l'Auberge Polonnaise

So I've been here for a week, and these are just some of the first impressions that I have collected in that time. I will make a more comprehensive post very soon (now that I have internet in my room). First of all, Krakow is absolutely stunning in the fall. The parks and avenues are gorgeous with the warm October sun and all of the yellow leaves falling around you and the sculptures.

The curious thing about living in Poland, the one thing that has been my saving grace, is how much I use me Spanish. Seriously. For example, my roommate, Isabel, is from France, and she only speaks English at a very basic level. However, she did an Erasmus program in Spain, and now she is at a near fluent level of Spanish. This is how an American girl can speak with her French roommate in Krakow... Who would have guessed? If you've seen the movie "l'Auberge espagnole" it resembles that storyline quite a bit.

There is no one here who is mono-lingual. Neither is English anywhere near being a "universal language." Explain it however you want –the proximity of European countries, inter-European study, immigration– but the fact remains that the majority of Americans are at such a disadvantage. The other foreign kids I am meeting, if we talk in English, it is certainly not their first language, and now they are learning Polish with me. What's up with our being able to graduate students and call them "educated" with maybe two years of half-hearted Spanish or German classes in high school?

Even so, the world is not perfect. Isabel and I are in need of a fridge for our dorm room, and as kids were moving into the dorms, there were a few fridges lying about the hallways. Isabel stopped a Polish student on the stairs to ask whether or not the unit in front of us was taken. The conversation went something like this:
(enter Isabel, Sarah and Dude)
Isabel: (in English) Excuse me, do you speak English?
Dude: No, very little.
Isabel: Ok, ummm... español? Italiano? Francais? Deutsch?
Dude: Ah, deutsch.
Isabel and Dude: (a conversation in broken German involving a lot of pointing, gestures, and "um" with Dude offering the correct word for "fridge" in Polish, which I promptly forgot.)
Dude: (Fed up) Okay, no, no, no. (Counts on fingers) Polski, Ukranski, Slovaki, Ruski, Ceska?...
Isabel and Sarah: Dziekuje (and exit)

Even with ten –count 'em, ten– languages available between us, we couldn't hold a simple conversation about a refrigerator! That little encounter made me wonder just what the hell am I getting myself in to.

Luckily I found a named Loretta, a British girl with a Polish mother, who grew up speaking Polish. What would I be doing without her help?? I really don't like NOT being able to understand what is going on around me or not being understood myself. I mean, come on - I was more or less a communications major. I live for being able to get my ideas across, and I always prided myself on how well I could get around Argentina with my Spanish. I honestly feel like a little child. I can really only look and observe. Pronunciation and reading is very difficult right now. The few words I do know are not enough to string into conversations, and when I do recognize things on billboards or that I overhear when other people speak, I get really excited.


I know I probably have enough literary references for this early in my blog, but here is one passage that struck me from the book that I was reading on my transatlantic flight. It's from Paulo Coelho's The Pilgrimage:
When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth. You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys you don't even understand the language the people speak. So you are just like a child in the womb. You begin to attach more importance to the things around you because your survival depends on them. You begin to be more accessible to others because they may be able to help you in difficult situations. And you accept any small favor from the gods with great delight, as if it were an episode that you would remember for the rest of your life.
At the same time, since all things are new, you see only the beauty in them, and you feel happy to be alive... The word pecadillo, which means a "small sin," comes from pecus, which means "defective foot," a foot that is incapable of walking a road. The way to correct the pecadillo is always to walk forward, adapting oneself to new situations and receiving in return all of the thousands of blessings that life generously offers to those who seek them.

True words when they refer to the simple state of a traveler and of how important it is just to keep walking, to keep persevering...