Travel

Franek the cat met his end courtesy of Rocky, the insane Caucus Mountain wolf/dog that guards the premises with lethal force. The new cat, Rusek (“Little Russian”) is young, feisty, and probably doomed.
While eating kielbasa, I was told with a smile that it was made from the ostriches I’d met on my last visit. I seldom eat things I’ve met, photographed and played with, so this inspired me to not eat any more bird kielbasa. I prefer anonymous ham.
The new ostriches are not as friendly or curious as the last bunch. In fact, they operate mostly in “flee” mode. I assume this is because they’d heard I’d unwittingly eaten their grandma.
The disabled gentleman with the hearty speech impediment gets paid 63 cents an hour for various tasks. The able-bodied one who drinks a lot earns $1.25/hour. The concepts of discrimination and minimum wage don’t have much hold here in the village, which is governed more by reality and the free market.
The only bar in the village – a single, unheated room that served warm beer – is closed. Not because it was unheated and served warm beer, but because they lost their customer base as a result of the exodus of able-bodied young men and women to other EU countries. One of the perks of EU membership (for young Poles, not bar owners) is being able to go elsewhere and make more than the $1.25/hour my brother-in-law would pay you here (less, of course, if you’re disabled).
It was a close race between the village mayor and the village priest for Most Overwhelming Christmas Display 2005, but ultimately the crown goes to God’s humble servant whose power bills are subsidized by the Vatican. He had an electric sleigh on his roof and lots of people eager to earn brownie points by wiring his bushes. Honorable mention goes to the mayor, whose lights flashed wickedly and often.
Christmas mass in the 600 year old unheated pine church enjoyed a record high attendance, probably because the village lost power at 11:30pm and there weren’t many excuses not to go. Since the priest’s speaker system wasn’t working, folks in the back couldn’t hear anything and chatted loudly. Presumably about the power going out.
The freshly paved road between the farm and the carton factory makes for great tow-behind-the-car sledding until you hit the not-freshly-paved cobblestone. Then your poorly made sled will slowly disintegrate and you’ll scream for your father-in-law to stop the car before you and your son are impaled on wood shards.
The closest toy store (40 minutes) is across from the other closest toy store. Both sell the same products, most of which are Chinese knockoffs of famous brand names. The winner for Bravest Little Copyright Infringer goes to the Chinese take on Legos, called “Ligao.” A third the price and one-quarter the quality.
While browsing said toy stores, I learned that “Huey” is “The World’s Most Famous Interactive Troll ™” whatever the hell that means. Perhaps one of the worst product tag lines ever shat out.
New Year’s Eve was celebrated in the village soccer field. The Mayor paid for a limited fireworks display, supplemented by several freelance bottle-rocketeers and the indiscriminate distribution of lit firecrackers. He also offered cups of Russian “Champagne” which tastes like fermented pears, and reminds you that Russians are better at producing vodka. Fortunately I’d brought a bottle of quality French stuff given to me in London by a Virgin stewardess because my seatback TV didn’t work and I can bitch well.
I saw a fat man in the only decent Mercedes I’ve seen around here and asked if that was the mayor of the village. “Yes,” they said, “How did you know?”

London is big city in the southeast of the United Kingdom. It is the capital of the UK. The UK is a member of the European Union, which is a collection of various unhappy European countries mocked and tortured by France and Germany’s shadowy diplomacy. The aim of the EU is to create a significant counterbalance to the economic power of the United States. So far they have created a cute new currency that at least a few of them agree on. And they have a blue flag with a circle of stars. Aside from that, it’s as organized as any collection of countries with independent, incompatible, secret agendas can be. The EU headquarters are located in Brussels, Belgium – one of the blandest cities in the world. Belgians are intolerably boring but they speak more languages than the average American so they are probably smarter.
London is a big city like New York is. However, London is much older and dirtier and therefore has much more history and plague than New York. While New York’s history is pretty much limited to the Indians and the Dutch owning it for a while, London’s is far more interesting. They have Roman ruins for starters. And they had lots of heads being lobbed off for various offenses, like spitting on the sidewalk or buggering the Queen’s brother.
The indigenous people talk like the cast of Monty Python, except for the American guy who was on the show. Although many Londoners’ accents may sound the same to an average American tourist, their accents actually identify whether the speaker grew up amidst sewage or is related to a Lord. By someone’s first ‘Hello!’ you will have immediately formed an opinion on whether or not the conversation will continue.
London does not feel as safe as New York in that there are more stabbings and ass-kickings. In addition, every English male is required to break at least one window a year. This was very evident on New Year’s Day when it seems the lads brought in 2004 by cheering, kissing girls in the area, and punching a window.
London today is kind of like New York under Ed Koch or, God forbid, David Dinkins: sometimes gritty, dirty, rough-and-tumble. The citizens are still awaiting their Giuliani to come and clean up the city and get Disney in there. During my trip a survivalist-loser type shot and killed a cop. There was a rumor that the killer was Canadian, which made me very happy. Later it turned out he was American, which made me very sad. They caught him but everyone was kind of freaked out for a day to have a lunatic American running about the subway system. Many cops in London do not carry guns and instead are armed with rolling pins and incredible self-confidence about their ability to roll an armed assailant into submission.
The most interesting thing I learned on this last trip was that the expression ‘one for the road’ comes from the fact that criminals (sidewalk spitters and Queen’s-brother-buggerers) on the way to the gallows from Newgate Prison would be allowed a last pint of beer at a pub to boost their morale and make them all Tally Ho! about being hung. The guards would not be drinking and instead would stand ‘on the wagon.’ This is either very interesting history or 100% horse dung disseminated via the tour guide on the overpriced, open-top double-decker tour bus.
London’s subway is called the ‘Tube’ while New York’s is called the ‘Subway.’ The English folks I know there don’t use the ‘Tube’ much, for fear of some ‘Arabs’ who they feel are ‘fucking insane’ and may try to ‘kill’ people on the ‘Tube’ for the chance to attend an ‘orgy’ in their twisted version of ‘Heaven.’
London has a beautiful pub culture. They take pride in their bars which are warm, comfortable establishments where one can enjoy a lovely, tepid pint of beer and a chat. You can also have a ‘fag’ which in London is a cigarette. The word has a totally different connotation in New York, usually meaning a gentleman who reinforces a stereotype by putting on an outrageous accent and getting disowned by his family.
The best way to remember it is this way: In London pubs you can have an English ‘fag’ and an American ‘fag.’ In New York pubs you can have an American ‘fag’ but not an English ‘fag’ unless you’re talking about an English gentleman who reinforces a stereotype by putting on an outrageous accent and getting disowned by his family. In that case it’s okay. The reason you can’t have English ‘fags’ in a New York pub is because our Mayor hates them – though he has a soft spot for American ones and gives them private high schools at taxpayer expense.
If there is music in a London pub it tends to be at a very low volume so as to facilitate a conversation. This is unlike pubs in America where the bartender sets his techno mix tape to volume 11 and you’re forced to shout over choruses of Yeah! Dance! Freedom! Party! The fact that Londoners have enjoyed pub conversation since the age of 18 or so rather than shouting over trite lyrics explains why conversations in London tend to be witty and interesting, while many New York conversations are as deep and rewarding as Yeah! Dance! Freedom! Party! allows.
English pubs are extremely enjoyable until 11pm when they close. This age-old early closing results in a lot of last minute binge-drinking before the pub closes. At 10:45p a bell rings advising you that you have only 15 minutes to binge-drink. At 11p, a bartender uses 800-year old clich’s to ask you to quit the premises. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here, people and Get the fuck out, please are good examples.
New Year’s can be enjoyable, though not if two ladies in your party are drugged with Rohypnol. If that happens, their New Year’s Eve will end prematurely when they become paralyzed and incoherent. I’d like to meet any guy who would spike a girl’s drink so he could explain to me the merits of drugging people he doesn’t know whilst I discussed the finer points of inserting finer points in him.
For those lucky not to be secretly drugged, it is customary to await the New Year until you notice half of the pub ‘ the half with a TV ‘ celebrating something. At about 12:03 you’ll realize that they are celebrating the New Year. To generalize: bartenders in London may not inform you of important things, like New Year’s, as they are busy serving drinks and remembering the 800-year old clich’s they plan on using when they ask you to leave the bar.
Musically, there are many differences and similarities to the New York scene. However there will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be a #1 hit called Touch My Bum in New York, or the United States for that matter. Ever.
London has great taxi cabs, better than New York taxi cabs for numerous reasons. For starters, their drivers are educated and speak the same language as their customers. They also know the streets by heart, the result of something called ‘training’ which has yet to be imported into the United States. The cabs have plenty of leg room and can easily accommodate five passengers. The worst part of the taxi experience is the fare meter, which shows you how weak the US dollar really is.
London lacks a few things New York has – such as an overly-regulatory, bureaucratic entity to micro-manage the building of commercial-use toilet stalls. You’ll also notice London has a different take on water pressure. To imagine a shower in London, wet a paper towel with cold water then hold it over your head and squeeze. Congratulations, you have just had your first London-style shower.
London’s several newspapers are similar to New York’s several newspapers. The left-wing, America-hating Guardian is very much like the left-wing, America-hating New York Times. The Sun, which is for dockworkers, is much like the New York Post, also for dockworkers. But the Sun has boobs on page three, making it a better paper for dockworkers.
Overall, London is a lovely place to visit – especially for the quarter-billion Americans who don’t speak anything other than English.

Rocky, the hyperviolent canine/wolf menace, spent the better part of the night engaged in a fierce, vocal debate with the neighbor’s remaining dogs. The conversation consisted mainly of Rocky letting out three of his patented guttural, bowel-shattering Woo Woo Woo barks followed by a coordinated reprisal of smallish sounding yippy-type barks off in the distance – as if gay guys and old ladies from New York had abandoned all their abhorrent mini-pets next door.
My guess is that the neighbor’s canine court convened; Rocky was tried in absentia and sentenced to a lifetime of being yapped at – the result of his murdering two of their own. Rocky seems perfectly capable of handling such a sentence. I do not, as the exchange of barkfire woke me up more often than the New York Fire Department, which routinely overreacts to smoking toasters at 4am with a 150 decibel medley of ear-piercing sirens and nerve-racking air horns.
During my stay in rural Poland, Rocky has dispatched two of the neighbor’s dogs. There is also evidence, scattered around the farm, that he was complicit in the early demise of no less than a basketball, soccer ball, plastic planter, door mat, several mole hills and a styrofoam block. The plastic squeaking pig I purchased as a goodwill/don’t-kill-me gesture has surprisingly been spared. So, the one thing that Rocky was actually supposed to chew to bits is in great condition, aside from being filthy. Rocky takes it with him at night and leaves it somewhere around the exterior of the house for me to find during my morning stroll.
This morning when returning the squeaky pig pal to Rocky’s daytime holding pen, I was approached by a farm worker named Stefan. He had previously stared at me from a distance, probably wondering why I was taking a picture of a plastic pig in the grass – for which I have no good answer. Stefan suffers from a very disabling birth defect that affects his speech and crippled his limbs. The good news is that in the last few decades the disease has gone the way of polio, the bad news is Stefan missed that train fifty years ago. As a result, he has the normally hard life of a farm hand rendered much harder by cruel happenstance.
Rocky hates Stefan, and it was quite obvious that if he were freed from his pen, Stefan would have been absolutely torn to pieces. The reaction was unusually violent even for an insane wolf/dog. Rocky performed what I will call the Rocky Is Very Angry routine. This involves running loops around the cage, barking all the while; every so often he jumps into the wall on one side of his pen, bounces off of it and addresses his potential victim with a hearty assortment of terrifying barks before resuming the routine. He’s jumped into the wall so often that the paint has been removed, revealing a 3×2 foot oval of paw-polished aluminum.
Stefan approached me for a little conversation. Conversation with him is not at all easy. Even Polish people have a very hard time understanding him on account of the effects of his debilitating birth defect. When he speaks, it’s coming from a disfigured palate and everything comes out in a burst of slurred words, some amplified and some muted, a la The Elephant Man. On top of all that the words are in Polish – not exactly my native tongue.
Our conversation was in Polish and was amazingly uncomfortable. It lasted what felt like an eternity, and had I known some of the family members were watching me squirm from the living room window I would have called for backup. The entire time Rocky performed the Rocky Is Very Angry routine and the obvious target of his venom was Stefan. Stefan seemed unfazed by the fact that death was only a thin wire fence away.
Me: Good morning.
Stefan: no idea
Me: What?
Stefan: no idea
Me: What?
Stefan: no idea dog no idea dogs.
Me: I do not speak Polish very well.
Stefan: no idea Polish no idea
Me: I do not understand. I speak only a little Polish.
Stefan: What no idea English?
Me: I speak English.
Stefan: I no idea English.
Me: I speak English. I speak some Polish.
Stefan: no idea Are you from England?
Me: I am American. I live in New York.
Stefan: Ah, American. no idea waiting no idea terrorist?
Me: Am I waiting for a terrorist?
Stefan: no idea terrorist no idea New York.
Me: I don’t understand.
Stefan: no idea terrorist no idea dogs.
Me: Rocky?
At this point, Stefan waves his shovel at Rocky. This does not please the mad wolf/dog, and the barking escalates in volume and violence.
Me: Oh, no, no.
Stefan: no idea dogs no idea.
Me: Very well. I will go to the house now. Good bye.
At first I thought Rocky had been trained to hate disabled people, but I later learned that Stefan regularly tormented the already unstable and dangerously violent wolf/dog. I don’t think this is a good idea. The family acknowledged that Rocky would undoubtedly attack the man if it had a chance.
I hadn’t thought to ask why a tree trunk was leaning against the house outside the kitchen window. It had been there since I arrived nearly two weeks ago. Last night I discovered why it was there when out of nowhere a furious Rocky repeatedly dove into the window, howling and pawing at the glass. It was his way of notifying us that he was in the mood for a pre-patrol snack. This morning I noticed there is now a bicycle leaning on the tree trunk leaning on the window. That passes for self defense measure, I guess.
We leave for London tomorrow. It was decided that since we’re not near the airport, we’ll have to leave the farm at 2:30am. Concerns about getting up and out of the house on time were secondary to the first thing that occurred to me: Rocky’s going to be out there, somewhere, unleashed. I hope he remembers the pig.

Twain said golf was a good walk, spoiled. But, I submit he probably never stumbled upon dead dogs during his jaunts, which he might consider a good walk even more spoiled.
For the second time while meandering around the farm I came across another victim of Rocky, the half-mad canine security detail that handles the night shift on the premises. Unlike the previous victim, which seemed almost peacefully at rest, the second victim showed signs of a violent struggle. The crime scene would be considered unpleasant. The deceased was youngish, a mutt of some sort, with what looked to be a little Labrador Retriever in him. There are lots of mutts in the village on account of the lack of a neutering program or leash law. A dog’s life here seems free and easy, with infinite places to soil and a variety of partners to sex up. Your only concern as a dog here would be not encountering a formerly abused, currently psychotic wolf/dog who is guarding a field of black currants.
There is, it seems, a hole in the neighbor’s fence that allows their dogs entry onto the premises which are defended by Rocky with such lethal force. Apparently twice they have been warned that it needed fixing. Shame on them, for they never heeded the warnings and as a result the number of dead dogs I have stumbled across during the course of my holiday is now two. I was told that there was a third victim dating back earlier in the summer – also the neighbor’s and through the same hole. Either the neighbors have an unimpressive learning curve or they simply haven’t noticed three of their dogs are missing.
This is the most dead dogs that I have ever come across, or care to. I’m not much of a dog person myself and in fact am less than fond of most of the pissing, pooping, shrieking little fiends I come across in New York daily. I think people who dress dogs in sweaters or pack their little creatures in special totes and drag them shopping at Barney’s are freaks. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean I want their precious things mauled by a crazed Caucus wolf/dog. In fact, like the ending of Les Miserables and hearing Gary Coleman talk, dead dogs make me a little sad, I have to admit.
It didn’t take much sleuthing to determine the final moments of victim number two’s short life. The tracks were fresh in the snow, and like a skilled ranger I simply followed them to the fence where the intrusion occurred. Lo and behold, there was a hole in the fence the size of which would have easily accommodated the dead dogs I came across. Several of the neighbor’s dogs barked at me as I approached. Apparently they have a lot of dogs to spare. The dogs barked and ran away and came back and barked and ran away. I imagined what they were saying. Where’s Antonek? Where’s Slavomir? What have you done to them? Murderer!
My wife’s family was not as concerned as I was about the whole affair. When I originally pointed out victim number one, my mother-in-law followed me out to the crime scene, acknowledged that I had in fact found a dead dog, and headed back to the kitchen to prepare lunch. Victim number two got even less attention. Again? Oh.
At first they tried to tell me that Rocky may have thought he was playing and accidentally killed his mates. But the Catcher In The Rye defense didn’t really work for me. They changed their case to That’s just life. When you’ve grown up on a farm and have experience raising, killing and cooking your own dinner your attitude towards animals changes, I guess. I, on the other hand, have never raised, killed and eaten my own food. I was horrified as a child when I actually caught a flounder. I cried when I saw a broken bluebird egg. I erected a memorial for my ex-girlfriend’s asthmatic, rug-pissing, pain-in-the-ass cat. Sure, I could kick P. Diddy out of a helicopter without remorse, but I’d swerve off a cliff to save a squirrel.
I decided to repair the fence. My wife’s family was not keen on this. They maintained it was the neighbor’s fence and subsequently their problem since they had twice been told to fix it. In their eyes, and probably rightly so, the canine casualties were unfortunate but an end result of the neighbor’s negligence and laziness. However, I convinced them that if I kept coming across dead dogs during my walks on the farm it would present a bigger problem than me fixing the fence. The idea of getting a good night’s sleep while Rocky was chewing intruders didn’t sit well with me. I eventually received what I think was their blessing and wandered about the farm looking for materials to repair the hole. It wasn’t long before I found a some extra wire fencing rolled up and in another locale a pair of snips and pliers. I detached several strands of the fencing and made my way back to the breach.
If the neighbor looked out their window they’d have seen a complete stranger squatting amongst the pines in a long dressy overcoat, wool slacks and leather gloves more suited for the theater than fence repair. For forty five minutes I cut wire and twisted it in an effort to render the hole impassable. Meanwhile, a brutally cold wind chilled me to the core while smacking me in the face with pine tree branches. No good deed goes unpunished. After I was thoroughly convinced the hole was closed, I cruised the perimeter one more time in an effort to secure the premises.
Mission accomplished. No dead dogs were discovered this morning. From this point on they’re on their own though. If they haven’t learned by now and dare to undo my handiwork, they kind of deserve what they get – even though it will still ruin a good walk.

The Polish countryside with a dusting of snow makes a remarkable Christmas landscape. The snow was exquisitely timed so that it got the coming down part taken care of two days ago. Everything was in place just in time for the holiday. The day before Christmas the skies were clear, the sun was out, and everywhere I looked – except where I saw a dead dog – resembled a lovely Holiday card.
I’m not sure what killed the neighbor’s little dog, but something tells me it was my wife’s family’s emotionally scarred, Cujo-dwarfing wolf/dog from the Caucasus. Rocky (ro-kee) sleeps just fine in sub-zero weather, howls like the part wolf he is and comes across as terribly menacing. Rocky handles the 11pm – 8am security shift on the farm. Something tells me he might have been the one that dispatched the neighbor’s dog when it chose to visit the premises without permission. There didn’t look to be much of a struggle. If I didn’t know there was a canine berserker on premises I might even have believed that the poor doggie died of natural causes.
I have been told that Rocky knows not to kill me. I think my wife’s family is hoping he’s noticed I’m not an intruder. There seems to be no guarantee however and I am still under strict orders not to leave the house when Rocky has been released. I plan on taking their advice. The other night while walking past the kitchen window I couldn’t help but notice the wolf/dog staring at me just outside, fangs bared and emitting a low, pants-wetting growl.
Oddly, when off duty and in his cage he cowers in fear. Apparently he was abused by his previous owners. This is very sad and it’s probably what made him a good security dog that kills intruders and threatens Americans on the premises. I bought him a plastic squeaking pig and a dog biscuit as a token of international friendship but that doesn’t seem to have won him over. Then again, he hasn’t killed me, so maybe it did. The silence of a winter night in rural Poland is occasionally pierced by the high-pitched squeal of the plastic pig. This is reassuring because it means Rocky is still outside, and possibly likes my gift enough to consider not attacking me.
Christmas in the Polish countryside seems a very hectic affair. The big deal is Christmas Eve, as Christmas Day is just a day to sleep in and relax. The events begin on the 23rd with a frantic housecleaning and acquisition of food from the various stores in the village. The 24th is the busiest day, with tradition dictating that women run the kitchen while the men muck about and fiddle with things.
What was most surprising to me is that the Christmas tree doesn’t go up until Christmas Eve. This is unusual to an American because Christmas in the States begins on November 1st when stores pack the last of the Halloween decorations away and haul out the Yuletide cheer in an effort to maximize store sales. Thanksgiving is a mere hiccup on the way to Christmas.
Two Christmas trees were delivered to the premises by an elderly farmer of some relation to the family. In the U.S. he’d long have been living in Florida. Things are different here though, and despite his age he spent the better part of two days out in the frozen woods hacking down pines after paying the land owner a few dollars. Cheap Christmas trees are one of the upsides of life in rural Poland. One of the downsides is when you’re 85 you might still be out swinging axes at them.
As the women prepared Christmas dinner, my brother-in-law and I looked for a place to plant the second Christmas tree outside. I thought it odd that we were planting a tree that had been chopped down but it was too bitterly cold to stop and cherish irony. We hacked a hole in the frozen ground with a pick, dropped the tree in and hung lights on it. All under the watchful, caged eye of Rocky the potentially murderous wolf/dog.
Last year when we arrived for Christmas I went to the bathroom and discovered a large fish swimming in the bathtub. Never having seen a large fish in someone’s bathtub before, I naively assumed they must have rescued it from a very cold pond. I remember thinking how sweet it was of them to help out a fish in severe weather. I later learned that it was a carp, and it was slated for termination and consumption as part of Christmas Eve dinner. Every time I went into the bathroom I was guilt-ridden and played with it. To the family’s amusement I started referring to the carp as ‘my friend.’ A couple of days later, one of the big Polish soap operas featured a retarded boy playing with a carp in a bathtub, wondering aloud why ‘his friend’ had to die. Art imitating life I guess. This year the carp was conspicuously absent, presumably because of my obvious emotional attachment to them. Leave it to the American to show up and start changing centuries of tradition.
On the 24th you’re not allowed to eat or drink alcohol. This is too bad. I was hungry and felt I deserved a beer for the effort involved in planting the Christmas tree. Tradition decrees there will be no food until the first star is visible in the sky; no drink until after midnight. Why it’s okay to drink on Christmas Day I’m not sure. I assume the rules are there to make sure folks show up at midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
Radio is the usual jumble. In the space of an hour you can cover a dozen genres. Whitney Houston segues into Polish Folk which segues into Bon Jovi. Most music is Christmas-themed. If it’s in English or Polish and about Christmas, it’s on rotation. I heard Silent Night by more artists than I can remember, in both languages. How they managed to translate the lyrics of Silent Night and keep the melody is pretty impressive, seeing as Polish words tend to be three feet long and stuffed with consonants. The cheerful holiday songs were briefly interrupted by an inappropriate Phil Collins ballad about children starving and dying in the streets because of evil politicians, but that gave way to another rendition of Silent Night and all was well again.
Christmas dinner starts with everyone taking a wafer. It may be a religious type of wafer, like a Body of Christ type thing. That would certainly make sense, but I’m not really privy to Catholic traditions. You go around to each person in the room, take a piece of their wafer and eat it. Then you say nice things to them and offer wishes for the upcoming year. In the wishes directed at me I understood a lot of yh’baby’, ‘next year’ and ‘please’ so if I’m not mistaken, the pressure is on. After the wishes comes the traditional left-right-left cheek kissing, then you’re off to eat someone else’s wafer, and so on. I thought it would be nice to include the bird in the festivities but apparently these wafers are off limits to the winged.
Dinner is a sumptuous affair with a required 12 dishes – no more, no less, no meat. In addition to the traditional Polish fare of mushroom and cabbage pierogi, breaded fish and assorted salads, my wife introduced her family to nontraditional dishes she picked up in New York from her addiction to the Williams Sonoma website. Some changes had to be made – fresh salmon was nowhere to be found – but the Poland debut of shrimp cakes, halibut with avocado/mango chutney and hearty cream of mushroom soup went swimmingly. It all went down great with a hot mug of borscht though I really would have loved a beer.
Presents are exchanged after dinner. My love for Polish beer glasses was again indulged and now I have to figure out how to get the four Okocim glasses back to the U.S. in one piece. I was relieved to learn that the wine rack and eight wine glasses I received were intended to remain here.
Apparently the Santa aspect is different here since gifts are exchanged in the evening when children are still awake and waiting by the tree. Santa’s arrival and gift-leaving is logistically complicated and requires coordinated child deception/distraction, stealth and a decent Santa costume.
After presents, coffee and a variety of cakes are enjoyed. Cakes are very big in Poland, and they’re all quite delicious.
Close to midnight, we donned our warm apparel and headed for the village church. It’s not a long walk, but it felt longer with the combination of bitter cold and strong winds. The church is gorgeous, 600 or so years old, a half-timbered affair that was recently renovated so it looks as brand new as a 600-year old building can look. It was the church we were married in, so it’s very sentimental. It was also very full by the time we arrived, and even though it is completely unheated we would have preferred to be on the inside of it rather than standing outside in the freezing winds. Church sells out on Christmas Eve, standing room only, be warned. After 15 or so minutes of straining to hear the priest over the winds and chatter outside, the family decided to call it a night and we trudged back to the house.
There was more eating to be done, pierogi and such with a mug of hot borscht which was a delight after having been freezing for the last half hour. There was some horrid movie on. It was an American film with one of the people from Beverly Hills 90210. It was dubbed in Polish though and all I could really discern was that they were on a big, scary cruise ship.
With all its tradition and Norman Rockwell ambiance I understand why my wife considers Christmas in Poland the most important holiday of the year.
One by one, they started fading and excusing themselves to bed. Rocky was released from confinement and I was again warned not to exit the house under any circumstances, just in case the wolf/dog decided to try and spoil an otherwise lovely Christmas.