I.A. Part II

Isaac Church — Tue, 19 May 2015 00:00:56 +0000

Here’s some more miscellaneous things I’ve noted during my stay in Poland:

You can’t barter at any of the shops in the market, which I find very annoying. If you want a better price, you must hunt it down throughout the city. The more touristy locations, as you might expect, have higher prices.
For a while, I thought I’d found a country that finally decided putting lemon in your water was a terrible idea. I was proven wrong about my 7th meal in.
Street performers are very marketing savvy here. Some dancers I saw came out, performed one song to show their talent, and then they asked that 30 people tip them before they would perform another song.
Bathrooms are often marked in the style of the British, with WC for “water closet”.
There is no term for granola in Poland. If you want granola with your yogurt, you order yogurt “with crunch”.
The open- and close-door elevator buttons actually work here. Praise the Lord.
The eggs are runny, and I don’t like it.
Speaking of breakfast food, Polish people prefer their bacon to be room temperature, which I find to be mediocre at best.
While we’re on the topic of breakfast food, I’ve never seem so many different varieties of ham in my life.
There is an abundance of WiFi compared to the US.
It is very difficult to pay with large denominations of bills.
Amber shops are sometimes scary because they often have scorpions.
I’ve yet to see an obese Polish person. I think it’s because of the inhuman amount of walking that is required in order to get around the city.

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I.A.

Isaac Church — Sat, 16 May 2015 18:10:57 +0000

As you may have noticed, this post is titled “I.A.”, which is an abbreviation for the Latin inter alia, meaning “among other things”. I thought I would write a bit about a few miscellaneous things I’ve learned/noticed/found interesting on my trip so far. I’ll do this in bullet form, since I don’t imagine most of these small tidbits of information would fit well in any of my other daily writings. Some of these things will be familiar to those of you who have traveled to Europe before, but I believe some of these differences will be points of interest to those of you who are unfamiliar with the customs.

Polish is a very, very difficult language to speak. It is nearly impossible to understand without practice even if one knows the words someone is saying.
I’ve found that it’s occasionally easier to get my point across in Spanish.
When you order water in restaurants, you must specify still or sparkling.
Water is very expensive at restaurants, more so than beer, liquor, or soft drinks.
Food, however, is very cheap, which makes up for the price of the water.
Polish ice cream is delicious, but is more like gelato than American ice cream. You can only order a 1-scoop cone.
Buses are always on time, and are very clean with nice overhead handles to grab. Appalcart needs to take note of the Polish bus system. The only similarities the two systems have is that all the bus drivers drive like maniacs.
Never jaywalk or cross before the crosswalk light turns. To do so means a 50€ fine.
Bags cost extra at supermarkets, and the grocers will not bag the items for you.
Ketchup and mustard are very different, most notably because of the lack of high fructose corn syrup. The ketchup is a little sweeter due to the use of real sugar, and the mustard is much smoother and is quite delicious as a substitute for ketchup on any dish.

Polish bottled water

Polish mustard and ketchup

One must be careful when calling something “cheap”. “Inexpensive” is a better word and is less likely to insult someone.
Smoking is widely acceptable at restaurants; however, it hasn’t actually bothered me the entire time I’ve been here.
Cars will actually stop immediately to let you cross at crosswalks.
If need be, waiters will ask people to move to a smaller table at restaurants in order to accommodate larger groups. People are usually more than happy to do so. In fact, a woman kindly moved tables to accomodate our group at dinner one evening. In America, this would have been the start of World War III.
Owners and workers often stand outside of their shops or restaurants. This is for one of two reasons: they are either trying to welcome you in and provide you with friendly service, or they are going to relentlessly tell you about the restaurant until you agree to eat there or manage to escape via some excuse.
The animals in Poland, while similar to those in the US, are often different colors. Crows are grey and black (on one crow), squirrels are red, and ducks are all the colors of the rainbow. I recognize many of the trees and plants from North America, but there are several I have never seen before, especially the flowers.

Polish duck

This concludes my I.A. post. I’ll probably have another or two before the end of the trip, but until then, do widzenia.

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I.A. Part II

I.A.