Polish sausage renaissance
Foodies can now find increasing numbers of quality Polish sausage in supermarkets, butchers' shops and local stores. With prices two-and-half to three times higher than cheap sausages, the premium products are everything that a Polish sausage should be.
'Kielbasa' is often compromised by the inclusion of bone fragments (dangerous to the teeth!), gristle, too much fat, too much garlic, the last two resulting in horribly-repeating belches.
Last week in the village store in Zgorzala, just outside Warsaw's southern borders, I bought some 'Polska surowa' (Polish raw) sausage, at 21.50 PLN per kilo. Equally delicious raw or fried, the sausage consists of chucks of uncooked but smoked pork loin (similar in taste and consistency to Krotoszynska ham). No foul belching followed consumption.
Our local Auchan has started to carry a branded range of smoked meats, including an excellent kielbasa at 18.50 PLN per kilo, called 'W Kominku Wedzone' ('smoked in the chimney'). More like your traditional kielbasa, this one is well-smoked, good consistency meat, not too fatty or garlicy, no bone, cartlege or gristle.
Both sausages go down well with beer.
The premium kielbasa is available in the UK too, where 'Topolski' brand sausage is available in Selfridges for 25 quid a kilo. An excellent name - Dan Topolski, the legendary Oxford rowing coach, his father, famed artist Feliks Topolski - recognisable names to Britain's cultured classes, plus the conjunction of 'Top' and 'Polski'. Deserves to do well.
18 August, 2006
01 June, 2006
How NOT to write a CV - top tips for Poles
Back from Lublin, where UK firms were recruiting (more) Poles to work in the UK. So enamoured are British employers with the talents, work ethic and qualifications of Polish workers, it's easy to forget that for every one "Pawel the Plumber, Krystyna the Cardiologist or Anna the Architect", there's ten wannabees back home who just don't cut it.
Some of the most glaring errors made in CVs coming to light at the Lublin job fair include:
"Marital status: Slow" (a literal translation - 'wolny' = slow)
"Marital status: Cavalier" (a lazy translation - not bothering to consult a dictionary)
"Last employer: ___________ Company From About About"
(Literal translation of Spolka z o.o. !!!!)
"... little hair business" for "biznes wloski" (trusting too much in the powers of an on-line dictionary)
"Hobbies and Interests: Aj lajk tu bejk kejk" (handwritten CV put together phonetically, assisted by bilingual friend over the phone)
Still, most UK employers and employment agencies present at the fair were more than happy with the people they did recruit...
Back from Lublin, where UK firms were recruiting (more) Poles to work in the UK. So enamoured are British employers with the talents, work ethic and qualifications of Polish workers, it's easy to forget that for every one "Pawel the Plumber, Krystyna the Cardiologist or Anna the Architect", there's ten wannabees back home who just don't cut it.
Some of the most glaring errors made in CVs coming to light at the Lublin job fair include:
"Marital status: Slow" (a literal translation - 'wolny' = slow)
"Marital status: Cavalier" (a lazy translation - not bothering to consult a dictionary)
"Last employer: ___________ Company From About About"
(Literal translation of Spolka z o.o. !!!!)
"... little hair business" for "biznes wloski" (trusting too much in the powers of an on-line dictionary)
"Hobbies and Interests: Aj lajk tu bejk kejk" (handwritten CV put together phonetically, assisted by bilingual friend over the phone)
Still, most UK employers and employment agencies present at the fair were more than happy with the people they did recruit...
25 May, 2006
Having a tilt at Polishness
I'm genetically Polish, but born and educated in the UK, where I worked for 16 years. I've been in Poland since July 1997, and am keen to discover what aspects of Polishness are in the blood, and what aspects are the result of 45 years of communist uravnilovka. Observing my UK-born Polish friends who like me upped roots after Poland became free and comparing us to our age-group born in the PRL, I can differences and similarities.
Differences
We do not tolerate the rudeness, indifference and obstuctionism of public employees. Brought up in the ethos of an apolitical civil service who'd write letters to you signed 'Your Obedient Servant', we find dealing with Polish bureaucracy and its PRL-era mindset frustrating and painful.
Similarities
We take umbrage with similar ease; we are highly patriotic, we tend to keep close to the family.
I hope that with every year that passes between the end of communism and the present day, young Poles raised in a free market democracy will continue to push Poland towards normality in the negative respects, while Poland will continue to retain all its strong characteristics.
I'm genetically Polish, but born and educated in the UK, where I worked for 16 years. I've been in Poland since July 1997, and am keen to discover what aspects of Polishness are in the blood, and what aspects are the result of 45 years of communist uravnilovka. Observing my UK-born Polish friends who like me upped roots after Poland became free and comparing us to our age-group born in the PRL, I can differences and similarities.
Differences
We do not tolerate the rudeness, indifference and obstuctionism of public employees. Brought up in the ethos of an apolitical civil service who'd write letters to you signed 'Your Obedient Servant', we find dealing with Polish bureaucracy and its PRL-era mindset frustrating and painful.
Similarities
We take umbrage with similar ease; we are highly patriotic, we tend to keep close to the family.
I hope that with every year that passes between the end of communism and the present day, young Poles raised in a free market democracy will continue to push Poland towards normality in the negative respects, while Poland will continue to retain all its strong characteristics.
Polish State Railways and the high cost of social mistrust
Travelling by rail in England with my son recently, I marvelled at the contrast between the work of a ticket collector in Poland and the UK.
The British guard asked me courteously to see our tickets, and seeing that I had two, thanked me and moved on. He did not inspect them close up as they do in Poland. He did not ask to see any proof of my 10 year-old son's educational status or age.
His bosses work on the assumption that if someone's got a ticket, there's a 99% likelihood that the correct fare has been paid. The ticket inspection task is about revenue protection. The guard's after people travelling without a ticket.
In Poland... "Prosze o bilet!" A command rather than a request (though levels of courtesy at PKP's guards are rising). The ticket is inspected thoroughly. Any legitimacja is checked thoroughly. The legitimacja szkolna is a joke. When travelling with my son and I'm asked for his legitimacja my stock response is: "There is compulsory education in Poland ['obowiazek szkolny']. Parents who do not send their children to school are imprisoned. That I'm here and not behind bars implies that my son does go to school. So why the bit of paper to prove the obvious?
The upshot of over-checking tickets on PKP is that ticket inspectors do not focus on revenue protection. My line out of Warsaw, run by Koleje Mazowieckie, is an excellent example. At all the unmanned stations between Warszawa Zachodnia and Piaseczno, passengers are requested to board the train at the first compartment of the first carriage to buy their ticket. The guard writes tickets out manually. Our regular ticket - "One adult, two children, three bicycles, from Warszawa Dawidy to Czachowek Poludniowy, return, coming back today". The guard needs to check the number of kilometers between the two stations, check my children's legitimacje, work out the tariff (family discount, excursion discount), tot it all up and write out the ticket longhand. The ticket will cost something like 13.67 PLN, and he's always short of change, so he's fumbling through his pocket for tiny coins worth a fraction of a penny. By the time he's written the ticket, the train has passed two intermediate stations. From the back of the train, where they can travel safe in the knowledge that no guard will ever have time to control, dozens of people hop on and hop off, knowing there's very little chance they'll ever be asked to pay.
And revenues are lost, management thinks no one's using the trains, services are cut back to save money, trains are cut from eight carriages to four - because the most elemental thought process has not been carried out.
It's a social mistrust thing. Over-checking costs. Management distrusts its ticket inspectors, controllers control controllers, the cost of revenue protection must be out of all proportion to the revenues actually collected.
Have your tickets ready please - passengers at the rear of the train travel free.
(This train is the all stations to Skarzysko Kamienna from Warsaw, pictured between Warszawa Dawidy and Warszawa Jeziorki, 19 March 2006.)
Travelling by rail in England with my son recently, I marvelled at the contrast between the work of a ticket collector in Poland and the UK.
The British guard asked me courteously to see our tickets, and seeing that I had two, thanked me and moved on. He did not inspect them close up as they do in Poland. He did not ask to see any proof of my 10 year-old son's educational status or age.
His bosses work on the assumption that if someone's got a ticket, there's a 99% likelihood that the correct fare has been paid. The ticket inspection task is about revenue protection. The guard's after people travelling without a ticket.
In Poland... "Prosze o bilet!" A command rather than a request (though levels of courtesy at PKP's guards are rising). The ticket is inspected thoroughly. Any legitimacja is checked thoroughly. The legitimacja szkolna is a joke. When travelling with my son and I'm asked for his legitimacja my stock response is: "There is compulsory education in Poland ['obowiazek szkolny']. Parents who do not send their children to school are imprisoned. That I'm here and not behind bars implies that my son does go to school. So why the bit of paper to prove the obvious?
The upshot of over-checking tickets on PKP is that ticket inspectors do not focus on revenue protection. My line out of Warsaw, run by Koleje Mazowieckie, is an excellent example. At all the unmanned stations between Warszawa Zachodnia and Piaseczno, passengers are requested to board the train at the first compartment of the first carriage to buy their ticket. The guard writes tickets out manually. Our regular ticket - "One adult, two children, three bicycles, from Warszawa Dawidy to Czachowek Poludniowy, return, coming back today". The guard needs to check the number of kilometers between the two stations, check my children's legitimacje, work out the tariff (family discount, excursion discount), tot it all up and write out the ticket longhand. The ticket will cost something like 13.67 PLN, and he's always short of change, so he's fumbling through his pocket for tiny coins worth a fraction of a penny. By the time he's written the ticket, the train has passed two intermediate stations. From the back of the train, where they can travel safe in the knowledge that no guard will ever have time to control, dozens of people hop on and hop off, knowing there's very little chance they'll ever be asked to pay.
And revenues are lost, management thinks no one's using the trains, services are cut back to save money, trains are cut from eight carriages to four - because the most elemental thought process has not been carried out.
It's a social mistrust thing. Over-checking costs. Management distrusts its ticket inspectors, controllers control controllers, the cost of revenue protection must be out of all proportion to the revenues actually collected.
Have your tickets ready please - passengers at the rear of the train travel free.
(This train is the all stations to Skarzysko Kamienna from Warsaw, pictured between Warszawa Dawidy and Warszawa Jeziorki, 19 March 2006.)
Like a German in Alte Breslau
My first visit to Lwów/L'viv/Lvov/Lemberg was a deeply emotional affair. Since childhood Saturday mornings at Polish school in west London, 40 years ago, where we learnt of this city, torn away from Poland by the Yalta betrayal, Lwów has had a powerful hold on my imagination.
In the post-war Polish emigre communities in the UK, Lwów was everywhere. The stained-glass windows of Polish churches in Chiswick and Manchester with the crest of Lwów 'Semper Fidelis', the Koło Lwowian - the association of old Poles from Lwów that many of my parents' friends belonged to - my scout cub troop, named Orlęta Lwowskie (Lwów eaglets) for the children that took part in the fighting for a Polish Lwow in 1920, Lwów was as Polish as kiełbasa, bigos, krakowiak and polonez.
Communist Poland had a different shape to the pre-war maps adorning the living room walls of patriotic Poles living in West London. One day, Poland would be free. Would it revert to it's pre-war shape? Every Sunday, at the end of Mass we sang "Boże Coś Polske" in our churches: the last line - which still brings goose-pimples when I think about it - "Ojczyznę wolna, rać nam wrócić Panie." It occurred to me that so many people - praying so intently, for so long, for something to happen - it would happen. Even though in the darkest days it looked like the Evil Empire was there to stay and Poland's chances for independence were negligible.
But what about the borders of a free Poland? In the 1980s, opinions differed. I had a heated argument with Ryszard Czarnecki, today a leading light in the populist Samoobrona party, in the pub garden of the Haven Arms in Ealing Broadway in 1987. He called me a 'sprzedawczyk' (sell-out artist) for suggesting that a free Poland should not include a Lwów and a Wilno, but should retain the post-1945 borders. I argued that any claims that Poland might have for these two cities would be mirrored by German claims for Breslau, Stettin, Allenstein, Kolberg etc. And while Poland today is smaller than it was in 1939 by more than the size of Belgium and Denmark combined, it is now central rather than eastern Europe, ethnically homogenous and more industrial.
Visiting Lwów does leave me with an ambivalent feeling though. The saying that 'every cobblestone in Lwow is steeped in Polish history' rings true. The streets, cathedrals, churches, pre-war, pre-Partition Polish buildings, make the city feel every bit as Polish as Kraków. And it's larger than Kraków. While the Piast dynasty's Poland did not originally include Lwów, the city had been Polish for the best part of half a millennium. As I walked the pavements my forebears walked, I felt just like a German must feel in the Stary Rynek of Wrocław.
The sights are a marvel. There's a certain old house, where the drainpipes on one side feed rainwater into the Baltic while the drainpipes on the other feed rainwater into the Black Sea. The old cemetary chapel with its polychromed bas-reliefs. The Armenian cathedral. The dilapadated factories on the edge of the cities.
But ultimately, Lwów must stay Ukrainian. Poland needs good neighbours to the east. A strong, free and friendly Ukraine is crucial if Russia - which has had its fair share of leaders with bisyllabic names ending in '-in' - is not to threaten Poland's raison d'etat.
And while Poles will continue feeling strong sentiment for Lwów, the countryside around had never really been 'Polish'. It looks and feels different. Huge post-collective farm prairies rather than the narrow strips of Polish villages. Even before the deportations, ethnic cleansing and further deportations, the proportion of ethnic Poles living in the countryside around Lwow was low. My mother's childhood memories square with this.
Is this 1945? No, 2006. The old market square, L'viv.
My first visit to Lwów/L'viv/Lvov/Lemberg was a deeply emotional affair. Since childhood Saturday mornings at Polish school in west London, 40 years ago, where we learnt of this city, torn away from Poland by the Yalta betrayal, Lwów has had a powerful hold on my imagination.
In the post-war Polish emigre communities in the UK, Lwów was everywhere. The stained-glass windows of Polish churches in Chiswick and Manchester with the crest of Lwów 'Semper Fidelis', the Koło Lwowian - the association of old Poles from Lwów that many of my parents' friends belonged to - my scout cub troop, named Orlęta Lwowskie (Lwów eaglets) for the children that took part in the fighting for a Polish Lwow in 1920, Lwów was as Polish as kiełbasa, bigos, krakowiak and polonez.
Communist Poland had a different shape to the pre-war maps adorning the living room walls of patriotic Poles living in West London. One day, Poland would be free. Would it revert to it's pre-war shape? Every Sunday, at the end of Mass we sang "Boże Coś Polske" in our churches: the last line - which still brings goose-pimples when I think about it - "Ojczyznę wolna, rać nam wrócić Panie." It occurred to me that so many people - praying so intently, for so long, for something to happen - it would happen. Even though in the darkest days it looked like the Evil Empire was there to stay and Poland's chances for independence were negligible.
But what about the borders of a free Poland? In the 1980s, opinions differed. I had a heated argument with Ryszard Czarnecki, today a leading light in the populist Samoobrona party, in the pub garden of the Haven Arms in Ealing Broadway in 1987. He called me a 'sprzedawczyk' (sell-out artist) for suggesting that a free Poland should not include a Lwów and a Wilno, but should retain the post-1945 borders. I argued that any claims that Poland might have for these two cities would be mirrored by German claims for Breslau, Stettin, Allenstein, Kolberg etc. And while Poland today is smaller than it was in 1939 by more than the size of Belgium and Denmark combined, it is now central rather than eastern Europe, ethnically homogenous and more industrial.
Visiting Lwów does leave me with an ambivalent feeling though. The saying that 'every cobblestone in Lwow is steeped in Polish history' rings true. The streets, cathedrals, churches, pre-war, pre-Partition Polish buildings, make the city feel every bit as Polish as Kraków. And it's larger than Kraków. While the Piast dynasty's Poland did not originally include Lwów, the city had been Polish for the best part of half a millennium. As I walked the pavements my forebears walked, I felt just like a German must feel in the Stary Rynek of Wrocław.
The sights are a marvel. There's a certain old house, where the drainpipes on one side feed rainwater into the Baltic while the drainpipes on the other feed rainwater into the Black Sea. The old cemetary chapel with its polychromed bas-reliefs. The Armenian cathedral. The dilapadated factories on the edge of the cities.
But ultimately, Lwów must stay Ukrainian. Poland needs good neighbours to the east. A strong, free and friendly Ukraine is crucial if Russia - which has had its fair share of leaders with bisyllabic names ending in '-in' - is not to threaten Poland's raison d'etat.
And while Poles will continue feeling strong sentiment for Lwów, the countryside around had never really been 'Polish'. It looks and feels different. Huge post-collective farm prairies rather than the narrow strips of Polish villages. Even before the deportations, ethnic cleansing and further deportations, the proportion of ethnic Poles living in the countryside around Lwow was low. My mother's childhood memories square with this.
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Is this 1945? No, 2006. The old market square, L'viv.
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