Some things leave me speechless. Like this one. What you see in this picture is a newly-designed logo for Nowy Sacz, a city in the south of Poland.

You may like it or not, but would you ever think it promotes Satanism and homosexuality?

Sadly, that’s exactly what the local pastoral ministry thinks. It expressed its outrage last week as in its representatives’ eyes the new logo – based on the human palm-shaped layout of Nowy Sacz’s old town, with the black spot denoting the location of the town hall – is a symbol of Satanism and palmistry. Neither of which are obviously supported by the Catholic Church. And neither is homosexuality, which allegedly is also promoted through this brightly-coloured sign, according to the same ministry.

The mayor is doing his best to apply common sense:

“An open right hand is the international symbol of goodwill and agreement, and the rainbow colouring of the hand is a sign of the town’s multiculturalism.”

Such ‘incidents’ and other ridiculous knee-jerk reactions are not exclusively Polish phenomena, but many people in Poland will tell you they are. They have their reasons to believe that – we, as a nation, for decades have been exposed to dodgy political deals, still largely don’t trust our leaders and public institutions and are generally unwilling to give them the benefit of the doubt.

It’ll take a long while to overcome this – if at all – but in the meantime it would be good if we learned not to find conspiracy theories in everything or at least not to publicise and blow out of proportion minor incidents, which can and do happen everywhere in the world.
Source: thenews.pl

This is an interesting initiative. Polish manufacturers from Wisła, a tourist resort in Beskidy, south of Poland, have had enough of cheap ‘local’ souvenirs mass-produced in China with little or no relevance to locally produced goods.

From now on they want to promote local souvenirs, food and other products and, to distinguish them from cheap, irrelevant tat, they plan to add stickers with a special logo and a “Made in Wisła” slogan to all goods produced locally.

“Tourists will be able to recognise sausages from Wisła, local cakes, spring water, wooden toys, local souvenirs or wooden houses. They can take home nice local cakes and not a ciupaga [Highlander's axe] made in China”

Pawel Bragiel, the chair of Wisła Friends Association told Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza.

He also claims Wisła is the first town in Poland to introduce such logo and such initiative.

I think it’s brilliant people begin to recognise and support what they know best. I do hope others will follow.

When I say fresh here, I mean new – new to me at least. I’ve discovered  Michał by accident when someone posted a link to this lovely video.

Michał talks about his music (in Polish, but with English subtitles) and the clip is illustrated with his fantastic acoustic jazz.

According to his site, his debut album, The Worlds, “was considered by music journalists to be an exceptional debut”.

Now feast your eyes on this great video by Patryk Kizny and enjoy Michał’s music.

Perfect for a hot summer evening.

I noticed today that Poland’s once biggest bank had opened a branch in central London.

PKO Bank Polski has a nice shiny branch in Shaftesbury Avenue. Weird location if you ask me, but maybe there are more branches in other parts of London.

As it’s Sunday, I couldn’t go inside and check what’s on offer, but I’ll investigate and report back.

I’ve recently introduced you to a new Polish cultural site aimed at the English-speaking world, and here we have another one.

This time it’s all about the latest news.

thenews.pl is run by Poland’s equivalent of the BBC World Service, Polskie Radio dla Zagranicy. It’s published entirely in English and is mainly focused on Poland or Poland-related issues.

You can also listen to English-language bulletins there and the site also offers Polish press reviews translated into English.

If you are really into all things Polish, you’ll find their micro-site on the upcoming presidential election particularly useful.

I found the new site particularly useful during the recent floods. While the BBC and most British media outlets completely ignored the disaster (American and Middle Eastern news outlets seemed to be more interested), thenews.pl had regular updates on the situation.

And just out of curiosity: HOW MANY of you are actually interested in daily news about Poland in English and is the existence of such service justified? I’d love to read what you have to say.

“You Poles are so, so…, erm, cultured! Yes, that’s the word, cultured!”

My English musician friend used to tell me that whenever we used to meet in a pub years ago to talk all things Polish (for his benefit) and all thing British (for mine).

What he meant was probably this: most Poles are not afraid of so-called high culture, they see it as an important part of their lives. And I suppose that’s still the case nowadays when Polish TV schedules overflow with numerous variants of Britain’s Got Talent and Dancing on Ice. Being an intellectual (not always synonymous with ‘cultured’, mind) is, unlike in Britain, not a sign of snobbery. It’s a sign of much-admired sophistication. Of being ‘cultured’.

Now those of you who are more interested in poetry, art, literature, non-commercial music etc. from Poland have a great source of the latest cultural news.

Biweekly is a great, recently launched website in English (with a Polish version too) and I like how they justify their existence:

We came upon such a sentence: ‘culture is not an obligation, one can do very well without it’ (Kot Jeleński). And we do not dare to state otherwise.

Yet, there are those, who, for some reason, do not want to live without it. Maybe they do remember Witold Gombrowicz and, just like him, they desire culture without all this juvenility and senile atrophy, butterflies and rainbows, dust and exaltation, patriotic and pseudo-intellectual demands.

The site has great content, very well written and well translated. Its eclectic collection of contributors makes it quite addictive.

Highly recommended. If you like feeling cultured, that is.

My blog has been nominated in the Language Professionals category in this year’s Top 100 Language Blogs contest run by LexioPhiles.

This is very flattering and I’m currently blushing.

But I will blush even more (and maybe do a little dance too) if you vote for me.

Please go to the voting page, scroll down to find “the POLSKI blog” and vote. I will love you forever. Voting closes on 24 May.

Dziękuję.

While Britain is struggling with the volcanic ash again, Poland and parts of Central Europe are hoping that they won’t see a repeat of the disastrous floods which destroyed parts of southern and western Poland in 1997.

Over the past few weeks the weather in Poland, the Czech Republic and other neighbouring countries hasn’t been great, but the past few days have been extremely wet, to say the least. Torrential rain has caused flooding in parts of southern Poland, with Krakow declaring a state of emergency on Sunday.

The Vistula River burst its banks and I’ve seen some pretty dramatic pictures of mudslides. So far four people have died.

According to Poland’s national broadcaster, Polskie Radio,

340 people have been evacuated from areas in the Malpolska province, with an ongoing effort to evacuate 1,500 residents in the Brzesko district. In surrounding provinces, 70 people have been taken to safety in Silesia and 54 have been evacuated in the Podkarpacie province. Over 8,000 soldiers have been put on standby with specialist equipment to help in rescue efforts.

Many roads, railway lines and towns in the mountainous Beskidy region have been affected and the rain keeps on falling. And it’s supposed to rain till Friday.

In July 1997 the “flood of the millenium” killed 114 people in Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic. Almost half of the victims were Polish.

I just hope the Polish Prime Minister’s mild optimism is fully justified this time.

Those of you who use Spotify probably know now that it’s become social and can be linked to Facebook. This way your Facebook friends can browse and subscribe to your playlists too.

That’s how I found out that – to my surprise – my Polish playlist has already 31 subscribers! That’s great!

It’s been modified a lot since I first created it over a year ago, but that’s good as it’s meant to be colleborative and reflect everyone’s tastes.

If you haven’t subscribed to it yet, here’s the link:

thepolskiblog’s Polish music playlist

And if you feel some great Polish music is missing from the list, feel free to add it to the playlist!

(And I’m sorry if you’re reading this outside Europe and wondering what Spotify is. Hopefully it’ll be available in the US and other countries soon.)

Got that from my friend who travelled to Buffalo. Ain’t that sweet?

Cliche? What cliche?!