20 east

We’re getting, have got, to that point where we really should be replacing a lot of stuff in the apartment because it either doesn’t work, or doesn’t do things we want it to do – i.e. hold more books. The trouble is that it all comes at the same time and so it becomes a pretty daunting list, and cost.

We for sure need a new bed for ourselves because it’s broken, the mattress keeps slipping off the frame. Of course, with the bed will come side tables and a cupboard because they currently all match. We need a new washing machine because it’s looking pretty nasty nowadays and isn’t washing as well as it used to. We need a bed for Zosia because she’s longer than she used to be. She needs a new desk because shes doing more desk work. She needs a bigger wardrobe because the clothes are bigger. The cheap desk on which I write this drivel needs to be upgraded to something more substantial. The lounge TV really should be a HD LCD type, especially now we finally have the HD decoder. The thing on which the TV stands will then need to be bigger and ideally have tons of space under for DVDs. Also in the lounge, we have three bookshelves, all about 1.5m square. These are all full to overflowing and not as stable as I’d like. The bench in the hall is naff and always has been, so that needs sorting. The sofa and chairs are, thankfully, still doing okay after being recovered. The dining table and chairs will also wait although we really need to be able to seat more people. Otherwise, we’re good.

Almost everything that needs replacing, apart from the TV & pralka, was from Ikea about 8 years ago. Ikea is Chinese food, or chewing gum. It’s a quick fix but ultimately not substantial or satisfying in the long term. So this time around we’re looking for something more substantial and that means more expensive. I hate to think what the total is of all those items but it is for sure going to have to done in stages!

We’ve visited a few meble shops recently and the range of styles and prices is staggering. We’ve given up on places like Almi Decor who have some nice stuff but want to charge you 7-10,000 PLN for a large bookcase. These, as well as the TV stand, the bench replacement and other items are probably all going to come from the Indian furniture warehouse in Wiązowna which has a great range of large old furniture and better prices. A large bookcase with carvings or painted decoration is around 4,000 PLN, roughly half of Almi Decor’s price for the same volume of book storage. They don’t have good beds though so that looks like it needs to come from a normal shop. They do have, for anyone interested, a massive “throne” made from silver plate and upholstery, yours for only 190,000 PLN. Yes, that’s over 40,000 quid for a chair!

We checked out the antiques market at Bronisze today. Some interesting stuff but not our style, too bulky in an Old Polish kind of way. There were a few nice 50’s style pieces (probably 70’s in Poland) and that will all be very fashionable soon but again, not what we want. The biggest annoyance at Bronisze is that there are no prices displayed on anything and so the whole thing is one big haggle. I loved a couple of the larger pieces, heavy dark wood with deep carvings of forest / hunting scenes but I have to believe they will set you back at least 10,000. Some nice porcelain and silver too, but we’re not really into used crockery and utensils.

We’ll keep looking but the plan is starting to take shape and when we have some money to spend we at least know which shops to go to.

We watched this film today, dubbed in Polish, at Cinema City, Arkadia. It is rated PG for a few scary monsters, straszny music and stuff. Zosia (5) was scared for about half the movie but only in that “I’m scared but I’m still watching” kind of way.

Boiled down plot is – mother and three kids move into old family home in the woods. They find out that the surrounding woods are filled with goblins, elves, sprites, large ugly frog-pirate things, one medium-sized sort of helpful pig thing and one gigantic bad guy. An ancestor of the family wrote a book about all this stuff and everyone wants to get their hands on it. He went off with the sprites many years ago leaving his 6yr old daughter alone. His daughter is now 80 odd and living in a home. The house is protected by a circle of mushrooms. There’s a nice goblin lives in the house. The rest, predominantly bad guys, can’t get in. They lose a few pages of the book, the bad guys kill the mushrooms, all hell breaks loose. Large explosion of tomato ketchup. The good guys win. Father and 80 yr old are reunited. Everyone lives happily ever after.

I’d say it is one of the better family films we’ve seen for a while and kept us all interested for 100 minutes or so. Worth watching.

Other, not as good, films we watched on DVD recently:

The Holiday – typical Hollywood rom-com. Okay for what it is.

Black Dahlia - spent too much time trying to be a ‘film noir’ and not enough time being an interesting film. There’s a story behind this famous murder but it didn’t really come out.

Click! – I think we actually stopped watching this before the end. Rubbish.

Katyń – Worth watching but better if you read up on the history first and get a copy of the DVD that does actually have English subtitles! Same atmosphere as most war movies.

Man of the Year – Too American. Okay if you’ve got no cleaning or ironing to do.

Evan Almighty – Well, it was one to watch last Sunday with Zosia and it had a lot of animals in it. Not as bad as billed, but not worth going out of your way for.

I am now officially in the ‘highly confused’ category. Last I remember, smoking was going to kill me and my mobile was not. Now it might be the other way around? I’ve been using mobile phones since they were invented, since the mid 80’s although back then they were called car phones for the obvious reason that you couldn’t remove them from your car. That makes me a prime candidate for a brain tumour, apparently.

I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of the media (and the scientists behind the news) changing their mind about what is going to kill me first. If it’s not going to kill you, it might just be bad for you. The list must by now be very long and very contradictory.

I can’t remember them all but: ‘mad’ beef, fast food, alcohol, smoking, marijuana, chickens, other birds, salmon, shrimps, coffee, Chinese food, roadside kebabs, roadside hamburgers, Coca-Cola, unpasteurized diary products, mobile phones, video games, not wearing a seatbelt, computer screens, Blackberrys, uncooked meat, rock music, Rottweilers, eggs, air travel….and so on, are all things I have done, had or eaten – you can work out which – very often in most cases (although I never inhaled!) and I’m still here! So a massive NER NER to the boffins and the media who give them air time. Your credibility is at an all time low with me. So low, that the next thing I’m told is going to kill me, I’m going to overdose on because a month later I’ll be told it’s actually very beneficial.

Why can’t they all just leave us alone?

Yes folks, I predict a new phrase will be entering the English language pretty soon – “It was a complete T5!”.

Despite the advertised months of testing everything, the things not working so far include – lifts, phones, tannoys and of course the baggage system from the get-go. Getting on for over 200 flights will be cancelled, possibly a lot more as there seems no end in sight.

Against this, the problems with Warsaw’s new terminal pale into insignificance.

I referred to this earlier but it might deserve a separate post.

The year was 1994 and it was I think, March. A few in our company had been planning a trip to Israel for quite a while to visit the franchisee and this trip was to include a visit to Jerusalem to see some potential new locations. Normally the visits didn’t go far beyond Tel Aviv which is where the companies headquarters were. As the time to confirm flights approached the number of people included in the trip started to shrink. The other members of the party were American citizens and the company, a large US Corporation, had been issuing ‘travel advisory’ messages of increasing strength until the “Cave of The Patriarchs massacre” happened at the end of February. From then on the advice was quite simple – “DO NOT GO TO ISRAEL”.

For the link-shy amongst you, a Jewish guy, Baruch Goldstein, a member of an extreme right-wing religious Zionist movement, entered the cave system in Hebron with his machine gun and plenty of ammo. He proceeded to kill 29 Palestinian Muslims and injure another 125. He was overwhelmed and disarmed by other Muslims who then beat him to death. There was widespread condemnation of the act and nobody was prosecuted for killing Goldstein.

The caves and Hebron generally are the second most holy site in Israel after Jerusalem for Jews and is venerated by Muslims and Christians also. It is said to be the burial place of of four Biblical couples: (1) Adam and Eve; (2) Abraham and Sarah; (3) Isaac and Rebekah; (4) Jacob and Leah. According to Midrashic sources it also contains the head of Esau, and to Islamic sources, is also the tomb of Joseph. So, it’s no surprise to find plenty of people there praying.

Hebron is a popular place for unrest, murders. In 1929, 67 Jews were murdered by Arabs. In 1994 the above took place and in 2002, 12 Israeli soldiers were killed and 16 civilians injured when Palestinians opened fire as they returned from prayers. I’m not what God and all those buried there think of all this, but I’m sure they’re not impressed.

Anyway. As all the Americans had taken heed of the travel warnings and canceled their trip, I was now the only person left. Had I been the family man I am today, I would have probably done the same, but I wasn’t and so after a few calls to check the reality on the ground I confirmed my flights.

I’m very pleased that I did. The visit to Jerusalem was just fantastic and seeing how all these religions focus on such a small area was amazing. So many super-famous religious places for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike and all within a short walk of each other, or in many cases, on top of each other, is mind blowing. Not only is there a curious mix-up of buildings but also of people. Deeply religious people of all faiths mixing it with Chuck, the loud-trousered, white-sneakered tourist from Texas and students and business folk and all the time the normal residents of the city try to get on with things. I remember feeling very uncomfortable when in the line of people passing the Stone of the Anointing in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There was I, an interested day tripper while all around me was much wailing and crying from people for whom this was a monumental moment in their lives.

Even if you don’t believe in any of the religions represented in Jerusalem, it is hard not to come away convinced that something pretty significant happened here.

In the aftermath of the massacre, Jerusalem was tense though. There were film crews everywhere, especially by the Western Wall where there had been growing incidents of Arabs (above) throwing stones at Jews (below). Just as I was taking in Jerusalem, the person I was travelling with, Itzhak, asked if I would like to see Bethlehem. “Bethlehem?”, I thought, that rings a bell… “Of course I would!”, I said. He explained that it was a short drive away but it might be difficult because it is an Arab town and because of all the trouble….etc. I asked him to try anyway and we’ll see what happens.

We arrived at Bethlehem and the town was closed to visitors. The Israeli army had the place surrounded and all streets were barricaded and had ‘border patrols’ in place. The main aim of this action was to contain the angry Arabs inside their own town and not let them spill out and cause trouble elsewhere. Itzhak, an ex-Israeli army commando, spoke with the guards and they allowed us through but told us to be careful. I noticed now that Itzhak was even more nervous than I was and I remember thinking that this was perhaps not a good sign!

I have memories of driving uphill towards the town square, the only car on a street lined with Arabs staring at us and not exactly waving or looking in any way welcoming. We got to the square (Manger Square) and parked the jeep, the Church of the Nativity stood off to the left. We were almost the only people there, perhaps another 15 people in total, of which at least 10 were Arabs offering postcards or tours of the church. I imagine in more peaceful times Manger Square must be a zoo and the queues for Jesus’s birthplace very long! I asked Itzahk if I might look inside the church and he said, “Quickly!”. I asked one of the Arab guides for help, to save time, and he took me straight to the main event, the birthplace of Jesus. Again from memory, this was at some basement level and I was shocked at how small and unassuming it was. After a moment there we retraced our steps back through the church to the square where I found an even more nervous Itzhak.

I was now caught between a gaggle of Arabs pulling at me to go visit their uncles shop or the bells or something and Itzhak who just wanted to get out of there. To be fair, as an Israeli soldier he was probably taking more risks than I was. I decided that leaving before something happened was the best idea, so we jumped in the jeep and got out of Bethlehem.

The rest of the trip was less eventful, aside from the usual interrogation at the airport on the way out which, given the climate, was more intense than usual.

What are the things I might pass on from this trip?

• Everyone should visit Jerusalem
• Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, or in ‘travel advisory’ warnings
• You only live once and, when travelling, who knows when you might get back to the place you’re in, so make the most of it while you can.
• You can be rewarded for taking some risks, but don’t be stupid about it.
• Always have a camera with you. On this trip and many others, I didn’t and I very much regret it now.