For the past four weeks, Britian’s The Guardian newspaper has run a series it has called New Europe. It has spent one week each analysing Germany, France, Spain and finally in the past week, Poland. The introduction to the series says “Who are our neighbours? Too often Europe is discussed and reported through its common [...]
It’s official! The golden couple of Central and Eastern Europe are breaking up! It had been a while coming, but sources close to the couple claim they have reached the stage where ‘irreconcilable differences’ cannot be repaired. The relationship had looked increasingly fraught in recent times, with Lithuania announcing recently that, in their opinion “the [...]
I have only one wish in life: I would like a simple, efficient bedside lamp. Actually I have two wishes, but the second one is for a sitcom about former Arab dictators sharing a flat in Brixton (Hosni! Have you been eating my humus again!?), which would be much more difficult to organise. Or at [...]
Errr… Just popped over here, noticed the last post went off six days ago and got my act together to stave off an impending week-long break in posting. I do not know whether the task was really challenging, since as every student during his exam period I am intently looking out for opportunities to indulge [...]
It’s that time of year when Mystik Monika rolls her palms over her crystal ball and tries to foresee what the future holds. The Polandian crew found a few spare złoty down the side of the couch and asked her to cast her eye over what lies in store for Poland over the coming year. [...]
So I’m poking around on the website of the Central Anticorruption Bureau (important journalistic research doncha know) and it occurs to me to wonder what I would do if I was foreigner wanting to report a heinous act of corruption—like my wife scoffing all the Christmas fruit cake for example. I clicked over to the [...]
Those who have kept up with Polandian for a while have surely read several rants on various things that make the hackles of English and American people living in Poland rise. Given that over a month has gone by since my last post went off here and that I have had an awful week abounding [...]
Mysterious Internet superhero Island1 Assange has recently published the contents of six-and-a-half billion pieces of paper he found in the bins behind the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Startling revelations being poured over by the world’s media include hints that Jarosław Kaczyński might be “a bit suspicious” of the Russians and that Radosław Sikorski spelled [...]
1. The Meat Tenderiser Every Polish kitchen has a worn and bloodstained meat tenderiser readily to hand. The visitor should not be alarmed, it is not there to facilitate the casual battery of foreigners, the tenderiser is a legitimate and vital tool in the preparation of kotlet schabowy (those delicious flat bits of pork fried [...]
The supernatural world was riven this week by news that Jesus, youngest son of Yahweh, has begun construction of a 300,000 square kilometre country to be called Poland in the centre of the European continent. Stretching a thousand kilometres from end to end, Poland will be the largest country called Poland ever built. “The plan,” [...]