phrasebook

It had been about two years since I’d been outside the U.S. before I came to Poland and I had forgotten that feeling of being surrounded in a language that I can’t understand. I had forgotten how intimidating it can be just to do simple things. The truth is that English is understood and spoken at a pretty good level in general. I think especially so in Cracow because of the large numbers of tourists. Nevertheless, the first words spoken to me are always in Polish, which I take to be a complement that I could be mistaken for a Pol. Naturally, since I plan to be in Poland for about 6 months I want to learn the language the best I can no matter how useless it will probably end up being to me in the future. I have been studying Polish (lazily for about 3 weeks) from a lesson book my friend Patrick, oddly enough, had lying around. I immediately found that of the several dozen of words I could read, I could speak or understand none of them when spoken. Teaching myself a language from a book wasn’t good enough, but I was in Poland so I feel like if I can just get my foot in the door with a few phrases I can pick up a bit as I go along. But my book was not really designed to be of use as a phrase book so I set out to find one in Cracow.

I want to take this opportunity to say what great people there are working at this hostel. If a person makes and attempt to be friendly with the staff here at the Mosquito Hostel, I’m sure they will find nobody friendlier in all of Poland. Also, they are helpful when looking for various things not typically searched for by the two day tourist. I was able to find a battery for my watch (baterie do zegarka), the post office (poczte), stores to compare the price of mobile phones (komorka), a weekend flea market, and quiet Polish restaurants. They are also happy to teach me a few words of Polish everyday and are patient in assisting my pronunciation.

Back to my search for the phrasebook. I went to a bookstore in a big mall and they didn’t have an English to Polish phrasebook, then I went to a smaller English book store called American Bookstore. They also lacked phrase books. I headed for another English bookstore that was listed in my guidebook. I searched and then asked an employee. He checked the shelf where the 3 copies listed in the digital inventory were supposed to be located, but none were there. At this point I was thinking there are two possibilities why it is so damn hard to find a Polish phrasebook. Either nobody thinks Polish is worth knowing unless you are born in Poland, or Cracow is suffering from a shortage of phrasebooks of massive proportions. I asked the employee if he could think of any place that may have such books and was drawn into conversation with an old Englishman. He’d been in Cracow over 10 years teaching at a University, and was happy to tell me all about Poland and good places to see. We bought some beers and started walking around drinking…
I eventually just gave up and got a Polish-English phrasebook. It’s difficult to use because it is…for Polish.