Impressions of an African Bulgarian
"A to Polska właśnie" - Wesele, S. Wyspiański
It was sheer coincidence that brought me to Poland. I am an African-born Bulgarian and I do not seem to have any immediate Polish ancestors, although with Genghis Khan and his descendants sweeping through this part of Europe in 12-13th century, you never know. My first encounters with Poland date back to family holidays on the Black Sea, which used to attract quite a few Polish tourists. Later on, during my University studies, I completed a course in 20th century Eastern European history, which was the closest I would get to Poland until mid-April 1999, when I was sent on a three-week assignment to Warsaw. At the time, I was working for the now-deceased Big-Five firm in St. Petersburg, and if it wasn't for the 1998 Russian economic crisis that left thousands of expatriates jobless, I would have still found it impossible to pronounce trzy krzyże or szczęście. On the other hand, many native-English speakers never learn to twist their tongue the Polish way, and hence find themselves forced to order pięć (five) instead of trzy (three) beers.
My first impressions of Warsaw were influenced by where I came from. Instantly, it felt like home. The city's spaciousness, its large streets abundant in parking space and massive architecture, reminded me of Russia, with the Palace of Culture like a déjť vu of my Moscow working days. Simultaneously, Warsaw was much greener and livelier, and hence a lot more like Sofia in the spring. Before coming to Warsaw, I never realized that I had actually missed the sight of the Hungarian-made red Ikarus busses that I used to ride every day to school while living in Bulgaria.
The homely feeling I experienced when first arriving in Poland has deepened over the years. Various events eventually transformed my initial short-term assignment into a perpetual extension arrangement. For fear of calling my stay permanent, which has Polish tax implications, as the readers of my tax column may recall, I consider it simply open-ended.
Looking back and trying to put my thoughts about Poland on paper, I keep coming across the same dilemma - should I present my point of view as a U.S.-educated expatriate with 10 years' professional experience in an international client environment, or should I also be revealing the more personal perspective of an Eastern European raised in the Communist era. In the end, I cannot avoid offering a mixture of both.
One thing I discovered when I started reading in Polish is that the English language press (including the WBJ), which kept me abreast of the issues in Poland in my first year here, would generally reflect the economic and political events in a more positive light than the Polish press. My Polish friends explained the phenomenon to me as being related to the Polish propensity to complain. It is traceable, for example, in the commentary section in the Rzeczpospolita green pages - things were bad in 2000, becoming worse in 2001 and not improving much even in 2003, the year of 3.8 percent economic growth here while the average growth in EU countries was 0.5 percent.
Indeed, Poles do like to complain, but I find this to be a Slavic trait, the only difference being in the form of presentation. In Russia, the activity of complaining would normally be accompanied with more sighing, the Czechs would go about it in a more pragmatic manner, whereas the Bulgarians would involve their neighbors or at least take it to the local café.
In certain very specific cases, I do find the complaining justifiable and even insufficient given the lack of any sensible improvement. The long-promised Polish highways are the most conspicuous of examples. I have not lost hope, however, that some day, in an enlarged Europe, a weekend car trip from Warsaw to Vienna would not seem like an outrage.
When I think of Poland and politics over the last five years, the first association that comes to mind is rotation - that of cabinets, ministers and their plans, which, I suppose, is what a young democracy needs to go through on the bumpy road to maturity. At least a sense of stability has been lent to Polish politics by permanent fixtures in the guise of Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Adam Michnik. The second thing that comes to mind are the corruption scandals, and they are probably here to stay for longer, judging from the current state of affairs in the rest of Europe and the world.
Culturally, Poland has become a more exciting place, according to my recollections, which date back five years. The relatively low number of museums is compensated for by the abundance of theatrical and musical events. Theater lovers can see anything from the Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged, first staged in the USA in 1981, to Hrabal plays and works by famous Polish playwrights, such as Białe Małżeństwo (White Wedding) by Różewicz, for not much more than the price of a cinema ticket.
Over the last year, night life in Poland's major cities has become sufficiently attractive to draw Carlos Campos and other famous international DJs, including the regulars from the Budha Bar in Paris. Many new restaurants and cafés have popped up across Poland's capital city, although the culinary expansion has lost speed compared to the country's economic growth. In fact, the culinary landscape has not improved dramatically. When I first learned that the French are the main foreign investors here, I was rather excited at the gastronomic prospects of dining out in Warsaw, but it turned out that the main French food supplier in the city was, and still is, Sodexho. Fortunately, the Japanese expatriate population seems more adamant about their culinary preferences.
All in all, living here took some getting used to, but now I am convinced that the changes that the country has undergone in recent years, and those that are still to come, will make Poland an exciting place in which to live. Things are getting better every day, and with sufficient global warming, even the weather may become tolerable for the African in me.
Donka Darpatova is a tax manager in the Warsaw office of Ernst & Young.
It was sheer coincidence that brought me to Poland. I am an African-born Bulgarian and I do not seem to have any immediate Polish ancestors, although with Genghis Khan and his descendants sweeping through this part of Europe in 12-13th century, you never know. My first encounters with Poland date back to family holidays on the Black Sea, which used to attract quite a few Polish tourists. Later on, during my University studies, I completed a course in 20th century Eastern European history, which was the closest I would get to Poland until mid-April 1999, when I was sent on a three-week assignment to Warsaw. At the time, I was working for the now-deceased Big-Five firm in St. Petersburg, and if it wasn't for the 1998 Russian economic crisis that left thousands of expatriates jobless, I would have still found it impossible to pronounce trzy krzyże or szczęście. On the other hand, many native-English speakers never learn to twist their tongue the Polish way, and hence find themselves forced to order pięć (five) instead of trzy (three) beers.
My first impressions of Warsaw were influenced by where I came from. Instantly, it felt like home. The city's spaciousness, its large streets abundant in parking space and massive architecture, reminded me of Russia, with the Palace of Culture like a déjť vu of my Moscow working days. Simultaneously, Warsaw was much greener and livelier, and hence a lot more like Sofia in the spring. Before coming to Warsaw, I never realized that I had actually missed the sight of the Hungarian-made red Ikarus busses that I used to ride every day to school while living in Bulgaria.
The homely feeling I experienced when first arriving in Poland has deepened over the years. Various events eventually transformed my initial short-term assignment into a perpetual extension arrangement. For fear of calling my stay permanent, which has Polish tax implications, as the readers of my tax column may recall, I consider it simply open-ended.
Looking back and trying to put my thoughts about Poland on paper, I keep coming across the same dilemma - should I present my point of view as a U.S.-educated expatriate with 10 years' professional experience in an international client environment, or should I also be revealing the more personal perspective of an Eastern European raised in the Communist era. In the end, I cannot avoid offering a mixture of both.
One thing I discovered when I started reading in Polish is that the English language press (including the WBJ), which kept me abreast of the issues in Poland in my first year here, would generally reflect the economic and political events in a more positive light than the Polish press. My Polish friends explained the phenomenon to me as being related to the Polish propensity to complain. It is traceable, for example, in the commentary section in the Rzeczpospolita green pages - things were bad in 2000, becoming worse in 2001 and not improving much even in 2003, the year of 3.8 percent economic growth here while the average growth in EU countries was 0.5 percent.
Indeed, Poles do like to complain, but I find this to be a Slavic trait, the only difference being in the form of presentation. In Russia, the activity of complaining would normally be accompanied with more sighing, the Czechs would go about it in a more pragmatic manner, whereas the Bulgarians would involve their neighbors or at least take it to the local café.
In certain very specific cases, I do find the complaining justifiable and even insufficient given the lack of any sensible improvement. The long-promised Polish highways are the most conspicuous of examples. I have not lost hope, however, that some day, in an enlarged Europe, a weekend car trip from Warsaw to Vienna would not seem like an outrage.
When I think of Poland and politics over the last five years, the first association that comes to mind is rotation - that of cabinets, ministers and their plans, which, I suppose, is what a young democracy needs to go through on the bumpy road to maturity. At least a sense of stability has been lent to Polish politics by permanent fixtures in the guise of Aleksander Kwaśniewski and Adam Michnik. The second thing that comes to mind are the corruption scandals, and they are probably here to stay for longer, judging from the current state of affairs in the rest of Europe and the world.
Culturally, Poland has become a more exciting place, according to my recollections, which date back five years. The relatively low number of museums is compensated for by the abundance of theatrical and musical events. Theater lovers can see anything from the Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged, first staged in the USA in 1981, to Hrabal plays and works by famous Polish playwrights, such as Białe Małżeństwo (White Wedding) by Różewicz, for not much more than the price of a cinema ticket.
Over the last year, night life in Poland's major cities has become sufficiently attractive to draw Carlos Campos and other famous international DJs, including the regulars from the Budha Bar in Paris. Many new restaurants and cafés have popped up across Poland's capital city, although the culinary expansion has lost speed compared to the country's economic growth. In fact, the culinary landscape has not improved dramatically. When I first learned that the French are the main foreign investors here, I was rather excited at the gastronomic prospects of dining out in Warsaw, but it turned out that the main French food supplier in the city was, and still is, Sodexho. Fortunately, the Japanese expatriate population seems more adamant about their culinary preferences.
All in all, living here took some getting used to, but now I am convinced that the changes that the country has undergone in recent years, and those that are still to come, will make Poland an exciting place in which to live. Things are getting better every day, and with sufficient global warming, even the weather may become tolerable for the African in me.
Donka Darpatova is a tax manager in the Warsaw office of Ernst & Young.
