Easter Traditions in Poland

Day 1 (Great Saturday)

People prepare a baskets full of goodies: colorful eggs, some bread, a piece of sausage, salt, a sugar lamb, maybe some fluffy fake chicken or bunnies to decoration. They take it to church were the food is blessed. It’s gonna be eaten on an Easter breakfast on Sunday.

Easter basket

[photo source]

Day 2 (Easter Sunday)

The families meet to have breakfast together. They share the eggs from the basket, say each other wishes and feast. The traditional Easter dishes include:

Żurek - traditional Easter soup

Mazurek - traditional Easter cake

Baba wielkanocna - another traditional Easter cake

[photos source] 

and all sorts of eggs (with mayo or stuffed), meats, salads...

Day 3 (Wet Monday)

The other name of an Easter Monday is Wet Monday (in Polish “Lany Poniedziałek” or “Śmigus-Dyngus”) because traditionally everyone splashes each other with water! This tradition comes yet from pagan times when people in villages were beating (lightly, nothing brutal :P) girls’ legs with willow twigs and splashing them with water. If some girl was omitted, there was a superstition that she wouldn’t find a husband quickly. Nowadays just splashing with water stayed (thank you, I wouldn’t like being beaten with twigs, even lightly:P) and everyone splashes everyone, even strangers. Some people exaggerate pouring whole buckets of water on people going to church or even elders turning the tradition not to be so nice anymore as it’s supposed to be fun, but that’s a different story. As long as it’s made in a civiliezed way it’s a lot of fun:) Especially children love this day.

Happy Easter!

Wesołych Świąt!

No Word from Gurb by Eduardo Mendoza

No Word from Gurb is a grotesque story of two aliens in a form of pure intelligence who come to Earth in a mission of exploring the life of creatures living here - humans. They land in Barcelona and soon one of the aliens - Gurb disappears. The other one gets a human form and in the meantime of looking for his friend, lives among people, whose behaviour, habits and being in general finds weird and irrational. He gets involved in many funny, sometimes absurd situations.

My impression of the book is mixed. There were couple of funny moments and I had to smile couple of times when a place I've been to or food I've tried was mentioned. The alien turned out to be a great fan of churros which I totally love:9 The book captures well the atmosphere of the city. But it wasn't as funny as the recommendations stated or maybe it's just not my sence of humor (I must admit I'm not a fan of grotesque) as some situations seemed too absurd or unnecessary. Although I liked the general idea of the story it didn't arouse an excitement in me. It was okay but not a revelation.

 

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churros <3

A stationery from Florence

Remember the postcard from Florence I got? That's not all goodness I got from that place. My friend also brought me this wonderful set of stationery! She sais that Florence is famous for it's paper. I find it so gorgeous that I am scared to write on it:P

100 reasons to snail mail #2

LANGUAGES

Through letters you probably won’t learn a foreign language from the basics (although who knows, maybe someone did it;) ) but it’s a great way to practice and improve the languages you’ve been already learning for a while. Usually in daily life there aren’t many occasions to write long texts if it’s not for homework. When you write a letter you need to create a longer text, look out for the right grammar because it must be understandable for your penpal and you won’t be able to explain what you mean a moment later when you’re not clear enough like you could do it when speaking. It might be difficult at the beginning but you’ll quickly get more confident. Moreover, in letters usually are brought up various topics so it’s a great opportunity to broaden your vocabulary. If you’re writing with a native speaker you might also get to know colloquial speech and slang words. All this is a lot of work but at the same time a lot of fun so you’ll learn with a great pleasure. I bet all snail mailers who have been corresponding in a foreign language would agree with me about that and can confirm making progress after exchanging some letters.

 [photo source]

You don’t need to write only with native speakers of the language you’re learning but find penpals from different countries who know a common language with you and learn some expressions in their native language. Maybe you’ll learn how to write your name in a different alphabet? Or how to say greetings in some exotic language which none of your friends around know? :)

 If you're into penpalling and want to share your experiences in your blog according today's reason, please link back here and make a comment that you made an entry :)

The Meditations of the Country Postman

 Time for a little entartainment my dear penpallers ;) Here's a nice old Polish song about postmen. I even translated the text for you. I guess the part about an uncle needs little explanation because it might sound a bit ridiculous. The song is from the times when it was difficult to get many things in shops. Also going abroad was almost impossible. If someone had family abroad who could send unavailable for majority things or clothes, such a person was an important persona. Right, I hope that explains a presence of an uncle in the song. Hope you'll enjoy it:) Do you know any songs connected with letter writing?

There are at least thousand villages and cities in the world

A man writes a letter at least once

People, get out of the way because the postman comes

Turn off the gas, so what that you have an uncle abroad?

People, get out of the way because the postman comes

And this moped of mine everyone here knows well

You’ll get a letter from an uncle

I know, who thinks in life doesn’t write anything

Who loves much writes a long letter

People, get out of the way because the postman comes

Postman’s bag is heavy of letters today

People, get out of the way because the postman comes

Maybe someone has been waiting for this letter for couple of long years

Maybe he’ll get it today

People write letters, regular, registered

They write that they love, can’t sleep or that they kiss you

People write letters, even in a small village

Letters grey, white, colorful

Take off your hat in front of the post.