Polandian

Nothing happening here, move along to Polandian – that’s where all the cool people are now.

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Architectural oddities of Krakow #1: Mind the Gap

I like to wander around Krakow looking at the buildings, street furniture, and general cultural brick-a-brack. It’s not uncommon to find me boring the pants off the lady A pointing at some obscure feature of Krakow’s architecture while gesticulating wildly and spouting some ridiculous theory. She generally rolls her eyes, quite rightly, and urges me [...]

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7-things-about-me meme

I’ve squirmed and vacillated about this one ever since Flowers on a Friday tagged me last week. I’ve never been the victim of a meme tagging before and, at first, I was apprehensive about the idea. I felt a little afraid and thought about calling the police in a plaintive tone of voice. There’s something [...]

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Fear of the Beatroot

This is kind of an ‘Elephant in the room’ issue. Anybody who blogs in English about Poland is aware of the Beatroot. He’s the Cory Doctorow of expat Polish blogging (astonished to note that ‘Cory Doctorow’ is accepted as a properly-spelled term by WordPress spelling software while ‘WordPress’ isn’t!)
Exactly what is his(?) secret. The guy [...]

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Save the Darth!

Some of you may or may not have received a slightly cryptic email from Darthsida last night. The fact that it was cryptic may not have surprised you (what else would we expect from Darthie), the fact that it essentially announced his imminent retirement certainly should have. The truth is that Darthsida is on the [...]

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Learn Polish on YouTube

I’m not big on resolutions. In fact the last resolution I made was a millennial resolution not to make any more New Year’s resolutions. I’m quite proud of the fact that I stuck to that one for seven years but, all good things must come to an end. I caught myself in the early hours [...]

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The English Wave

Nothing to do with a flood of my countrymen heading Poland-ward but the physical action of moving your hand about in such a way as to express greetings or goodbyes. English people do it a lot and Polish people seem to do it hardly at all. It’s another one of those very simple cultural differences, [...]

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The Thermometer Outside the Window

When I moved to my current flat in October I was shocked to note that I didn’t have a thermometer outside the window. For those of you unfamiliar with the whole ‘living in Poland’ thing, let me explain. According to a law going back to the 17th century all Polish domiciles are required to have [...]

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I Call a BlogMeet!

It’s a little known fact that every year the best bloggers in Poland meet at a discreet and swanky location in order to give awards to each other, drink excessive amounts of whisky, and generally have a great time. The reason this is a little known fact is that I just invented it. But on [...]

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Mild-mannered blogger in culture-shock-break-down horror!

No, I’m not trying to set the record for the greatest number of hyphens in a post title, I’m referring to a brain fever that seized me the other day as I was writing “Eleven things you always wanted to know about Polish people and weren’t in the least bit disinclined to ask.” I’m afraid [...]

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