Smell The Coffee

Poland was . . . I’ll pm you about it. I have a love-hate relationship with the place, which at that time was all love. Poles are extremely hospitable, providing you’re the right color and nationality. 🙄🙄🙄 Racial and anti-Semitic slurs pose no problem. I used to go rounds with an uncle who’d spout racist dreck just to get a rise out of you (don’t even get me started, there are other ways of bantering with someone, but he’s too dumb to notice). The country I keep mentioning in my posts “whose name I don’t want to mention?” It’s Poland. My mum was born and raised there, but to me she’s not Polish. I speak the language, so I get to hear all the good stuff. 🙄

What also gets me is that no matter how long your family has been there, if you’re Jewish, you’ll always be The Jews. My great-grandmother converted to Catholicism and that was very hush-hush. Even though her maiden name was Herz, which made it really obvious. I’m Jewish on my dad’s side, but he became atheist due to the war.

Poles are also the first to go on about immorality, but then will steal and cheat. Not all of them, of course. But cheating your family out of inheritance and scamming them is more normal than not. Of course that can happen anywhere. And take what I say with a huge pinch of salt, because I really hate the place.

What also gets me is that you’d meet Poles who were always complaining about how the educational system in Britain and America was so much worse than back home. They demand others assimilate, but they don’t see the need to. Again, not all, but significant numbers. What I found is that the British and American systems made you think for yourself, where the Polish system spoonfed you.

My typical example would be the type I always seem to encounter from
Poland. You know how when you meet an expert in any field your instinct is to ask that person questions? Well, the type I mean will tell you everything about your field as though they were the expert. This, to them, is how they prove their intelligence.

My main gripe is a total lack of empathy I’ve encountered. Apologies if you have friends there. To me you are from the place you say you’re from, regardless of whether you look like the average or stereotypical person from there. I hate this classification of “the Jew,” “the Nigerian.” Except they wouldn’t understand that Nigeria is a country, since to them Africa is a country.

Another example is, my cousin has been living with his partner for over fifteen years, but they’re not married. They have two kids though. Triggers a lot of comments. His best friend asked him to be godfather to his son, so my cousin decided to go to confession, and the priest wouldn’t give him confession, because “he was living in sin.” That kind of arrogance and stupidity always gets to me. Again, I’d use more colorful words, but since this is not my blog, I’ll refrain.

Sorry about the rant. Clearly I need to work out a lot of stuff here.

To me it was so natural growing up the way I did. I wouldn’t change it for anything. But it never seemed adventurous, just interesting. And normal. Your brother willingly (more or less) studying in East Germany, now that’s the real adventure to me.

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