As you know I’ve traveling around Poland a bit lately. It’s been fun. I got to see all sorts of very interesting things. Or not so interesting things, which for some reason stuck in my head anyway. And I dutifully took pictures of it all.

Actually, speaking of pictures, I realized that we’ve never had a classic photo post on this blog before. Hmmm… How did I manage to overlook THAT?

So for today, I prepared a selection of photos that though maybe not necessarily interesting for everyone (and especially not for native Poles reading this blog – I apologize in advance here for any hurt feelings), show a few things that I noticed during my Polish road trips. Things that made me chuckle, or say out loud “what were they thinking!”.

Here we go:

You know those big fonts of holy water you see when entering a catholic church? Those where people dip their hands and then make a sign of the cross. Have you ever thought how the holy water gets into those fonts? And what is holy water anyway? And what happens when the font becomes empty?

Now, this mystery has been solved. This is what I saw in one of the churches in Toruń.

The caretaker came over and poured some “Kropla Beskidu” bottled water into the font, and voila – problem solved. Then he poured some into a plastic cup and had himself a drink. And then left both the bottle and the cup by the font, presumably for future refills.

This is something else I saw in Toruń. Unfortunately, the shop was closed and I didn’t get a chance to investigate this mysterious “schab po żydowsku” up close.

“Schab” – pork loin. “Po żydowsku” – Jewish style. Hmmm…

While driving around Warszawa, we saw this:

I don’t know about you, but if this was my company, I’d never let such an embarrassing typo roam the streets. Or maybe Victoria Group (yes, that’s the proper name of the company - I looked them up on the internet) was hoping that nobody would notice?

And speaking of company names… I have seen quite a few really strange ones around. I can forgive “Bizarro” (a restaurant by the E7 highway), because I’m guessing the idea was to name it after a comic book character. But this made my English speaking traveling companion spit his soda all over the car’s dashboard.

Yep. Blow.

And by the way, here’s something else that makes me chuckle. There is a major jewelry store chain in Poland. They specialize in wedding bands and engagement rings. The company’s name is Apart. I know that it’s just a pretty sound in Polish and doesn’t mean anything at all. 

Just imagine this firm expanding to the UK, for example. Their ads would be simply wonderful – “Apart – the best choice you can make for the rest of your life.”

Personally, if I were getting married, I’d prefer my guy to buy our rings at a place with a more auspicious name – like this one, for example:

By why does their logo look so much like GAP? From a distance it totally had me fooled.
Hmmm… The mysteries of modern Poland.