In the year of boiled potatoes...

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You know Internet, I’ve always harbored a miasmic stew of resentment, annoyance and, most of all, seething jealousy for real bloggers. People with lives and full-time jobs who somehow manage to foster weekly litters of snarky entries, adeptly bred out of twitter soundbites and too much coffee—people who have a faithful fanbase of Japanese men in their mothers’ basements and college students prolonging their analyses of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. As you’ve probably noticed, I am not one of these bloggers, despite always secretly wishing I could be (and by that I mean wishing I had an ounce, or even just a drop—hell, I’d take an experimentally negligible vapor—of self-discipline, since that’s all that’s really required to be a consistent blogger). But let’s look at the facts: my last post was in March. My next post might be in September, maybe August if I feel particularly motivated. And my mix-breeds don’t end up the perfect mélange of cute and snarky, but rather somewhat demented and straggly, the kind of hopeless mutt that incessantly gnaws door frames and only manages to “sit” when you need him to move because his droopy butt is crushing your MacBook. Maybe it’s time to accept that I’m not cut out for this line of non-work.

It’s not that I don’t like writing a blog—I genuinely do—but my life just isn’t that exciting. There’s a certain hysterical narcissism that allows other bloggers to provide a play-by-play narrative of their trip to Ikea, or an in-depth exposé of a Subway footlong, that—fortunately for my friends but unfortunately for my Internet infamy—I lack.

You see, the dirty little truth is that my life here, my year of Fulbrighting in Poland, has been excruciatingly uneventful. I wake up. I go to work. I read. I watch a soap opera about young Polish girls getting scammed in London. I burn dinner. I eat burnt dinner. I go to sleep on my left limbs, which fall asleep before I do. In the middle of the night I limp with tingling limbs to bathroom to pee. I go back to sleep and dream that shrieking geese on bath salts are chasing me in the Polish salt mines, only to realize milliseconds before the shrieking birds peck my eyelids off that the shrieking is my morning alarm. I get up. I pick at burnt remains of dinner for breakfast. I momentarily consider changing the sound of my alarm, but then immediately forget what I wanted to do when I pick up my phone and unlock the screen. And so the day continues…

Now I know what you’re thinking: But Elise, you’re ABROAD! You’re doing a FULBRIGHT! You’re in EUROPE! Your life must be more exciting than mine!

Nope. 

Wroclaw is pretty equivalent to any Small Town USA (well, Medium Town, really), except more gray. Men drink beer and watch the game in the pub. Old ladies eternally seek the perfect grapefruit for the best price at the supermarket. Boys race their bikes along the river. Teenage girls wither away their youth and allowance at the local mall. And everyone is white and everyone eats meat-and-potatoes for dinner and everyone watches the same channel on TV narrated by right-wing nutjobs. Sound familiar?

Now don’t get me wrong—I’ve enjoyed living here, and I’ve gained a lot from the past year. I’ve made wonderful friends, eaten wonderful food and ogled wonderfully attractive women. But I think the most surprising aspect of my year abroad has been the fact that it hasn’t surprised me much at all.  I experienced much more culture shock moving to Los Angeles than I’ve ever come close to in Wroclaw. The only difference between Wroclaw and Springfield, USA, is that Springfield has more vowels and obesity. And sometimes beer in Wroclaw is served with a straw (either to avoid the inconvenience of spillage when customers are too drunk to hold their glass upright or to be more child-friendly…I’m not sure which). Anyway, the point is that my expat routine, like the many boiled potatoes I’ve consumed this year, has been fulfilling but not particularly flavorful.

That being said, I plan to post more from now on, and to mix things up. That’s right, for the next few weeks I’m swirling some cheesy goodness and smelly chives on these potato blogs, with short stories, articles, pictures and more. Why, you ask? Well, starting next week, I will no longer have this distracting burden called a job. Yep, starting next week, I’ll no longer have to deal with the energy-consuming responsibilities of conversing in 3 dimensional social settings, where others can actually smell whether you’ve showered and can actually taste the coffee you’ve posted in a black-and-white Walden filter on Instagram. Clothes, hygiene, verbal exchanges, money…soon they’ll all just be fleeting memories of a time long past. Which means, assuming I don’t suddenly create a World of Warcraft avatar or start watching Game of Thrones this weekend, this blog will be the sole center of my energies.

Namaste bitches.

XIV. Mid-year reports!

So I’ve received a few requests via email for more information regarding the Fulbright. Apparently some of you out in cyberspace still naively consider this blog a source of real information, and so I’ve decided to acquiesce and provide you with my mid-year report, something every Fulbrighter fills out regardless of project or country. Designed as a self-evaluation of one's “progress,” the mid-year report is in the form of a standard online survey, with very few parameters and no indication of what is expected.

The questions are verbatim from the report. The responses are in their original full-length, which I had to condense for the form itself to meet the 1500 character limit per answer.

1. What are/were the most important goals/objectives for your Fulbright project proposal? Please list the top 3 or 4. Next to each goal, select the response that best indicates your progress, to date, in the accomplishment of these goals: 
Achieved, Significant Progress, Some Progress, No Progress, No longer significant.
 
GOAL #1: Write the next Great American(-Polish) Novel

STATUS: Some Progress

Okay, so I may have overestimated the mental resources required to teach full-time while studying a new language myself, as well as my affinity for Polish beer. Yet most of all, I ingenuously underestimated—and by my euphemistic “underestimate” I mean that I did not in any way account for, or have any idea was not just the chimerical conveniences of lazy people— my susceptibility to winter lethargy and this phenomenon my Polish friends call ciśniene with the same whispered dread Hogwarts kids reserve for Voldemort (rough translation: barometric pressure). Seriously, what happened? Everything turned leaden and comatose, and I think I might have unintentionally undergone biological hibernation because I have no concrete recollections of the past 4 months. I only retain one vague impression from (what I believe to have been) late December, which may or may not be unconsciously concocted in the same way our brains fill in minor gaps in images, or missng letters in common words in order to create a congruous narrative. My impression is of waking up in a somnolent gray not knowing whether the luminescent 9:00 on my alarm indicated Ante or Post Meridian time, followed by an epiphany that was not so much an epiphany as a confrontation of the obvious. This brazen realization was that the European clock system (i.e. the 24-hour clock) is not cultural idiosyncrasy or evidence of the utilitarian socialist mentality but pure necessity in a region where one is consumed in perennial darkness.

Let me put it this way: you know those shitty stories about some father who gets dressed every morning at 8:47 am, eats his fibrous oatmeal with brown sugar, kisses the wife goodbye, gives the little league son a paternally affectionate slap on the back and drives off to work in the SUV, as he’s done every morning for sixteen years, except one day—without any warning or signal—he just never comes back? And nobody knows why he left, or where he went? And for the next few months, from 5-6 pm, the wife waits at home thinking that maybe today he’ll walk back through that door like he had always done for sixteen years with his briefcase in hand and his tie slightly askew towards his left shoulder? Well, the Polish sun is one of those shitty fathers.

Basically, this is how it happened: one day the sun just sank over the horizon and never came back.

I was not prepared for this.

Everyone told me, at least with regards to weather, I had nothing to worry about in Poland. Chicago and Warsaw are like brothers, with equally brutal winters; it shouldn’t be anything I haven’t handled before. Freak snowstorms, toppling winds...you know, the usual seasonal affronts. But they failed to mention that I would live in a gloomy twilight for weeks at a time. While Chicago may be similar in terms of weather—temperature, winds, precipitation—these similarities are entirely contingent upon oceanic currents. Geographically speaking, our true European parallel is Rome. Chicago and Rome lie on almost the exact same latitude (41.6° versus 41.7°). The North American parallel to Warsaw, on the other hand, is Saskatoon, Canada, at 52.2°. Thus while I’d been well trained to beef up for ice, wind and hail, I’d not been remotely prepared for becoming the bastard child of a feckless sun of a bitch.

That all being said, I'm about 40 solid pages into my book and about 100 semi-solid. The story is of my grandparents' escape from Poland in 1939, the only members of their large family to elude a tragic and horrible fate. They crossed the country in trucks, cars, horse-buggies, anything with wheels to get to Lithuania before annexation. From there a Japanese diplomat named Sugihara signed a family visa for them to cross Russia on the Trans-Siberian railroad and then take a boat to Japan. After a few months in Japan, they then managed to get a boat from Yokohama to the US on May 7, 1941. I think what fascinates me the most about their story is how they managed to stay weeks, days or sometimes mere minutes ahead of global events that determined their fate. They left Poland on August 26, 1939: five days later they would not have been permitted to leave. Even more incredulous, my grandfather returned to his hometown on the border between Poland and Germany on the night of August 31st, to try to convince his family to join him in running as fast and possible from Hitler’s army. They considered him hysterical and paranoid, and told him there might not be a war at all-- and, even if there was, they would be fine, just as they’d been twenty-five years ago in the Great War. They’d dealt with worse. So my grandfather left, frustrated and terrified for his family, and caught the last train out of Poland that evening. Literally the last train. The tracks were bombed that same night, with the train just barely managing, as if by some preternatural fate, to stay ahead of the bombers. None of his six siblings, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, nieces, nephews or cousins survived. Only 2 members of his family remained after the war: a third cousin who had moved to Palestine in the 1920’s, and a fourth cousin whom he'd never met, Leo Seifman, whose story is so incredible (literally) that I doubt I could get away with including it in my novel (which is essentially non-fiction, since I’m not changing any historical facts or events. The “novel” part is that it’s written as a narrative. Someone wears a blue dress. Another person eats an apple while reading Sholem Aleichem. These narrative tools comprise the fictional component of the project.)

The story of Leo Seifman is that, like almost all my relatives from that time, he was sent to the gas chambers. Knowing what fate lay ahead, Leo decided he was in no hurry. He lingered as long as possible in the “changing room,” taking in the plastered walls, the rough texture of each button on his prison uniform, the musky smell of sweat and the slightly bitter almond scent from the residual hydrogen cyanide. He soon found himself at the end of the line of bodies getting filtered into the chamber and decided, since he had nothing to lose, to attempt to slip behind the thick iron door to get a few more seconds of life. Somehow nobody noticed his disappearance in the shuffle until the guards had closed and bolted the door, exposing him naked and alone against the wall. The gassing had already begun and, if nothing else, the Germans were notoriously obsessed with efficiency and economy, so wasting an entire canister of Zyklon B on one person was out of the question. Instead they just sent him back to work under the presumption that he’d end up back in the chamber soon enough anyway. And so he worked, until the Russians liberated the camp.

2. GOAL #2: Learn Polish.

STATUS: (Relatively) Significant Progress

I arrived in Poland knowing only the phrases comprised in the first three units of Rosetta Stone TOTALworld (c), and now—after four months of relentlessly subjecting myself and my more patient Polish confidantes to what could be interpreted by those not involved as the maniacally circular and nonsensical ramblings of a borderline schizophrenic—I can...well...survive. This may not sound as impressive as it feels (which is not very much either), but I've never had a talent for adopting foreign tongues, a failure I attribute as a byproduct of my upbringing in the patriotic monoculture known as America (I also like to think my English is so predominant it overreaches into those sections of my brain that would've otherwise been reserved for foreign languages… like my American Standard English is a large, red pick-up truck and the Broca's area the standard size of a parking space designated for compact cars (in cerebral terms of course, or else I’d be a giant human...as for why the truck is red, I’m not sure, but it feels like a vital and mandatory component of the analogy so I’m keeping it in.) And so my ASE spills over the white line into the areas reserved for cute European vehicles, like the Polish Maluch, the French Peugeot, the German Volkswagen.)

In fact, the notion of tackling a new language (even worse, a Latinate, synthetic language) terrified me enough to seriously consider deboarding the plane after the LOT Air flight attendant wished me "dzien dobry," my first non-computerized confrontation with this insane and illogical linguistic system (true story…I think I was also excruciatingly anxious at the prospect of living alone in Poland for a year). Thus the fact that I can compose even a minor sentence (Gdzie jestem? Co to jest?) is a small miracle, and more importantly the result of more tears, sweat and expletives than anyone donned with the honor of a Fulbright should ever confess to discharging. And, of course, I couldn’t have done it without the following: my Polish teacher, the most patient woman in the history of education, whom I meet 1.5 hours/day M-F; some patchy tandem tutoring sessions; and my housemates, Polish lawyers who never cease to dazzle me with their capacity for grammar, native speaker or no. (And, yes, I’m aware that I essentially just wrote an “Acknowledgements” section to my studying Polish. It is that big a deal.)

3. GOAL #3: Teach English

STATUS: Achieved

I’ve been teaching English Tuesdays and Thursdays with Professor Elaine Horyza. We teach 4 sections Tuesdays (each 1.5 hours with 15 minutes in between), and 2 sections Thursdays. While Elaine determines the majority of the syllabus and structure (she’s prescribed very strict and somewhat limiting teaching goals by both the university and the new EU standards, to be officially enforced starting Fall 2013), I get to teach at least one section per class, and plan 2 classes per semester. Last semester I designed 2 classes around social media: vocabulary, implications for the English language, social implications, personal implications, political (you guessed it) implications, etc. We discussed the logistics of relationships and dating through this new, non-physical venue. We discussed the potential for careers and jobs through this new market medium. We discussed the role social media played in the US presidential elections, the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement…tackling the overriding question, “Is social media a tool or a detriment to democracy?” And the class amazed me with their astute and perspicacious ideas and opinions.

This semester my unit will be about food and animals. Eating animals, owning animals, protecting animals, with all the ethical and practical ramifications such practices necessarily engender in us H. sapiens. In Korea and the Philippines, dogs are delicious; in Europe and America, companions. In France, a baguette with butter and cheese is the perfect start to the day; in the US, we harbor an institutional distrust and resentment of gluten, fat and dairy. So it should be interesting to see how my students feel about food culture, and how often (if ever) they contend with the consumption of sentient creatures.

4. GOAL #4: Work/volunteer at a local theater

STATUS: No longer significant.

Get involved in theater:
In my original letter of intent, I claimed I would effortlessly implant myself in the local theater scene, wherever that would be and in whatever form that would manifest itself. Basically, I assumed that the second my dramatic feet touched the potatoed Polski earth, thespians from around the region would blow their conk shells and plug in their S4s (the theater world’s Bat-Signal, though of course they would have only done this if my plane landed in the evening, which it didn’t), and summon me to the stage. Needless to say, with my elementary Polish phrases and well-rusted experience (I haven’t done theater since college), this did not happen. It also might be because finding a conk shell 450 km from the nearest body of saltwater was too much of a challenge.

Furthermore, I quickly learned that dabbling in theater was not an option. Like street gangs, marriage and high fashion, you’re either in or you’re out: 100%. Make a full commitment or don’t make one at all. And since I had many ideas and ambitions for this year (see goals 1-3), I decided to stay out.

I do, however, attend many plays here. Studio Matej and Theater Zar at the Grotowski Institute have put on my favorite performances thus far (most notably “Caesarean Section: Essays on Suicide,” which I saw twice in one weekend because it was that mind-blowingly confusing and horrible and gorgeous), as well as Song of the Goat Theater, which isn’t as viscerally decadent but intellectually dynamic and worth noting. Others worth a mention are Theater Polski and Teatr Wspołczesny, which are both great for listening practice with Polish (see goal #3).


5. GOAL #5: Find Polish lover

STATUS: No progress

Don’t worry internet. I didn’t actually include this one in my mid-year report.


What kind of changes did you make in order to adjust to the local culture?

Honestly, Polish culture isn't too different from Chicago culture, which makes sense given that for the past 50 years our largest human import has been of the perogi-consuming variety.

I will concede that I've become more clothes-conscious, since women here tend to spend more time and energy on appearance (my college sweatpants were the first casualty of European living). I've also become more patient, but that's been a matter of force rather than choice. People don't cross the street on a red sign, no matter what. Even if it's -20°F (or C), and snowing, and the road is closed, and a giant sloth is attacking them with razor sharp teeth, and someone managed to build a time machine and go back to 1879 and convince Karl Benz to destroy all his blueprints such that the automobile never came into existence, even then people would STILL wait for the light to change. There's also a great deal of forming lines before a callously fusty older females, whose favorite two words are a resounding “Nie ma!” (Literal translation: Not have!), which they typically bark with a rough contraction of the abdomen, which also (at least observations indicate) comprises the full extent of their daily physical activity. Worst of all, people stand in the middle of escalators without moving. The frustration often brings me to tears.


What types of safety issues were prevalent in the country (problems with diet, pollution, crime, etc.) and what safety precautions would you recommend?

I can't think of anything.


This place is safer than anywhere in the US in terms of crime (I forget my iPhone on tables at cafes and restaurants all the time) and the food is very easy for sensitive stomachs. Best of all, not only have I managed to maintain a strict vegetarian diet, but I've discovered new dishes, unbelievable vegan restaurants and many fellow conscientious eaters to partake in aforementioned restaurants with me.


Please comment on other aspects of your social and cultural adjustment.

It would be easy to atavise my first few months here with laughter and smiles, the same way we often look back on elementary school as one long and cordial playtime, when in fact we all struggled socially and developmentally and I still-to-this-day have strong residual emotions of helplessness and impotence instigated from activities as innocuous as ordering juice over an adult-sized counter, or approaching the "cool kid" monkey bars, or basic mental problems such a 3x4=?.

The truth is I struggled more than I expected my first few months here, because—if you replace "monkey bars" with the northwest corner of Monsieur cafe, and "juice" with coffee—all those quandaries I just mentioned from 3rd grade apply once again as major stress-inducers.

On top of that, my first few months here were lonely, lonely in a way 3rd graders cannot fathom. Lonely in a way only adults understand, because only adults realize how deeply ontological and interminable such loneliness. And sometimes I had to go home early to cry and ask myself "What the hell am I doing in Poland? Who am I? What am I doing in my life?" and then wishing I had somebody to listen these questions even if she didn't know the answer or diagnosed me with some anxiety disorder I likely already have. In other words, in my first few months here, I began to understand Chekhov's Masha and Dostoevsky's Sergeant X on levels I never wanted (maybe I should’ve applied for a Fulbright in Russia...).

On the brighter side, I've since pulled myself out of this state and thrived, and that's not an easy thing to do when living alone in a foreign place. In other words, I would finally call myself "adjusted" and relatively happy (relative to writers, that is, which is admittedly a low standard). Also, I'm heading to a birthday party as soon as I finish this report, so my happiness is about to be bolstered with liquor and chocolate cake. You might want to consider repeating this question to me tomorrow.


Please comment on your travel to and arrival in your host country. Did you experience any particular difficulties? Was there anything special that made your adjustment easier? Are there suggestions or hints that you could offer future grantees to your country/world area?

Booking the flight was easy and straight-forward, and I stayed in a dorm arranged by my university when I arrived, which was not remotely comfortable or clean but served its purpose for the initial 2-3 days before traveling to Warsaw for orientation. The only issue was that I had to pay for my flight to Poland with my own money, because we did not receive our first installment within a reasonable time to reserve a seat. If I hadn’t been fortunate enough to have the personal expenditure to do this, I’d be trapped in a troublesome and frustrating bind, which is something to keep in mind for next year’s class.

My only other "suggestion or hint" for anyone heading to Warsaw from their base city is to take the train, not the bus. It's worth the extra money to be comfortable, safe and able to sleep/work with ease. The trains here tend to be timely and spacious (and first class is typically only 30 zlotys ($8) more, with a guaranteed seat and a table, outlet, snacks, etc. Well worth a mini-monetary splurge). The bus, on the other hand, is horrifically long, uncomfortable and crowded, and the roads wind and dip and swerve the entire route (for more details, see blog entry #7 “Bath Salts Geese and UFOs”). Apparently a highway is in the process of being built, but the pace of public infrastructure is one of the few vestiges of communism that seems in no hurry to change (and yes, I am aware of the less-than-clever entendre in that sentence). I think this highway will be a few long years away. Until then, stay on the tracks.


In what areas have you found IIE, the U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassy personnel and/or the Fulbright Commission especially helpful? What areas need additional attention? What improvements would you suggest?

The communication has been non-existent, but I anticipated this. Everyone told me that Fulbrights are notoriously unsupervised, and that you have to be disciplined and self-motivated. I still don’t know anyone’s name at IIE, USDS or the Embassy, except for Internal Unit Chief Kevin Kabumoto, whom I met randomly through the Forum for Dialogue Among Nations, and is incontestably the coolest Asian in Poland. If he reads this report, tell him I owe him a drink (or three) next time I head to Warsaw.

I haven't had any issues, so I haven't had a pressing need to contact anyone for professional reasons—thus I can't say what the response level would be. However, given that the Embassy is a top priority government agency, I’d assume prompt and thorough, but I also wouldn’t bet more than 7 zloty on that assumption. But at least I’ve been a Fulbright pre-sequester, right? I’d imagine the response time and organization will be even worse next year. And something tells me that the embassy dinners and opening ceremonies may have less champagne and hors d’oeuvres come 2014…but what was the question again?

Oh right. Attention. Improvements. The only thing I wish had been better clarified (and still don't understand) is our insurance plan. They basically gave us a useless propaganda booklet and walked away. I have no idea how to get reimbursed for prescriptions, etc., or how to book/pay for a doctor's appointment.

Hey, guess what? It's my head, and I'll do what I want with it

I've always lived in major cities...Chicago, NYC, London. On the rare occasions I've lived in smaller towns, I've been insulated in the uber-liberal goo of academia (Ann Arbor, Claremont, New Haven, etc). So Wroclaw is the closest I've come to true small-town life. Calling Wroclaw a small town typically annoys my Polish friends, because they consider it a major city, but by American standards a regional capital of 630,000 doesn't exactly imbibe the "anything goes" anonymity of a concrete jungle. While some minor subculture action does fester below the surface, overall the presentation is wholesale heteronormative and somewhat redolent of high school, in the sense that every girl wants to look like they've walked out of the same commercial magazine selling feminine beauty. Long silky hair, luscious and glossy lips, hairless, scarless,  moleless, wrinkleless. Everything-less. Some of the more daring women flaunt a shorter but unquestionably feminine haircut, or keep the thickness of their eyebrows if they really want to draw attention as going rogue.

As for me, I've never shaved my legs. My eyebrows are still complete in their glory. I don't wear much make-up, and my favorite pair of pants are grape-print leggings. Oh, and I got a haircut this week:

A super futuristic, bright red haircut. A haircut from the year 3000, when the human race is so overpopulated that everyone is gay; when high heels are talked about like corsets; when people communicate thoughts and memories through blinking and entering a mind cloud; when computers are no longer separate entities but embedded into our bodies, such that my every touch and sound can be morphed into whatever form I please. And I like it here. 3000 is a good year, especially for Scandinavian wines and long-haired cogs (cat-dog hybrids). I think I'll hang out here for awhile.

But the point is this. Wearing this hair in a studio and at a photo shoot is quite different than wearing it at the gym, or the mall, or the coffee shop. And it's a lot more trying than I thought. I've cut off my hair before. But here, in Wroclaw, this is the first time I've ever felt self-conscious about it. It took all my willpower not to shout or cry in the middle of the market square this afternoon.

So here's what I have to say to the jerks on the tram and the old ladies selecting tomatoes while really gossiping about my head. It's my head. It's my body. And I'll do whatever I damn well please with it. If you don't like it, tough shit.

And guess what else? By demanding the same limited standards of performance and appearance from your fellow citizens, you are limiting yourself, putting yourself in a tiny hole that confines your ability to explore the full diversity of what the human mind can express and create. You are participating in a race that you'll never win, and that will leave you feeling empty and unfulfilled and unattractive. Because your outrage is really due to the fact that I'm cheating. I'm not playing the game. You can't rank me beside the other girls and see where I line up, because I'm not trying to fit that mold. And I think you would have a lot more fun in life if you stopped trying to figure out where you stand in the pack too. You don't have to be a humanoid alien from the year 3000. You could be from the year 1700. Or 300. Or 1979. Or another dimension altogether, where years don't exist. You could be a new color, a new species, a new gender, a new artform, a new movement, a new sound. Imagine how much more dynamic our world would be. So stop acting jealous or offended and find your own image, something that no one can touch because it's so above and beyond what they know. Expand their minds. Expand your mind. Turn off the TV. Close the magazine. Do something radical that pushes you out of your comfort zone. Challenge yourself. Challenge your insecurities. Challenge your limitations.

When I first chopped off all my hair, girls kept calling me "brave." Again and again, I would hear them say "I wish I could do that; it's so brave." Well, guess what? You can! You only need to follow these three simple steps: Step 1. make a ponytail. Step 2. open scissors. Step 3. Close scissors over ponytail. Voila! It's not Julia Child's Coq au Vin. Should you chop off all your hair? If you want to, yes. If not, no. But don't wistfully stare at me and tell me you wish you could do that too, like it's beyond your capability. Do it. Or not. As long as it's your desire, your personal choice, and not your insecurities making the choice for you. High school is over, thank goodness. The popular girls won't spray whip cream into your locker or spill coffee all over your white dress. The only mean girl you have to be afraid of now is the one in front of you in the bathroom mirror. Maybe it's time to show her a lesson.

XII. Roofied by life

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What the hell happened to the past month? Seriously, I apologize to all friends, family and internet stalkers for my long hiatus while I – to sum up a blitzkrieg of writing, archiving and swashbuckling – got shit done. I can’t believe how much time passed so quickly. I feel like I’ve been roofied by life.

But let’s skip the excuses and apologies and get to the juicy stuff, shall we? First, however, a rant about what the hell happened to the past 30 days, because honestly I don’t know, and also because I feel that you, my dear reader, have been conditioned to gnaw through a slew of digressions before reaching the rich marrow of my prose, and I would hate to deprive you of the foreplay. And yes, I am aware of how perturbing and (hopefully) off-putting that metaphor mélange must have been – unless, of course, cannibalism is your thing, in which case, I know a great guy in Poland – but once again, it’s all part of the conditioning. Take solace in the fact that you will be a stronger person afterwards.

So I have this inchoate theory that time develops the same way humans do, with the same progression of mobility. First, that little lump of time just lies around, occasionally kicking or screaming, but generally immobile. Then it learns to crawl, followed by some teetering steps, until, one day, abruptly and without ceremony, it walks (and here is where the nostalgia and pathetic attempts at atavism often kick in). Then it figures out running, followed by its first tricycle, which quickly gets traded in for a bicycle. A few years later, time is running through the house waving a big driver’s permit in your face. Then it gets a car. Next thing you know, your little time goes speeding down the I-20 without you.

Well, I feel like my time just got its pilot’s license.

Thankfully, most of the month’s events aren’t particularly blog worthy, which we all know is an incredulously low standard (seriously, I just read an entire entry about morning toast. Our generation has some major disclosure issues). I’ve been focused on applying to MFA programs, in the hopes that someday I won’t have to dole out my brilliance for free on a self-created blog. In reality, what it means is that I’ll be doling out my brilliance on my self-created blog while interjecting every paragraph with a plug for my new novel no one buys, but maybe gets opted for a Hollywood movie. An MFA also means that my prose will get suffused with a somnolent lyricism, with poetic limitations and the cadence of an autumnal creek. In other words, it may mean I will start to sound like everyone else. At least, that’s what I think as I stir the last of my oatmeal in an old pickle jar. I’m still wearing the purple spandex dress with black tights, and my hair feels smoky and oily, every strand still permeating of sweat and cigarettes. I spoon a small lump of oats and try to swallow, but it feels too dry, and flavorless. I’d forgotten to add sugar. I fill the last clean receptacle in the apartment with water to help wash it down, but it just makes it worse. The water tastes like last night. Like counterfeit vodka and chasers from concentrate. Maybe the cup wasn’t clean after all. Maybe I should have stayed home with Primo Levi rather than suffer the frivolities of living people. After all, that's what books are for, aren't they? To be friends with the dead and imaginary when the live ones fail you…

Yep, you should probably get used to that, maybe subscribe to the New Yorker to prepare yourself, because this little vegetarian is stepping into the literary meat grinder. (She also just made her second cannibalism reference of the day, thus filling her weekly quota. Second parenthetical: I actually love the New Yorker. Deborah Treisman, if you ever read this, you are my heroine, and your fiction podcast my heroin.)

Okay, digression complete. Onto the past month. Okay, fine, I’ll admit it: month and a half.

1.     Family vacation: My mother and sister used the excuse of my ex-patriotism to fly over and see Prague and the Bavarian alps. It was the first time in almost a decade that we took a girls’ trip (my parents are in medias res of divorce; the “I survived…” t-shirts will be distributed as soon as we actually do). Honestly though, it was the best family vacation we’ve ever had. Relaxing, heartfelt and full of rich conversation. The only weird part of the trip (other than all of us getting along) was our tour guide in the alps, who kept trying to force us to visit a village called Oberammergau [five syllables: Oh-ber-arm-er-gau]. She wanted us to see Oberammergau because it puts on a passion play once a decade, but given that the village was the midst of its nine-year off-season, we didn’t feel particularly compelled to drop in. Well, that’s not entirely true. At first I did, because I assumed a passion play was some kind of tumescently erotic showdown, full of hyperbolic professions of love and hate between love-making. I mean, how can you hear the words “passion” and “play” without thinking it must have something to do with ecstatic sexual encounters? But, no, once again my Jewish ignorance misleads me. Apparently a “passion play” is the reenactment of Jesus’ death. Ew. Gross.

Okay, time to save myself 1000 words. Check out the Bavarian alps:

My family on a hike

 

 

This is medieval instrument is called the hurdy gurdy.

This castle is Ludwig II’s Neuschwanstein, probably the most flamboyant structure ever built. Basically, Ludwig wanted a big Broadway musical set of a romanticized medieval castle, with no regards to budget or historical accuracy. I had read a lot about King Ludwig II before seeing Neuschwanstein, so I knew about his underground grotto with the swan boat and the opera stage, and the fact that he never had a wife despite incessant pressure from an entire nation to do so, followed by his deposition and suicide. From these ad hoc facts, historians often conjecture that the king was gayer than Elton John’s bedazzled sunglasses. But after walking through the valley of unicorns and gilded swans myself, I feel that Elton John’s paraphernalia are much, much too straight for this to be true.  

If you ever find yourself in Germany, this castle is a “must-see.”

2. Visiting the Keret House, aka Dom Kereta. I will elaborate on this in my next entry. Also, there might be an article about this getting published soon. I’ll keep you posted.

3. Prague: the sequel

So two weeks after visiting Prague with the family, my friend Ira invites me to a Swedish House Mafia concert in Prague’s O2 Arena. I’d never heard of Swedish House Mafia, but Ira was driving and paying for the hotel, and I wanted to return to Prague. Besides, every time I brought up that I would be going to see these mafiosi, my friends would immediately implode with jealousy, so I very well couldn’t forfeit an opportunity to make them think I’m cool.
On the drive, Ira played a Swedish House Mafia song called "Don't You Worry Child." The lyrics were nostalgic and wistful, the piano chords were simple and rhythmic and I liked the opulence of the singer's timbre. I started to get genuinely excited to hear what else this band could do.

The day was incredible. Endless and delicious food, phenomenal sightseeing and thigh-slapping company. Finally, we left the main square to go to the concert. Well, Swedish House Mafia, very much like the Swedish mafia in general, doesn’t really exist. You see, Swedish House Mafia is not a band. They don’t make music at all, actually, because they’re disk jockeys. Yep, I paid over $100 to sit in an arena full of coked-out Eurotrash wearing sunglasses at midnight to watch a DJ spin records. I felt like such a dupe for unwittingly participating in a multi-million dollar scam, and there was nothing I could do about it. Well, nothing except get hammered enough to forget the fact that we were at a concert without musicians. I really fucking hate my generation sometimes.

How did I not kill myself again?

Oh right: this pretty much captures the lack of sobriety

And I happened to be in good company :)

Alright, that’s enough catching up for now. More to follow soon. In the meantime, there’s a grad school application just waiting to be cried over…

Na koniec, mam

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 This weekend I finally picked up my old computer from the repair shop. Of course, by that I mean, I walked in upon a disgruntled looking employee, asked for my computer, and received a prompt and savory “Nie ma,” before I could even provide my reservation number. For some reason, people here seem to love not having whatever good or service you seek. The words nie ma—literally translating to “Don’t have,” and roughly to “fuck off”—boils inside them all day, and they clearly relish any opportunity to release these five letters in a seething froth of self-satisfaction. Every time I hear an ecstatic “Nie ma,” the subtext seems to be “Haha! Yes! My exclusive solace in life comes from knowing I have the power to make your life harder. You will keep returning here, everyday, frustrated to the point of psychosis, and every time you enter we will be closing. The lights will be on, the door open, and the noon sun still high above us, but we will be closing, and you will have to keep returning, again and again, in a Sisyphean nightmare of which only we have the power to awaken you.”

But this time I was determined to break through their diabolic time loop, to break the cycle. I physically grabbed the shopkeeper’s shoulder and fumbled through some angry sounding Polish words, carefully constructed so as to remain within the safety of the nominative declension. Her eyes widened, and suddenly I saw a human being behind the system. “Tak.” She whispered, astonished. “Mamy.” My jaw hung slack, useless. We have. I couldn’t believe my ears.

So here I am, sitting in my apartment back in Wrocław, restoring order to my cyberuniverse. My files have returned to me. My life has returned to me. And, contingently, my motivation.

Or, for those of you too lazy to read:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyly3JtXoy4

X. Toruń Orientation: The Gingerbread Museum

The first thing you need to know for this story to make sense is that I love ginger. I love anything and everything ginger. Ginger tea? I buy the boxes in bulk. Ginger cats? The cutest creatures on the planet. Ginger candies? My purse is like a ginger mass grave, empty wrappers unceremoniously piled at the bottom.* Ginger people? Look at my past relationships (that’s right, Nicholas John Humphrey II. You thought I liked you for your hipster rants about American Conservatism or your outrageously Anglican name? Think again.) Anyway, the point is I freaking love ginger. So imagine my ecstasy when I discovered Toruń is the capital of gingerbread. I had to run back to the hotel and cry softly into my pillow, truly overwhelmed with happiness. It was almost too much to bear.

Once I learned how to pronounce the word for gingerbread in Polish (pierniki) my language lessons were officially over. I bought bagfuls a day. Pierniki were the only things that kept me awake through morning lectures. The only things that kept me smiling through our ninth dinner of potatoes. The only things that kept me communicating with my peers (Peer: “Hey Elise! Can I try a bite of your pierniki?” Me: “Fuck off.”).  At night, when my daily pierniki bag was finally empty, I would dream about which kinds to buy next. The ones dipped in dark chocolate? Or maybe the traditional Catherine bread, named after some medieval girl the king proclaimed the official pierniki baker for the entire kingdom? I finally found where I belonged: Toruń. Everyday in Toruń was a pierniki day.

Then one day, the unimaginable happened. We were going to the International Pierniki Museum. An entire museum dedicated to gingerbread! I immediately wondered if I was qualified to apply as head curator. I began planning my permanent move to this parochial Polish town.

After Polish class (Po proszę pierniki. Wiele pierniki. Lubię pierniki?), the time had finally come. I ran downstairs and waited for the tour guide, my weight shifting constantly from foot to foot, desperate not to pee myself with anticipation. Yet as we walked up the stairs to the entrance, it became immediately evident that the “Pierniki Museum” was not a museum by any stretch of the imagination. The international Pierniki Museum was a single room with a man and woman dressed up in medieval peasant garb and an overpriced gift shop taking up half the space behind them. The other “museum-goers” constituted of a fourth-grade class trip. I knew it was a fourth grade class trip because half the girls wore leggings, and the other half jeans.  By fifth grade, sartorial self-autonomy breaks down and the dictatorship chooses either leggings or jeans as the official standard, contingent upon the decade. My decade was a hegemon of bell bottoms, but, according to my niece, the current ruling is “jeggings,” an intermediate of the legging-jean dichotomy. I also knew this was a fourth grade class because the girls lorded over the puny boys like geese in a pool of baby ducks. The rest of the audience comprised of Fulbright scholars: professors in their sixties and seventies, doctorate candidates and post-grads. Apparently, it was not obviously in which category I belonged…the fourth grade teacher actually started escorting me to their side of the room before realizing that, despite my stature, I was not wearing jeans, leggings or “jeggings.” I was not amused.

Jeans or leggings... Why did I sleep through that lecture on conceptual clustering?

Finally, it was time for us all to circle around and shut up. The woman (who introduced herself as the “gingerbread witch”) threatened that if we shared the secret to her perfect recipe, we would be burned alive. Except that she clearly could not give a shit. She said all her lines in perfect monotone while twisting her finger around the purple highlights in her hair (not a 13^thcentury fashion). And somehow, while within inches of sixty eager audience members, she managed to give the entire speech without acknowledging the presence of a single soul. This degree of apathy does not come naturally, and I'll admit I was impressed.

On the other hand, the “medieval peasant” presented his lines with the cheerful spunk of a cartoon elf. He gleefully welcomed each and every one of us, and spliced in jokes at every possible juncture. Between the depressed punk rocker and this sexually ambiguous elfin creature, I decided I didn’t want a career here after all.

And that became even more evident with the events that followed…

Courtesy of the Muzeum Piernika

 Now here’s where the story gets quite disturbing. It begins with the witch’s explanation of how to make the perfect pierniki. Get this: gingerbread does not entail any ginger. This has to be the biggest case of false advertising ever, perhaps only second to low calorie ice cream. Why would you call something “gingerbread” when it is neither ginger nor bread? I still love it and it’s still delicious, but, seriously, what the fuck? To make matters worse, the pierniki dough has to sit in a barrel for 12 weeks before it’s ready. That’s right, eighty-four disgusting days in a dank basement to gain its spicy flavor and brown bear hue. In fact, the fresh dough is a kind of a light biege. 

While these were not our medieval pierniki guides, it captures the general sentiment (courtesy of the

Żywe Muzeum Piernika)

However, none of this even mattered after what we learned next. After gingerbread bitch and the elf explained the secrets of the pierniki, we “made” our own. Squishing a handful of their pre-prepared dough into little brown turds, we rolled the turds in flour, flattened the turds with a rolling pin, and then picked out a mold to press onto them such that they would look less like turds. I chose a dancing bull in an ovoid frame. Then we transported our molded turds onto a giant baking pan to transform them into delicious pierniki. I have to admit, they still looked delicious even after finding out that they’d been sitting in a mildewed, possibly rat infested basement for 12 weeks before getting molded, and even after thinking of them as fecal matter. I counted the minutes until I could bite into my drunken bull, hot and soft and crispy all at once. This was probably the closest I’d been to desiring meat since vowing vegetarianism 14 years ago.

I couldn't find a picture of a bull, but it's the same general idea

After ten endless minutes, it was time to remove the pierniki from the oven and take them off the baking trays. Yet just as I lifted my moronic bull by its horns, the elf announced that these were not edible pierniki. No, rather these were the decorative kind. I clamped my mouth shut. The decorative kind?! Apparently, it’s a Polish tradition to make gingerbread that you don’t eat. This is incontestably the most upsetting nonsense in the history of Poland, which is saying a lot if you’ve read anything about Poland’s history. Seriously though, what kind of sadistic joke was this? Who the fuck makes gingerbread that you can’t eat? Apparently gay elfs and their emo sidekicks.

So that was our trip to the gingerbread museum in Toruń. It sucked.

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(*Is it appropriate for me to type that in a blog about Poland? Probably not.) 

Skipping to the Present

Due to the almost four weeks I spent computerless, I have a tough decision to make: do I play catch-up and try to brief my loyal readers on the last month, or do I skip to the present and cut my losses? If I do the former, I'll always be living in the past (which I do enough in a post-diaspora Poland as is). If I do the latter, I don't get to write about the Fulbright Orientation, and the fascinating village of Torun.

So here's my compromise: I'm going to post the 2 articles I do have from that time, and then move to late October. Once I retrieve my old computer and its hard drive, I will send anyone interested our official Fulbright itinerary and my notes from the daily lectures, with topics ranging from Polish Romantic literature, to conspiracies regarding the Smolensk tragedy (the plane crash in Russia that killed the Polish president Lech Kaczynski), to the Open-Gate Sociology Test of Poland, to Optical Tomography techniques and genetic medicine technologies. I have pages and pages of notes, and some of the lectures were absolutely captivating. Others, not so much.

The only events I truly wish I had time to write about are the Malbork Castle and the philharmonic concert in Bydgoszcz. Thankfully, wikipedia has fabulous articles about the castle and the Teutonic Knights, and, as for Bydgoszcz, words always break down at the doors of music anyway.

So onwards we go!