One month in

I just got business cards today, so I guess they think I’m staying. It’s almost been a full month since I arrived, which seems like a good time for an assessment of the good, the bad and the straight-up weird in Poland. I expect this list to evolve once I get to Warsaw, which I think will have it’s own good/bad/weird list.

Good

This is so obvious it’s boring, but the public transportation is excellent. I take a train from Gdansk to Sopot and back each day, and even without a discounted pass a one-way journey is just over $1. The train runs every 10 minutes and is ridiculously easy to use. I hope Warsaw is as user-friendly.

You can tell a lot about a country by what its people are willing to stand in line for, and in Poland it’s freaking soft serve. I kid you not. You can barely walk half a block without seeing an ice cream stand or a giant fiberglass ice cream cone beckoning you. Even really nice restaurants will plop a girl and a soft serve machine on its patio in case passersby want to snag a quick cone. There are a number of varieties, but the basic chocolate/vanilla twist is a lody amerykańskie. Go figure. This loadie American is a fan.

Bad

There’s something to this whole tipping thing in the U.S. If you know a large chunk of your income relies on providing service then you hustle for the cash. Here tipping isn’t standard, and neither is good service. Some say it’s another holdover from Communism; because these folks were conditioned into complacency regarding shitty quality and bad service, that standard continues to be accepted today. My boss, who is British, talks endlessly about how America is a customer service-oriented country and I’m in for a shock dealing with Polish people on this front. I wouldn’t call it shocking as much as…annoying? And it’s not just relegated to waiting 30 minutes to get your bill in a restaurant after asking three times (furreal). Folks like ticket agents and the like will never offer helpful information; rather, they prefer to watch customers fuck up and then, when the customer comes back for help, they point out that they didn’t offer the necessary information up front because it wasn’t asked for.

Waiting patiently in line in this country is for chuckers. Or as our guidebook says, “Queueing is a cutthroat game of cunning and sabotage.” Considering Polish people spent most of communism queued for things as basic as toilet paper, I guess I understand the resentment towards standing in line. Tactics for cutting include walking to the front of the line and getting help because their request is too simple to necessitate the long wait, declaring that age dictates a front-of-the-line position, or my favorite: skipping, and then saying, “No, it’s ok, it’s ok!” as if by saying it, it is so.

Weird

While driving to Poznan my boss pointed to the side of the road, where a woman was standing on the shoulder/ditch. He said, “What do you think she’s doing there?” I thought for a moment and then…NO! “She’s what the Poles call a TIRowka,” he explained. What do I call them? Ditch hookers. Apparently almost any stretch of well-traveled road will have a few ditch hookers sprinkled along it, mainly to satiate the truck drivers along their journeys. I always thought hookers tried to be slightly more covert than that, but standing by the side of the road tarted-up shattered that illusion.

American products that you and I would consider crap are HUGE here. My coworker Bartek confessed a love of Budweiser beer even though he has access to excellent German and Belgian beer. Miller Genuine Draft is another favorite. Wranglers, which I thought only Brett Favre wore, are a white hot brand (they have their own store fronts in malls). I’d say this also applies to Antonio Banderas, who is the spokeswhore for my Polish bank. He was preceded by Danny DeVito.