The Krakow Derby

Last week I attended the Krakow derby. As Danny Dyer would say, the Krakow derby is a naughty naughty fixture. Before going to game I had heard stories and watched documentaries online about Polish football hooligans and in particular the Krakow derby. Almost everyone I spoke to before going to the game warned me about what might happen. I was told that one of the stands would be closed as someone had thrown a knife onto the pitch at the previous game. So I was a bit nervous to say the least, but I went all the same.

The game was held at Wisła's stadium and I was sitting with the Wisła supporters, undoubtedly the safer part of the stadium. Wisła had actually been confirmed as champions the night before the match, which meant that perhaps some of the edge was taken of the match, which had previously been billed as a championship clincher.

The first thing I noticed going to the match was the amount of police and how they are dressed. The police don't mess about in Poland, they are big, strong and carrying weapons (sometimes guns). It is a strange sensation you get because on the one hand you feel safer, seeing so many police, while on the other hand you get a bit nervous, wondering why so many police are necessary in the first place. Another thing about polish football is that it 95% of the supporters are male, and mean looking. I'm not labelling everyone a hooligan but a lot of the people who attend these matches look like the stereotypical hooligan. They are big, shaved head and growling at everyone.

Inside the actual stadium the two sets of fans were kept apart by a physical barrier and rows of police. The Cracovia fans (all 800 of them) were dressed in black jackets. These are the jackets of the Cracovia hooligans, known as anty-Wisła. The Wisła supporters were dressed in red and in a bit of a party mood, owing to them becoming champions before the match had even begun. As you can imagine, the singing during the match contained a lot of swear words and was usually directed at the other team. It was difficult for the small group of Cracovia fans to make themselves heard because everything was directed by the Wisła ultras who were their usual disciplined, choreographed selves.

The action on the pitch wasn't very interesting. Wisła won the match 2-1 but the most entertaining moment was in the final minute when the Cracovia goalkeeper was sent off for a spectacular rugby tackle after he had come forward for a corner.

The action off the pitch was aslo fairly tame and the whole thing passed off relatively peacefully. The usual ritual of scarf burning never took place. There were actually pleas by the club over the loud speaker for supporters to refrain from burning scarves. In Scotland they ask you not smoke in the stadiums, in Poland they ask you not to set fire to the opposition scarves.

Bloody Foreigners

Any of you who are familiar with the Daily Mail will know it's stance in relation to immigration and it's stories about Polish plumbers etc. Well bearing that in mind I'd like to suggest what the column of a Polish version of the Daily Mail might look like. Imagine this opinion piece was written by Richard Littlejohn's Polish equivalent, Ryszard Małyjanek.

Poland has lost control of it's borders!! Since joining the European Union Poland has been over-run by hordes of British stag and hen parties. Cities like Krakow are struggling to cope with the sheer volume of people who come in search of cheap booze. When Poland joined the European Union the government assured us that the numbers coming would be low and managable and would only bring benefits, however their estimations were wrong. Now the focus group "stag party watch" has produced a report showing the true effects and consequences of the problem. The hard hitting report claims that the government has no idea how many stag parties are currently in Poland and that public services, particularly street cleaners and bouncers, are being stretched to the limit. One of the biggest problems cited by the report is that the price of a pint has almost doubled for the average Pole as a result of the strength of the pound. A spokesman for "stag party watch" commented " Poles who have lived here all their lives, paid their taxes and abided by the law are being hit hardest by this sharp increase in beer prices" adding " it's a bloody liberty". A spokesman for the local bars responded to these accusations, "the pints are there but the locals don't want to drink them, the Brits will come and pay the prices, what can you do?". However it's not just beer prices which have been effected by the wave of stag parties. The vast majority of the stag parties which come to Poland don't speak a word of Polish leading to more and more signs and posters being produced in English. A local taxi driver from Krakow commented "they come over here and expect everything to be translated for them into English, it's a bloody disgrace". When we asked for an interview with a government spokesman we were told that no-one was available but they did issue a statement in which they said "all in all the effect of stag and hen parties has been positive". This seems to be at odds with a poll carried out among readers of this paper in which we asked our un-biased and well informed readers "are stag parties to blame for the increase in unemployment, crime, terrorism and bird flu in Poland". The answers were stark. A whopping 93% of people answered yes and in another poll, 90% of people said they believed there should be some of qoutas for stag parties. The evidence is clear and it's time to act. Poland must regain control of it's borders and most importantly it's pubs.

Back after a long break

I realise that I haven't posted anything for a while however (3 months, but who is counting?) that doesn't mean I haven't been doing anything. In fact it's quite the contrary, I've been too busy to post. Well maybe it's a mixture of working too hard and being too lazy. I believe they call that an oxymoron.

So what have I been doing? Firstly, getting to grips with the language. For those of you who have tried to learn Polish, you will know it's quite a tricky language to say the least. I think it's important when you learn any language to study the basic grammar rules. There are people who say they learned a foreign language without ever attending a lesson and without ever looking at a text book, don't believe them. You can learn a lot from going to a country and immersing yourself in the language but you still need some structure, especially for grammar. Vocabulary and expressions you can learn from every day situations, watching TV, listening to music etc, but grammar needs to be taught to some degree. With this in mind I have been making more of a concerted effort to master some of the basic Polish grammar structures.

I have also been reading a bit, especially Polish literature [in English however :( ]. At the moment I'm reading a book by Ryszard Kapuściński. If you like non-fiction and in particular travel writing then Kapuściński is your man. As one of the only Polish journalists able to travel during the socialist times, his stories are unique to say the least. I can honestly say that reading him has encouraged me to re-start writing on this block.

Finally I have done a wee bit of travelling. I visited the famous salt mines of Wieliczka outside Krakow. I also went to Germany for the first time to visit Berlin. By the way it is true what they say about German effeciency. I am also planning to visit the Ukrainian city of Lwow which was once part of Poland, the Berwick of the East.

Spring time has arrived in Poland and it has brought good weather and inspiration so I'm sure this post won't be my last for another 3 months.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

The first post of 2008 and one of my new year's resolutions is going well. I hope I can continue to write more regularly on my blog. Christmas was nice for me, I spent a traditional Christmas at Kasia's house and then travelled to Scotland on boxing day to spend a few days there with my family. I even managed to get home yesterday in time to have a wee hogmany party in my flat. All in all, everything went fine. So why the title? When are we going to hear about these unfortunate events? Well the title is a description of my journey back from Scotland to Poland with the wonderful Wizzair and via Katowice airport. I have actually thought of writing about Katowice airport before, due to the fact that every time I have been there something has annoyed me. Well this time was no exception. Anyone who has flown with Wizzair or even Ryanair for that matter, will know that they never take you where you actually want to go. They don't fly you to Glasgow but to Prestwick, not to London but Luton or Stansted, not Barcelona but Girona and with Wizzair, not Krakow but Katowice. Well this is annoying but usually there is a connection available to where you want to go. The Wizzair connection is a wee miny van. So we arrived at Katowice airport at 1.30 am, expecting to catch this van to Krakow. So there we were, waiting outside in the cold with four other people for this van. Time went on and there was no sign of the van. We asked at the information desk in the airport, but the ladies working there didn't know if it was turning up. Point number one for Wizzair and Katowice airport, communicate better!! What is the point in having an information desk about the airport if the people working there don't know pretty simple information like when a bus will arrive? Eventually we were told that the bus would arrive when two other flights had landed. This meant the bus would be there around 3 am. So we waited and at 3 am the bus arrived. The only trouble was that the driver informed us that most of the seats were reserved and there were only two spaces available. As I said earlier, there were 6 of us waiting for this bus. So here we were, 6 people, tired, cold, wanting to go to Krakow and only two spaces on the bus. Point number two, costumer service. This bus driver was probably the rudest guy I have met and had absolutely no advice for any of us on how to get back to Krakow. Eventually a decision was taken to let two Scottish girls take the seats and we took another bus to Katowice train station to try to catch the first train to Krakow which left at 4.20 am. So we took the 40 minute bus ride to the train station. Now if anyone reading has been to Katowice train station then you will know that it is not the prettiest place in the world. When we arrived at the station, thinking we had missed the train, we were told that it had been delayed and we had 20 minutes left to catch it. Great !! A piece of luck at last!! Well not exactly. The woman working at the ticket sales desk worked as quickly as a woman in the Polish post office and despite there only being one person in front of us in the queue, it took a good 10-15 minutes to get out ticket. However once that was done, she told us to go to platform 4 and wait for the train. After waiting at platform four for a while, there was no sign of a train for Krakow. It was almost 5.30 am when the woman announced that the train would be leaving from platform two. It seems that Katowice train station has a similar communication problem. So it was off to platform two, running with our suitcases. Well eventually we made it and got onto the train, arriving in Krakow at around 7.30 am. The moral of this story is try to avoid Katowice airport and train station. Not the best situation considering that Katowice will be used during Euro 2012.

Education, Education, Education

Recently I was commenting on how things are not always worse in Poland as they are in other EU states (namely the UK). It is true that wages are higher and the relative cost of living is lower however the UK has it's problems (last time I gave the example of street violence). It would now also appear that the Polish education system is in a better condition than it's British equivalent. A report published by the International Student Assessment Programme ranked countries in terms of the educational performance of 15 year olds in reading and maths tests. The UK, perhaps not surprisingly, was among a group of countries ranked as average in both maths and reading. What might surprise some people though was that Poland was in the top 10 countries in the world in terms of reading, putting it above average. In fact the only EU states above Poland were Finland and Ireland. So like I said before, the idea that everything in the UK works better than Poland is far from true.

Polish people

I noticed that one of the comments on my blog asked that I write more about my views of Polish people. This is will inevitably lead to generalisations based on my personal experiences, so if you disagree with anything I write on this subject, feel free to let me know.

Having only lived here for 3 months, I'm not yet in a position to give a detailed analysis of how Polish think on every issue. However on one issue, the future of Poland, I have some initial impressions that are worth highlighting. When it comes to the present state of Poland and the future of Poland, I find Polish people quite pessimistic and disillusioned. This is something I have noticed in all the generations. In very few countries do people love their politicians but in Poland people really don't have faith in them. Not only do people not like the current bunch but no-one (at least no-one I have met) has concrete ideas, that they are desperate to bore you to death with, about how to change the situation. No-one talks passionately about politics, about what Poland must do to change the situation. Most people seem to accept that this is how things work in Poland, like it is some law of nature that can't be altered. It is probably not surprising that many people feel this way, particularly the older generation. After all, Poland has a pretty brutal history. I would however, expect young people to be a little more passionate about the future of their country.

On this very point, I had a conversation class with a business man last week. This guy has a very good job, he is the regional manager of a huge supermarket chain. He is a man I would expect to take an interest in Politics and have opinions on the future of Poland. However when we got onto the topic of Politics he had little positive to say. It ended up with me convincing him that not everything was so bad. The geographical location of Poland (in between Germany and Russia) which has been a curse for Poland for hundreds of years, can now be seen as an opportunity. European Union membership has made Poland a key state in linking Eastern Europe and Western Europe. Poland is in the unique position of being both a Western EU state and an Eastern European state and can surely combine these two sides of itself to become a gateway economically and politically between the business's of the EU and the vast market of Eastern Europe. Poland also has a large, young, educated labour force ,most of whom are currently abroad but many of whom plan to return. Upon returning, this generation will surely bring new ideas and practises back to Poland as well bringing new skills (e.g. language skills) which will be attractive to any business looking to invest in a country.

Like I said, it's impossible not to make generalisations about a whole people but my initial impressions are that I am more enthusiastic about Poland than most Poles. Then again, there might be a whole community of young, politically active Poles with lots of ideas and enthusiasm that I just don't know about.

Update

I have been asked by work to run a conversation/debate class once a week. The debate is of course in English and I chose the topic. This is completely voluntary so all those who attend come of their own accord and usually have something to say. So this is a great opportunity for me to get the views of some more Poles. It's a bit like the BBC show Question Time, with me playing David Dimbleby. The class has only been running for two weeks but already we have spoken and debated the topics of Climate Change and Immigration/emigration.

I chose climate change because it's one of the most talked about topics at the moment. That discussion went well and a good debate started between an older more cynical man and a younger, less cynical girl. Although that was good, the second topic was much more interesting and relevant. The topic of immigration is one which effects Poland in a completely different way than it effects Scotland. So we had an interesting discussion about why young Poles are leaving in their thousands and what impact this is having on Poland. I was surprised to find out that Poland will probably have to start bringing in labourers from China and Vietnam to help them build the stadiums they need for Euro 2012. Most people in the class also admitted that they plan to leave Poland at some point in the future, with a quite a few saying they would like to settle abroad permanently. The most popular destinations, not surprisingly, are the UK and Ireland. The reasons? Money, it's that simple really. There is also a general feeling that life is easier in the UK and Ireland. That you can keep more of your money and things are just better. I suppose this is what my blog is all about, comparing life in Scotland with that in Poland. My gut instinct is that some people have too idealistic an impression of life in the UK. Sure, wages are higher and relatively, the cost of living is cheaper. Many things are also easier and less frustrating, see my article on queueing theory. However, not everything is rosier in the UK or should I say, worse in Poland. One thing which is certainly not rosier and arguably worse in the UK is the level of street violence. Krakow has it's bad parts but it's got nothing on Glasgow when it comes to serious crime. It is slowly beginning to become noticed here the number of Polish people killed or seriously injured in violent assaults in the UK. A feeling of safety is something that you really appreciate when you have it and I certainly have more of it here than I did in Glasgow.