When did the world get so small? Coming from the Uk, this little island floating in the sea, I had a sense of distance. I knew that it was 10 hours drive to Cornwall, 45 minutes to York and a long way to the tip of Scotland. These are considered long journeys in England.
Ally has been interviewed for a job in Frankfurt, and I have to say that I am so excited that she might get it and be back in Europe. I laughed the other day at the thought that another country is considered close to me, but then, she is on the other side of the world. Fingers crossed everyone.
When I was a little girl, my dad used to sing me a song about Frankfurter sandwiches. I think it was a sign of things to come.
"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind"
Aristotle
"I've been lucky, I'll be lucky again."
Bette Davis
November 03, 2005
October 31, 2005
Ex-pat circle of thoughts
When you are living somewhere outside of your own ccountry, you gravitate towards other outsiders. This being my third year away from Yorkshire, I now have a wide circle of ex-pat friends; Canadians, Americans, Australians, English, Dutch, Danish. The list goes on. You find in these people something that connects you. You experience a place differently from those who have always been there.
As my friendship net has widened, from people all experiencing Warsaw as ex-pats, I find that I now have a new understanding of living abroad. A few months ago I moved again. Ally Moved back to her home country and A moved from Warsaw to Amsterdam. Talking to these people naturally involves a philosophical analysis of the nature of 'abroad'.
I met A yesterday at the Sacre Coeur. We have not seen each other for a year. Within ten minutes, the cafe creme was ordered and we were deep in discussion about the new places that we had chosen and the ones that we had come from. Years in the UK never gave me such a specific and strong understanding of the choices that we make.
In the ex-pat circles that we run in, we are forever destined to understand a little part of each other. We will always be the outsider, and I am not using that word in a negative way. To openly discuss huge parts of our life choices makes the circle of ex-pats in any place quite a little community.
Will I always feel like an outsider now? Even when I go home to Northallerton? The people there have no idea what it is like to experience the things that I have done. Will my feelings of beautiful seperateness fade away if I choose to return? We make choices to seperate us from where we begin, this leads us back together in the end anyway.
"Happiness is the longing for repetition"
Milan Kundera
"Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get"
George Bernard Shaw
As my friendship net has widened, from people all experiencing Warsaw as ex-pats, I find that I now have a new understanding of living abroad. A few months ago I moved again. Ally Moved back to her home country and A moved from Warsaw to Amsterdam. Talking to these people naturally involves a philosophical analysis of the nature of 'abroad'.
I met A yesterday at the Sacre Coeur. We have not seen each other for a year. Within ten minutes, the cafe creme was ordered and we were deep in discussion about the new places that we had chosen and the ones that we had come from. Years in the UK never gave me such a specific and strong understanding of the choices that we make.
In the ex-pat circles that we run in, we are forever destined to understand a little part of each other. We will always be the outsider, and I am not using that word in a negative way. To openly discuss huge parts of our life choices makes the circle of ex-pats in any place quite a little community.
Will I always feel like an outsider now? Even when I go home to Northallerton? The people there have no idea what it is like to experience the things that I have done. Will my feelings of beautiful seperateness fade away if I choose to return? We make choices to seperate us from where we begin, this leads us back together in the end anyway.
"Happiness is the longing for repetition"
Milan Kundera
"Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get"
George Bernard Shaw
October 29, 2005
Why I love Warsaw
1) Green Coffee, the best place in the world. Both cool and trendy, friendly and comfortable. Saturday mornings with J. Late evenings with K and N. Flirting with the boys behind the counter.
2) Ulica Chmielna. Always something new to discover on this pedestrian street that links the two main shopping streets. New bar: 'Level', look into it.
3) People. Friends of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities. People who love me, people I adore.
4) Polish food, especially gypsy pie.(Potato pancakes with goulash, mmmmmh)
5) Vodka. So cheap, so smooth. I got my Wisniowka!
6) Being there and not wanting to go home.
7) Being there and forgetting that I live somewhere else now.
8) Cold weather and squint-your-eyes sunshine.
9) Buying pierogi, polish chocolate and zupa to bring back and have polish things in my Paris flat.
10) Realising how happy my Warsaw life made me.
11) Staying with people who make me want to stay up and chat into the early hours of the morning and forget that I am so tired.
12) The beautiful familiarity of the airport.
13) Wondering if I will ever live in Warsaw again.
"Fear not for the future, weep not for the past"
Percy Shelley
"Maybe I'm too young to keep good love from going wrong
But tonight you're on my mind, so you never know"
Jeff Buckley
2) Ulica Chmielna. Always something new to discover on this pedestrian street that links the two main shopping streets. New bar: 'Level', look into it.
3) People. Friends of all ages, backgrounds and nationalities. People who love me, people I adore.
4) Polish food, especially gypsy pie.(Potato pancakes with goulash, mmmmmh)
5) Vodka. So cheap, so smooth. I got my Wisniowka!
6) Being there and not wanting to go home.
7) Being there and forgetting that I live somewhere else now.
8) Cold weather and squint-your-eyes sunshine.
9) Buying pierogi, polish chocolate and zupa to bring back and have polish things in my Paris flat.
10) Realising how happy my Warsaw life made me.
11) Staying with people who make me want to stay up and chat into the early hours of the morning and forget that I am so tired.
12) The beautiful familiarity of the airport.
13) Wondering if I will ever live in Warsaw again.
"Fear not for the future, weep not for the past"
Percy Shelley
"Maybe I'm too young to keep good love from going wrong
But tonight you're on my mind, so you never know"
Jeff Buckley
October 25, 2005
Sunshine through my window
The girls are here and soon they will be gone. It has been three days of bright sunshine in my Parisienne life. They are my soulmates, the ones that I found in the most unlikely of places. The four of us have celebrated the occasion of our 30th years and the occaision of nearly 12 years of friendship.
They have noticed what no-one else would or could. Reached into me and changed me, then and now. We have laughed so much that we have coughed out food, started to snort and not given a damn what any of the chic parisiennes think about that. We have drunk red wine, eaten cakes and taken hours over a meal. We have chatted, we have talked. We have been serious and we have been stupid.
When all is said and done they are the people that know me. They are the people that accept me, love me. All those years and we are all still here. I am amazed by these women in my life. I live in Paris, but I miss them. I miss them so much that a lump rises in my throat just thinking about them crossing the ocean and not being near me any more. Which is strange because that is exactly what I did to them when I moved to Poland.
Speaking of Poland, the flight to Warsaw leaves this afternoon, just after they go back to the UK. Lets see what the heart makes of that.
"This moment contains all moments"
CS Lewis
"Love isn't finding a perfect person. It's seeing an imperfect person perfectly"
Anonymous
They have noticed what no-one else would or could. Reached into me and changed me, then and now. We have laughed so much that we have coughed out food, started to snort and not given a damn what any of the chic parisiennes think about that. We have drunk red wine, eaten cakes and taken hours over a meal. We have chatted, we have talked. We have been serious and we have been stupid.
When all is said and done they are the people that know me. They are the people that accept me, love me. All those years and we are all still here. I am amazed by these women in my life. I live in Paris, but I miss them. I miss them so much that a lump rises in my throat just thinking about them crossing the ocean and not being near me any more. Which is strange because that is exactly what I did to them when I moved to Poland.
Speaking of Poland, the flight to Warsaw leaves this afternoon, just after they go back to the UK. Lets see what the heart makes of that.
"This moment contains all moments"
CS Lewis
"Love isn't finding a perfect person. It's seeing an imperfect person perfectly"
Anonymous
October 22, 2005
Laduree Ladies
After school yesterday, seven of us ladies made our way to the Champs Elysee for champagne and cakes in honour of D's birthday.
We went to Laduree, a gorgoeus old tearoom and patisserie on the main tourist strip in the city. Beautifully, the place was full of old parisienne ladies, one of whom had a small dog sat on her lap. We were seated at our table, smiling at each other, getting ready to relax. Feeling our freshly minted, half term freedom stretching out ahead of us.
L and I went to look at the cakes and went back to the table even more confused than before, so amazing did everything look. I managed to narrow down the choice and chose Saint Honore, a towering mound of pastry and cream. However wondrous it looked, it tasted like heaven on a silver fork.
We chatted, laughed and told stories. We were polite and cheeky at the same time. Friendships between women are something to behold, as were the seven of us sat in Laduree.
"Women are wiser than men, because they know less and understand more"
James Thurber
"I like men who have a future and women who have a past"
Oscar Wilde
We went to Laduree, a gorgoeus old tearoom and patisserie on the main tourist strip in the city. Beautifully, the place was full of old parisienne ladies, one of whom had a small dog sat on her lap. We were seated at our table, smiling at each other, getting ready to relax. Feeling our freshly minted, half term freedom stretching out ahead of us.
L and I went to look at the cakes and went back to the table even more confused than before, so amazing did everything look. I managed to narrow down the choice and chose Saint Honore, a towering mound of pastry and cream. However wondrous it looked, it tasted like heaven on a silver fork.
We chatted, laughed and told stories. We were polite and cheeky at the same time. Friendships between women are something to behold, as were the seven of us sat in Laduree.
"Women are wiser than men, because they know less and understand more"
James Thurber
"I like men who have a future and women who have a past"
Oscar Wilde
October 21, 2005
I think, therefore I blog
It is Friday morning and the last day of school before half term. I just sneaked out for a creme and a gossip with D, my Canadian friend. D has just started to read my blog and had lots of lovely things to say to me about the way that I write and the things that I have to say on my own little portal to the world.
She has got me thinking about this blog though. What is it that keeps us all blogging? The difference between our blogs and a journal or diary is clearly that we are sending our thoughts out int0 a public forum. We are opening our heads and hearts for everyone to see. Does having the little comments box full after our latest post validate the words that we put into cyberspace for all to see? Does it matter if the little box isn't full?
People would like to remind me that blogging is not really 'writing', but most of the time I feel like it is. We are imperfect people putting out little perfect images into the world. The fact that they are there, the fact that people read them maybe makes us feel a tiny bit less alone in this big bad world.
From those blogs that are personal to those that are political, I am in love with the blogs that I read regularly. I feel connected to those people behind them. In a world where links are hard to make, can this ever be a bad thing? Should we just be out in the world, face to face, or is it fine to connect in the world of blogs, thought to thought?
"The only real people are the people who never existed"
Oscar Wilde
She has got me thinking about this blog though. What is it that keeps us all blogging? The difference between our blogs and a journal or diary is clearly that we are sending our thoughts out int0 a public forum. We are opening our heads and hearts for everyone to see. Does having the little comments box full after our latest post validate the words that we put into cyberspace for all to see? Does it matter if the little box isn't full?
People would like to remind me that blogging is not really 'writing', but most of the time I feel like it is. We are imperfect people putting out little perfect images into the world. The fact that they are there, the fact that people read them maybe makes us feel a tiny bit less alone in this big bad world.
From those blogs that are personal to those that are political, I am in love with the blogs that I read regularly. I feel connected to those people behind them. In a world where links are hard to make, can this ever be a bad thing? Should we just be out in the world, face to face, or is it fine to connect in the world of blogs, thought to thought?
"The only real people are the people who never existed"
Oscar Wilde
October 20, 2005
The girls
The girls all arrive on Saturday afternoon for our joint 30th celebration. We decided that we were going to all meet for a holiday this year to recognise the year in which we all turn 30 (Even though my birthday is in January, I turn 30 last!).
I cannot wait to see them in all their familiar glory, twelve years after our friendship began. We are all very different and yet the history that we share means that we will always have something in common.
Thinking now about them arriving makes me wonder about the time and things that have passed. As the weeks turn into months and the months melt into years, where has the time gone? As I stare down the barrel of my 30th birthday (I am taking it the hardest), is this where I thought that would be? Does the time go quicker as you get older? No more desperation to be an adult, it is right here and now.
"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once"
Albert Einstein
"If you're lost you can look and you will find me
time after time"
Cyndi lauper
I cannot wait to see them in all their familiar glory, twelve years after our friendship began. We are all very different and yet the history that we share means that we will always have something in common.
Thinking now about them arriving makes me wonder about the time and things that have passed. As the weeks turn into months and the months melt into years, where has the time gone? As I stare down the barrel of my 30th birthday (I am taking it the hardest), is this where I thought that would be? Does the time go quicker as you get older? No more desperation to be an adult, it is right here and now.
"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once"
Albert Einstein
"If you're lost you can look and you will find me
time after time"
Cyndi lauper
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