Polish Joke

Opole, a small town in Poland. Late 2006.

1.

"I know a Polish joke," I told my students.
They sighed. "Go on," they said.
"It's from an old British sitcom called Yes, Minister. Very funny; superior writing. You'd like it. Well there's this one episode where there's some diplomats and one of them says to another, 'Hey, have you heard the latest Polish joke? Jaruzelski!'"
"That is not funny for us. It was a very serious time."
I tutted. It got a laugh on the BBC. "Fine. God. Tell me a joke then."
"We don't know any."
"Then that's your homework."

2.

"Jokes. Go."
"There are two pigs eating from a..." He swept his hand sideways.
"Trough," I said.
"There are two pigs eating from a trough. One of them vomits into the trough. The other one says, 'Hey! Stop making more work for us.'" His fellow students giggled.
"Right. Interesting insight into a certain way of thinking. Ah, Evalina. Your joke please."
"Me? Okay. There is a man who borrowed money from his friend. He can't pay it back. He is worried. His wife says, 'Why are you worried?' He says, 'I borrowed money and I can't pay it back.' 'I will deal with it,' says his wife. His wife goes to the phone and calls the other man. 'Hello,' she says, 'my husband doesn't have the money. Goodbye.'" The class laughs furiously.
"Yes?" I said.
"What?" she said.
"Then what happened?"
"That is the end of the joke."
.

Disco Polo Polo vs Disco Polo Ruskie

Which came first, Disco Polo or Disco Polo Ruskie?

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES are you to stop the video before you get to 3:01 (counting down). You must listen to the chorus or you will have bad luck for 10 days. And check out the SPECIAL EFFECTS at 1:17.

Chorus:

New Year
All our dreams will come true
We will remember the new year - all year!
Don't regret wasting candles

If you are planning to train to be a CIA operative or a professional chess player at any point in your life, see if you can pass this test of mental durability and concentration: You have to watch this video WITHOUT nodding your head in time to the beat.

Disco Polo

"How long have you been in Poland now?" asked Ola.
"Three months. Four. I dunno," I replied. "But I feel like I've learned a lot about Poland in that time."
"Do you know about Disco Polo?" she asked.
"No," I said.
"Then you know nothing."



Jestes szalona means "you're crazy."
'Boys' remain the highest-grossing artists in Polish history.

Life in Poland

Weirdness, part one

1) Chimney sweeps. There are chimney sweeps in Poland, and they transport themselves on bicycles. They wear a grey uniform and top hats. If you see one, you should hold a button until you see a woman wearing glasses.

2) Nuns. Are everywhere. I have seen nuns in Pizza Hut, shopping in Tesco, queuing for a bus, and eating an ice cream with two scoops.

3) Paying the bill. In a restaurant, if you say 'thank you' when you pay the bill, it means you don't want change. Polite foreigners beware!

4) Shyness. Poles are shy about speaking English. The woman who works in the baker's shop next to my school speaks English. But if there is someone else in the shop, she speaks Polish.

5) Politics.

i
One of Poland's foremost politicians is this man. At the 1:00 mark he is saying, "I have a mother, I have a brother. My daddy is dead. He is in heaven now." Later, he assures voters that if he is elected mayor of Bialystock, there will be no more drugs or crime.

ii
The President and Prime Minister are twin brothers. Their party won the election after a religious radio station known as 'Radio Maria' told its listeners (predominantly elderly women) to vote for it.

iii
Two Polish MEPs were accused of raping a prostitute. One of Poland's top politicians said, "You can't rape a prostitute." He was not fired.

iv
The Minister for Education (and deputy Prime Minister) doesn't want gays to be teachers. He wants schools to fire them. A journalist pointed out that this contravenes European employment law. The Minister suggests headteachers "Just make something up then." The Minister looks like Frankenstein.

Great Brzegspectations

The conference room at the Besel electric motor factory in Brzeg is a comfortable, bright and clean space. It's the sort of room two countries would use to harmonise bra sizes, or a place where an actor could give a bitchy off-the-record interview with a gossip magazine.

In one corner is a stand on which sits a variety of electric motors - all seemingly identical but different in staggeringly complicated ways. On one wall is a map of modern Europe. Through the window lie the factory gates, where matchstick workers trudge home after their daily toil. My student sits opposite me. He has finished his shift but remains for 90 minutes to practice his English. My ignorance of engineering, Polish culture and Polish history delights him. He wants to tell me everything.

He typically talks for 89 of the 90 minutes - the perfect student. Once he starts talking he doesn't stop. He's like one of the machines in his factory. ('This machine,' says the foreman to the visitors from Warsaw, 'can pump out 15 English sentences per minute'). I choose my first question carefully, because it will be the topic I hear about for the next 45 minutes. But whatever the starting topic is, his mind is irresistibly drawn to Polish history, and the second half of the lesson he talks of Hitler, the Battle of Britain, Yalta, the Communist Era, but mostly Stalin - Stalin above all dominates his thoughts. The tangents that lead him to Stalin are remarkable. "Brzeg has a high unemployment rate. Under the Communists we had full employment. Of course, we also had Stalin." "This factory was bought by an Italian company. Stalin wasn't Italian."

But as he mentions Stalin, I interrupt.
"Rafal," I say, "I'd love to talk about Stalin again, but I have a question." His eyes widen slightly. I let the pause last for a few seconds. "You work in a factory and that. Electrics. I need a sort of adaptor thing, so I can plug my English things into Polish sockets."
He understands. He makes a phone call. "I know where you can get them," he tells me. I pick up a pen to take the address. "Let's go," he says.
"Go?" I am stunned. "Go to buy them? Now?"
"Yes, we should have time."

He drives me into the centre of Brzeg. We go into a phone shop. There is a queue. Rafal ignores the line and goes to the front. "Good day. This is my English friend Andrew. He needs a phone adaptor." This isn't going to work, I think to myself, I tried this already. It doesn't work - they don't sell them in that shop. The queue doesn't appear to resent me. We leave.

We race to another shop. On the way we are nearly hit by a blonde woman driving while smoking and putting on lipstick. She smiles at us. She has two children in the back of the car. "Did you see that?" asks Rafal. He stares at me for no less than ten seconds - while entering a roundabout. I have a vision of my mother being informed of my death. A man is telling her that my presence in the car was a mystery, and that the lorry which hit it was undamaged, though the driver dropped his phone after the impact.

I open my eyes and we are in a sort of general purpose electronic peripherals store. Rafal ignores the queue again, and the shopkeep hands him two plug adaptors. "They will solve your problem," the man says to me in English. Rafal insists on paying for them.

He drives me back to the factory, then drives home, twelve zlotys poorer. I roll the adaptors around my hand and wait for the other teachers to finish.

Opole Mio

Andrew Humiliates a Tramp

Copernicus Airport. Great name, miniature airport. It is located 9 bus stops away from the train station in Wroclaw. Whichever way you mentally pronounced 'Wroclaw' just then, know that it was wrong. W in Polish is pronounced 'V', C is pronounced 'TS' and L (with a line through it) is pronounced 'W'. Of course! So the city is called Vrotswav. Easy!

I asked the man at the information desk for some information. He looked terrified and went to get someone else. I had a look around. It didn't take long. Vrotswav's airport is bigger than my house, and probably bigger than your house, but not bigger than your house AND my house. I saw an ATM machine - necessary, as I hadn't brought any Polish zlotys (or xwafkas if you want to pronounce the currency properly.)

Another, taller, man came to give me some information. I needed to get bus 406. I thanked him, and for the next four minutes he watched me like a hawk as I tried and failed to get money from the ATM. I wondered if he would lend me some money. Probably not. Fortunately, a generous auntie had left me twenty pounds in a game of Monopoly so I had just about enough for the bus and train.

At the train station I joined a random line. Or was it random? My queue was full of stunning women. They were slow though, which gave me time to look at all the helpful English signs. Yes, that was sarcasm: there were no signs in English. I didn't have a clue what was going on or how to get to Opole. I started to panic slightly.

At that moment, a tramp decided to stand next to me. He poked me in the elbow, said some things, and finally started pointing into his mouth. His teeth were rotten and distorted, like a row of diseased trees, each of which has been repeatedly struck by lightning.

'Don't be touching me,' I said. 'Shoo.'

He wouldn't leave me alone. I stared ahead at the unmoving queue. He poked me again and repeated his curious gesture. Finger into the mouth. Finally, two girls behind me started to berate him. 'Leave him alone, he's a foreigner,' they probably said. I turned and realised they were pretty.

'Hi,' I said to the best one, 'Do you speak English?'

She giggled shyly. 'A little. Giggle.'

'Please can you tell him,' I pointed to the tramp, 'That I am not gay?'

It took a moment to sink in, and then the girls laughed, delightfully. To my surprise, they passed the message on to the tramp. 'He's not gay,' they said in Polish.

'Nie, nie,' said the tramp, then waved his hands in exasperation and moved on. One nil!

I turned to the hot girl. 'Can you help me get to Opole?' I asked.

'Of course,' she said.

She was delightful. I'd probably be married to her by now, if our first meeting hadn't involved me being really mean to a homeless man.

.

The Sin Bin

“Marriage is too expensive; divorce is too final. When marriage turns sour, people have nowhere to turn. I sought a creative solution, one fit for the modern Taiwan. The results, as you know, have been spectacular.”

I had accepted an invitation to meet Yan Xiang Ling, Taiwan’s Ministeress of Confucian Sustainitude. She wanted to discuss her controversial Spouse Bin policy. “Please tell me how you thought up the idea,” I said.

“After my divorce I was very unhappy,” she said, “while my ex-husband found contentment in brothels, gambling dens and all-night sex parties. I set out to correct this injustice and find some way to reduce divorces. However, although Taiwan is the world’s best country and our tourist slogan is ‘Our Country is Better Than Yours’, it is well known that Taiwanese people are not creative. I used the Internet to research foreign culture and came across the term ‘sin bin’. In some of your barbarian sports, the judge can make unsporting players leave the field and think about what they have done. Marriage is very much a team sport, so I adapted the idea.”

“But,” I said, “In sports the sin bin is a bench next to the pitch, whereas you have erected a concrete prison cell on every street corner in Miao Li.”

“Yes,” she said enthusiastically, “it’s a very elegant system. If a man fails to notice his wife’s new haircut, or stares too long at a pretty waitress, or commits any of the 999 Spousal Hate Crimes listed in the legislation, his wife can call the hotline. A squad attends the scene, interviews the witnesses, and can place the husband in the local sin bin.”

“Doesn’t it lead to more divorces?”

“No, because the squads take the view that the woman is usually right. Within a very short space of time, men learn they have to keep their wife happy or face cold, foodless nights in the sin bin. Miao Li is like a paradise now.”

“Have there been any unexpected side effects?”

“Yes,” she said, “there have been no marriages for two months. But no marriage means no divorce, so I have achieved my goal. The Mayor of Miao Li will be delighted – when his wife lets him out.”