Polish Gene

There’s something incredibly reliable about good coffee shops. My own dependability on decent barista coffee is similar to that of a heroin addict relying on their drug dealer. 

Yes, I say that, because not getting the right coffee can seriously ruin my day. And people who know what I mean, know what I mean.

So what’s so difficult about getting good coffee when you’re far from home? 

For me personally, there are three relatively annoying barriers to live with:

One:

I’m not into black coffee and I don’t drink milk that came from a cow’s tit (how did we only just realise this isn’t natural?!)

Two:

I can tell good coffee beans from the bad a mile off.

This means I need access to a skilled barista who knows how to source good coffee beans and process them correctly as well as appreciates that silly milk alternatives such as soy, coconut or pea (nice try Sproud, but you’re not quite there) are simply not acceptable. They change the taste of coffee. Unsweetened oat (yes, I’m looking at you, Oatly Barista) is a good alternative - it doesn’t get in the way of coffee. Simple.

Three:

I want to sit down to drink my coffee.

That one may need a bit of explaining. What can I say, I just like to sit down and feel it sink in and stir that God-sent buzz into my blood. I don’t care to run along with a herd of angry commuters, not before I had my fix. 

Yes, I’m that much hard work. And the sit down requirement stands in conflict to the previous two goals. The God Of Caffeinated People knows that if you manage to get a perfect oat latte, you’re most likely in a very busy cafe.

(decaffeinated growl)

Nevertheless, in 2019 all this fussiness can seem carefully marketed to. 

I mean, all over the globe coffee culture is being taken to absolute extremes hitting an all time high with recent nitro cold brew and what not. 

But let me tell ya. Having travelled a fair bit in the last two years whilst often working from cafes I feel I could write a book about bad coffee experiences.

The good ones? They’re good. You get your fix, lift your spirits and on with your day. It’s the bad ones you remember because for some reason they really f*** with you. 

So here’s my completely biased and selected at random Bad Coffee Travel Guide. Here I go. 

1. Surprisingly, there’s no bad coffee in Norway

This came much to my surprise but perhaps the best overall coffee experience I had was in Oslo and Bergen. Something about the seemingly cold, neat and annoyingly healthy Norwegians makes them perfect coffee addicts.

No matter how hard I tested the nordic coffee scene, I just could not get bad coffee in Bergen. And it’s not an insignificant detail that they have a way of pampering you with their waffles. It’s one thing to eat a delicious, warm norwegian waffle (whilst admiring the perfectly erect posture of your nordic barista). It’s quite another to be able to make one yourself, which I came across in a couple of cafes in Norway and wept with pleasure. 

Fussy decaffeinated customer experience: 10/10

2. Obviously, there’s no bad coffee in Italy

We all hate Italy. It’s basically a country which has everything and one does struggle to think of a single reason why they shouldn’t just drop everything and move to Tuscany, or Puglia, or Veneto, or… 

But if you are looking for reasons not to move to Italy (other than grown-up ones such as crime rates) quite possibly the hardest one will be coffee. They make espressos taste like mother’s milk and paint the gentle foam on top of each unmistakable cup with the finesse of Michaelangelo. 

I tried catching the Italians off guard by ordering coffee in petrol stations, at busy airports or very near the northern borders. But no luck. Their coffee is so good, I prefer it in an espresso or alongato so I can savour it. And if I want my afternoon cappuccino, I don’t even mind a bit cow milk. 

In Italy, I’m not even fussy anymore. They’re that good. It’s super annoying. 

Fussy decaffeinated customer experience: 11/10

3. There’s almost no bad coffee in New York 

To decrease your chances of getting a baddie in NYC, go Brooklyn. Brooklyn feels almost like the home of most of this world’s baristas so it’s no wonder I didn’t even have to ask. I just walked in and the person behind the coffee machine would just start making my coffee. They knew.

But even if you stay in Manhattan, you’re likely to be wowed: the Japanese themed, the minimalist, the artsy, the functional - whatever tickles your reusable mug. 

The only annoying aspect of coffee drinking in New York is the price. No, it’s not actually $6,30 because you have to add a 20% tip. And no, it’s not an option, they make sure you feel like a d*** if you just give them a smiley face. And I hope you’re not hungry as that microscopic cinnamon bun might drive the final tag up to $12. And given that Norway, one of the most expensive countries in the world (especially when it comes to food) opened the list, this should hurt even more. 

Get a day job, NYC. 

Love you though!

Fussy decaffeinated customer experience: 9/10

4. There’s some bad coffee etiquette in London

I love London, me and her have a very special relationship. And there are some amazing cafes and coffee companies that make it really hard to get bad coffee. This applies especially to East London and Soho, but really you can dictate a pretty high standard throughout zones 1 and 2. 

What I find difficult to live with sometimes is how tiny a lot of cafes are and how overcrowded they get. Somehow, if you go to a nice cafe anywhere else in the world you’ll be able to walk inside without shrugging your shoulders up against your body like a bobsledder. 

Not in London though! The general expectation is: slide in, try not to breathe too closely to anyone, get your coffee and get out. Forget sitting down. And that takes a lot of joy out of coffee drinking. 

But try Tap Coffee, Kaffeine, Italo or Story Coffee for an unmistakably sublime London finish and possibly even a seat.

Fussy decaffeinated customer experience level: 8/10

5. There’s some adorable coffee in Portugal

I know that some people would talk about France, and I do love dunking a croissant in my coffee, I’ll give them that. But for me Portugal does it better. Something about the size and choice of vessels (love having a small latte in a simple, thin glass!) as well as the pastry selection makes it extremely difficult to complain about. 

The price of coffee in Portugal is an additional bonus. It’s as if someone had recognised espresso machine coffee as a very basic, if life-enhancing, commodity that should not be restricted to busy bodies and hipsters. In Portugal, the time you spend sipping on your tiny yet satisfying cafe au leche is unlimited. 

The only “but”, which probably doesn’t even apply to that many people, is that the Portuguese don’t really care about pleasing the more refined taste buds. Unless you seek out an artisan cafe, you basically get what you get. It’s good coffee but on the whole it won’t knock your socks off like the Italian juice. 

Oh, and forget about vegan milk in a real Portugese caf. They don’t give a sh** about that nonsense.

Fussy decaffeinated customer experience level: 7/10

6. LA doesn’t care that much about coffee

There’s a lot to be said about why living in LA doesn’t require that much coffee. First of all, there’s so much sun and jogging and freshly squeezed juices and kombucha on tap that a primitive caffeine fix is just not that essential. The it girl that trots around East Village with a paper coffee cup will swap it for a beetroot-celery-apple-ginger juice whilst she’s longboarding in Venice Beach. 

And sure enough, I didn’t pay that much attention to coffee in LA. There was just so much else to do. Yet still, I don’t remember getting any noticeably bad coffee in LA.... well maybe apart from the one in Universal Studios canteen. But that only proves the point - if you’re shooting an exciting new series surrounded by industry top dogs (which - let me make it clear - I was not doing, I was taken around on a friendly tour), you don’t need perfect coffee. 

You’re on a pretty sweet natural high!

Fussy decaffeinated customer experience level: 6/10

7. I don’t care about coffee in Cape Town

Coffee culture has a way of mirroring gentrification. If you’re in an ungentrified area in a city and come across an outlet with a bit of scandinavian interior design, thick wooden tables or recycled furniture as well as a shiny new cadillac-of-an-espresso-machine, you feel safer. It’s strange to find that in a place such as Cape Town, as remote and “ethnically complicated” as they come and yet delivering the perfect vegan froth at the snap of your fingers. 

So yes, although they are scarce and make you feel a bit like you’re trying to stay in your european bubble, you can find nice and often worky cafes in Cape Town. But why the hell would you want to go there, when you’re also surrounded by so much beauty and adventure. 

Take a coffee detox in Cape Town and hike up and down Table Mountain instead. Or drive up and down the coast and watch one of the most spectacular sunsets on earth!

Fussy decaffeinated customer experience level: 5/10

8. There’s some amazing coffee in Warsaw

Warsaw, my beloved hometown, has a difficult relationship with coffee. On the one hand, like everything in Poland it’s saturated with mainstream brands and coffee corporations. The first Polish cafe chain Coffee Heaven was bought out by Costa Coffee (insert puke emoji) and the more sophisticated Green Coffee was turned into Nero. This of course killed of most of the character that these independent Polish brands managed to create in their heart-warming outlets. 

On the other hand, since approx 2015, smaller and more locally targeted cafes have been popping up all over the place. And most of them keep a fantastic standard of beans and make all sorts of coffee making techniques available to the general public. So I implore you to skip on Nero and try the likes of Cophi, Coffee Desk or Relaks.

Fussy decaffeinated customer experience level: 4/10

9. There is way too much bad coffee in Oxford

For a town hosting so much poignant brain power, Oxford has still a lot to learn when it comes to serving good coffee. It’s no secret that most English people are more into pubs than cafes and fair enough. But I seriously doubt that all those international scholars, prima sort professors and MBA high flyers run on builder’s tea alone. 

Oxford simply has much more potential for great coffee experience - a well run cofee joint will immediately find customers. That’s why it’s disappointing that there are only a couple of decent joints scattered around it’s Harry Potteresque streets. 

But you can prove me wrong - please send me your Oxford coffee list!  

Fussy decaffeinated customer experience level: 3/10

10. There’s plenty of really bad coffee in Switzerland

I love Switzerland. The efficiency, the timely trains, the impeccable landshafts. Your mind can truly be at rest as the Swiss are taking care of everything. And yet, I dare say it does not apply to coffee. 

Sure, you can find perfectly crafted cafes in Zurich, it is after all an extremely affluent Eauropean capital. But venture out anywhere and coffee turns into something resembling something a friend of mine compares to “milled mammoth bones brew”. 

Why oh why, Switzerland?!

Grief is a funny thing, they say.

It can catch up with you in unexpected ways. It will make you do strange things and you won’t even know what was driving you. Grief as you may imagine it - the devastation, anger, sadness and emptiness one feels after losing someone they love - is easily diagnosed. 

But grief can also wear very different masks and pounce at you with undetectable delay. My Granny died in January 2018 but it wasn’t until recently that I truly understood what it had done to me. 

But this is not a sob story. 

I think that grief can make you stronger. If you let it, it will mould itself into something good. And frankly, it will do so in very sophisticated ways. 

They say grief will take you on a crazy, unpredictable ride and you might as well just accept it. 

They say it will make you climb dangerous mountains, move countries, burn bridges, fall in love, crash out of outmoded value systems. Grief will reframe your priorities and therefore - you. 

If you had truly been grief-stricken, you will never be quite the same again. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 

Ula

My Granny, Ula (pronounced ‘Oola’ if you don’t speak Polish) was the sweetest, most generous human being I’ve ever known. And ask anyone else who knew her - they’d say exactly the same thing. It was as if we knew a real life angel who walked and talked like a human but had special powers of being genuinely good and kind and lovely. She had a charming giggle and smiled all the time.  

Which is amazing considering that war took her first youth, Communism poisoned the second and a doctor’s error took her husband. I never met my Grandad but I know that he was an Auschwitz survivor. He survived the world’s most notorious concentration camp only to die from an appendicitis just a few years later. 

And yet, when you came to my Granny’s home, you felt like you were stepping into the light. She was the guardian of pragmatic optimism, the head of the family, the stronghold of security. She had so much love and wisdom to spare, it made anyone she met wonder: where the hell was she getting all this strength from? 

Her tiny flat in a Słupsk (a city near the Baltic sea) was my childhood’s most trusted playground and hers was the love I could always count for. Where parents were too strict or absent, my Granny was there to understand, hug and refill my cup. She was a big, bright presence in my life that could never be replaced. 

So it’s no surprise, my heart quietly collapsed when she died. 

The great freeze

When my dad called me to tell my Granny had passed away, I froze over. 

We knew she was fading, but still, it came as a shock. A shock so strange that I couldn’t shed a tear until her funeral a week later. And even then, I had to look to my cousins, sobbing over the untimely flower bouquets. My father’s unscripted, deeply moving speech finally got me going. And when I started crying, I knew I was only just scratching the surface of a big, dark bubble inside. 

The real coming to terms with her death was still locked deep inside me.

Here’s the crazy thing. I felt something dark and strange come over me the night she died. You may or may not believe me, I knew something had happened. It was almost physical, as if something was strangling me and then let go. And you can’t just forget something like that. 

You won’t let it go until you can at least understand a tiny part of it.

I wasn’t letting her go.

And given that she had lived a long life, I should have let her go sooner than I had. But - without really being aware of it - I was holding on to her for over a year. I did some pretty crazy things trying to lock her in, holding on to some part of me that was really close to her. I was trying to somehow preserve the me that knew her and could feel her presence as if she’d never gone. 

For over a year I was still surprised to realize she was dead every time I thought about her. 

And I thought about her a lot. Going back and forth in my head: should I have called her more often? Should I have come to see her in the weeks before she died? Did she know I loved her? Did she know how much I was relying on the continuity of her life?

LA, September 2019

My Granny died at 93. It was a good age to go I suppose. But did she really leave? 

Here I am, a year and a half after my Granny’s death. 

I’m on the underground train in LA - of all places - and I had just done a tour of the Universal Studios lot. I board the train with my boyfriend and we take separate seats. We are exhausted and the train is almost full. 

I take a seat next to this Afro-American woman. I don’t really get a proper look before sitting down but I know she’s an elderly woman with a soft, grey afro and she’s holding a trolley bag. You know, the kind grannies around the world sport when they go shopping. We were just sitting there in silence as the train traversed underneath Los Angeles. 

And suddenly there it was. This incredibly familiar feeling washing over me like the sea breeze of the town where my Granny would take me to the beach each morning. It was as subtle as her voice waking me up and telling me it’s time for breakfast. And as certain as her finger as she waved it at me when I did something naughty. 

It was a warm wave of sudden and absolute certainty that I was sitting next to my Granny.

Don’t get me wrong, this woman didn’t remind me of my granny, at least not that I was aware of it. I’ve seen many older Polish women (who looked much more like her) since my Granny died and thought “I wish my Granny was still alive”. Of course.

But this was different. This woman felt like my Granny. 

And this was a feeling that was impossible to shake. Of course I didn’t realise this straight way. But my body did. I started crying - or rather - tears started to pour down my cheeks. At first the shy few. Then, a rhythmical one every twenty seconds, and finally: a constant stream. It was as if I was watching myself produce these little streams of salty water. The tears didn’t feel like my own, because I had no reason to cry. In fact, I felt incredibly calm and happy.

And yet, they definitely were my own tears. I was sitting on the LA underground train going downtown, next to a woman I’ve never seen before in my life, sobbing. As our stop was approaching, my boyfriend walked up to me saying something about a gallery we should go to. When he saw my face his went totally pale.

Oh God, baby. Are you ok?

I was. In fact, I was better than I had been in the last one and a half years. For I had just been sitting next to my beloved Granny for nearly fifteen minutes. Feeling her presence, her love, her kindness - all of it. 

How was this possible? Was I going mad? Was it the previous night’s margaritas talking? Was this woman a witch? Or one of those Californian hippy gurus who helped grieving granddaughters reconnect with the souls of their much missed grandmothers?

I couldn’t tell. But I knew that before we got off the train, I had to say something to her. This woman’s been sitting there quietly this whole time probably thinking I was going through a really tough time. So as I was leaving my seat to get off at our stop I looked towards her, ready to apologise or say something to ease her mind.

And here’s the thing. As I turned towards her, her face was already there, turned towards me. And it was a lovely, bright face with a huge smile stretched involuntarily across it.

I opened my mouth to speak but she was quicker off the mark.

Have a lovely day.

That’s it, that’s all she said. There was no “Gosh I hope you’re ok, darling” expression on her face. There wasn’t a glimmer of surprise that I even wanted to make contact. It was as if she was expecting me to say something and just wanted to show that it was ok.

It was ok to cry. It was ok to be slightly hungover and seeming to fall apart on a train. 

She got me. 

Or maybe, she got where I was coming from. Or maybe she was just a beautiful human being and was used to people reacting this way to her. Or maybe, she was in fact, Ula, my angel Granny, saying hello to me from a happier place. 

Whatever you believe in, you will eventually be challenged by someone “smarter” than you.

Smart, meaning that they know how to use the right words and arguments to perhaps make you doubt what you strongly believe in. Smart, meaning that they might have a less emotional, less intuitive approach to an idea. Instead, they use data or experimentation to find logical, rational arguments that are often harder to stand up against in a conversation.

Deep down, you may still believe that you are right, but because you approach things more intuitively, on the surface your beliefs will seem weaker and less valid than those of someone with hard arguments. You are forced to face your worst fear: the necessity to rethink your values, to challenge the fundamental truths on which your world is built. This can be much more challenging than we think and most of us will never even entertain the possibility.

Take any political belief that you are absolutely adamant about and then imagine what it would take for you to doubt it. If you can’t imagine it, it means you haven’t met your match yet.

For every hardline right-winger we need a sharp and tough enough far leftist. 

For every unbending socioliberal, we need a soft spoken conservative.

Believing that the world is as flat as seen from where you’re sitting is just as dangerous a concept as thinking that it’s the only correct way to think about the world. But taking a trip away from your values is no walk in the park and you will find yourself looking into some very dark corners of your own soul.

If you strongly believe yourself to be tolerant and open-minded, when faced with a smart, yet evidently racist counterpart, you may find yourself considering under what circumstances you might actually become racist.

It’s not fun, realising we’re only human and mostly determined by our environments and not necessarily by our own free will. But isn’t that the only way to stop hating the people we don’t understand? And how else can we survive in an increasingly polarised world, where we not only read about extremism in history books but we actually come across it in our streets, schools, workplaces or even homes?

And does it mean that you are moving more towards the right or left if you’re changing your mind - even if it’s just for a moment? Is the center some idyllic place bang in the middle of extreme left and extreme right? Or perhaps it is an imperfect place occupied by so many of us, lost and desperately looking for a box to fit into?

If I want you to change your mind, it’s not necessarily for my own benefit. Perhaps I think it would give you some kind of relief to realize that you may actually connect with the people you so desperately want to despise. 

Or, perhaps I have an itch to plant a tiny seed of an insanely uncomfortable thought in your head. A thought that perhaps - God forbid - you might actually have something in common with those terrible people.

But, hey, you already do! You share with them your motherland and in it its daily bastions of democracy: supermarkets, public transport, universities, hospitals, public libraries, museums, etc.

Perhaps there’s that one aspect of understanding who they are and where they came from that will indeed be helpful in understanding a little bit more about yourself. And if you still see them only as inexplicable monsters, then at least you’ve given them enough chances as a fellow human and citizen to change your mind about them.

And perhaps that makes you less of an inexplicable monster to them. And if you don’t care about that, then you don’t care about democracy either.

Take the 1989 Polish Round Table negotiations between members of the communist government and democratic opposition. According to psychologist Janusz Reykowski, who participated in the talks, what made success possible were certain conditions that had been described by German philosopher Jurgen Habermas. 

His theory of effective communication states that there are five conditions necessary to achieve compromise:

Equality - the assumption that all sides involved are seen as equals

Mutual respect - the rule that no words spoken should offend or demean

Ability to see the source of conflict from the other side’s perspective

Rational evaluation of differences - acknowledging that we differ in opinion

Readiness to explore a just solution - one that doesn’t harm either of the sides

The Round Table Agreement resulted in the first semi-democratic elections and eventually ended the rule of a communist regime under which Polish people had lived for fifty years. Would they have achieved this by pointing out each other’s obvious weaknesses?

No matter how hard, it’s always better and more effective to connect rather than disconnect ourselves from each other. It’s also better to be prepared for a political truth that may indeed be your worst nightmare.

There’s nothing heroic about disagreeing with someone if that disagreement isn’t going to change anything. There’s something transforming - however - in seeing the other side as they are and not judging them at face value. 

Seeing those other people march and respectfully walking against the current?  

So this is a rather risky attempt to share an in-joke.

A couple of summers ago I went to a music festival with my friends and as per usual we booked our accommodation very late. It meant that we ended up staying in a place Americans would refer to as ‘a dump’. All the nice spots were already booked up and as we were in our 30′s (just), camping amongst reckless kids wasn’t an option. Although we probably had wished that it was. 

So we stayed in a dump which meant that we felt a bit like being on a school trip and definitely living below our daily standards. We relished it. Wearing scruffy clothes, freeing ourselves from the daily suit-ups (unlike the reckless kids who were fully committed to looking all cool). We were basically negating the committed kids and trying to out-cool them at the same time. The photos we posted on Facebook included shots of us wearing hoodies, camping out on piers, looking a bit like we were waiting for Godot...or so we hoped. All in an obviously desperate attempt to feel less restrained by grown-up-hood. And so, yes, during the silliest hours we would jokingly refer to ourselves as refugees. 

Oh sweet ignorance. 

The first time I encountered some organic food for thought on the refugee situation in Europe was when I saw this short BBC video about a young Syrian woman who made it to Sweden. She didn’t look or sound like the stereotypical refugee we were referring to in our drunken in-joke. She spent over 3000 euros to make the journey that would give her a chance to reboot her life. She was smart, positive, switched on and strikingly confident. She walked and talked like any of my friends.

While going through the process of transplanting my life to another country, I would often find myself living out of a suitcase. Sometimes it was a temporary solution to save money while sleeping on someone’s sofa. Sometimes it was to make more money as a frequent business traveler. Many people who work in London commute from very remote places, many Londoners work mostly outside of London. You can spot members of both tribes marching in masses through airports and train stations. With their huge backpacks containing a change of clothes, a reusable water container attached to the side.

This nomad life made me understand that for many people the concept of home really has changed. And even though it may not yet be fully recognized by governments or the general public, it seems that more and more people are living away from home and working away from their desk. 

Being uprooted like this can often be painful - even if you’re doing it by choice. But there’s a lesson there which for me is probably that ‘home is where the heart is’ - only reversed and understood as ‘home is in the heart’. 

I wrote this ‘poem’ about refugees while sitting on my last plane back to London after a longer visit back home.

Walk me

What is she thinking now? The girl on the train seeking asylum. She's imagined a new world for herself. One where she's not held at gunpoint while handing in her dissertation. Those narrow-minded bastards, they just don't get the female narrative. 

What is he hoping for? That man in the tent. He's considering a change of lifestyle. One where he doesn't have to imagine his children bleeding to death all day long. Perhaps then he could afford the new iPad Mini.

What are we looking for? The people tapping at screens on planes and trains. Extra elbow space on the tube? A luxury of the kind of silence that accommodates our thoughts? 

Consider this.

That girl is wearing the H&M tee you just tucked into your high-waists. Just like you, she's dead bored of being confronted with outdated ideas. That guy, he's likewise disappointed with the last season of Game of Thrones. He's had it with grief, drought and humiliation. 

[Sorry blog for being too busy for a while. This is a belated post I wrote in the midst of summer and now it's just here as a farewell to a very sunny and long season #thankyou ]

Chałupy

You are the sand under your feet. It’s what you’re made of.

And we are at least a couple of postcards away from paradise. This is not a place for poolside chatter. The light may be changing. The drinks are most definitely lukewarm. But there is a peace in the slow shimmer that we can’t put a hashtag on. There must be a clarity behind the confusion. But we are lost at that particular sunset.

Must be that I discovered that truth poisoned with laughter. Hanging out over the edge. Suspended cloud to fly over. So this is who we are. So there’s that mirror of soul searching loneliness. I see you now.

Soft shimmer behind my ears like late August fields. Del Ray repeats herself as we find the hills and valleys enchanting beyond compare. Waves of comfort are in abundance. How tricky the summer’s song that can only turn the leaf.

I was sitting on a tram on a Saturday. Saturdays are yoga days so I was composed and extremely perceptive. There is a special kind of vibe to Polish public transport, especially in the middle of winter. Things are pretty grim and there is a sense like everyone is just trying to survive. You can tell that some had already reached out to spirits…even if it’s a bit too early in the afternoon. Come to think of it, I can’t really blame them. Hey, not everyone can last through over a 100 sun salutations (well actually I only last through about 50 - that’s without passing out).

So here’s me and and my temporarily zened-out self and in walk two youths who - just by the way they’re walking - are obviously looking for trouble. As I’m at the time ridiculously fearless and accepting, I don’t flinch. I just watch and see every little detail that gives them away as brainless heavy duty football fans. Or possibly minor junkies who can’t afford proper kicks. The way they’re marching through the tram with their boddies agressively taking up space like t-rexes in Jurassic Park.

I wait, with slightly less than healthy curiosity, to hear them speak. But instead, they start gesturing fiercely. And I realize they’re speaking in silent language. Normally I wouldn’t be able to understand anything at this point, but with my senses sharp as a knife on a yoga Saturday, I begin to read what they’re saying. The one on the left, with a military haircut and black tracksuit trousers is obviously agitated about someone’s behaviour. He lets them have it but in a way that only his pal can understand. And his pal acknowledges it with nods that could kill if someone got in the way.

The most captivating moments of this energetic exchange happen when they try to attract each other’s attention when something distracting happens around them. They wave and repeat the gestures endlessly unitl one of them refocuses on the story. And I find myself wondering about the number of distractors in our lives in 2014. They beat them off like flies with their ninja moves. They understand how much effort it takes to focus and help others around us focus on what’s important too.

And then, it happens. The guy on the right, wearing a hoodie and inadequate trekking shoes evidently opens a new chapter as the tram leaves from a stop. His eyes come to life with excitement and he can hardly hold on to a handrail as his hands start running wild, tempted to convey. As he starts gesturing something around his arm, I realize he’s describing a massive tatoo. One that begins as high as the neck and ends somewhere around the wrist. I can’t tell what it is exactly but one thing is for sure. This is not a tatoo someone already has. This is something he had wanted for a long time.

This is a tatoo he imagined for himself and he is definitely getting it done.

This is what my dad said to me over Christmas:

"Dream. Keep dreaming, because dreams make life a better place."

I hear a lot about dreams from people lately. They all seem to think I'm a dreamer. I'm always suprised at this, as I really don't think I am much of a dreamer. When I think of the things that they may consider as 'something of a dream', I only realize they are talking about my plans. 

This observation reminded me of a summer long ago when I came back from America and my family asked me to tell them about my adventures there. I told them about my visit to this beautiful house in Maine. This wasn't just any house but one right by the ocean, with a swimming pool and a small private beach where I would pick clams just as they were drilling themselves into the sand. We would cook these clams on the beach, dip them in melted butter, drizzle them with lemon and eat them while sitting on deck chairs, in the setting sun.

That summer was indeed a constant dreamy joyride along the East Coast. But it was Maine that really did it for me. In Maine, I would have fresh lobster and watermelon soup on a daily basis. In Maine I got an electric shock after touching a fence that was meant to keep deer away from flowers (one never forgets their first electric shock). In Maine, as a dare, we would jump off the bridge into the ocean so cold, it took your breath away. 

So, when my family back in Poland asked me where I was and what I did, I told them all about this fantastic place called Maine. I was excited to share these stories with them. But they laughed and said I must have invented this Maine place no one has ever heard about. In those days you didn't have a phone full of photos and a couple of weeks passed before I got sent a parcel with snaps from overseas.

Of course now that I look back at it, I realize that by telling this story to my family I must have bragged my head off. So they just teased me about it to help me get back on earth and pretended that they didn't believe my story. But at the time I felt incredibly frustrated. How could something that was so undeniably real and so alive in my memory seem to them like a story that never happened? Did I in fact dream it all?

I may have even checked my geography book to see if Maine really did exist. It did. I was twelve. 

That was probably one of the first moments in my life when I understood that some things you just have to do alone. And no one needs to understand or believe in it. It's just something you have to do without anyone's pat on your shoulder. 

As I grew up, there were many moments when I was so weak, I would buy into any theory. There were times when if someone told me that Maine didn't exist, I would tell myself it's better if it didn't and actualy believe it. But then again, somewhere in the back of my head, I knew it did. And those images of crazy ocean waves coming at me, the lobsters having a stroll across the kitchen floor just before meeting their fate in the pot, the greenery so overwhelming with freshness you could get high just from looking at it. These facts were not there to make me unhappy or confused. They must have been there for a good reason.

Every Christmas I think to myself: ok, that's it, this year I really need to be the grown up. There must be loads of things and people that need me to do so. No more looking out for the first star, no more peeking under the tree, no more lying on the sofa with a pixaresque production. And, last but definitely not least, no more dreaming of sickenly handsome version of Santa.

But how can I, when I still remember my (sickenly handsome) dad running off as Santa just after he turned an empty bottle of Pepsi Cola into a full one using only a kitchen cloth? How do people become so serious so quickly?

It just eludes me.

This has not been a white Christmas in Warsaw. In fact, it was constant sunshine and around 7 °C, which is pretty unheard of. To make things even less christmassy, majority of the trend setting residents have chosen Madeira and the like this time around (how easy to sum up the God-forsaken, F.O.M.O.-injecting Facebook feed). Yet still, the 'holiday season' (I've spoken to a Californian recently, I have to at least try it out) to me is always a time for innocence, even if people can't stop fiddling with their iPhones under the table.

One of my favourite suprises this year (apart from sun bathing on the terrace on Christmas Day) was the screening of Love Actually at Chwila. Tytus Hołdys, who runs this low-key yet soulful bar, has not only proven he knows how to use social media to grow his business with this winning invite. He actually kept his promise. At the screening (which was free of charge), we were showered with gingerbread cookies, soap bubbles and heart-shaped christmas decorations. What would normally be tacky and awkward was somehow all the snow-deprived nation needed. We watched the movie silent disco style (in head phones) which produced a strange kind of intimacy and somehow made people react with no sense of being anonymous whatsorever. For me and two of my girlfriends I brought with me this was the turning point of .. well... realizing that Christmas was all around. 

Then, brainwashed and buzzing with Christmas spirit I was ready to bake my own little funky gingerbreads and marinate herrrings and discover that I had absolutely no talent for stuffed karp in jelly (sorry, mum). 

Marinated herring, recipe by White Plate. 

Gingerbread yogi in the triangle pose, baked by my yoga teacher.

My gingerbread people, pepparkakor style.

Dried fruit compote, amazing at helping Christmas digestion.

My bike, turned ridiculously christmassy (sorry, mate).

When a slightly eccentric friend of mine said he was flying to Isreal for the weekend to avoid being in Warsaw on November 11th, I thought that was a bit over the top. I mean yes, Independance Day in Poland is a rather humbling experience. None of that 4th of July crap. Instead of fireworks, we have flares and the bad kind of firecrackers. The official celebrations are never that jolly either, reminding us that to express pride and gratitude towards our freedom fighters, we must first have a deep understanding of the country's long history of excurciating pain.

I won't forget last year's Independance Day as I was living in a very central part of Warsaw at the time and on that day was afraid to leave the appartment. Through very tall windows typical of well aged tenement houses I could see menacing flashes of flares and hear screams of hatred.

I never really tried to understand the confusion. Why would so many young and healthy people want to waste their time fighting on the streets in the name of saving the "Polish Poland"? What to their mind is the Polish Poland? Have they ever seen it? Experienced it? Is it something they dream about? Have their fathers and grandmothers told them bedtime tales of a better world in which one didn't have to work long hours in order to get their fair share of meat and toilet paper? Who deceived them about the reality of a free economy and indefinietly seperated them from a society that accepts variety in order to prosper?

The truth is, sadly, I don't care. I'm not the generation that did. I never felt that I needed to plant theories in anyone's head or explain simple truths that freed the minds from self-harming constraint. I'm no preacher and I don't read enough. Other generation Y-ers of the city of Warsaw think the same and rather hang out in young fashion fairs and cool bars, such as those on Plac Zbawiciela. The flower rainbow in the middle of that hipster-native square never really symbolized anything to the people of Warsaw untill it was burned by the nationalists this November 11th.

Flower rainbow in Savior Square set on fire during Independance march (photo: Ewa S.).

The policemen looking like it's martial law of 1981, trying to contain the riots (photo: Ewa S.).

I'd like to thank my soul sister Ewa S. for allowing me to post these photos she took around Savior Square. And I'd like to remind her how she said I was exaggerating about being scared to leave my flat a year earlier. It is scary and it is sad but we will re-plant the rainbow and go back to the cafés where lazy hipsters in skinny jeans serve us reluctantly. And when we ask them about the burned rainbow, they'll say: 'We wanted to plant it with different flowers anyway'.

The skelleton of the Savior Square flower rainbow, November 12th.

The safe distance I watched Independance Day from this year.

Polish designers dressed the shop windows in Poland's national colours. Here: Maciej Zień's attelier on Mokotowska street.

Indian Summers are a gift from the Gods. The unexpected abundance of sunshine and colour. Autumn baskets superheavy with sun-fed vegetables carrying the precious juices to get our cells through winter and beyond. There is a presence of a promise that not all things in life have to be earned, that some of them simply happen because we deserve them as humans.

So why are indian Summers in love songs so often a scenery for heartbreak and endings? Are crowded beaches, cheap airline planes, tourist traps, sunburn and seeing people's bare feet really that much more dazzling? And why should any Summer love end with the first leaves making a touch down? Perhaps it's just not love. No good love could be scared off by a flickering tree of gold or knocked out by a chestnut falling of it. 

But because those bonus sunny spells are not something we had to fight for or bargain our souls with, there is this temptation to give in. Travellers, you can put your suitcases away for now. Lifeguards, you can work on your six packs later. Fashion bloggers, you can cool the toenail art fever. Praise the little joys that are so much more precious because they come amidst scarcity. Pick out the little gems that we walk pass in the peak of any summer. Surrender to the idea that the best things in life are free.

I surrender. To this:

There a more than a million ways to look at a city. The harder you live, the more dimensions you see. But some ways are more precious than others, because they make up who you are. Warsaw has indeed saw war and more destruction than any other city which can now be considered an up-and-coming European capital. But to me that's only a tiny truth. The large truth is the story told by anyone who has at least once worked hard, partied hard and woke up the next day feeling embraced by the city's strong, clingy arms. I personally recommend taking a lo(ooooo)ng taxi ride with a nausea-causing air freshener as the ultimate bonding experience. If you'd survived that and still enjoyed looking at the city streets while breathing the oxygen from the opened window - you're hooked!

Coming to Warsaw and looking at it the way you look at pretty things in galleries is just wrong. It is not a place to look at, it is a city to live in. It does not take you by the hand the way Rome would. It doesn't delight, neither does it make things particulary easy for you. But its song is one of my favourite: constant change. Like a snake that drops its skin, over and over, I discover my city every day. And when I say it changes, I don't mean that I metaphoricaly rediscover Warsaw every time I experience somethings different. It actually changes. I could be away from one section of the city for a couple of weeks and find it hard to recognize it. If you want to go the same old shop where you bought all your Christmas gifts last year, better check again or make a call, it's probably not there anymore. You cannot really stay in your comfort zone with Warsaw. But what madness would it be to try to hold on to our comfort zone these days?

I recently went to an opening of an exhibition Warsaw Under Construction. Again, it fails to explain Warsaw to an outsider (neither is it well translated into English), but it is a perplexing attempt to outline the way the city was planned. And of course, it focuses heavily on the pitfalls of the execution process, which still ressembles the good old days before 1989. 

Thankfuly, we are all architects of Warsaw.

You know how people tell you that Friday the 13th is a stupid superstitious joke? Well let’s just say next time the day-date collision hits the calendar, I might take extra precautions. Not that what I learned this time had anything to do with actual bad luck.

What I did learn is that one can live without their right hand. A hard lesson to learn, especially for your left hand! But first.

Imagine you wake up in the morning feeling breezy and ready for action. Things are finally being put into motion, stars align. And then you set your foot out the door and take three hits straight through your gut (say... from a rather rusty Kalashnikov) the moment you extit the door.

And now imagine you had the choice between loosing your right hand and your left hand. Let’s say your right hand represented everything you knew and understood.  Your right hand is the one you always scratch your nose with. Sign contracts with. Lift your pints with. Pretty essential stuff! Your left hand on the other... hand, stands for all those things uncomfortable and new. You know it’s there and you know you do need it, but you‘re just never as gracious and agile at flexing it. It’s always easier to use your right hand.

Tough decision! You either settle for for the safe way and never actually move forward or risk baring your own weaknesses.

After that extremely long day of shock therapy I finally laid my head on the pillow, my limbs numb from the superfast bloodflow that left the vains puls-less. You know how when you are extremely tired your limbs seem as if they‘re not your own. You look at them as if they were somebody else’s or just.. not there. Well – to make things slightly more cheery, my right hand was so numb that it completely disappeared in a rather oversized sleeve.

And I suddenly thought: what if I didn’t have my right hand? Obviously that would be much worse than the situation I had just been thrown into. But then, the next morning I would dust myself off and start flexing my left hand. Starting by eating pistaccios with it. Then moving on to heavier and more complicated stuff. As a left-handed person I would quickly gain new powers, like become more creative, be better at golf.

And to drop a key note bomb... apparently the left-handed gene IS the selfish gene! Left-handies are more likely to survive in the proces of evolution! 

When I was younger I would never let go of a mood swing.

Whether it was a sudden surge of overexcitement, euphoria or self-doubt and sadness, I would let it kick the shit out of me. I believed that to merge with this feeling meant being a genuine person. I figured since I can’t escape it, then I better celebrate it. And boy did I celebrate it. The only problem with achieving that sense of inner-integrity was that it often meant being left destroyed and vulnerable to more swings.

But I was ‘happy’ to ‘be myself’, as kids raised in the air of lesser faire parenting do. Whatever happened in the outside world as a result of my mood swing was certainly less important than my emotional life.

One of the few blessing of getting… of maturing is that you begin to acknowledge those moments and take control of them. Before you let your whole being be saturated with the extremities of human emotion – whether they are self-inflicted or trigged by something on the outside  – you stop and think. You think about the scale of this thing. You think about the circumstances in which you are experiencing it. You think about the possible motives of other people that may have lead you to feeling this. Bottom line is: you THINK.

My singing teacher once said to me ‘never trust people who tell you that you think too much.’ It got stuck in my head because she was a strong role model to me at the time. A conflicting thought wouldn't let me embrace what she'd said – yes, but what if we overanalyze, that’s never good, right? Especially us girls. We tend to overthink what other people say and do and that can cause trouble that was never there in the first place.

But there’s a ground-breaking discovery in understanding the difference between thoughts driven by emotion (‘it came over me’) and thoughts which we produce voluntarily (‘I realized that’).

Understanding that difference was probably the greatest lesson I learned in my twenties. It’s not about being boringly rational. It’s about self-preservation that helps you enjoy life without giving yourself away. Some call it self-love, I call it the switch. If you can turn yourself off, you can charge your battery. If you can turn yourself off, you buy time, patience and strength. If you can turn yourself off, you have a chance at getting whatever it is that you need to either thrive or move on.

How we learn to do this I’m not sure, but it’s definitely not a pleasant process. Something painful and confusing must happen to make us see the point of using the switch. But honestly, it’s worth it. It’s worth living to the fullest, getting your ass kicked (usually by your very own foot) and then looking at yourself with a philosopher’s eyes. What you actually discover by thinking clearly about yourself is that the world is a much kinder place. Your vulnerability is sweeter and your anxieties are a joke if you can master the art of the switch. The swithing off part means you can later come back to whatever it was that made you feel the way you felt but with a clear head. Yes, it's as simple as that and I still managed to write 2555 characters about it.

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On a sunny Sunday I’m permanently looking for fake missions that I can embark on by getting on a bike and riding to another borough, preferably one on the opposite side of Warsaw. My most recent one was to go to Powiśle (a very go-to neighborhood by river Vistula) and look for bottles of booze that me and my friends had hidden in the bushes outside a club two nights earlier.  

Level of priority: 0, probability of finding them there untouched: 0. The ideal fake mission I could not turn my back on, especially after a day of running actual errands and pleasing family members.

In every fake mission of this sort, the real purpose is always a life-enhancing experience that you couldn't possibly predict. It isn’t until after you’ve come home and sat down on your sofa that you realize what it was that god of fake missions wanted you to find on your way. But to explain this, I have to go back to the booze and why I could make myself believe that it was hiding in the bushes.

It was my friend’s hen party two nights earlier. The evening revolved around a professional pin-up photo shoot during which we ate cupcakes and kabanosy, drank champagne and fooled around with retro props, blowing soap bubbles and – basically - losing the plot. The photographer had been extremely patient with us, even when in our darkest moments towards the end of the shoot we looked more like Thai call girls.

We left the studio feeling so fabulous, that nothing could get in the way of fun. We had a few bottles left and since the taxi ride only took about 15 minutes, we were still left with one or two when we drove up to the next venue. Na Lato and Syreni Śpiew are perfect twin bar slash clubs arranged in abandoned post-soviet buildings in the greener part of the river district. Deck chairs, foodie-approvable pizza and paper cups mixed with world class bartenders and eccentric DJs. All in the shelter of a park. This was where we abandoned the booze: ‘No one will find it in these bushes!’ (in daylight these were a few plants here and there).

I shouldn’t really go into much detail as to what happened next, apart maybe from recalling six of us getting on one hammock which inevitably crushed into the ground just as we were posing for a photo.  

      Us on the hammock.

      The collapse.

      Na Lato 

      Syreni Śpiew

So there I was on a Sunday, sun setting, no champagne in the imaginary bushes, just an empty bottle of something slightly cheaper, Bieszczady wine (7 zlots / 0,75 l).

On my way back I did a pit stop to buy a baguette at my favourite French bakery, Vincent on Nowy Świat. And just as I left the shop to place a fragrant parisienne in my basket, it happened. Annoyed as I was to be pushing my bike along a crowded, touristy street, I managed to catch a glimpse of someone’s curious eyes.

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Kazimierz Wielki was a good king. He had found a Poland made of wood and left it made of brick. Kazimierz Dolny on the other hand is a notourious temple for the lazy people of Warsaw. So lazy, that they only wish to drive as little as possible to get out of their own terra, their nearest cafe, their usual weekend atrociousness and swap it for one that is slightly less predictable. 

I don't judge however. Guilty as charged, I love the short drive (even though the traffic can get worse than during rush hour on Domaniewska street), the microclimate architecture, the walks along Vistula, the loess soil nurtured greenery, the foodie (me) pampering, the galleries and the bumping into celebs during Two Riversides film festival. 

A friend of my mother's once referred to Kazimierz Dolny as 'a million people and a well'. My recent visit reflected just that. If you are an outsider, to you this town could make you wonder why all these people want to be here at the same time. The tiny market with only two beautiful fasades to really tickle your sense of aesthetics. Stubburn crowds of families from the nearby Lublin, parading before and after their Sunday lunches. Third class circus artists displaying their unlicenced tricks in an erratic manner that doesn't stop the real show.

The real show takes place somewhere in between all this. Perhaps it's the artists, who have been coming to Kazimierz for over a century to indulge in drinking and other usual shenanigans. Perhaps it's the Jewish legacy and the flea markets where you can buy a rusty German iron or a wooden ring from Bali. Or could it simply be the timeless reliability of fruitcakes and noble-mindedness of Dziwisz Tea House?

Or the well? 

Twin tenement houses, under St. Nicholas and St. Christopher, XVI cen.

Afternoon at the Dziwisz Tea House.

Untitled by Sławomir Mikawoz.

 Boat-shaped bar at Król Kazimierz hotel patio

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For some time now, I carried in my head a word I came up with. And I know blogs shouldn't just be serving self-relief purposes but I might actually get a blogger's block if I don't just let it out. Not very pro, I know.

So this word, 'happonent'. It could just be a cluster of 'happy' and 'moment' but let's face it - that just sounds cringe. 'We shared so many happy moments' is almost an insult when you want to break up with someone. It's so hackneyed, you wouldn't be surprised if it sets them off into a tantrum more than 'It's not you, it's me.'

And yet, they occur. These undisturbed blissful instances that fill you up with a thousand little smiles tickling you from the inside. Happonents! And because they are nouns, you can now add more words to them to define what you mean. For instance:

sudden happonent (that one good moment during a day that generally sucks);

food happonent (when you're biting into an amazing burger);

work happonent (that one time when you're boss took you seriously);

awesome happonent (a really intense happonent you'll never forget);

drunk happonent (when you're laughing really hard at a very bad joke because you're nursing your fith vodka sour);

Warsaw happonent (good time you associate with a certain place, person or object);

sex happonent ("YES!").

Happonents are your private memory stamps that no one else needs to understand. They can be tacky, they can be materialistic, they will and should be a bit soppy - it doesn't matter. You will not be judged.

Here's just a random pick of mine:

Epic sunset over Wulpińskie lake, Galery 69, Dorotowo, Mazury

  Warsaw National Stadium, before Beyoncé's concert, Orange Warsaw Festival

Lunch in Bydło i Powidło on Kolejowa street in Warsaw, in the foreground: "Powidlak"

A guy playing electric guitar while standing in river Thames in front of Tate Modern

Self-made brand hero of a car workshop in Bieszczady 

This... bird in Palmiarnia, Poznań

Breakfast and trashy summer reads in Loutro, Crete

Practically any exhibition at Mocak galery in Cracow

Practically any upcoming storm (this one is in Marsala, Sicilly)

Wafle with icecream and pear in Meat Love, Hoża street, Warsaw