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February 23rd, 2007

Peek at Poland: Time to Make the Pączki

Jordan & Maria Seidel · 07:59 · Eastern & Central Europe

lingua → es

“Polish Doughnuts” by Polska＊ポーランド＊Poland

For at least one moment in the dark days of winter, life is sweet in Poland. Marking the last Thursday before Lent, Tłusty czwartek (or, Fat Thursday) is a day of over-indulgence in sweets.

This past Thursday, in scenes disturbingly reminiscent of Communist days, the local sweet shops and bakeries were full of people, lining up to get their hands on the source of sweetness and symbol of this special day - the traditional Polish doughnut, or pączki. Unfortunately, by lunch break, our local bakery was sold out already!

Typical sight in Poland on Fat Thursday, Wikipedia

Interestingly, each country has its own way of marking the last day before Lent: in Greece, instead of sweets, they eat loads of meat on Tsiknopempti. In Latin and South America, they celebrate in a more dynamic way with the Carnival.

How does your country mark the start of Lent? Do you sit in a sweet shop and gorge yourself on baker's delights or do you take to the streets?

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February 13th, 2007

Poland's Pulse: Healthcare Bingo, Alcohol Curfews, Red Pig

Jordan & Maria Seidel · 17:21 · Eastern & Central Europe

lingua → es

A rare bit of snow this winter brings families out for fun. (Warsaw)
Photo by Embe at warsawdaily

A week of intermittent snowfall broke a dry spell, drawing kids outdoors for some winter games. It will be a short-lived affair as the winter has been a let-down for some with warmer temperatures and, as Our Man in Gdansk suggests, indoor games are sure to be in fashion soon. One such game is a perennial favorite but with a twist from Poland, get your chips out for “Health Care Bingo.”

Here I present a cut-out-and-paste version of office bingo to help you while away the hours of talking heads talking about why the Polish health service is in a jock. You have to choose just three of the following commonly proferred explanations of why the Polish health service is in a jock.

What happens when local authorities get to plan, but not pay for a highway to connect Helsinki and Warsaw? BINGO! An offer they can't refuse plus irreversible damage to numerous forests. But when the chips are down, bloggers become clicktivists. Varpho has set up a petition and encourages all to take action now:

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January 1st, 2007

Poland's Pulse: “This year was…”

Jordan & Maria Seidel · 17:39 · Eastern & Central Europe

lingua → zhs · zht

2007 from our window -by Jordan

Polish bloggers are having a holiday break. Stuck between family and tons of food (both are obligatory parts of Christmas celebrations here), some only posted best wishes, and many didn't even bother to do even that.

Among these who managed to update after all, a great number seems to have been struck by the “recapitulation plague.” This disease, a type of melancholy, is particularly rampant around the end of the year. Its main symptom among the blogging community members seema to be a need to summarize and somehow evaluate the past twelve months.

Almost every post started with “This year was…”

The bloggers of Salon 24 (more about this initiative at a later date) seem to compete in summarizing. Its host, Igor Janke, in his Janke Post, proclaimed 2006 to be the lost year (PL):

This was a year of disappointments in the public arena. After the last elections I, like millions of Poles, expected a great renaissance. I counted on Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Donald Tusk and their parties. Both have wasted their chances. PiS maybe wasn't doing as bad as many were predicting. They did introduce some reforms. But they also introduced (populist) Giertych into the government. They introduced minister Jasinski, who's blocking privatization. They introduced minister Fotyga, who's not doing a thing. They make deal, split and make deal again with Lepper and his pathetic band. The levels of political discord have reached previously unknown heights. Although the economy is, thankfully, doing fine, I'm disappointed. From the politicians that were supposed to make a breakthrough I'd expected much, much more.

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November 13th, 2006

Poland's Pulse in the Blogosphere

Jordan & Maria Seidel · 15:18 · Eastern & Central Europe

lingua → es

Looking on with incredulity…Impersonal meets personal on the streets in Poland. Automatic money machines not adopted by all. Shared by WarsawDaily.

On Nov. 11, Poles observed Independence Day. Apartment blocks donned national flags, but there were no fireworks. Woodcraft in Poland places the holiday in its historical context. As noted by The Poland Dairies, there was a bit of fanfare in the public sphere:

…the cavalry rode past the building - about 30 men dressed in soldier's uniforms, riding down the street on horseback.

And, observing the Polish wanted ads with an anthropological eye, Our Man in Gdansk points out some rather interesting consumer trends while de-coding Polish prose.

Gynaecologists sometimes advertise a “full range of services.” This is a widely-understood code for “we do abortions.”… If you have the old-fashioned (read: communist) type of wardrobe door, which opens out on contraptions known as “hinges” you are a clod, a bumpkin. Remember: it's not “location, location, location” here. It's: “mozaika, glazura, terakota.”

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October 16th, 2006

Poland's Pulse in the Blogosphere

Jordan & Maria Seidel · 15:14 · Eastern & Central Europe

Local Dancers in Poland's Lake District (Mazury) prepare for Sieja (kind of fish) Fish Festival - by Embe, WarsawDaily

Perhaps a Christmas footballing miracle has come early, as Kinuk reports on Poland's victory over the 4th-ranked Portugal last week:

Their victory surprised myself, N and my brother, P, who was texting us furiously throughout the game. If Poland had played like this during the World Cup and for the last few games, supporting them would be a whole different ball game, if you pardon the pun…Portugal had a bad night, but Poland had an exceptional one and they can walk away proud from their achievements.

Not to be outdone by athletes, the Polish judiciary offered up its own legal miracle by beefing up the critical punch of journalists when it comes to overly sensitive, and litigious politicos. Writes Traveling Life:

Poland's top court has taken a step towards defending the freedom of speech, saying that one can only be punished for defaming a state official under a current law if the statements are made while he is performing his function.

And not to violate the “law of threes,” another miracle is noted by Poland - IP law news and Resources - no, it's not that Poles have stopped their incessant complaining, rather:

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October 2nd, 2006

Poland's Pulse in the Blogopshere

Jordan & Maria Seidel · 14:57 · Eastern & Central Europe

We’re looking through the Polish language blogs first, this time, as the political situation in the country generated a lot of heat in the blogosphere, as well as managed to get the world’s attention for a while.

Here's the low down… After the break up of the coalition, the ruling PiS scrambled for majority. While courting PSL - “the other farmers’ party” in the parliament – they openly appealed to former partner’s MPs to leave Samoobrona and back up the government. Andrzej Lepper was swift to punish the few opportunists – he pulled out promissory notes which he apparently had each party member sign upon joining, and promised to execute the “debts” as penalty. Populists’ leader also told the press that ruling party members were approaching his MPs with “corruption offers.” Two journalists of the private TVN channel decided to follow the story. They came in contact (sources differ on “how”) with Samoobrona’s Renata Beger – a controversial MP with a pending court case for election fraud - and got her cooperation in taping two important PiS politicians negotiating her defection.

The Beatroot offers an English transcript of the secretly taped meeting. Among the demands that they were prepared to meet were: securing Beger a high post in the Ministry of Agriculture and mandates in local elections for her family members. “Negotiators” also suggested that they could help Ms. Beger with her legal problems, and pay off her promissory note with a special fund created with parliment's money.

Bloggers differ in opinion which offer was more outrageous.

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September 18th, 2006

Poland's Pulse in the Blogosphere

Jordan & Maria Seidel · 09:38 · Eastern & Central Europe

The 16th century town of Kazimierz Dolny in Poland - by Gustav (Warsaw Station)

The Polish Farmer and the Dell? From bovinechips to microchips, Polish Matters reports on the largest single US investment in Poland from computer-maker Dell. The plant is slated for construction next year in Lodz and will employ 2,000 people. That's very good news for an economy already suffering from a serious brain drain pointed West.

While microchips are very small and shiny, and cowchips, well, are not, the Real Warsaw waxes on about the sizeable chips on Polish clerk shoulders. Why is it that there are more scowls than smiles in the shops? An answer:

The mainstream theory is it goes back to the communist days when shop assistants did not need to be polite. There were less goods than customers and the shop assistant was god, allocating the goods at a whim to the pour souls in the queue.

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August 1st, 2006

Poland's Pulse in the Blogosphere

Jordan & Maria Seidel · 02:59 · Eastern & Central Europe

Gushers of cool at the local Mall in Warsaw - by Embe, WarsawDaily

Poland is a hotspot in a few ways this week. While the heatwave is starting to take its toll on fan stocks (Warsaw seems to be sold out of them), Blog from Poland reports on the annual outdoor rock concert called “Woodstock Stop”. Touted as the largest European music festival, The Woodstock Stop (repeat that 5 times fast!) will attract an estimated 400,000 people — I suppose this is where all the “fans” went?

The Woodstock Stop (Poland)

Far from the peace, love, and piwo, but no less the hotspot, As the Warsaw Crow Flies blogs about a live re-enactment of the Warsaw Uprising:

My inside man tells me the battle begins at 4pm with 'some' fighting expected in the streets near the Fort Legionów.

And while the ‘real-deal' fighting continues in Lebanon, Our Man in Gdansk, identifies some “uncritical acceptance” of the Israeli strategy by Poland's largest newspaper:

“Lebanese Children want to be Martyrs” is the surprising headline in Friday's Gazeta Wyborcza. The subhead: “Thousands of children are the victims of Hezbollah's war with Israel [not Israel's war on the Lebanon]. In photographs from the Lebanon one sees mostly the dead or those injured after the explosion of bombs. But most of them are those with sick souls.” I don't recall such sickly moralising accompanying the same newspaper's publication of a photograph of Israeli children writing messages on the bombs used to kill their Lebanese neighbours.

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July 18th, 2006

Polish Blogosphere Update

Jordan & Maria Seidel · 09:06 · Eastern & Central Europe

Better late than never… That's what PolBlog hopes bloggers will think in response to its latest foray into blogging technology. Its new “Talk Back Attack” features an audio comment option to put “a voice to the text.” This is how PolBlog explains the new feature:

Audio-commenting, as we call it, adds another dimension to blogging — think of it as audio SMS.

The topic for the inaugural Talk Back Attack (TBA) is the very hot issue of the Polish brain drain. PolBlog pontificates:

While Poles working abroad are now what one could call economic refugees, in the nearest future they may very well be followed by their diseffected brethren, the political refugees. How to put a brake on it? Oddly enough, there won't be any religious refugees as Poland stands to become a country of unemployed, educationally undistinguished (and indistinguishable), Catholic zealots.

And speaking of the devil(s), religious zealotry may be just what Poland needs if Edward Lucas is correct in his latest report pinning much of the blame for Poland's fall from EU grace on the twins currently serving as President and PM:

It is easy to argue that the Law and Justice party has done disappointingly little in the nine months since it won Poland's parliamentary and presidential elections. But in one respect it has done a lot: once a regional heavyweight, respected in America and around Europe, the country now attracts ridicule and condemnation. The main culprit is the president, Lech Kaczynski.

The twins of Polish politics are providing tons of newfound grist for the satirists. The Real Warsaw waxes instrumental, anticipating a potential windfall of success should the ‘wonder twins' fail (or succeed, depending on the POV):

…it would be impossible to set Poland any lower on the world respect ladder. good news for me…I want this country to fail so I can prosper.

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July 4th, 2006

Polish Blogosphere Update

Jordan & Maria Seidel · 08:26 · Eastern & Central Europe

With missionary zeal The Poland Pulse blogs about the latest English camps coming to Poland. By no means clandestine, the camp project to convert Catholic women to a less formalistic Christianity hopes to demonstrate that:

…following Christ is much more than going to church and paying homage to a religious icon.

Now if that ain't taking a swipe at Polish Catholicism (watch out Radio Maria!).

Swipes aside, kicking is king (sorry Jesus) for some Catholics, and boo describes the familial ambivalence of watcing (from a Catholic country) her Protestant team loose to a(nother) Catholic country. Perhaps sympathetic to her World Cup woes, gs says in the comments section:

One fundamental problem with the way the World Cup is organised is that there are many more teams that get eliminated compared to the number of teams who end up winning (1).

But hey, defeat is part of life isn't it? In fact, according to The Real Warsaw, the little (or, little-ish) failure inside each of us needs to rear its head in order for success to be possible at all. So go ahead, awaken the failure within…

That is… unless you live in Poland, in which case failure seems to be mainlined directly into political culture. And looking like failure on steriods, lawmaker Renata Beger was convicted of forging her electoral petition list. Like it was stated, a little failure can prompt positive results, as the beatroot has launched the tongue-in-cheek Polish Pro-Corruption Party with Ms. Beger as its leader. An appropriate motto: “Nothing succeeds like failure.”

That’s the Poland blogopshere update! Until next time - Do widzenia y po widzenia!

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