Childhood revisited

The most happy memories of my childhood come from the times I spent with my grandparents in a Polish village in the eastern part of Poland. This part of the country is now called Poland B and that means representing lower standards than the prosperous districts. Place a bit behind the times.  My memories go to the times that are really far behind today. Sometimes I think that I have been living in three centuries. When I first visited my grandparents it was like going back in time to the XIXth century. There was no electricity there, water was drawn in buckets from a concrete well and I was taken from the station home to my grandparents by a horse and a buggy. No rubber wheels, just metal bands around the wooden wheels! It was a bumpy ride.

But the air was not polluted then. There were many pluses in those days at least in the eyes of the four-five years old girl. I was sent to my grandparents for many reasons, I presume. My mother was a really young woman, nineteen years older than myself. The grandmother performed the role of my carer perhaps better than my mother, she had more common sense and experience. My Beautiful Mother was also a working woman and she was away from home for most of the day. My parents were building a small business in the communistic Poland. They were considered to be enemies of the system and, at times, I felt guilty seeing that we were better off than most of the people around. I felt like I did not quite belong in the communistic world.

The official reason to send me away was – fresh air in Sadowne. Sadowne is the name of the village which has a big church and a big school. Much too big for the locals only. It also had its “upper class”. My grandmother was a kindergarten/school teacher in her unmarried times and my grandfather was a Polish-Soviet war hero and a tailor.  They were respectable people. I say it with tongue in cheek. Of course they were respectable but so were the others as well. Anyhow I was not supposed to be familiar with some of the neighbours. Some  were even considered to be a bad influence.

The neighbours on the right side did not meet with approval of my grandmother. There were many children there who were not clean and ran around bare foot. Not proper people according to my grandma. The father of the family used to drink too much and when under influence loudly disciplined his wife and children. One could hear shouts and screams coming from their house.  With time the boys of the family became strong enough to stop excesses of their father. The dramas became less frequent.

People who lived in the main street were not farmers, they were teachers, shop keepers, tailors. The right side neighbours were farmers. During harvest I could observe strange and fascinating activities like threshing wheat and haymaking. I was transfixed to the fence dividing the two houses looking at the magic of what was happening on the other side. It was all new to me. This was the only time I saw harvest work except for later on in movies about life in the nineteenth century.
   
                                   

One day I sneaked in to the neighbours through the gate in the dividing fence. The gate was not used often as there were no friendly visits between the two families.  However I can imagine that my naughty grandpa when he wanted to smoke a forbidden cigarette, he would cross the gate to go to the neighbour for a smoko.

Once I ventured into the forbidden territory to be warmly welcome and given a treat – big slice of dark bread, covered with glistening lard spiked with cracklings and sugar sprinkled on top. Revolting? Perhaps. But not too my taste at the time. It was heavenly good, a completely new, exciting taste. And a forbidden fruit! The bliss did not last long. I was not clever enough to hide my tressure and eat it in private. With my original sandwich in hand, I marched in to the kitchen of my grandma who seized it immediately and threw it to the rubbish bin with disgust. Oh, what a disappointment to the little girl! Such a fantastic food and so rudely taken away! Perhaps I will not ever be able to taste anything as good as that! Of course I have tasted many fantastic food after this event, like the oysters in Paris, I wrote about earlier. Or bread dunked in fragrant olive oil at Santo Spirito. This black bread with lard belongs however to the list of best food I tasted in my life. Actually some form of that specialty is now served in Polish folk restaurants, only the bread is not dark enough and there is no sugar served with it.

This was served while waiting for lunch with my Aussie friend when she visited Gdansk this year.

 In my dreamy plans I see myself someday visiting Sadowne again. This most likely will remain only a dream. But who knows?

Challenging times

It has been rather difficult for me to write new posts lately. One of the reasons is that I have not physically travelled much and my travels always provided me with easy and obvious choice of subjects. No easy choices these days. Another reason is that I am going through challenging times and it takes my thoughts away from communicating through blogging. The subjects that preoccupy my thoughts do not lend themselves to sharing through internet, at least I feel so. So what shall I write about ? This is my question.  The subjects that are currently in my thoughts are: friendship, gratitude, courage. They are very big subjects and I do not feel up to writing anything profound, at least not now. Hmm...

So I will write a bit about professional side of my life. I want to be current here so I will not reminisce on my past successes and failures. The middle part of my carrier was all about management, project management and leadership. This came to an end but I was not ready to keep smelling the roses as my only occupation. So, I became a certified life coach. There is a link here to my management/leadership past. There is continuation. But in the past I did not think much of “selling” even if for a while I thought that life is all about selling, that we sell something all the time. Like ideas. I think selling skills are important but I have not acquire them to the level of knowing how to sell my coaching successfully. I have not given up though. I strongly believe that coaching is something I could use to make my contribution.

This is how i see the scope of life coaching. My personal expertise is in Personal Development and Career

A week ago I came up with an idea to write posts for my coaching blog www.accoachonpurpose.com. Posts related to values. I feel very strongly that knowing and understanding one’s values can be very helpful in making life decisions. Recently it came to me through the LinkedIn contacts that knowing my values can help me to manage my emotions. This I found intriguing and very promising. The new writing project is to write a chapter about each identified value considering its practical uses and some general descriptions. This is still evolving in my head but I am excited about the project. Will it be also a marketing tool for my coaching? Not sure but I will have fun writing about something I have been very interested in for some years. I will learn some things in the process as well. That’s a plus.

This picture (by Stella Bowen) will find a place in my future articles about Values. To illustrate Friendship perhaps? 

and this Picasso should be a great illustration for writing about Freedom

This has been a bit different post today to the previous ones. A bit up close and personal. More than my earlier posts. Hmm...

Warm weather lifestyle

When I stop and think I have to envy myself the lifestyle I lead lately. It is now spring in full swing in Sydney and I still vividly remember spring in Poland which finished for me only three months ago. Maybe I do not envy as it is about myself I am thinking about but I should and I do feel grateful that I am able to live two springs a year. 

I am not a skier, hence I do not miss the cold weather, red nose, frozen hands and feet or snow in its slosh consistency. I can live very happily without it. Sure, there are some beautiful winter landscapes, there are times when snow is fresh and white making the world so quiet that you feel like wrapped up in cotton wool. Only if you think that in Poland winter lasts five to seven months and the beautiful white snow lasts maybe one or two days during the whole period you get less enthusiastic about living through the full four seasons.

This is a good version of Polish winter, but, boy, it was cold!

At the end of April the Northern Europe wakes up with colours and smells of spring. First come pussy willows as the symbol of future change in weather. You can get them in flower shops and they are also sold in streets by small entrepreneurs running their not fully legal small businesses at street corners.

My Polish favourite spring flower - lilac

Reminiscing I recall the time when walking though still a snowy park in Warsaw I was stopped by a reporter needing a spring picture for a newspaper. It was March, rather cold and I was wrapped up in a sheep coat. I was handed in a bunch of pussy willow branches, asked to smile,somebody took a picture of me, I got a nice thank you and the next day the 22nd or 23^rd of March, the first day of spring I saw my picture on the first page of an equivalent to Sydney Morning Herald with the caption “Warsaw spring, still in a heavy coat but already with bunch of pussy willow branches”.  What glory days they were... I wish I kept the newspaper cutting.

                      And  

Coming back to reality and 2014 in Australia, I returned from Poland at the end of August and was able to welcome Australian spring on the 1^st of September. I like the simplified way of starting seasons here. One does not have to remember if it should be  20ies, 21^st, 22nd or 23rd of March. Astronomy does not practice simple solutions. This year 2014 Northern spring equinox was on March 20, but I had to check it to make such a statement. 

Travelling through Australia this year I saw spring at its best, the Southern Hemisphere style. Wattles, in my mind, are an Aussie symbol of spring and I saw many of them this year. The suburban streets of Sydney are lined with azaleas and my favourite wisterias.  Different flowers, different smells, different beauty. I am so lucky I can observe and enjoy both of the spring editions.

My Australian favourite spring flower - wattle

Remembering Childhood Days

Many of my posts are about travelling. There is a Polish saying – Travels educate.  Yes, they do and I like to travel maybe because I like to learn new things. Learning according to some psychological test is one of my core strengths. I also like to experience new things. New landscapes, unseen before art, food not yet tasted, new people . I have rather eclectic approach here. And now when I came to my Australian home and will stay put for a while, I still travel. Recently, I have been travelling in time. To my childhood holidays with my grandparents.

It was a village in the eastern part of Poland, not far from the Russian border. The times when I visited my grandparents distance felt different to how it is now. Everything seemed so much bigger than now.  The village seemed like a whole universe to me. I did not have an idea that the Russian border was so near. To me it was not.

The distance from my grandparents house to the church seemed like a really significant one. Minutes seemed longer than they feel now. At that time I did not try to achieve in the same way as I leant to expect of myself over the years. With my current expectations I feel each day that I do not measure up to my life appetites. Something needs to be done here, but this is another topic. At the times when I was spending long months with my great parents, the days were full of activities and new experiences but I never had feeling that I should have done or achieve more. I might had plans for the next day, I might had been nicely tired after a full day but I did not think I felt guilty that had not done enough.

Now when I think about those blissful times I often think about my grandpa. Lovely man, a bit of a softy when dealing with his grandchild. I felt really loved by him. He was not an ideal man, of course. He suffered of asthma but smoking was one of his pleasures he could not resist.   However there was a very energetic and bossy grandma in the picture. According to her, smoking was strictly forbidden so my grandpa had to resort to  deviousness. He was working from home so my grandmother kept an eye on him during the whole days. I was sometimes sent to buy him cigarettes at the kiosk next to the church at the other end of the main street. It was a special village. It had a main street, a church and a school.

My grandparents lived opposite the school almost at the end of the main street. 

The village has only 6,000 people but the pupils come from the whole district. Such a small Polish Oxford on a grammar school level

The very end of the street was a couple of houses further and was marked by a cross. As I am writing about a catholic country it was only fitting that the  church marked the other end of the street. That was my destination when sent on the mission to supply my grandpa with his poison. I am not sure how he organised his private money, grandma was very bossy and wore pants in the household. I suspect that she took care of the family finances. But we are able to do even seemingly impossible things if we really want to. He had money to buy cigarettes.  My very gentle and honest grandpa was able to skim to protect his moments of pleasure even if he was damaging  his health. Well, we not always do what we should.

Strange country Poland, such a big church in such a small place

On reflection I was getting rather bad lessons in lying with and for my grandfather and supporting his behaviour which I should had been condoning.  Hmm... But I still love the memories of those days and my disobedient grandpa.

After a break

After such a very long break in posting as mine it is very difficult to resume.  It is time thought. I am not sure if anybody missed my writing, but I did. This is a good reason enough to start again.

I am back in Australia, my home. It is really emotionally complicated for me having two homes, two home countries and loving them both even if in a different way. Some of my friends consider me lucky to be in such a situation. And I am grateful that I can taste and understand the two so different cultures. Poland is always more dramatic and the current situation is not, what I call, safe for Poles. There are many good things that happen there if one forgets Mr Putin for a while.

Some time ago I wrote about the Polish Prime Minister. I am very proud now that he will be the President of the European Council for the next five years. Great and well deserved recognition.

This is just a “let’s get me going again” post. I even do not have a proper subject for my writing today. I just wanted to make a move in the right direction. 

Remembering Warsaw Uprising 1944

I am still in Poland and a lot is happening here but I was sidetracked by some health issues so I am writing with some delay about a very complex Polish historical issue. I am not quite sure if I managed to sort it out for myself already but my thoughts are a bit more clear. I am talking about the Warsaw Uprising of the first of August 1944. This year is a big anniversary and a big discussion on the subject. I was brought up on literature, films and propaganda presenting images of those horrible times. There were many years when communistic propaganda did not allow true presentation of the events and their meaning. Home Army was the Polish resistance movement in German-occupied Poland in allegiance with Polish Government-in-Exile. They organised and fought in the Warsaw Uprising. The communistic regime was on the other  side of political spectrum and very critical about anything related to the Home Army. This is putting it very mildly as there were times when people associated with the Home Army were considered an enemy of the communistic system and were savagely persecuted after the war the same  as by Germans during the war.

The uprising started at 5pm (W Hour) on the 1^st of August 1944. Every year sirens of Warsaw joined by hooting cars lament in memory of the tragic times. Actually more and more towns freeze for one minute to remember and pay respect to those who so willingly gave their lives in attempt to free Poland.

                     

For many years I just thought it was patriotic, tragic and unsuccessful but I did not judge. Later I became angry that the Uprising was called at all. It was doomed to fail and the young people, children really, were called to form an unarmed army. They were sent to a certain death by politicians in London and Home Army superiors. I was angry that 200,000 people died in the senseless fights, that they were so young, many in their teens, that Warsaw was destroyed in carpet bombing to punish the nation. I was angry at the willingness of Poles to die in romantically patriotic senseless uprisings. There were many of them in Polish history. All but one lost. 

                                     

I still am angry at that, but I have learnt to see the need to pay tribute to the people who gave their lives and I do not protest any more that there is so much fuss over the anniversary of the 1^st of August. 

How can one loose weight in Italy?

I was not able to even if I thought that I might. It was an opportunity, in a way, walking and walking during days of sightseeing, no fridge around to make trips to in moments of weakness. However it did not work that way I intended and I am not sure why. Three meals a day, no excesses, hmmm...Many would laugh at me thinking – Italian food and slimming??!! Think of those Italian mamas. The mama image must have been created for a reason. Well, yes, maybe... But when I looked at the Florentine people, no matter what age or sex they were slim! Maybe I was selective in my noticing examples of skinny Italians. Maybe, but they were many slim people there anyhow.  Maybe Floretines are different to the other citizens of Italy, I know they think themselves better and more sophisticated.

So what do they eat, the same as tourists? Pastas? Risottos? Gnocchi? Cheese? Gelatos? Focaccia? Panini? Do they drink Italian wine as so many of non-Italians do? I am still puzzled but I also have my little insight to the mystery. I met a very slim, elegant  lady in an elegant shoe boutique. We engaged in a conversation, she spoke very good English and was keen to talk. After some polite remarks and some girly chat I plucked up the courage to asked her the question : how come you can be so slim having all this food around you? Do you eat it? The answer was – yes, once a week I eat what I like in moderation including gelato and tiramisu. I thought – this is clever. I will then declare Saturday to be my day of pleasure. I will eat nice things in moderation with a glass or two of champagne or a good wine, maybe even Vin Santo  with a biscotti? Do you know they dunk biscotti in Vin Santo? Fantastic! And such a simple delicious desert to serve your friends!  Wow, I am dreaming of it already.

When I was in Florence, I actually behaved as it was two weeks of Saturdays. We ate what was available and this was not particularly healthy but we hardly had any choice. In our palazzo accommodations we had coffee, tea and biscuits for pre-breakfast snack. After few days I skipped the biscuits. I still do not know what Italians eat for breakfast but in cafes there are only piles of focaccias or paninis with bocconcini or other cheese, prosciuto  and sometimes a symbolic leaf of something green. This was our regular breakfast which we ate on our way to some church or gallery. Plus two cappuccinos served without any chocolate as it is in Sydney.  Coffee is much nicer this way.

Big coffee to get us going

Our lunches were light another white bread sandwich, sometimes a salad with a glass of wine. So far not that sinful. 

Around seven we were making our way to Santo Spirito for dinner. By Italian standards it was still very early for diner, but in my book it was already late. We did not eat anything excessive really, but this was time for a hot meal. Italian eat in a different way to what I am used to, vegetables are ordered separately to the meat and one somehow forgets about them when faced with other choices and they do not land up on your plate automatically. Each dinner stared with compulsory white bread that landed up automatically on our table, not like it was with vegies, together with  fragrant olive oil or black olives tapenade. One simply had to eat it. In our  favourite restaurant we typically ordered a big salad to share and half size  portions of either pasta or some delicious Italian main course speciality. Excessive? I do not think so.

This was really nice

On our way home it was time for gelato, we passed two of fantastic galaterias and one just had to sample the flavours. My companion was very particular about what she ate so there was always a research stage before she made her choice. I was more overwhelmed with possibilities and they all seemed fantastic to me, so I did not fuss.

One of our favourites Galateria La Carraia. Serious stuff! This was only part of one of the two counters, hence problems to make a choice.