On Thursday, in the sleepy provincial city of Lublin, things got exciting. A motorist noticed that the driver of a Cherokee jeep (price: around 150,000 zl — you can buy a flat for that) was behaving erratically, weaving all over the road and stopping and starting for no reason. On calling the police he was […]
During a visit to a rescue team in July President Kaczy?ski was introduced to a sniffer dog. The dog’s handler said: “Ira siad!” (“Era, sit!”). Poor Lechos?aw is reported to have said “Irasiad jest bardzo zdenerwowany” (“Erasit is very agitated”). I won’t say I wouldn’t have made the same mistake.
They did things differently in the past. Road signs in Poland did not always strictly conform with the strait-jacketed expectations of west European motorists. For instance, there are at least two different signs to indicate pedestrians crossing! How many accidents has that little fanebrium caused? One shows a girl (she has a pony tail) and […]
I went up the country. It turns out that not all life in Poland revolves around pubs and discos. Out there the centre of social life is the shop — the only one for miles around — sometimes open on split shifts: 6 to 10 in the morning and 6 to 10 in the evening. […]
Przekroj has an interview with a satirist, Krzysztof Piasecki, who is faced with a problem at work that many would envy: it’s too easy. I start a sketch, I start repeating what politicians have said and I don’t have to add anything because everyone’s already splitting their sides laughing…. I quoted deputy Pi?ka and people […]
You would think that with their glorious and recent history of trade unionism the Poles would know a thing or two about striking. Today’s Dziennik carries a story about the doctors’ strike. It seems that the good doctors are manning the picket lines in their public hospitals in the morning and then, in the balmy […]
I am proud and happy to report that I fell for all five April Fool’s jokes in the last Nie bar one. That Jarosław Kaczynski paid a state visit to the US instead of his (identical twin) brother and president of Poland, Lech? Sure, why not? That Minister Wasserman wanted to drain a lake in […]
Some random absurdities, all from just one issue of Gazeta Wyborcza. The Belarussian KGB has branded the Lukaszenko opposition terrorists. The newspaper is up in arms. Only GW Bush (if you’re not with us you’re against us) is allowed brand the opposition “terrorist”. Marek Zuber, adviser to Polish Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, has admitted in […]
“Of course, before Eastern Europe can really take off a generation of workers with the communist mentality will have to die off.” This is a cliche that has been kicking around these parts for at least the last fifteen years. In general, I’ve always been suspicious of it. It sounds a bit too much like […]
Here’s a lazy one, lifted from Nie (“No”) magazine. In Warsaw central railway station they have opened a special “Service Point” for intercity train travellers (or “the rich”) where you can, as Nie says, have a coffee and send flowers to your wife or fancy woman but not buy an intercity train ticket – for […]
