the talking bear

Kraków Soup Festival - "Super Soup" etc...

Aired on Polskie Radio dla Zagranicy 22.5.2007. Link to report here. Audio (mp3) can be downloaded here.

On a Saturday in May, Kraków’s district of Kazimierz becomes full of visitors from around the world for the annual Soup Festival which is held on Plac Nowy in the heart of the old Jewish quarter. Last weekend provided food for thought for residents and visitors alike, giving warm refreshment after Friday’s ‘Night of Museums’ in Poland’s cultural capital. On a hot afternoon, things got hotter as more than twenty different soups were put on trial and the good citizens of Kraków and beyond were treated to soups made for the occasion by various restaurants from throughout the city. The festival, which is run by the KTO theatre company, is a celebration of what brings people together in a way that transcends quite possibly all cultures on earth. Soup is something that has managed to do that, and with soups from around the world and of varying tastes, the 6th edition of the Soup Festival was more than just a day out.
I met some soup revellers and they told of their culinary adventures:
We had tomato and banana soup, it was amazing, it was fantastic. These French women served it to us and they were lovely, and the soup was beautiful. I don’t think I could eat too much of it, because it’s very sweet, but it was the perfect amount, it was delicious.
What kind of soup did you have today?
This is kapuśniak, and it’s very good. It’s a fat soup, but I’m not afraid of getting fat…
Spirits were high, and as the jury decision was being made for the competition for the day’s best soup, others tried out more concoctions, although there was some criticism from orthodox soup lovers:
I ate Thai soup, with coconut and chicken, and it was really hot you know, but for me, it’s not a soup. I also ate soup with tomato and bananas, but also, it’s not a soup, because a soup for me needs meat, bones, eyes and brain I guess…
I met with Piotr Zajączkowski, co-owner of Edo Sushi Bar in Kazimierz, who was serving one of his soups to the eager crowds:
Can you tell me, what kind of soup are you preparing this year?
This time, we’re preparing soup from asparagus, with salmon, marinated in miso.
And last year, what kind of soup?
Last year was kimu-chi jige, it was a Korean soup.
It was this soup that won him second place in last year’s battle for the best brew, and his asparagus and salmon soup certainly got my vote. Other soups on offer included a nettle and pomegranate seed clear soup, an interesting taste; and a well-heeled red lentil broth, not its first outing at the festival it seemed:
And actually last year I remember trying the same, and it was very sophisticated soup. Yeah I liked it, I liked it actually.
The Soup Festival of 2007 was a heart-warming event, and bringing food to back to basics in the company of friends and strangers alike made for an amazing atmosphere, especially in the setting of a sun-drowned weekend afternoon in one of the most beautiful areas of town. Will this year’s winner, the Thai Galangal soup from the Horai restaurant, make a comeback next year?

Coffee Culture in Kraków - Link Update

Polskie Radio (current) link to report and mp3. Audio also here.

http://www.polskieradio.pl/zagranica/gb/dokument.aspx?iid=49622

Coffee Culture in Kraków

My latest installment for Around Poland, Polish Radio's travel magazine, is about the savouring of coffee in Kraków. Not just that though: much like other towns in this part of Mitteleuropa, or more precisely, the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, coffeehouses are an intricate part of life. Vienna, Bratislava, Kraków, L'viv and all that. Come to Kraków and check out some of my regular haunts.

Broadcast on 12.3.2007 (link to follow...)

MP3 can be downloaded here. (ca. 7,1MB)

Text continued below...

Time for a coffee. The rumble of the Italian espresso machine is music to my ears, much as the silence that comes after it. Sit with me a while in a coffeehouse in the southern city of Kraków, home to some of the best coffee, not least one of the best places to drink it in.

The history of the European coffeehouse goes back to the legend of Kulczycki, a Polish-Ukrainian soldier who fought at the Battle of Vienna of 1683, when King Jan Sobieski drove back the Ottomans. It is said that this soldier found large sacks of coffee beans in an abandoned camp and with them decided to open the first coffeehouse in the city itself.

How romantic, you might say. And you wouldn’t be far off. Kraków has had its love affair with the black gold for a few centuries itself, and in that time the city has become filled with some extraordinary establishments on almost every street corner. One of the oldest coffeehouses still in business in Kraków is Jama Michalika, which is on Floriańska street. It was originally opened in 1895, and was the artistic hub of the city’s cultural crème-de-la-crème. The famous ‘Green Balloon’ cabaret was also formed there a few years later. This was just the beginning of the coffeehouse trend, though…

Times have changed since Jama Michalika opened, and the modern Kraków boasts coffeehouses to suit everyone’s taste. Décor can vary wildly: for instance, the Propaganda café on Miodowa street in the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz; a time warp to Poland’s previous era of Communism with a touch of retro on the dark side. This coffeehouse is a world away from, for example, Botanica, a café on Bracka street which has the air of an orangery, or a large glasshouse.

So I have mentioned but a few places for coffee. But why do people go these places? What is the need? Is it just caffeine? Tomek, an actor and barman in one of Kraków’s coffeehouses, explains the rituals behind the espresso…

… so you come in on a 5 minute break off work, drink an espresso, and then you leave. But you can also make it into a ritual. Throw some magic into the whole procedure. You could get a macchiato instead of an espresso, and when you meet with friends to find out what’s going on, coffee just makes that much more sense. It’s not just about the coffee or its taste, it’s about feeling as if in a far off place for those five minutes.

… from my observations, there are three stages. You can come in the morning, or at least before noon; you get a sandwich, drink some coffee with it,  or juice, or whatever. Then you have the afternoon, when you have what I’ve talking about all along: you come to meet someone, and the most natural way of doing it is over a coffee, without any pretexts. Then comes the evening, when people come to drink, to dance, or do any other multitude of activities…

There is much more to the Cracovian coffeehouse than meets the eye. Each ‘local’, from the Polish lokal, roughly meaning ‘establishment’, is its own very ecosystem. The coffee’s not always important when there’s much more going on around. I spoke to two coffee drinkers about what they thought about the coffeehouse atmosphere. Aeddan, my regular spokesman on such life matters and also currently a university lecturer, and Karolina, a Pole from Canada who is currently studying in Kraków.

Well I think it’s a chance to meet with other people, but it’s also a chance to get lost within a comfortable surrounding, you don’t necessarily have to go to a place where you everyone’s name, but just the fact that of going into the comfort zone of the Old Town, or the centre of the city, where you can sit down and be alone, but not be lonely…

Exactly. There is a difference. There are places where you can sit in Kraków, and you’ll be sat there for five minutes, and you’ll see everyone you know walk past. Think of Bracka or Stolarska. And you know you can go and sit in a café, you’ll meet someone that you know. You can’t just have a coffee somewhere without somebody dropping in…

Well, no…. But sure you can, right? You can go onto Bracka, you can go onto Stolarska, and you know when everyone has their office hours at certain cafés, but you can also go into the secret nooks, where perhaps you’ll see a familiar face, but not necessarily, there are a lot of places to hide within this very confined space…

So it’s kind of intimate and sociable at the same time, which I don’t think very many cities have to offer.

If you want to be seen sipping a smooth espresso on the fashionable Plac Nowy in Kazimerz, why not go to Alchemia. This is one of the most prominent coffeehouses in Kraków, and also doubles up as an art gallery and is a whole institution in its own right. Winter nights are welcoming, and lazy summer afternoons can also be whiled away all too easily. Back to Bracka street in the centre and to Prowincja, where you get an ambient old-time rustic feel, or perhaps conceal yourself in a cupboard at Café Szafé on Felicjanek street?

Whichever coffeehouse you decide to go to, you will always find, especially after a few days of musing over a blend of Colombian roast, that the same people will return. The city is a web of coffeehouses that intertwines with each other, each passing over information and local gossip. Newspapers are read in this city, but the word on the grapevine tends to move that much faster, making the printed press redundant. All coffeehouses are centres of talk. Two great places to go for a chat over an espresso are Manekin on Tomasza street, and also Pierwszy Lokal, the first local on Stolarska street, where much of this program was recorded…

There is no one philosophy behind the coffeehouses in Kraków. Maybe you’ll find a place to define yourself and your thoughts in this amazing city. Maybe you won’t. But it’ll happen over a cup of coffee. That’s for sure.

6 Month Update

You wouldn't have thought that after nearly 6 months of absence (ab-sense?) I would have bothered to update my blog. I feel it a kind of duty. I owe it to a lot of people. I may even owe it to myself. I dunno.

The last six months, and in fact this whole year, has taught me so much about what is real and what is not; what is truth (or something that resembles it), and what are porky-pies, or just plain bullshit. I suppose such emotional conflicts are something that every person has, more or less. But let us not dwell on emotion for too long, as there are things to be told.

I am still an MA student. Although at this point in time I rather I weren't. Last semester I attended class, of course, but there wasn't enough of it.

I worked as an intern at Kraków's International Print Triennial. I was supposed to learn something useful, like do a bit of PR or something. I translated instead. Oh, how I translated. Now I know this blog is about my profession also. But this was incredible. I started to figure out that I was not cut out to be a full-time translator. Nevertheless, I finished the internship after three months (the time alloted by the university), and found myself with a few translations coming in, either from the Print Triennial or from the Bunkier Sztuki, the contemporary art museum. And of course some students keeping up appearances from time to time. I trained one in English for his matura exam. My next-door neighbour's grand-son. No pressure there, then. Luckily he passed. And they say A-levels are getting easy in the UK...

I went on holiday to Italy. Beautiful. I went by train from Poland. It took me forever, because the Italians decided to strike on my ass the day I decided to travel. So I spent 14 hours in Villach, a very picturesque Austrian Alpine town on the border with Tarvisio. The way back was adventurous too, as precision Italian timekeeping, this time, made me run across Vienna station half-naked to catch my ongoing connection to Kraków. But that's really by-the-by. It was fun.

When I got back from Italy I got busy answering the phone. And making calls too. The last two months have done their business. And I've done mine. I have got two new jobs which ideally sit together side by side. At least with the timetable that I have been given. I am now a lektor at a local (Cracovian) private Catholic university, the Tischner European University (Wyższa Szkoła Europejska), teaching English as a foreign language (natch) but also a practical module for the Applied Linguistics course at the university. All pretty cool. Then a month after that I had an (job) interview at Radio Polonia, the English section of Polskie Radio's external service. Two days later I was in the studio reading the news lajw to a global audience. I got my microphone, and am now their correspondent in Kraków.

All this, and of course more. My company has finally started up. Funnily enough, it's called The Talking Bear. And I deal in translation, foreign-language teaching, and advertising. Yes, you did just read that... I have my own stamp, and what is more my very own accountant. Well, I would like to see any of you try to understand Polish tax law!

Of course, not everything is OK all of the time. My mother's best friend Zyta died just before I went to Italy. She was in a coma for about a month. So sad when shit like this happens. She was with us on our holidays in Italy last year, and I, too, have known her for my fare share of time. She accompanied me with her husband Marek on the drive down to the Abruzzo, and lay on the back seat telling us funny stories and engaging in awesome discussion, whether it was about caffè coretto or Florentine architecture. RIP, Zyta. You were truly great.

And then comes today. I'm sitting at home with a cold and a temperature. Translations from the aforesaid institutions never seem to cease, and of course I'm a little fed up with it all. And then a message: Carmen nie żyje. Carmen was a stray dog (bitch) that hung around our house in the Abruzzo. Her full given name was Carmencita (by the people who looked after the house), and she was very friendly, always hungry and extremely playful. Mum got her inoculations done, got her an Italian pet passport and while I was driving with Marek and Zyta back to Warsaw, Mum and Carmen went to Rome and attended the Angelus on St. Peter's Square. Carmen even had her own seat on the plane on the flight back. However, we knew that she was ill. It wasn't long before she became weak, not helped by last winter, with no doubt. Always cheeky and cheerful, Carmen was great company for us, and for the other three dogs in Warsaw.

In the Wawel choir too, two people have died so far this year. One bass and a second tenor.

How brittle life is: such is the way we are made, alas.

To finish for now - one thing that I have realised is this: you can't have your cake and eat it. But you can nibble at someone else's. (That's love.)

I don't know when I'll next post. The best way to listen to what I am doing is here. In fact I might even start taking my radio podcasts that I file with Radio Polonia and upload them here. Perhaps with a bit of off-the-air commentary?

Love you all, M

PS No, I haven't finished my MA. But I will. Promise.

The Chef Special

Yesterday I spent a day in Łopuszna and Nowy Targ with some of my classmates from uni. I managed to hitch a lift with one of them on the way back, yet alas the car (like a true bagnole is wont to do) broke down on the way, about 30 km from Kraków. Anyhow, to get along with the tale, we managed to roll into a petrol station (Lotos in Jawornik near Myślenice (Northbound 7/E77) for any interested parties) before the car conked out. We spent a few hours there, and I don't think I've ever had so much fun on a Saturday night (honest). Jan, one of my fellow passengers, was astute enough to notice the menu that was hanging by the entrance. It offered four dishes (further investigation in the restaurant proved that they in fact were the only things on offer). And this is the crunch: talk about multicultural or ethnic cuisine, this dish had it all:

Kurczak a la frytki w sosie chińskim

Chicken a la chips in a Chinese sauce

Need I say more?

Beef!

2.5 lbs of prime roasting beef, 3 eager Brits and 1 Sunday afternoon means only one thing. Roast!

Of course we overdid the spuds, the gravy was thick (but rich and scrumptious), yet the beef was done to a turn. Polish meat is really quite something. Yum.

Jonathan adds the final touch... honey.

We ate, drank and I for one collapsed on the sofa afterwards. Now that's a sign of a good lunch (if not a coronary...).