It's the second of January and it's back to the grind. After a whole week off it was a real chore to crawl out of bed this morning. But manage it we did. Eventually.
I spent Christmas in Katowice with my soon-to-be adopted family, and it was a very different experience from the English one. For a start, everything happens on Christmas Eve: dinner and presents. The other two days are spent eating and chilling out. The emphasis is on the dinner and the family and the presents are tokens for others, not the focus.
To begin the celebrations, everyone takes some wafer, the kind you get in church and, offering it to others, you break a piece off each and at the same time wish people good luck, happiness, peace and, in my case, an easy road to speaking Polish. It seemed very formal after the relaxed pubbing of England, but was a sign of how much less commercial everything is here. I mean, people were still carrying Christmas trees home on the day before, so there's no rush to get a tree up at the beginning of December. This year, on a vist to England, I saw my first fully decorated tree in a Westaughton pub on the second of September, on the way into the beer garden with a pint of shandy. It made me wonder what the 'feast' of Christmas is about when for some it starts four months early.
So what about the food? All I can say is I've never had a CHristmas dinner like it and am extremely grateful to those who cooked it. Well, we started with barszcz made from scratch with several pounds of beetroot and almost as much butter. This was poured over pierogi (parcels of pastry containing mushrooms and cabbage) and was fantastic. Next came mushroom soup, again made from scratch. There then followed the carp (which the Poles eat instead of a roast) which came with potatoes and vegetables. After that I got a bit fuzzy about which dishes came after which and I was grateful we didn't have the traditional sixteen courses. I lost track of the number we had, but it was approaching twelve. The food was washed down with a fruit punch made from fresh apricots and plums and to finish we had some cake and little oranges. The whole thing took around four hours and then afterwards we exchanged simple, but thoughtfully purchased, gifts and then sat around, bloated, on the chairs. No James Bond for me this year! The following two days were the same, a round of food and drink, endless cups of tea and no television. Perfect. Even after so much eating we were still able to bring three days supply of food back to Warsaw and now, finally, the fridge is bare!
Snow dominated the scene between Christmas and New Year, with half a metre (or a foot and a half in old money) falling in two days. It's started to melt somewhat, creating skiddy patches everywhere and slush puddles the size of football fields, but the ground is still white in many places and perfect to look at. We went for a walk on New Year's Eve morning, to the forest near to the flat. It was magical. Trees were heavy with snow, the forest silent, only the sounds of some birds and the squeak of a wheel as a woman pushed a pram along a path. We walked for an hour before emerging into a small blizzard and I felt like an Arctic explorer for a time, walking Indian file along the side of the road in the footsteps of an ambling drunk. Real explorers would have done the journey in, probably, half the time and in shorts, but I enjoyed the challenge of putting myself against the snow, only taking a few minutes to shelter in a bus stop. If only Scott had had a karta miasta...
New Year's Eve we went to a party with friends. Vodka, made with fresh cucumbers, and shots called 'mad dogs' were the order of ceremony and although we left at one in the morning to get two night buses home, the party caried on until seven, with dancing and drinking. We drank champagne at midnight and I set off two fireworks that threw sparks into the trees and then bounced back, burning one girl's coat and frightening everyone else. The joys of being slightly drunk and slightly irresponsible experienced again. Sparklers finished off the outdoor entertainment and, with the temperature hovering around minus three, we popped back inside.
Now it is time to start the New Year proper. The post Christmas blues are here only because of the return to work and a semblance of normality, shakey as it may be. I'm not blue though, unless you count that brought on by the cold. I couldn't be happier. And I start this year with the knowledge that I will live in Poland for a long time, with the girl I love and who I will marry later this year. Who could be blue about that?
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