Curiouser and Curiouser! on poland http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic poland Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb The key point to retain is that Poland has mountains Fri, 23 Apr 2004 09:23:45 +0100 <a href="http://www.idlewords.com/2004/04/bukowina_tatrza_ska.htm">Bukowina Tatrzańska</a>. <img src="http://www.idlewords.com/images/bukowina/miasto.jpg"><br> <blockquote><br> If you think of Poland as shaped like home plate, the Tatra mountains run just along the country's southern tip, right where the catcher would be if the catcher were Slovakia (and Hungary were the umpire). I understand that baseball metaphors may be lost on some of my readers, but chances are anyone unfamiliar with baseball comes from a country that does a decent job teaching European geography. No harm is done.<br> <br> [...]<br> <br> Ha ha, only serious. Forbidden to keep hard currency, people logically turned to commodities that were easy to store, easy to sell, and were guaranteed not to lose their value. And it's hard to imagine any set of political or economic circumstances short of the Second Coming where it would be impossible to exchange alcohol for ready cash in Poland (one suspects that even during the Second Coming they would work something out). Grain alcohol is the ultimate liquid asset - compact, valuable, always in demand - with only two shortcomings: susceptibility to fire and susceptibility to the man of the house, who in these parts can rarely sleep easy knowing that just a lock, a few wooden planks, and his wife's constant vigilance separate him from a month-long bender. <br> <br> <img src="http://www.idlewords.com/images/bukowina/swiatynia.jpg"><br> <br> If you are lucky enough to get your hands on it, grain alcohol of course tastes great straight, but you can also use it to prepare this tasty beverage:<br> <br> <blockquote> <b>Herbata po Góralsku</b> <p>(Highlander Tea)</p><br><br>Fill a glass 3/4 full of freshly brewed, strong, hot tea. Add a heaping teaspoon of sugar and enough grain alcohol to fill the glass completely. Stir, let sit for five minutes, serve hot. For an extra kick, use only half a glass of tea. </blockquote> [...]<br> <br> Not all the luxuries of this part of the world are so easy to export, of course. If you want the best toasted cheese to be had anywhere, or ham so good that you will weep for the lost years you could have spent eating it, you have no alternative except rush to the Carpathians. And there's no way to bring home the clomp clomp of hooves on snow, the distinct stench of ancient Hungarian buses, or the ferociously bright stars when the tramontane wind blows. But holed up homesick in a cold winter room on another continent, pouring half bottle of vodka into your mug of Lipton gives you a fair first approximation.<br> <br> <img src="http://www.idlewords.com/images/bukowina/snieg.jpg"> [<a href="http://www.idlewords.com/">Idle Words</a>]<br> </blockquote> <br> Excerpts from another interesting and deadly funny piece from Maciej.&nbsp; He manages to be both interesting, witty and eloquent.&nbsp; I'm really beginning to hate him.<br> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002115.html In the future, every momentous historical occasion will get a crap soundtrack. Mon, 03 May 2004 08:16:59 +0100 <blockquote>&nbsp;<img src="http://www.idlewords.com/images/ue/duza_flaga.jpg" alt="Large EU Flag"><br> <br> I was warned that it was utter madness to arrive in Warsaw on the last day of April, the day before Poland and nine other countries were slated to join the European Union. There was a meeting of the World Trade Organization under way, the city was filled to the gills with prime ministers, central bank heads and other luminaries, and fully half of the city center had been designated a "red zone", accessible to residents only, with no vehicle traffic allowed. Traffic gridlock surrounded the city, the airport was overwhelmed with clouds of black helicopters, every window within throwing distance of a Warsaw street had been boarded up in preparation for the "alternaglobalists" who follow WTO meetings like tie-dye artists used to follow the Dead. Anybody who could find the means had already left town - the capital was utterly deserted, menacing, bristling with police and furtive al-Qaeda operatives wrapped head to toe in plastic explosives. I was to understand that my father bore no responsibility for fetching me at the airport, none at all, that I would have to fend for myself, and God help me.<br> <br> Continued... [<a href="http://www.idlewords.com/">Idle Words</a>]</blockquote> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002174.html