I am curious that this annoying little box is still working after all these decades… though the people maybe long dead or moved to the UK… the soviet era wires still keep on listening??
may you find a restful night without the pizza guy buzzing…