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Watch out for the drunks

Apr 022011
 
Warning from a boy

Warning from a boy

Today two boys stopped and called to me over the fence. They were about 12 years old. One of them started talking. Told him, I don’t speak well etc. He seemed very excited about the prospect of speaking to a foreigner. He warned me about the drunks. I said, “Nie ma za co,” which I thought meant something like, “It doesn’t bother me.” But maybe it doesn’t mean that because my response seemed to upset the kid. He then said something like, “I only wanted to inform you.” I felt bad.

How to learn Polish by talking to drunks

Mar 212011
 
Roman

"Polska jest chory kraj."

I don’t speak Polish well. In fact I can hardly speak it at all. What’s worse is that my ears reject it as a barrage of consonants: “chishshkrchshiz”. It’s like a grinder in my head. After a year of struggling I have to admit that perhaps I am just one of those unlucky people who have absolutely no talent with languages. But I learned something new today: I actually can have a conversation in Polish so long as my conversational partner is a drunk. Not a person who is drunk, but a person who is always drunk.

Roman, tipsy at 10am, was weaving down the garden path as I rolled up on my bike. He warned me about the drinkers (pijaków). Under the circumstances I found this quite charming.

Roman asked for my name. I gave it to him but of course the name “Jodie” is not easy for the Polish mouth and he couldn’t manage it. I told him to call me Baltazar. In Polish this is pronounced Bal-TA-zar and you have to roll the r. But he didn’t want to call me Baltazar because ‘that’s a boy’s name,’ he said.

When I took out the key to open the gate, he became very animated. He asked if the garden was mine and I said, “It is now.” He seemed to understand what this meant. We talked about where I live, where I’m from, etc. He said that either he or his brother lived in the blok nearby. I’m not sure which. He left after I went in but was soon back with sausage and buns — one set for himself and one for me. He asked if he could come in. I refused the food, but he thought I was refusing him entry. Once I understood the misunderstanding, I invited him in. I kept telling him I didn’t want the food, wasn’t hungry. Why? I don’t know why! Well I gave in pretty quickly and took the food. A cheese and pickle sandwich! It was awesome and delicious!

Roman is a short fellow. Perhaps as tall as me. He’s not very old — in his early 50s, I’d say. He has a wide face, neither distinguished, imploring, or even curious. Just a nice (red) open face. A cute face. He told me he used to be in the army (wojska) near the sea. Maybe he said the navy. Maybe I heard wrong. We started talking, in very general terms, about trouble in the world. I must have seemed like a goofy optimist to him because I was saying or trying to say that there’s always something that can be done — we can always make things better. At some point he said, “Poland is a sick country.” I’m not sure what he meant specifically and I didn’t have the language skills to find out, so I told him that it’s the same everywhere. All countries are sick. Aren’t they?