Adventures of a wegierka in Poland

For the last two weeks I have been commuting to the centre of Warsaw for my Polish language classes, which finally I started with not much optimism to adequately acquire it. This later part of the sentence stands not for my lack of enthusiasm, but for my amusement for the complexity this language makes you face. Aside the impossible consonant constellations, imagine a language where you have to operate with different forms of plural, depending on the number of items you are talking about, e.g ending with 2, 3, 4 or 5 or more, to put it simple. But it is not so simple of course. The funniest thing of all is the Russian I learned 20!!!! years ago coming back mixing the numbers into a pretty Slavic cocktail.

Anyway, what I wanted to tell about is driving in the city. First I had a navigation system to show me the way to my school from the village, which is as a matter of fact 40 km South from Warsaw, not 10 as I was informed... The only problem I encountered besides the huge jams and quite dynamic driving style (read: total disrespect for any kind of speed limit) was the outdated map in the system. Meaning Poland does develop, they made a pretty pedestrian street from Nowy Swiat, where my class takes place. Which I realized the moment I entered the nicely paved street only with ministerial cars, buses and taxis. I hoped that the 10 year old blood red Fiat Seicento will nicely smooth inot the environment without the police flagging me down. Of course I was already preparing my innocent, no cash, no idea where I am, I am so terribly sorry performance when the police did stop me right in front of the turn to the school. I should not say all this cause it sounds all too desrespectful, so please do not take me wrong, from that day on I found another, legal way, but that day I was so proud of myself making it at least that far and even more was able to get away with a stupid face without paying a 100 Euro fine!

Okay, from then on I did not use the navigation system, but a good old map. It worked. I improved my driving time from 1.45 minutes to 1 hour one way - see above mentioning the dynamism of traffic. Than I had to give a lift to Tomek to the airport, to find my way from there to the school, from the school to his parents house, from here to the school the following day and finally to pick Tomek up at the airport. And I lost my good old map. BUT I succeeded :))) On time! And when I bragged about my proficiency of cracking the roads of Warsaw I realized that I have never seen at least 3/4th of the city... Nevertheless I do have a sense of satisfaction, because I am able to make a left turn at a traffic light without a disaster. Okay, you may wonder what is the deal there, but imagine an elbow fight of cars making their turn when the opposite direction also has green, flowing cars in 3 lanes at least blocking your turn and when finally the flow stops, you have red and the cars start flowing from the other angle of the road - both directions. In second best case you are stuck in the middle of all this waiting for the next green... Well, it is not as bad though as it was in St Petersburg, where there were not even lanes, only 7 cars next to each other fighting for the same one spot when turning :) And Budapest is excused only because there are not enough lanes on the roads...

One of the many good things here is that Poland is the country where Hungarians, alias wengierka (female version) are warmly welcome. Come on girls, the best place to cultivate your feminine ego is here - free drinks, big smiles and loads of compliments from cute Polish guys :)))