Manic Bookstore Cafe

In Poland many people seem to be proud of their apples; I've heard people say: "Our apples are some of the best." Of course, I come from the States, where we have really good apples, so I had to be convinced. We tried different kinds of Polish apples, and we recognized some of the varieties we buy at home. In Zakopane we were able to buy Mutsus. Here in Warsaw we've found the Ligol to be our favorite. I'm not sure why apples are so important to me, and to my family. Maybe because I love to bake pies; maybe because we make applesauce in the old-fashioned food mill every year. In fact, some of our biggest fights are over how to make applesauce. I insist on the food mill I inherited from my grandmother, but my husband wants to use the Cuisinart and keep the applesauce chunky. He claims my applesauce is too smooth... Regardless, we now make a batch on the wood stove and serve it hot for Thanksgiving dinner, and when we can find the time we make up a huge quantity...

"A multitude of impressions!" That's what Michael Blake used to say in my 3rd year Russian textbook Русский язык в диалогах [ Russian Language in Dialogues ]. And that's the way I'm feeling. Overwhelmed. But in a good way. Colloquially we might say: "Impression overload!" When I was at Middlebury Russian School in the 80s, my fellow students and I loved to make fun of Michael Blake and the idiotic things he used to utter in our textbook -- his experience of Moscow ice cream, his commentaries on 1970s architecture ("In England we too now frequently build using concrete and glass!"), his visit to the barbershop where the barber spritzed his neck with cologne and gave him a little massage. But I guess that's what life in a foreign country is: daily new impressions. We are counting down our last days here in Warsaw, and we have many more things on our "to do" list -- places to see, walks to take, restaurants to try, even a ...

I've just figured it out: one of the benefits for language learning of living in-country is that the entire place is your conversation partner. Wondering whether a film I've invited a friend to see has English subtitles, as it did when I saw it during a film festival a few weeks ago, I made a phone call: Kino Iluzjon, słucham .  Czy pani wie, dla filma "We mgle" napisy będą po polsku? będą też po angielsku? The renovated Kino Iluzjon -- very chic! Of course, she didn't actually know the answer, but still, I practiced asking a question. Trying to sort out my children's eyesight, I stopped by the NFZ: Mogę zapisać dzieci do okulista? Also no definitive answer, but I was able to find out what the complicated process is for trying to take advantage of this Polish health insurance I am paying for out of my salary, and I did it in Polish. Waiting miserably in the rain for the bus: To ne jest ładna pogoda, Czy pani wie, już był sto czternaście je...