Jazz in Northeastern Mazovia
Still high from my discovery of the thriving and innovative jazz scene in Krakow, I was hoping to find at least a little of the same in downtown Płock (pronounced “Pwotsk”). I walked by the one reputed music club in the main square, but it sounded like ska, which I might never be in the mood for. So I walked across the street to a promising looking club with a Russian flag, and asked the first person I saw where I could find jazz. On this street, he answered sluggishly, as if the weight of the entire world was on his shoulders.
Further down the street I heard some vaguely organized sound coming from this coffee shop with a sad-looking half-deflated plastic cat hanging from the balcony. It was just some very amateurish blues band, so I continued on.
I got past the “liveliest” part of town, turned down a few brightly lit but abandoned streets, past a cemetery, and found a place with a “Zywiec” sign. Zywiec is Poland’s second biggest beer export, and seems to be king in much of Poland. Shyly I found a spot at the small bar next to rascally looking types and a bartender who seemed to be counting the days to retirement even though they numbered in six figures.
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Anyway, I resorted to my standard icebreaker- an explanation that I didn’t know Polish very well. They didn’t know a word of English, so we had something big in common- the lack of a common language. I found I was able to communicate about my reason for being in Poland, my search for my family, my time at the language school, etc, and one of the guys eagerly continued to ask questions, some of which I understood. Like others before, they were suspicious I was in Poland to find a Polish girl to marry, apparently a popular motive of budget-minded British in one of the most affordable regions of Eastern Europe. The other guy, a fellow with tinted glasses and a cane, was speaking to me at turbo speed, and I didn’t understand too much. He just didn’t believe that I could speak some Polish but not understand him. This made him pace across the floor, angrily. |
Being a beginner in a language really makes it easy to be self-centered. With just a thousand or so words, it’s much easier to speak than to understand. You can express yourself clearly in general terms about a couple of topics that you care deeply about, or express complex ideas using simple words. Conveniently, you don’t know everyone else’s vocabulary, and so really have little chance of understanding them…
After some time, even I got sick of hearing me talk about myself, so I left the bar and moved on to another activity that doesn’t depend on language skills. Sleep.
Tags: Ancestry, Bars, Genealogy, Language barriers, Poland, Płock, Travel
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