Posts under Culture

Kapuśniak - Cabbage Soup

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Oct
24
2009

There are many definitions and examples of comfort food – I’m pretty sure that every culture has its very own typical dishes that fall into this category. And one thing is certain, when you’re sick you crave that yummy, comforting goodness. And I am and I do. But what do I crave? Kapuśniak (cabbage soup).

Now, maybe not exactly your typical Polish comfort food (but what would be? Schabowy and potatoes plus surówka?) but kapuśniak is what I want to eat whenever I am sick.

The only problem is that I can’t make a really good cabbage soup if my life depended on it. Why? First there’s this issue of whether to use fresh cabbage (świeża) or sauerkraut (kiszona). I like my kapuśniak sour, but not too sour. So what are the correct fresh/sour proportions? And second, what about the soup base? Mine never tastes like it should. It always has that “nouvelle” air to it instead of an honest, hearty and satisfying down to earth kapuśniak flavor.

My dad makes the best kapuśniak on the planet and I love it, even though he likes his with fresh cabbage. However, I have never mastered this kapuśniak making skill and hence I am stuck with improvising whenever I feel like eating a bowl of cabbagey goodness.

And to be completely honest, I’ve had no idea that cabbage soup is (was?) one of those newfangled weight loss fads. Really? We, Poles have been eating it for at least a thousand years, so it’s nice to see the rest of the world catching up.

OK, but back to the original question. How to make my kapuśniak taste right the Polish way? Because right now, I make it somewhat like this:

  • shred a bunch of cabbage
  • open a jar of sauerkraut
  • cut up some veggies
  • get a couple of those bullion cube thingies or a can of ready-made consommé (I’m not the patient type to boil some bones for soup stock)
  • some bacon and a couple of bratwursts
  • random seasonings and spices (read: whatever’s available)

It’s still good and quite tasty, but nothing like my dad used to make.
So, how do you make your kapuśniak?

PS. And by the way, how does this old saying go? Po kapuście d..pa chluszcze. (something like: after eating cabbage soup, stuff spouts from your behind, except that it vaguely rhymes in Polish), so be careful. And the d-word is considered vulgar, so there.

 
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Not Going Back to School After All

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Oct
9
2009

Remember my excitement about my return to school? Well, after all, it’s not going to happen. And so right were those of you who said that I should have picked a school in the UK, or elsewhere. Ah… But I guess I needed to learn it the hard way all by myself.

So what happened? Well, turned out that I couldn’t study the one field that interested me (and which was the reason why I chose that particular school in the first place – WSSM in Łódź) on-line. Why? Apparently that particular course is financed by the EU and the EU regulations require for students to be physically present in the classroom and to sign the attendance roster personally. Which, if you want to know my opinion, smacks of discrimination against people with physical disabilities and limited mobility, but that’s a whole another story.

The problem is that nobody bothered to inform me about this requirement during my initial meeting with the school’s president (rektor) and two of their academic staff. I made it very clear that I was interested in studying intercultural communication (which happens to be that EU financed course) on-line and I was told that, “no problem, we can arrange that.” But, no, they can’t.

Why nobody at WSSM thought to read the fine print on their EU agreement regarding this course BEFORE I submitted my application and paid the admission fee (wpisowe), I really don’t know.

Needless to say, I am very unhappy right now. Nah, that’s an understatement. I’m more than unhappy, but since this is a PG blog, I will try to control myself.

What the school offers me now is to study anglistyka (English philology - because intercultural communication is one of the minors offered in that department) virtually (on-line), but that’s not an acceptable solution for me.

If I wanted to study straight English, I could have applied to any other school. There are more private schools in Poland now than you can shake a stick at.

Now, of course, one of the academic staff fuming with righteous anger tells me that there is an inaccuracy in how I describe this whole situation. Frankly, from where I’m at, I don’t see any inaccuracies. I am not interested in where the school’s limitations come from, that’s none of my business. I’m only interested in the fact that I wasn’t informed about them when I was handing over the money. And that’s definitely my business. Or was the school that desperate for my wpisowe money (admission fee)? And yes, I will try to get that refunded anyway.

I’m really sad and sorry that it turned out that way. I’m still determined to go back to school and study intercultural communication/relations. But it won’t be at a school in Poland. Unfortunately.

Anyhow, how’s that Polish złota jesień (golden autumn) coming along?

 
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How to Write Dates (po polsku, naturally)

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Oct
3
2009

I was writing a semi-official letter the other day, and even before I managed to get to “Szanowna Pani“, I was already stumped. Not that it’s anything usual, me getting stumped, but it’s been happening with amazing regularity lately.

Anyway, my MS Word automatically fills in the current date according to the American system: the month comes first, then the day, then a comma, and then the year. And suddenly, I was sitting there in front of my laptop deep in thought, not entirely sure how to properly write it in Polish. The key word here, of course, is “properly.”

Dates in Poland are written in several different ways.

- rok (year), miesiąc (month), dzień (day),

- dzień (day), miesiąc (month), rok (year),

- as numerals: 3.10.2009, or 3.10.09,

- or like this: 3 X 2009

- sometimes there’s a lone “r” following the year: 2009 r.

- with the month spelled out, and so on…

- and if we’re going to spell the month, does it decline, or not?

You see where I’m going with this, right? Such a simple, everyday thing as the current date left me scrambling for some heavy-duty Polish language help.

And what did I learn? That when it comes to the correct date format(s) in Polish, pretty much anything goes, except (hey, of course there would be an “except” – after all this is Polish we’re talking about here, and everybody knows we live for “excepts”):

- the date format should be appropriate to the text (official, private, etc),

- if you choose to write the month as a Roman numeral, it’s a mistake to write the date like this “3.X.2009 r.” There should be no dots before and after the Roman numeral,

- and, yes the month does decline. So, we need to write “3 października 2009 r.”, and not “3 październik 2009 r.”

- and finally, the date should follow this order: day-month-year, or year-month-date (for official correspondence), and unfortunately, it means that you can’t begin with the month, as my MS Word insists on doing.

The “r.” is short for “rok” (year) and if you feel like it, you can spell out the whole word. But of course, it declines as well. So it’s “3 października 2009 roku” and not “3 październik 2009 rok”. But if you don’t like that “r”, you can skip it altogether and write “3 października 2009” or “3.10.09” or “3.10.2009”.

So, how did I finally write it in my letter?

2009.10.03 for easy filing of official correspondence that nobody bothers to read anyway.

PS. For my native Polish readers who, I’m sure, will feel the need to tell me that my info is incorrect, or not entirely correct - this post was written based on advice taken from PWN’s “Poradnik językowy” and my conversation with a polonistyka professor at a very prestigious Polish university.

 
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Barb’s Trip to Poland and Chipmunk Diplomacy

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Sep
30
2009

Today we have another report from our fabulous guest blogger - Barb from Canada.

Enjoy!

I recently returned from a short trip to Poland with my head (and heart) bursting with impressions and perceptions. Since my last trip occurred over 25 years ago, to say things have changed would be a little bit of an understatement.

It was a trip that mixed both business (confirmation of citizenship- stwierdzenie posiadania obywatelstwa polskiego) and pleasure, so the types of interactions with native Poles varied quite a bit. I would like to write a post about the citizenship aspect of my trip (with Anna’s permission of course - yes, please!!! Actually, no, not “please”, you MUST!!!) at a later date, so this post will be a little more general.

Język polski: With the sole exception of a teenage girl working the counter of a Subway sandwich establishment, I managed to interact in Polish with enough mastery of the language that no one felt compelled to switch over into English. I felt like this was a huge accomplishment. It still rankles that the Subway worker had the gall to ask me “big or small?” I naturally ignored her and asked that my sandwich include: pomidory, swieży ogórek, sałata, i musztarda. My proficiency with the language varied/depended with the time of day (feeling tired - zmęczona), emotional state (a heightened emotional state - podekscytowana) and of course the amount of alcohol consumed. My efforts were warmly received and my interactions were all very pleasant and sometimes brought smiles.

On one occasion, I was taking a commuter train to Sulejówek from Warszawa and was on the phone with my uncle. I was trying to convince him to meet me in the courtyard of a nearby church. It was the end of the day and I was struggling with the proper declension (przy kościele, koło kościoła, itd). As I was the only one speaking accented Polish in a rather crowed compartment, many people tuned into my conversation. As I valiantly tried to get the declension right, I noticed many folks starting to smile, and to hide it unsuccessfully.

People were kind/helpful (uprzejmi) everywhere I went, including dreaded institutions like the post office (poczta) and Urząd Stanu Cywilnego. I lead a rather charmed existence, it seems.

Polish pride: It really is challenging to interact with Poles in their native land and to successfully navigate through the minefield of making comparisons/comments about your own country without inadvertently triggering that prickly Polish pride. After a while, I learned it was best to confine my comments about Canada to two subjects: legal blood alcohol limit (0.08 grams versus 0.02 grams in Poland) which was met with resounding approval and the universal appeal of Canada’s small woodland creatures, namely chipmunks. For anyone not familiar with the charm/cuteness of this creature (urocze stworzenie), please view the attached link. Another neutral topic was the similarity of our coinage (monety). How can you offend anyone with more cuddly Canadian animals, namely engravings of loons or polar bears?

I must confess to developing an affinity for some strictly Polish “wildlife” i.e. wściekły pies, but that is an entirely different story. :)

Old town in Warsaw, photo by Barb

PS. Barb, so are you officially Polish now?

 
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September Picture Post - Photos of Poland

Posted by Anna Ikeda
Sep
27
2009

Hi guys!
After all these very serious discussions this month (because what to give a foreign mother in law who’s a snob and has everything is a serious discussion indeed) we deserved a more relaxing subject. And I realized that we haven’t had a proper picture post in a very long while. Shame on me.

But this time, I thought we should try something different. Instead of looking at my lousy photos of store names and advertising billboards, I want to show you the country as other people see it. Other people, who are actually very skilled at using cameras and taking gorgeous photos, as well. And some of them even provide informative commentaries in English. So it’s a win-win situation, right?

We’ll start with one of the most picture-perfect cities in Poland – Toruń. Glenn Standish over at Toruń Daily Photo Blog (the original English blog on Toruń) does a magnificent job at showing the city as he sees it.

photo by Glenn Standish

And he writes about it in English, too, which is always an awesome combination.

Then we move on to Yellerbelly’s Warsaw Daily Photo Blog. Also with gorgeous photos and also with short write-ups in English.

photo by yellerbelly

And I just love how he talks about Warszawa stuff that we should all know but somehow never think about anymore, like the story accompanying the photo of a manhole cover on ul. Miodowa.

And rounding up today’s selection of photo blogs from Poland is Łódź Daily Photo by Frank de Jol.

No text, just photos, and all of them magnificent. Łódź is definitely one of my favorite cities in Poland (“one of” because it has to compete with Gdańsk for this honor), and when I look at Frank’s photos I always end up thinking, “Gee, I never knew it was THAT beautiful.”
So, please go and take a look!

If you like this idea, I will feature three new photo blogs from Poland next month. That way even those readers who have never been to Poland will get a chance to see our beautiful country.

 
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