Residency

We are officially residents of Poland! When we first arrived we had to go to the Foreign Affairs office and apply for residency and to get PESEL numbers, which are sort of like Social Security numbers. Since Mike and the kids have Irish passports they are considered European citizens and therefore because Poland is a member of the EU whatever they had to do to apply for residency was a lot simpler that what I had to do. As a foreigner I am only allowed to stay in the country for 90 days maximum (without a visa or residency card). Thankfully this dawned on me the week before we were leaving to visit Dublin, so I called the woman who was helping us with the registration process and she got me a letter from the Foreign Affairs office to bring with me stating that my application was in process. It turns out they did pick up on my 90+ days here so I was stopped at passport control both leaving and coming back into Poland, so thank goodness I thought of it before I left or I would have missed out on the Dublin trip. Mike and the kids got their cards months ago, but today I finally received mine, which allows me to stay in the country until 2014. I won't even show the inside of it since it is one of the worst pictures of me I have ever seen...but here is the front. Now I just have to remember to carry it with me whenever we travel - I had a similar one in Dublin but I didn't think it was that important because I had a special stamp in my passport that said I could stay in the country for 5 years - but then my wallet got stolen with my residency card inside it so I didn't have it when I flew back to Ireland once and customs officers did not like that one bit and said I could have been arrested (?). Oops.

Mike and the kids think they are really cool because they get to blow through the EU passport lines at all the airports (which aren't always the shortest lines, and they still have to wait for me on the other side!) But because they applied for residency on their Irish passports, they can no longer travel on their US passports which means no more stamps from any EU countries that we visit. Oh well, at least I will have them in mine as a keepsake (suckahs).

A Word About Being An Expat

People often ask me how I handle living abroad - as many of you know, I am the most anxious worrier on the planet. I think a lot of people are surprised that I managed to move to Ireland and now, here I am in Poland leaving many people scratching their heads. I'll admit moving away was hard at first (and this was after moving to another English-speaking country, I can't even imagine the culture-shock I would have experienced if I had moved straight here from Boston!), but the reality is, at the point in life when we moved away, the most important things in my world were my husband and my two kids.  And they are all here with me, so it doesn't really matter where we are living as long as we are all together. I think about being single, or even being married without kids, and having to be moved overseas on my own - now that thought scares the crap out of me. I've met some families whose husbands commute - Dublin to Krakow, Krakow to Switzerland, even Boston to Krakow. Now that to me would be harder than anything I have had to deal with since we've been away.  I know that wherever we end up,  I can always count on three people I can have a conversation in English with, who are always there to go to dinner with, or to go out exploring the sights with. All of the other little annoyances that I've had to get adjusted to are just trivial things that I know I will get used to over time, and so I don't get overly upset about them and they certainly shouldn't be causing anyone to have a nervous breakdown or anything (aHEM!). Don't get me wrong, I have my days where I bang my head against a wall and scream, 'If only we lived in the US this wouldn't be happening!!', but I just have a large glass of wine and life is good again. On the flip side, there are a lot of things that wouldn't be happening to us if we were still living in the US - the kids' passport pages are getting filled up with stamps from all of the countries we have visited. They are being exposed to so many different languages, and they (we all?) will hopefully be learning a new one soon. Recently I went out to dinner and we went around the table saying where we were from - Argentina, Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Honduras, India, and one girl had just moved here from Katmandu. I was fascinated talking to her, asking her how she liked Poland and she was so excited to be living here after not having electricity or running water in Nepal...(OMG). She said her husband has to drag her out of the shower each morning because she just stands there enjoying the warm water pouring out from above.  The other night we were invited to our neighbors's for dinner, the wife is from Denmark and the husband is from Germany. After we ate we sat around the table chatting and the wife asked us to turn over the place cards and there was a little Danish song printed on the back, so the she led the song and we all stood around the table and tried to join in. Kind of silly but I loved hearing about the history of the song and what it meant to this family.  I just feel like I am learning so much about the rest of the world - I know it's not like we are roughing it touring through Africa or Indonesia or anything, but I wouldn't pass this experience up for anything. One of the things I miss when we visit the US is hearing all of these different languages and accents. And now I feel like I have friends all over the world that some day we may be able to visit again after we move back. Obviously it has been hard to be away from our family and friends, and it's hard looking at pictures on facebook of family vacations, or people going to Cape Cod, or pumpkin picking and apple picking - but I try not to dwell on that and instead I think, soon enough we will be back to enjoy all of those things...or maybe not (insert evil laugh here ....)

Thanks Jack

I saw this picture on Facebook and got a good chuckle out of it. And Jack must have a Facebook account, because I posted it last night and for some reason this morning (Saturday) he woke at 5:45 am, which he hasn't done in years. He marched into my room, angrily yelled "MOMMY!!", then demanded that I come sleep in his bed (much like the other weekend morning when he screamed, MOMMY you need to GET UP and feed me NOW!!!" But that was at a much more sane time of 9:00).  My first thought after looking at the clock was that I was worried that I wouldn't be able to fall back to sleep, because usually if something wakes me up it takes me hours to get back to sleep. But really it didn't matter because when I climbed in next to him he just rolled around and talked to me for the next hour until I finally decided to throw in the towel and go downstairs. Thank goodness we didn't have a crazy night out last night. Now if he would just get his days straight and do this sort of thing Monday through Friday when he has to be ready for the school taxi at 7:40 am we would be all set, but instead I am dragging him (and Ava) out of bed kicking and screaming and crying and yelling at me about how I am the meanest Mommy ever for making him wear the clothes that he picked out the night before. Ah, the joys of motherhood!!

More Polish Things

Just a few more things I thought of...

Names - I need to add JoAnna to the list of common names because I am meeting so many of them - our cleaning lady, the new doctor I found, a career/relocation coach working with BBH to help spouses adjust, and even a physical therapist. Aneta is another one, and there are at least two Adas and two Kubas at the kids' school.

Everyone wears high heels - walking through the square (on the cobblestone, I have  no idea how they do it), early Saturday mornings out and about (although the ones I have seen may possibly have been hookers!), even at Tesco pushing a kid in a shopping cart (and the outfit is usually topped off with a really short skirt or short shorts). Did I mention how ugly the shoes are? When I walk by shoe stores I glance in and so far I have not really seen anything that would make me even want to go inside. I am guessing I am going to have to wait until visits back to Dublin or the US in order to do any kind of shoe shopping- which kind of stinks because doing it here would be a lot cheaper. Clothes-wise there is an H&M, Zara and Mango which we had in Dublin so I should be all set- and two of those have a kid section which is good. We do see a lot of Wranglers around, I wonder if there is a store? I remember I used to have a favorite pair of purple cordouroy wranglers when I was in 6th grade, wonder if I can find some here? While I'm on the subject of shopping, I was happy to find solid deodorant and foamy shaving cream for Mike (instead of the gel), two things we could never find in Dublin.

Pedestrians have the right of way- I was used to this years ago, going to college in CT and then moving to Boston- freedom to just walk out into the street with no fear of getting hit by a car. Then I moved to Dublin and as a pedestrian I feared for my life. I need to really pay attention here when I drive around because it is a very pedestrian-friendly city (which doesn't make much sense to me considering the drivers are so crazy) so people really don't look at all before walking into a crosswalk, and I have had a couple of close calls because I am just not used to it.

Businesses stay open late- I love this one. It was on of the things that annoyed me about living in Dublin, most stores closed at 6pm, except on Thursdays when they stayed open until 8 (which isn't late enough in my book). Here they are open at least until 10pm, which makes life a lot easier if I ever have to run out for something after Mike gets home from work. Tesco is open 24 hours, and I saw a few 24 hour pharmacies. Even the little post office in our neighborhood stays open until 9, I couldn't believe it.

Most restaurants serve all-day breakfasts. Another thing we had a problem with in Dublin- taking forever to get out of the house on the weekends, really wanting to eat eggs or pancakes and then having to eat a hamburger or a sandwich instead because all the places we went had stopped serving breakfast. But on the flip side, it's really hard to find sandwiches here, so you win some, you lose some I guess.

Taxis are cheap, but you can't hail one on the street. You have to go to a designated taxi stand, or call one. Annoying if you ask me.

Krakow is a very catholic city. There are churches everywhere, and nuns and monks. The other day I saw a  nun tooling through our neighborhood on a bike and I really wanted to take a picture but I thought I might be struck down by a lightning bolt if I had. I believe Ava is supposed to make her First Communion next May so right now I am in search of an English-speaking religion class that she can go to. Otherwise we will have to throw her into the wolves and put her in a Polish class- which probably won't end up being too difficult for her I guess. She is taking Polish at school twice a week, and the other day she went up to a street vendor and ordered a bagel in Polish- "Dzień dobry. Jeden serem proszę- Nie? Sesam proszę, dziękuję!" Which means, hello, one cheese please. no cheese?sesame then. Thank you!! 

The cutting off is out of control. I think I touched on this in an earlier post, but people love to cut in front of you here. I took the bus the other day and there is a machine on the bus where you buy your ticket. I watched a person get on the bus, stand in front of the machine to buy a ticket, but when he took 1 millisecond to dig some change out of his pants pocket a woman behind him with change in her hand just pushed her way in front of him and threw her change right into the machine. I couldn't believe it, but he didn't seem phased by it at all. This also happened to me at the shopping mall when I was standing in front of the ticket machine looking in my purse for money to pay for parking and I wanted to deck the person. 

They don't use top sheets. I noticed this when we were living in Dublin, more so when we traveled around and stayed in different hotels throughout Europe. The beds just have a fitted sheet covering the mattress, then a duvet (comforter) on top. I hate, hate, hate this, as I cannot sleep without a top sheet. Not to mention it really skeeves me out because i am sure most hotels do not wash the duvet covers after each guest leaves (I know they don't wash comforters that often in the US, but maybe since you can take the duvet covers off they are washed more frequently in Europe? I hope?)...We brought most of our bed sheets with us from the US, but I do remember buying new sheets at IKEA when we lived in Dublin and I was able to find a top sheet- it took a lot of searching but I did find them. But at the IKEA here they don't sell them at all, not even on the website. It was really hot this summer and our comforter was too heavy so I needed a top sheet over me, so I ended up having to dig a mismatched one out of the closet to use on our bed. 

May, June, August, and September are the months to get married. We weren't here in May but the past few months we did notice that every single time we went into the main square we saw a bride and a groom wandering around with a photographer. It turns out any month with an R in it is a lucky month to get married (June= Czerwiec, August = Sierpien, September = Wrzesien).  May (Maj) doesn't have an R in it but has great weather even though it's not a lucky month. So people put their wedding garb on and get pictures taken during the week, and then usually get married that Saturday. One day we saw a bride a groom walking along, and the bride was munching on one of those zapiekanka things while the groom chugged a bottle of beer. Mike and I actually felt sorry for them because they looked all alone and we thought wow, that must have been one boring wedding. But obviously they were just on their way home from a photo shoot.

Dry cleaning is very expensive. I think we used to pay around €2 or less to get Mike's shirts cleaned in Dublin, but here they charge almost 17 pln which is about €4 a shirt. This is the dry cleaner that is in the Tesco shopping center so it's the most convenient one for me to get to (which isn't really convenient at all). The first time there we dropped off about 15 shirts and the woman looked at me like I was crazy. She kept pointing to the price list but I really didn't have a choice. Since then we have found a place that's only about €3 a shirt, but it's right in the city center so the parking stinks and it's really hard for me to get there. I am thinking that I'll just wash the shirts and maybe our cleaning lady will iron them for us, we need to figure this one out.

Everybody smokes. This goes for Europe in general, we have noticed this ever since we moved to Dublin. Fortunately most places have banned smoking indoors (thank goodness, I can't even imagine that). Unfortunately, they can still smoke outdoors. This wasn't as much of a nuisance in Dublin because the weather wasn't really nice enough to eat outdoors at a restaurant . But here we eat outside every time we go out, and we are surrounded by smokers and it really ruins our meal. I still think they should designate smoking sections outdoors well, or even just stop manufacturing cigarettes altogether : )

I'm still confused at gas stations. Most places are full service, and when I pull in the attendant will go over to my gas tank (which is on the opposite side of the car) and just stand there. I mean, he isn't even trying to look into the back passenger window to figure out what I want. So I end up having to get out of the car, walk over to him, mumble in English and then point to the gas I want then get back into the car. I just don't know what I am supposed to be doing, or why he doesn't come over to the driver's window and ask? Weird.

There's lots of hitchhikers here. I see them a lot heading down the main road that leads to a place called Zakopane, which is about 2 hours south of us near the Slovakia border and a big skiing destination in the winter.

I cannot for the life of me find regular lined notebooks. Ava needed some for school and I ended up having to order them from the PTA. The other day I was looking for one to use when I start my Polish lessons but the only ones most stores sell are grids with really small lines so trying to write within the lines is pretty difficult, and then skipping lines just seems to take up too much space. Poland must be filled with lots of mathematicians and statisticians I guess...

Kazimierz

There is a neighborhood within Krakow called Kazimierz, which is the old Jewish quarter. Inside (or next to?) this area is where the Nazis created a Jewish ghetto and forced all of the Jewish people in Krakow to live during World War II. Most of them died within the ghetto or were later killed or sent to concentration camps. Some of the area was destroyed during the war (side note - most of Krakow was untouched during the war, the story I have heard is that a German general who was based in Krakow considered it an important historical city and ignored Hitler's orders to destroy it but I'm not sure if that's true). Anyway, the area used to be pretty run-down and had a bad reputation but in recent years it has been coming around - now there are lots of little cafes, restaurants and bars all over. The area is still pretty dismal looking but I guess that is part of its charm.  One afternoon we took a little walk around the area (Ava wasn't happy because she prefers to be on the main square) and then had dinner. Since then we have been back a few times on our own and have found some good restaurants and fun bars. It really reminds me of being back in New York City (except that everyone speaks Polish!)

The main square - and supposedly to the left is the place to buy the best zapiekankas in Krakow

Ava unhappy with Kazimierz

Jack and his teeny tiny dessert (which ended up being the perfect size for him)

Our table in the back garden

Fortunately for us there was access to a playground right out back