Moving to a new country can be daunting enough without the added pressure of not knowing what might await your skin and hair in terms of pleasant or slightly less pleasant surprises. Add to this the uncertainty of how to manage dressing within your style in weather conditions you might not be that used to…
Month: January 2024
Silesia II – An Interlude on Relationship Dynamics
Then there was the issue of the club. She really wanted to go there because it spelled freedom for one night. That was the main reason she’d asked us along on this trip, more than chipping in for gas. Her husband was tending to their infant, which translated into frantic phone calls from home every…
The Avon Lady is Not The Only One Who Hates Me – a treatise on my relationship with conservative societies
We ran into the Avon Lady again the other day. As always in these cases, I was with her neighbor and – again as always in these cases – we saw her son first. He greeted his neighbor, looked a question at me as though he wasn’t quite sure whether to talk to me or…
Road Trip Adventures – How a Trip to Silesia Reinforced my Intuition. Part I: Arrival
The hostel was a hovel. Nothing matched how it had been advertised / the photos they put up online. For starters, the 3-bed arrangement with one bed on a mezzanine with private kitchen and bath in a spacious room turned out to be a bunk bed contraption with barely three inches between the third…
More Tales from the Polish Relatives: wujek Marian
The person who did stay in my mind, for a long time, was ciocia Basia’s husband, wujek Marian. Wujek Marian had married into the family (obviously) and when I first met him at the age of eleven I was scared of his dog. As an aside, before I discovered that I’m somewhat of a dog…
Unraveling the Mystery of the Polish Relatives: ciocia Basia
If I held off writing about her it’s (mainly) because she is the one I interacted with the least. She was my mother’s first sister (the third-born) and my mother hated her guts. My mementoes of her were admittedly vague. Apparently we’d first met when I was two and she joined forces with me and…
The People Watcher Observes a Couple
This particular Nero we are at is an island in a not too busy mall. It’s also the northernmost mall, a concept reflected in its name. Most people are there to take a much needed break from shopping (one of the reasons I loved malls as a child was because of the hustle and bustle…
An Acquaintance Revisited – the Avon Lady Ignores My Existence because I’m not Racist
We ran into the Avon Lady earlier, coming home singing and goofing around despite the cold, and then noticed that someone was at the front door. And since there aren’t that many people in the building (and none that would really be out this late), we cursed under our breaths and walked in with our…
On the Power of Saying Yes – Epiphany Rock
I’m not a big church goer, preferring my own interpretation of things, but there’s a beautiful chapel right behind where I live when I happen to hang out in Poland, and an even more beautiful church, so when I was invited to the carol singing for Epiphany, I decided why not. The original plan was…
NYE in the Village
The village hits different when you come for a visit, and when it’s on your own terms. Or when you jump at the suggestion to just step away and take some quiet time in a village so remote even local Poles tend to mispronounce it. Normally villages aren’t my thing, especially not on big days,…
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