The only indication that colloquial Polish has taken any root in my unconscious—where it must reside to make real progress—emerged on my melancholy flights back, cholera, “home.” Flying Lufthansa, when interacting with the flight attendants, I should have been able to use, or even default to, my not very good German, but my natural instinct—since Germany is a foreign country—was to use a foreign language, but the foreign language that came out was my not very good Polish. (The flight attendants, of course, speak much better English than I do anything else.) Even when I tried, consciously, to recall my German, bad Polish blocked most of my efforts. I managed a decent German sentence or two with my seatmate, a Tamil whose German was perfect and whose English was commendable. It can be done it seems. But maybe you have to be a woman.
Friday, May 31, 2013
Lufthansa
My foray
draws to an undistinguished close. We’re at T-minus 10—days, give or take. There is too much to
do to make much of an accounting just now. The mother of my children, best
friend, and byłą żoną, (“was wife”)
has shown up at my rooms and requires some attention. I walk her about. In the
process of my revisiting tourist mainstays with her, she, more curious, or at
least differently curious, pushes lines of inquiry and social interaction—dining,
drinking coffee, thrift shop visitation just for fun, and farmer’s market questing
in search of asparagus and strawberries—that make me wonder if the only Poland
I might realistically enter at some point in the distant future exists behind
the walls of a monastery, one in which the brothers have taken a vow of silence.
Thankfully, there are a number to choose from.
The only indication that colloquial Polish has taken any root in my unconscious—where it must reside to make real progress—emerged on my melancholy flights back, cholera, “home.” Flying Lufthansa, when interacting with the flight attendants, I should have been able to use, or even default to, my not very good German, but my natural instinct—since Germany is a foreign country—was to use a foreign language, but the foreign language that came out was my not very good Polish. (The flight attendants, of course, speak much better English than I do anything else.) Even when I tried, consciously, to recall my German, bad Polish blocked most of my efforts. I managed a decent German sentence or two with my seatmate, a Tamil whose German was perfect and whose English was commendable. It can be done it seems. But maybe you have to be a woman.
The only indication that colloquial Polish has taken any root in my unconscious—where it must reside to make real progress—emerged on my melancholy flights back, cholera, “home.” Flying Lufthansa, when interacting with the flight attendants, I should have been able to use, or even default to, my not very good German, but my natural instinct—since Germany is a foreign country—was to use a foreign language, but the foreign language that came out was my not very good Polish. (The flight attendants, of course, speak much better English than I do anything else.) Even when I tried, consciously, to recall my German, bad Polish blocked most of my efforts. I managed a decent German sentence or two with my seatmate, a Tamil whose German was perfect and whose English was commendable. It can be done it seems. But maybe you have to be a woman.
