Angela and I decided some time last year that we would create a Top 10 list of reasons to be an anthropologist. We ended up with a good six or seven, but my favorite one, of course, was #4 ‘All idiosyncrasies can be blamed on the anti-malarial medication,’ which was a close second to #2 ‘Being an anthropologist automatically allows you to be classified eccentric instead of crazy.’ With this in mind, I realized that I too have developed my own little idiosyncrasy- Chapstick. I know it seems odd, but I have a real obsession about Chapstick, and not just any old lip balm, I mean Chapstick, the one and only.

I have Chapstick everywhere, and I mean everywhere. There are two in my coat pocket, one in each of my smaller jackets, one in my book bag, one in my briefcase, and one in my computer bag. There are also several Chapsticks around the flat- I have one on the kitchen table, one by the chairs in the sitting area, there used to be one in the kitchen (it melted), one on the nightstand in the bedroom, and a couple in the bathroom, not to mention the spares. I also put Chapstick in my pockets when I go out, never know when you’re going to need it. True, it is a bitter, cold climate so my lips do get dry but there are so many other uses for Chapstick. If you get a cut, put Chapstick in it, need to lubricate your key? Chapstick. When I was in band and I was out of cork grease, I used to put Chapstick on my saxophone. The point is I have an obsession with Chapstick. So, you can imagine my irritation and intense disgust when I went out Saturday afternoon without my coat and with a sweater with no pockets. I went to reach in my pocket, and yes, no Chapstick.

Now, I’m sure you’re asking, ‘why is she talking about Chapstick?’ Well, I had an epiphany soon after the great Chapstick incident of 2005. Basically, what all this is about is things that you are used to and the degree of irritation of being outside that at times. You must understand that I have, once again, contracted some kind of Polish funk, that has left me ill with some respiratory nastiness for the past week or so, leaving me holed up at home, with only the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency for company. What you should know is that I was quite comfortable with my little life here in Krakow, with some irritable exceptions, though really unworthy of note.

My life is pretty simple, I spend most of my time on my research, pausing for social visits with friends who also like to kvetch about the cold, relationships, etc. I have my extracurricular activities which keep me busy, and I’m a very happy person (unless of course, I’m sick or woken up by insane telephone calls at 6am for no apparent reason, I digress). So, the point here is that my life is comfortable, and while I don’t speak Polish worth a damn, I can get by pretty well. I can order taxis, get veggies from the market, and I have mastered most of the daily tasks involved in living in a foreign country. However, to my displeasure, sometimes these things come back to bite me in the… well, you get the idea.

As you know from my Thanksgiving adventure, I’m not a big fan of Tesco. It takes me several hours to shop if alone for several reasons. First of all, selection. While Tesco has three zillion types of jam, it does not have things like cloves, canned soup, etc. so what ends up happening is I get to the part on my list where I need say, ground beef (mince) and I have everything else for the makings of meatloaf, and then, no ground beef, so I have to scrap that plan, put back everything for meatloaf and start all over again. This is usually a vicious circle or I will plan to make something different, buy what I need only to come home and see that I forgot something in the recipe. Truly frustrating. This is also exacerbated by my poor command of the Polish language. If I go to Tesco alone, I have to take the dictionary and work slowly through everything in the store. It is a laborious and unpleasant task. However, I have become used to this, it is the norm.

As soon as I got back to Poland from the holidays, we needed to shop. There was no food to be had so it seemed pertinent to go before New Year. I went into produce to buy cucumbers, as you do, as usual. I put two in the cart and then we stand in some god-awful line for something close to eternity. Things are being scanned, etc. when I am informed that cucumbers must be weighed in produce. This weighing things before you get to checkout I have the hang of, but for the last three months, cucumbers at Tesco have been sold by the piece. Yes, by the piece. I was flabbergasted. What do you mean ‘by weight’? Cucumbers have never been sold by weight; you can’t do that. I was amused and proceeded to launch into a cheerful tirade making the cashier chuckle. You can’t just change cucumbers like that, one week you buy them by the piece, the next week you buy them by weight, it’s wrong. It should be against international law, it’s just cruel.

Once my silliness ended at Tesco, I settled in for the night, knowing the next day I would be preparing New Year’s lunch, complete with foodstuffs I had brought from home. On my return, I had packed several important things- cornmeal, macaroni and cheese, hominy, and all the fixings for New Year’s lunch: black-eyed peas, collard greens, cranberry sauce, etc. Come New Year, I had my traditional lunch. Black-eyed peas (my Mamaw reminds me that you must eat 365, one for each day of the year) for good luck, collard greens so you’ll have money, and cornbread so the corn will grow. Ah, yes, there was something just comfortable about that. Food is one of those funny things though, where there is routine and there is such a thing as ‘comfort food.’ I’ll save my gastronomical overview of Poland and my creations for another entry. The point is that things had gone from chaos the evening before in the uncertainty and change to the normal transposed. I had my Southern New Year’s lunch right here in Kazimierz.

Like I said before, there are just some things that you get used to. When I lived in Hong Kong, I learned to tune everyone out since I didn’t know what was going on. Now, I try very hard to listen to Polish, but it seems a bit garbled. Anyway, by Monday morning I needed to get out to see a professor about an interview. I set up the interview, was instructed where to go, and I thought I was set. I asked Jaime ‘is all I need to say Przegorzały? He assured me that was so. They might ask me if I want the restaurant or the hotel, but just tell them restaurant, which I can actually do in Polish (I can oddly enough do a lot of things that involve food….) Anyway, I ordered my taxicab, I was assured this was the best way to find it the first time, and headed out. I said my word and the driver kind of nodded and we set out. He said a few things in Polish, which I of course did not know what he was saying and then he asked me something I did understand, what street? I had no idea, what did he mean what street? I thought all I had to say was Przegorzały, and I’d be done. Nope, not likely.

The driver pulled over to the side of the road, pulled out a map, and showed me that Przegorzały was an area, not a place, as I had thought. I explained in bad Polish that I don’t speak Polish, as if he didn’t know that already. We repeated this several times. All I knew that where I was going was on a hill and the place used to be Hans Frank’s former summer residence. He hadn’t the faintest clue. This continued and I began to get nervous, not because I’d get lost and miss my meeting, but because I only had 30 zloty on me. The fare was up to 26 when I spoke with his wife on his mobile trying to figure this all out. That, however, didn’t help either. At this point, I phoned someone else who graciously gave the taxi driver directions. We proceeded up another hill, the wrong one, before finally getting me to the right hill, but up too far. A hill, actually doesn’t begin to cover, this was bordering on mini-mountain. Anyway, with the fare at 29.50 zloty I realized that while I did finally manage to get where I was going, I did not however have enough money to get back, and frankly, I didn’t really know where I was.

I arrived on time and I was walking down part of this mini-mountain, I noticed that the snow falling was coming down harder. ‘Great,’ I thought, ‘I’m stuck on a mountain in a snow storm.’ I had fears of being stranded for days in a former Nazi’s house. The short story is that my interviewee did not show up, which was unsurprising by Polish standards. I phoned Jaime 45 minutes after my scheduled appointment and voiced my disgruntlement with being ill and stranded on a mini-mountain. I couldn’t call a cab because I didn’t know where I was and I had no money and I couldn’t take the bus because I didn’t know which one to take and again I didn’t have any money. Standard options were out the window- paying the taxi by credit card should I ever figure out where I was, stopping at an ATM. I was prepared to follow students to a bus and just get on, ride illegally and then hope against hope that I wasn’t going to be caught. Luckily, I didn’t have to do that, pity was taken upon me, a taxi was called for me, and Jaime was waiting for me at my final destination to pay for the cab.

The funny thing is, while I was waiting for the cab, I walked around the lobby of this building, passed by the giant, concrete swastika fountain, currently a resting place for dismantled Christmas decorations, and I gazed out the back balcony. It was a stunning view; you could see for miles. Beautiful snow coming down (yep, snow back to being beautiful again) and precious landscape was stretched out before me. Out front, forests with trees blanketed with snow, such an amazing site. I stood there for a moment and thought, ‘Hans Frank had good taste.’

My perception of being able to take a taxi as per usual got me into that situation, feeling a bit too comfortable when I really should know better. My comfortable discomfort with the cold is also one of those statics in my Polish life. I always have something to complain about, the weather. That was, I did until Saturday when I awoke to a gorgeous blue sky. For a moment, I thought I was somewhere else; the sky hadn’t been blue in ages. The grey, bleak Polish sky had become a constant and then with no warning, blue sky and mild, lovely weather. I wasn’t expecting it at all and I was pleasantly surprised. However, it was also this weather that prompted me not to put on my coat and put on the sweater with no pockets and thus no Chapstick, but more on that later.

While the weather was an interesting change, it did make me think about changes in general and those specific to Poland. I wrote rather haphazardly a few months back about the invasion of the film crew filming the movie of the Pope’s life in Krakow. They were filming 1930s Poland. What I found interesting was as much as Poland has changed over the last 70 years, so much of it hasn’t. It was interesting how putting a few signs on Dajwor changed 2004 Kazimierz into 1940 Kazimierz. All that had to be done was add a few costumes and signs for shops and you can go back in time a few decades. The film crew had, however, one significant prop, an old version of the #6 tram, which ran through the former Krakow ghetto. Other than that, people in the third and fourth floors of the buildings were watching from 2004 what was going on back in 1940. Some things remain the same, whether this is good or bad I really cannot say.

However, there are some things in life that you can change. For me, that is my living situation. I have stated on numerous occasions my displeasure with my insanely cold flat, so in taking my mother’s advice, ‘if you don’t like something, change it.’ That is precisely what I have done. I can now type this novella to you all without my fingers going numb, without drinking insane amounts of tea to keep warm, and not having to wear a parka. Sometimes, change is a really good and welcomed thing. Sometimes it may not seem so at first, but after going through the cycle of emotions of frustration, irritation, and anger you realize that you can change things and this can make all the difference in the world.

So when I reached in my pocket on Saturday for that tube of Chapstick, I was frustrated and irritated by my misfortune, but in the end, it was minor and it could be changed. I have a comfort with black label Chapstick that smells like my Papaw and reminds me of home. I can eat hominy and fried chicken with biscuits when I need some comfort and I can work my way through most unfortunate events, especially in my travels. It makes things exciting and reminds me of that constant changing of life, and some of those things that won’t change despite itself. In the end, though I can say that even in the grimmest of situations, you sometimes realize that there is a bright side. I now know more than I did when I started, about cucumbers and taxicabs, and I know that despite it all, Hans Frank really did have good taste. Oh, and as for Chapstick, never leave home without it.

Links:

Blog
http://blogs.bootsnall.com/april/

Chapstick Homepage
http://www.chapstick.com/

The History of Chapstick and Carmex
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blchapstick.htm

Lip Balm Anonymous: The Industry of Addiction
http://www.kevdo.com/lipbalm/chapstick.html

Chapstick Death: A Testimony
http://www.i-mockery.com/minimocks/chapstick/default.php

Hans Frank
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Frank1.html

Book recommendations:
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (Fiction, set in Botswana)
Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith (Fiction, set in Botswana, #2 in a series)
A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche (Fiction based on non-fiction account of the Rwandan genocide)

Quote for the week:
“If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts.” –Albert Einstein

“Those who change are often viewed as traitors in the eyes of those who can never change.” –Source Unknown

Latin phrase of the week:
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem!
Stand aside plebians! I am on imperial business!