September 22nd 2013

So today was spent taking a casual trip to Poland for lunch. And I am now fluent in Polish (i.e. I spent my time pointing and repeating the following words like a demented parrot):

Tak - Yes
Nie - No
Dzien dobry - Hello
Prosze - Please
Dziekuje - Thankyou

My first impression was the ease with which you can travel from Germany to Poland and vice versa - no passports needed. After being totally baffled by this, my host family went on to inform me that this is now the same all over the EU, and the passport control at that part of the border had been taken down three years ago. So it was pretty odd to see German German German written everywhere, when the next moment there is not an 'Achtung' or 'Vorsicht' in sight and instead I am bombarded with masses of Polish.

So that was my first experience of Poland. Next, I was driven to Legnica, which is a little further in and on the way became less and less ignorant to the Polish culture, thanks to my hosts. For example, I didn't know that Poland is the fastest-growing economy in Europe at the moment (I had thought that was Germany - oops!), or that the eastern part of Poland that I was visiting actually used to be part of Germany.

Upon arrival at Legnica, I was struck by how quiet the town was, and then all was made clear when I saw that most of the population was in one or other of the church services going on at the time. Being a highly religious Roman Catholic country, the town was almost littered with fantastically gorgeous churches, but despite this, there were still people standing outside the doors because they couldn't get a seat. I was keen to look around the inside of one of these impressive buildings but would have to wait, so in the meantime I tried some traditional Polish cuisine, Zurek (an absolutely delicious soup), and had a mini-tour of part of Lednica, discovering that it is a town famous for its copper. There is even a copper museum there, but I didn't pay it a visit.

Eventually managed to have a look around one of the churches, and it was indeed incredibly ornate (as you might imagine). My one lasting memory of that church though will be my realisation of exactly how ingrained religion is into Polish society as opposed to the secular-slash-slightly-religious-slash-sort-of-Christian-when-it-suits-us mentality that seems to prevail in England; I went in right at the end of one of the services, just as people were getting up and leaving, and as people got up a lot of them bowed in the direction of the altar before they left. The last people to get up and do this before the church was completely empty was a man in his seventies dressed in a suit and a smart middle-aged woman. No surprises there I thought - just the kind of demographic I would expect to do such a thing. Then, someone came running out from a door at the side of the altar (I have no idea where he came from or what he was doing), and it was a teenage boy with a Grade 1 haircut, wearing a tracksuit, and chewing gum. But even though he was obviously in a hurry, he remembered to stop for a second, turn around, and briefly bow to the altar before quickly making his way out of the church.

After this, we made our way to Jawor, about 10 miles south, and I was taken to see the Protestant Church of Peace (Kosciol Pokoju), which was surprisingly ornate for what I would think of as a Protestant church. The walls are adorned with paintings, and the altar is decorated in gold. And it's very big - to put it into perspective, it can house 6,000 people.

So with my mind filled with new knowledge and a little bit of Polish, we drive back to Bautzen, and I feel that little bit more cultured. Now to get ready for the week ahead teaching English...