Bloated Winter Stock

An Introduction to Rugby

2011-02-07T21:50:00.006+01:00

Sports seldom come high on the agenda when planning a weekend, particularly when it involves activities other than tennis or football. However, the rugby Six Nations began this weekend just past and it was on Friday that I enjoyed my first-ever televised rugby game. That is not to say I have never darted through a room or stumbled about a bar that might have been screening a game in the past, but I have never made a conscious effort to sit down and watch it. It seems, from my experience this weekend, that I may very well have been missing out on something special.

As violent as it was delightful, the opening game between Wales and England was a tremendously entertaining battle that saw two devastatingly talented teams ruck it out over the course of eighty minutes. My sisters, who are both avid Rugby Union fans, leant a hand in providing an outline of the rules as the players darted back and forth across the field in a brutal ballet that was quite possibly one of the most exhilarating sporting events I have ever seen.

It will not be as easy to catch the rest of the games in Poland unless I manage to find a sports bar over the course of the next couple of weeks, but the chance of them screening rugby over football in Wroclaw is pretty slim. Regardless, I shall be on the prowl in an attempt to pursue my new favourite sport and encourage others to do likewise.

Headphones

2011-02-06T22:22:00.003+01:00

The journey back to Wroclaw from London today was astonishingly peaceful. This is entirely due the carelessness of the the stewards, who were unable to notice that I did not take my headphones out from the moment I boarded the plane. On the outbound flight to Stansted I was driven quite insane by the continuous stream of adverts that bombard every passenger from the overhead speakers - I have never seen anybody buy scratch cards or smoke free cigarettes on board but the stewards still insists on pushing them. I can therefore understand their looks of discontent as they plod back and forth up the isles, peddling absolute rubbish.

My return trip therefore provided me with ample opportunity to indulge in James Blake (whose debut album is supposed to come out this month) and 'oOoOO'. Though I am still unsure how I should go about pronouncing the name of the later act, their first E.P. was released last year and is well worth the £5 it cost to get hold of it on iTunes... music vouchers were very much the theme of my birthday gifts this year, allowing me to spend far too much time musing over new melodies.

High Contrast

2010-05-16T20:50:00.004+02:00

I received word this morning that a limited edition, hand-bound version of High Contrast Review's first publication will be available in six weeks or so. It will feature a short story I wrote for HCR earlier this year.

The latest film for TLEVP - shot in Sao Paulo - is undergoing it's 7th edit and should be released soon.

Cambridge 2010

2010-02-20T23:42:00.002+01:00

I am currently in England where I am working on the final TLEVP film in Cambridge. As you may have seen in my 'News' section, the theme of the film is Homestay.

It has been an interesting project to work on for several reasons, the first of which being that I the majority of interviews I am conducting are shot in the houses of the interviewees. This makes sense when taking into account the subject of the film, but it is certainly not the easiest thing to do; particularly when the interviewees have an appointment at the local hospital in order to see their newborn grandchild for the first time. However, I have met some real characters so far and I am confident that the film will be a success. The other intriguing factor with this particular film is that I am familiar with my surroundings. I can not compare the Cambridge experience to Shanghai, New York, Casablanca, Sao Paulo etc. as I am capturing footage of an environment without the tourist goggles. I know what needs to be filmed, but at the same time I am trying to imagine what the audience may wish to see and how they wish to see it in a completely different way. I am enjoying myself.

I shall return to Poland later on next week and continue editing both China and Brazil. China is literally on the cusp of release and I am ever so excited about it!

Chinese Internet Rant and Index Explanation

2010-01-22T19:58:00.003+01:00

Ever since returning to Poland at the beginning of the month, my days have been occupied with learning and short journeys on the tram, while my nights are spent cutting, splicing and tinkering with the remaining films for The Learning English Video Project. I am most excited about the way they are turning out; particularly 'Insights from China', which still has no official release date. This particular film is like no other from the series and, although I should be disinclined to choose a particular favorite, 'Insights..' has something very special about it. Due to the current commentaries on China's Internet situation (nobody in mainland China will be able to read this blog for instance) I am curious to see what the reaction will be concerning the film... This very issue in itself troubles me somewhat. Of course the Internet is censored, as different countries permit different things to be made available. No other country has grabbed national headlines as much as China has with regard to Internet strictness and that may be the source of my frustration. The Chinese government claimed that the Americans were imposing 'information imperialism', while Americans condemned the Chinese decision to censor Google searches on subjects such as Tiananmen Square and Tibet... It is well known that there is information (digital or otherwise) that is not made available to the American, British etc. public and so it is seemingly impossible that the aforementioned Western governments should criticise the Chinese in the fashion in which they have chosen. I am not shocked by this criticism, just disappointed...

I have been collecting grades for the first semester of my MA this week. The Polish system is an interesting one; an 'Index' (a pocket sized green book with personal information, a passport photo and space for grades) is supplied, wherein one writes one's subject information. The teachers for each subject then fill in the Index and hand it back to you complete with their signature. So far my marks are showing the results of a fruitful semester that I have thoroughly enjoyed, although I may have been a little naive in thinking it possible to study during the day and edit at night with their being possible side affects... I may now consider myself a polyphasic sleeper - something new for 2010.

2010

2010-01-12T21:55:00.000+01:00

Wroclaw, Poland.

I spent my Christmas and New Years Eve in Shanghai. I have several projects in China at the moment and I needed to return to Asia for the third time in 2009, primarily to develop research in a paper I am writing on the subject of Confucius. As well as working on The Learning English Video Project and planning a future film to be shot in Cambridge, I have been living a double-life as a student by day; attending lectures and seminars on all things embracing Political Science. My M.A. is in International Relations, a subject I find both fascinating and inspiring. Since October last year, I have been taking classes in Economics, Human Rights Protection, International Relations Theories, Environmental Protection as well as region specific modules and additional courses in Polish and Mandarin Chinese. The first semester is coming to a close and so my time is occupied with exam preparation and essay writing. Even though this utterly rules out the option of a bustling social life, I simply can not put enough emphasis on the joys and benefits education can bring. I am starting 2010 as I wish to end it; in the grips of an exasperating educational exchange.

The Learning English Video Project is far from complete. The EnglishClub team have been adding resources to the films that are already available to watch and I am working hard on edits for the next two releases. 'Insights from China' should be online in the coming weeks but there is still no word on an official release date.

I am not one for new years resolutions as such, but I do feel as though I did not read enough in 2009. I am going to make full use of my library card in 2010 and make sure that I leave some time aside for reading things outside of the 'scientific literature' bracket.

With that said and done however, I need to get through a few more chapters of perhaps one of the most peculiar books I have ever encountered; the first volume of a series on ancient Chinese philosophy. The book was written in English by a pair of Chinese scholars and the style of writing baffles me...

Happy New Year!

Daniel.

Lamenting the death of Michael Jackson

2009-06-27T21:47:00.000+02:00

Somerset, England.

The people who saw Michael Jackson live and joined in the chorus were themselves performing in the act; they were engaged in that collaboration of the audience with the artist which is a necessity, but not always an aspect of, all art.(1) After witnessing the countless collections of video clips and digital collage, revisiting the highs and lows of Michael's career, it is by no means a feat of astonishing bravery to conclude that the King of Pop possessed genial qualities. Michael's perplexing ability to draw the crowd into manic frenzy and tremendous applause, was, and will forever be, an attribute mastered by performers miniscule number. This is the ultimate reason why celebrities, politicians, critics, journalists and members of the general public will continue to occupy media attention with emphatic quotations of sorrow and lament for years to come.

I believe that the retelling of Michael Jackson's story is a positive thing, even if it is only possible to retell after his passing. The inevitable negativity that musicians endure from the media ultimately distract the audience from what the performer sets out to achieve and this is often menacing. The extraordinary dedication, skill and prowess that were undertaken to achieve the height of fame conquered by Michael are unimaginable, but the courage and values that were mirrored in his artistic qualities only just fall short of impossible. No performer should attempt to bite off red-hot iron unless he has a good set of teeth(2) however, and Michael's august nature had been rotting under the heavy mass of media pressure for over a decade.

The negative publicity was indeed a poisonous web spun by the powers that be and I often found myself being tangled up in it. But then there always was a nostalgic resonance whenever I heard the sound of his name that threw me back to the first time I heard 'Speed Demon', 'Another Part of Me' and 'The Way You Make Me Feel'. 'Bad' was one of the first records I ever owned and it was certainly one of the most frequently played. I was 7 when I got the album on cassette and I remember being fascinated by the fact that Michael used to black. As a 7 year old, I was (perhaps somewhat understandably) unable to comprehend how and, more importantly, why a black man would change his skin colour. There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society: to retreat ahead of it(3), but what I was unable to fathom at the time was the beautiful eccentricity, individuality and valor that Michael harboured. That he released such penetrating music was the icing on the cake for me, but this was something I did not take the time to reflect upon until his death.

If anything positive can be drawn from what has happened over the last few days, it will be a newfound respect for Michael and his work. The musical legacy he left behind is set in stone to act as an inspiration for generations to come but also as a bleak reminder of what happens to the heroes we torture in the press.

1 - Shamelessly adapted from T.S Eliot's 'Marie Lloyd' (1922)

2 - Harry Houdini

3 - Roland Barthes

Tales From America - Blog Update

2009-06-20T21:55:00.001+02:00

It has been over a year since I last updated 'Bloated Winter Stock'. But tonight, on Saturday 20th June 2009, I have decided to rekindle the cathartic fire that once managed to find it's way from brains to the keyboard.

Tomorrow marks the release of 'Tales from America', the third film from The Learning Video Project and the longest in the series so far. The film is an objective documentary that focuses on education, integration and studying abroad. 'Tales from America' bridges a transatlantic crossing that incorporates the ideas, experiences and influences of language students from all over the globe. I am merely the weaver in this dynamic outlet that lays waste to the arguments for jaded patriotism and anti-immigration laws that litter the current political scene across the UK.

My film is released tomorrow, and although it is the third in the series, it feels to me as though it is the first. There is something special about this release causing me to pulse with both excitement and intrigue. How is it going to be received? Both 'Stories from Morocco' and 'Lessons from Romania' have had incredible coverage, with the latter achieving 15,500 views in the first month! Will this film attract the same amount of attention? The project sponsor, EnglishClub.com has organised free lesson plans, free material for teachers and free quizzes for students as well as global PR to coincide with the film's release. I would be foolish not to be excited.

Having said that though, The Learning English Video Project, in it's entirety, is a medium through which I am able to broadcast my feelings towards world society and global progress. I am inspired beyond words by the dedication of the people I interview and the students and teachers who have left feedback on EnglishClub.com. This series is a testament to their dedication and the realisation that people from different nations, backgrounds and generations can come together in learning a 'neutral' language.

I am going to Shanghai in August, then to Sao Paulo in September. My trips to both China and Brazil are motivated solely by The Learning English Video Project and I hope that my positive drive towards producing the final two films in the series only increases...

In three days time I will begin my third year at Millfield Summer School. This time as the Academic and Site Manager for Downside.

'Tales From America' will be free to watch/download/host at http://www.englishclub.com/ as of tomorrow (21.06.2009)

Zakopane

2008-06-15T13:52:00.000+02:00

My chest snaps as I stand. It feels much better. Even though this random escapade is to be a short one, the small suitcase we have with us is comforting; it feels like an anchor of preparation seldom included on banal treks to the village or surrounding woodlands. I snatch it up greedy before the door to my right slides open. Two nuns bolt towards the open, clad in blue and white robes, past a huddled bunch of biddies I can see through the smeared glass windows. Someone told me before we came that it is not necessary to book a room in Zakopane before arriving, as it is almost impossible not to stumble across swarming old women with boards upon getting off the coach. I hook my jacket around my waste and thank the driver, a tatty gnome like woman with chipolata fingers and bad breath, hops up and down in front of me exclaiming that she has an apartment for rent. Her loose pink blouse is so stretched it looks like it is trying to escape her tacky dark skin. I look over my shoulder and ask Joanna what she thinks, she winces. A group of elderly women point at the gnome lady from behind and make faces at her when she tries to convince us she has a beautiful apartment for us to stay at this evening. I ask her where her accommodation is located and she tells me it is only three minutes around the corner, her mawkish digits grapple with the suitcase and we are on our way.

The gnome lady’s competitors sneer behind her as she turns to gloat, but she does so only for a second. She whisks us off in the direction of the high street past kiosks, meat markets, veggie stands, coat racks and shrubbery until we find ourselves at the entrance to a modern Polish tower block. The walls are yellow. Gnome lady opens the door with a silver key and we march up some stairs to the third floor, she shuffles us inside her smutty abode and shows us around. The first thing I notice after stepping into the bedroom is the glorious view of the Tatra Mountains in front of us; peaks capped with amethyst streaks that shimmer in the sunlight. It looks glorious, which is a little more than I can say for the dingy quarters we are asked to pay seventy zloty a night for. I haggle down to fifty and the gnome lady sneers while handing me two small keys strung together by a gritty pink hair tie. She tells us not to touch the boiler, even if it starts rattling in the night. The ceiling is bulging and the dead lock is busted but everything else works fine. She says she will be back at ten o’clock in the morning to remove us.

Joanna has just finished a twelve-hour night shift and her hands are shaking but she says she is ready to climb some mountains. The poor lass works as a security administrator in Bochnia, her role similar to that of Janine Melnitz in Ghostbusters, dispatching security forces to breeched areas of the town. I pry about the small apartment and decide is not actually all that bad for fifty zloty a night. The boiler growls and spits some thick black liquid into the bath tub as I walk past it and into a second bedroom. Like the room we dumped our suitcase in, it holds two foldout sofa beds and little else. As I turn to leave the room though, I am confronted by one of the creepiest religious objects I have ever seen.

White polystyrene folding boxes are commonplace in the UK for carrying battered fish and chips. They are most useful when eating on hoof and even for storing ‘from the night before’s. As useful as these boxes are in the take away food department, I would never so much as even think about using one as a picture frame. Yet that is what I seem to be presented with. A polystyrene fish and chip box lid, nailed to the wall, framing a cut out of John Paul 2nd. The late pope grins back at me as I make no effort to contain my laughter at this absurd display.

We walk a couple of minutes from the apartment to the bustling high street, the forecast was for rain but the sunshine has brought masses of people out onto the streets for ice cream and dancing. Hundreds of market stalls litter the pavements, selling everything from baby slippers to long axes. The air smells of chestnuts and the Gubalowka mountains in front of us rocket from the ground below the busy high street. We hit the bottom end of the town center for a mushroom zapekanka each and locate the cable car to the top of Gubalowka. According to the tourist guide, this is the most accessible mount and is full of screaming kids as a consequence. The most rewarding aspect though, is that it is an excellent place to view the ‘praying man mountain’, whatever that may be. Half expecting to be escorted to the top of the mountain all rickety by a rusty chairlift, I feel a splinter of disappointment upon discovering the sixteen zloty a head ticket only covers a one way journey to the top by a state of the art train. We clamber on board and the electronic doors hum as we zoom past eager climbers haggering their way up the recline. I envy each alien stride.

School children bustle about the wooden fencing that overlooks the below. A loggers leap type race track, flags crumpling in the gust jets and the praying man mount. It twirls in a sea of cloud somewhere to our right. The view from the top of the Gubalowka is beautiful but I feel foolish for paying to get to the top. We take a coffee in a café overlooking the fabulous view and we discuss our plans for the remaining few hours we have left in Zakopane. We are staying for two days and one night; a deserved break after a tricky year of toil. Joanna points to the praying man and asks me what I think. This particular formation is symbolic due to the fact that it slightly resembles a man laying down in the prayer position… Some time ago, people decided that it would be a good idea to stick a giant cross on the praying man formation’s ‘finger’ to help inflate its symbolism. It looks daft. Regardless, the range is an incredible sight and makes walking back down to the bottom of Gubalowka most pleasant.

By the time we reach the bottom of the 1200 metre descent, I am walking at a mad angle. There are so many peaks and pivots to patrol, my ankles bend odd every time they touch ground. The sky hints at downpour but we still have one more mountain top to conquer before dinner if we wish to make the most of our stay in Zakopane.

After a nice sit down and a cup of tea in a field, we wait at a random bus stop. There is no timetable and daffodils lark in the gentle breeze. A little similar to Rytro with its multitude of guesthouses and tourist delights, Zakopane is one of the most popular destinations for Poles during bank holidays and summer seasons. According to Joanna’s father, there were over one million visitors during the May bank holiday weekend this year, leaving the roads jam-packed and inflation on a killer wave. The streets are crowded enough on this murky, I can’t imagine what a million bodies on a sun kissed afternoon would do to this small town.

We wait twenty minutes and an eight seater stops and drives us a few kilometers up the road to a range called Kasprowy Wierch. This bad boy is eight hundred metres higher than Gubalowka so we have no intention of climbing up or down it. At least not today. As the cable car plods slower up the plume green mountains, the clouds get that much lower. Droplets of rain start to slap the glass-paneled car as we escalate. There are thirteen of us in the car, huddled together taking pictures of astonishing scenery. Gallant green gatherings of steep bark ad tussling leaves jigsaw up the mountain as we near the 1000 metre mark. We stop at a place called Myślenickie Turnie, change cars and get higher. A slim brunette stands in the center of the car and spins around in circles while clutching a video camera. Her sister asks what she is doing and the camera lady presses a free finger to her lips. The car tilts to one side and a fat man squeals with glee. 1987 metres above sea level and we are at the top of the mountain, although we might as well be at the bottom judging from the view. Cloud surrounds the peak of the mount and it is impossible to see more than a few feet in front. I feel as though I am a part of some glorious magic show, all surrounded by smoke. I refuse to pay the two zloty at Dominium to use the toilet and urinate over the edge of the mountain.

Once back at ground level, we make our way to the bus stop. A driver bolts upright when we walk past and asks if we want to go to the center for three zloty each. Sounds fair. He boots us up with a grim collective of moist walkers and starts the ignition. The drive back to the center of town is a quick one, taking no longer than a few minutes. By this point though, Joanna is very tired after her night shift and needs to collapse. We find a pizza restaurant in town and order humongous portions of veggie delight. We make plans for tomorrow, accounting for the gnome lady waking us up at ten o’clock. She tells me that she once went to a mountain range in the area called Morskie Oko and that it is a frightfully wonderful place to spend an afternoon if it be rain free… We walk back to the flat half expecting to see Gnome framing a picture of Ratzinger in a crisp packet. She is not. The boiler screams at me while I use the bath, a lacey black spider watches me as I scrub.

Joanna sleeps for an hour and a half while I mooch around the shops in search of herbal tea. The sky is leaking but it matters not, for when she awakes, she tells me she wishes to drink wine in the center. We brolly to the high street in search of bright lights and noise. There are several illuminated signs, some bustle in the air and thudding beats come from a building somewhere above. We stumble into a quaint little joint on the main strip. There is a band of three belting some whoppers on their strings and horns as we take our seats. I order a bottle of white wine and the waitress beams back at me as she pours.

-

I throw on my jeans and scour the kitchen for cutlery. Three forks. I take a swig of cold tea from the bowl I used as a vessel last night and stroll the morning dew in search of a bakery. I settle for a 24 hour mini mart called SuperSam and purchase some fresh rolls, a yogurt and a couple of drozdzowki. When I get back to the flat, we fill the rolls with cream cheese and get disturbed. A ten to nine, Gnome bursts in through the front door with a couple of new guests. She yells good morning at us and shuffles her new clients into the polystyrene pope room. We had agreed to have the room until ten o’clock this morning but I suppose this comes at the expense of winning a bitter haggle.

We consume our breakfast on the small balcony and finish packing to the voices of Gnome’s new guests, they hand over the full asking price in cash and Gnome leaves. The gent of the new clientele asks where we are from but he has never heard of Bochnia. He sits in the second bedroom and natters to us politely while skinning up a joint on the coffee table. We bid them adjure and walk towards the train station with our suitcase, passing scores of babas with smoked cheese and head scarves on the way. We pay a lady at the station five zlotys to take our suitcase somewhere and look after it for the day while we scout the area for busses to the Morskie Oko.

The mini bus is tight and loud. It buzzes through small villages, bombs around sharp corners and struggles over dusty hills, lavished on either side with fury green trees. I listen to a Spanish vocab builder and the first ten minutes of Andrew Marr before we arrive at a large car park. We pay the driver eight zloty each and then pay another three something to get through the gates and into the countryside. There are posters and signs everywhere exclaiming the presence of bears in the area. A mass of people start to make their way up the steady mountain and scores of walkers crack open tinnies as a symbol of vacation. I am stunned that so many people are drinking beer at this time and place. I fancy one. Waterfalls, brooks, sudden drops and random pathways jilt at all angles throughout the six kilometer hike to the top of the mountain. I drink a litre of water, wash my face in a stream and get confused for a girl on the way to the Oko. Once we get to our destination I feel a change in the air. The most placid and glistening veneer of the cleanest and possibly the coldest water I have ever seen lay in front of me surrounded by flourishing greenery and crumbling rocks. Chubby fish swim close to the edge in hope that I will drop my sandwich from the rock I am perched on. A guesthouse looks over the transparent water where trout swim and children throw stones. Group loads of Poles arrive on carts pulled by horses and there is not a cloud in the sky. I look up to my right at one of the highest mountains in view, Joanna tells me it is called Rysy and it is 2500 metres high. Crikey. I buy some tea with rum and we sit with a group of elderly Germans who munch on pealed apples with bread and meat.

Boris

2008-05-09T13:47:00.000+02:00

Social Networking. An online phenomenon I despised with relish and poked fun at with a side order of chips. A digital bastard house of misfits and weirdos, a place I felt alien towards and unwelcome in. When I joined Facebook I could feel myself climbing into the trap. Vast amounts of time spent tagging photos, joining groups and reacquainting old friends was a sure sign this was only the beginning. But that was okay. I was just keeping in contact with old friends and forgotten chums… So why not just email the people I speak to regularly and leave the rest to flitter away like old photos in a cyclone of zeitgeist? I contemplate this question and scribble in my notebook as the pospieszny train travels me direct to Wrocław from Bochnia. The journey is five and a half hours and I will have to make the same trip back again tomorrow morning. Why am I doing this again?

It all started with a pop-up. A greyed border on a music orientated SN website advertising a concert three hundred and ten kilometres away from where I live. I always make an effort to take my students recommendations and interests seriously. I only have a select clientele of one-to-ones and I like to keep up to speed with their music and film tastes. When one of the select few referenced LastFM as an online cultural adaptation of music based bar talk, I decided to give it a whirl. Thousands of strangers rampaging audio recommendations I had never heard of and the option to catalogue music preferences. I became excited and opened an account. Misfit Weirdo. This was me being engulfed in a new environment. An environment I had recently jeered at as being little more than a database of wasted efforts. Before long I was checking, updating and monitoring my profile with the same enthusiasm I had for my Facebook page. Misfit weirdo.

It was through this site I found that one of my most coveted bands is playing a one off gig over the other side of the country. I contemplated. I decided that I would only go if there was a way I could stay in Wrocław for free. For the last six months I have been finishing my novel and, being as though it is my first, I received no advance for it. The grosz are few and far between so I needed to make sure the venture would be minimal in expense. When travelling Poland for the Talking TEFL project, I signed up to another SN site called couchsurfing.com. I didn’t take advantage of it on the nationwide journey but my account remained active. Although couchsurfing.com harbours the same principles as the other ‘communities’ I have tumbled into, it is probably the most useful. The site details a catalogue of people all over the world, from Antarctica to Kazakhstan, who have free accommodation available to whoever wants it. I met Agnieszka through this site and she is going to meet me at the station when I arrive in five hours time.

My legs ache and my mouth dries as my journey continues through Katowice and onward to Opole. I read Naked Lunch and The Kite Runner while listening to Stereolab on my headphones. I eat rice cakes with the butch nana sitting opposite me. The heat pours through the windows and I think about how I have spent the first sunny day in a long while, cramped on a train with body throb. I arrive in Wrocław at half past four and feel faint as I walk through the station to the concourse. My stomach growls in a wicked echo and I prod my gut like a pin cushion. Angnieszka said she would meet me here at half past but there is no sign of her. She called me up a couple of days ago and told me that she would leave work early to meet. She said I would recognize her from the profile photograph and that we could hit the venue straight away to pick up my ticket for the concert.

I loiter under the train departure info and wonder who will recognise who first. I turn around and come face to face with a tall ginger girl, she has light blue powder stroked lightly over her eyelids and a toothy smile. “Well good afternoon Daniel” she says in plenty rehearsed English. “Good afternoon” I reply, almost trembling for lack of sugar. I wonder about the protocol for such situations and she asks me what I would like to do. People push past on their way to the platforms and I hook my shoulder bag over my head. We leave the station and walk down a main road. I want to ask her about couchsurfing and why she allows total strangers into her home. My questions seem terribly inappropriate and I bite my tongue. A fat lady barges in front of us and bellows across the street at an invisible boy and Agnieszka tells me about how Polish people have begun to alter their personalities to suite the American demographic. I am confused and my gurgling stomach feels like it is dissolving. The venue is called Firlej. I step inside. There are two bearded men behind the desk. I ask them for a ticket to this evenings performance and I notice that this is the first time I have spoken Polish in front of my host. She crumples her face. Fort five zlotys for a ticket and a free poster. We leave Firlej and walk towards the Rynek while discussing Serge Gainsbourg. Agnieszka is most pleasant, her ginger curls dance in the gentle breeze and her index finger points at a grinning couple. We walk over to them and they speak to us about dinner. They tell us that a Mexican restaurant called Havana has reasonable prices and excellent vegetarian tortillas. I walk with her. “They are a lovely pair” she says, “he is German and she is Polish but they speak in English all the time”. I nod and look over my shoulder.

The restaurant is smoky and dark. We take a seat at a crowded table with one leg shorter than the other three. It rocks slightly when I lean on my elbow. This seems to be the right time to ask about couchsurfing but my voice jumps out all paranoid and jittery. She looks relaxed and subtle as she flicks her ginger hair with long bony fingers. She tells me that I am the third guest she has hosted (the waiter takes our order) and that she is very pleased I came. She doesn’t get much time for holidays so she lures new being and conversation with promises of free accommodation. This must make her feel in motion. I smile and thank the waiter as he brings over two cold pints of Okocim. My head throbs as I slurp and we discuss the infinite possibilities of fraudulent absurdity that could take place in our current situation. I could be anybody. I could be nobody at all. Does she really want to bring me into her home? Misfit Weirdo.

After a slice of cherry pie and a fistful of Ibuprofen, she escorts me back to the venue one last time. She says that she doesn’t like walking and I go inside on my own. The lady checking tickets at the door greets me with a whisper. “Czesc”. “Hej” I blurt back all clumsy. I order a beer and stuff my jumper into my bag, there is far too much in there what with all the books, bottles of water and empty cigarette packets. I must look suspicious. There is a loud mechanical whir coming from behind a closed door in the hallway. I light a cigarette, take a couple of drags and put it out while staring at the ticket checker lady. The whirring gets louder and I open the door.

There are no more than thirty people in the audience, they are swaying slowly, transfixed on the stage. Two young men rock back and forth with guitars in their hands. There are transistors, mixers, synths and distortion pedals all over the place and everything is deafening. I can feel my ribs rattle around to the sound and I take my position next to the stage. Underneath the overheads. I take photographs of the quiffed guitarist as he swings to the booming grooves. His strumming the source of the stampeding boulder like percussionless drone. Each flabby groan ripples through the room like a wave. I surf on the sounds and dwell in the crunching blasts that drip off the walls as they ricochet. The band is called Growing. They ooze cool and define intriguing. Their set finishes after twenty minutes and I get another beer, my ears ringing and I feel like a plaster cast of myself before I entered the room.

I have been a fan of Boris since 2002. The first thing I heard from their back catalogue was an album called AbsoluteGo. The record consists of two tracks and lasts for over seventy minutes. Each track is a brutal recording of distortion, guitar fuzz and feedback. It sent me wild and became the centrepiece of my university dissertation, for which I received top marks. I got in touch with the bands Japanese record label Diwphalanx, bought albums in bulk and sold them on ebay as recommendations to people who had never heard of them. Boris released Pink in 2005, a glitzy bashing of rock songs for which they received a great deal of critical acclaim. The band also has a reputation for experimental collaborations, thunderous live shows and general inconsistency. Perhaps not the safest band to bet twelve hours of train on.

So perhaps this is more for the experience, I guess while swigging on my beer bottle. When has it ever been possible in the past to sign up to a networking site, take up a cyber peer recommended concert and arrange to stay at a complete strangers house for free? Boris takes to the stage. I am on the right and have a perfect view of Wata, the dreamy shoegazer guitarist, as she plucks her strings. Boris birth their set; slow, bursting and loud. I can feel the noise in front of me like a block I have chisel at in order to move. They play for just over an hour. A barrack of mystical buzz.

I leave the venue in a melt. A warm evening breeze wraps around my distorted hearing as I adjust myself to the real world. If ears could squint.

She meets me at the top of the street by the crossroads. I pick her out of the crowd, bobbing up and down through the windows of a tram. She speaks to me but I can hardly hear anything at all. Like a rolling cliché, we stagger, strangers in the street light. A rickety bus drops us at her flat across town and we are at her place by half past midnight. I drink lemon juice in the kitchen. My bed is a fold out sofa in the spare room and I share my space with a PC and a library of eighties horror DVDs. She says she will wake me at five so that I am on my way back home bright and early.

The sky is naked and a morning chill pinches my cheeks. She tells me she had fun and that I am welcome to stay anytime. Utterly casual. I thank her for the hospitality and my bus pulls up to the pavement. I am at the station by six. My train is guarding the platform warily as I board a back carriage. In six hours I will be home.

Shakespeare's Sister

2008-03-30T13:45:00.000+02:00

I hated Macbeth just as much as every other piece of literary text that was dished out by my teachers at secondary school. The fact that it had been chosen for the curriculum and that I would have to answer questions about it made me despise the masterpiece. Many other fine literary works were turned into chores and wasted on me. It wasn't until I finished my GCSE exams and enrolled at college that I began to placate my interest in literature. This is when I began to realise how I had wasted my time at school. It took me no less than two years to re-read all of the books I had disregarded in the past but I never once cursed myself for not making the most of the opportunities I had. Such a thing would have only saddened my dilemma, making a mockery of the re-reading tasks that I set myself. This particular reason is one of many as to why I have so much admiration for students that study, enjoy and even memorise literary texts and prose. On April 2nd 2008 I was asked to judge an English Literature Recital and drama pageant at a high school in Krakow. This was my second year as a judge on the panel.

The mini bus from Bochnia to Krakow gets me to the centre in a record time of thirty five minutes. I manage to dodge the dancing drunk who swings his way from seat to seat, stinking the vehicle with the foul smell of dungeon gin and alight at the stop nearest my arranged meeting point. I am then driven to the High School by a young lady I recall from last years contest, she tells me that she is teaching her young baby how to swim at the local leisure centre. Even though it is only swimming, it is a skill which will develop with time, making it one less thing for the baby to learn when it is older. Although there is of course a limit to how many things small children can learn at one time, early learning is something that is not taken advantage of enough and I discuss this with my new friend as we drive through the Krakow suburbs. The high school is quite a distance out of town and we only just make it in time for the competition, nervous students loiter around the main entrance of the concourse looking over their notes and quizzing their friends. Kasia, a good friend of mine and one of the event organizers, takes my coat and offers me something to drink before the event takes place. I take my seat in the spacious auditorium at the judges panel just in front of the stage. I feast on the sweet pastries and orange juice that scatter the surface of the table and glance around at the costumed contestants. Aside from my swimming baby companion there is one other judge I recognise from last year, a bubbly member of staff with exquisite English proficiency and a friendly allure. A senior member of staff from another Krakow high school sits to my left and we are all provided with a schedule for today's performances. I look over the list of recitals in the first half and am intrigued to find works by E. E. Cummings, Lord Byron, T.S. Elliot and ...Allister Crowley?

The first half comprises of twenty three recitals in all, each to be marked on interpretation, diction, understanding and stage presence. The participants themselves mostly attend schools in Krakow but there are a few on the list from towns as far out as Brzesko. It seems that this is quite a reputable event for its genre and I feel most pleased to be a part of it. Before the competition begins, the judges are introduced to the audience and I am prompted to take a little bow when my name is called. The lights go down and the announcer calls the first contestant to the stage where she recites the poem 'I love you so much' by Mr Cummings. Her voice trembles and she looks utterly bewildered by the prospect of speaking but she manages to remember her lines and sets a relatively good standard for all that is to come. When the young lady finishes the poem in English, she then recites it in Polish with the same diction and poise. I have such admiration for students that can dedicate themselves to such things but I refrain from going overboard with the marking for recital number one. As the competition continues, I become utterly transfixed by what the people on stage are saying, obviously there is some variation in that some contestants choose easier texts than others, some forget their lines and some are overcome with shyness. I fill my judges form with notes in short hand that will make sense to nobody else and I devise my own marking system. About twenty minutes into the show a young lady climbs onto the stage in a head scaff that she removes when she reaches the microphone. She recites a flawless fragment of M. Zimmer Bradley's 'The Mists of Babylon' in an utterly gripping manner that stands out phenomenally from the rest of the other performances. Her style is composed and her English pronunciation is perfect, her recital was a most difficult piece to remember but she bounces through it effortlessly and I find myself writing five out of five on my paper. Most of the contestants seem to be afraid of the microphone and stand to the left of the stage which makes it difficult to hear what the are talking about. There is a wonderful recital of Robert Frost's 'Stopping in the Woods', which goes down a treat but it is not until act twenty two that I find myself deciding on a personal favourite. The poem is 'The More Loving One' by W.H. Auden and, although it is not the most difficult poem to recite, the girl who performs it does so beautifully. Every word she says feels like she treasures it and wants everyone to feel the same way about the poem that she obviously does. One of the final performances is from a cocky young fellow with long hair and spectacles. He trudges across the stage like an angry giant booming a poem written by British Occultist Aleister Crowley. Whether the rest of the judges panel, or the director of the high school, who happens to be a priest, know what the boy is reading is a mystery. It would be easy to dismiss this young fellow as a joker but the fact that he has memorised and beautifully articulated a perhaps... lesser known poem is a bonus for me and I rate it. If his stage presence and arrogance where a little less obvious then perhaps the rest of the panel would feel the same way but I can feel them recoil with disgust as he recites the Polish version of his chosen piece.

The recital portion of the event comes to an end after an hour and half and the judges retire to a staff room to discuss their verdicts. I walk behind the three other judges with at least two contestants in mind and a craving for stuffed green olives. We arrive at the staff room and pour over our notes, discussing who we each believe to be the top three contestants. My thoughts are generally agreed upon, except of course for the Crowley recital which receives no merit at all... and perhaps rightly so. It was not the time or the place.

The second half starts after a ten minute break and I am handed a second plan for the rest of the afternoon - Drama. Each piece is expected to last for approximately ten minutes, I look down the list to find mostly Shakespeare adaptations, with the exception of an Oscar Wilde piece and something by Jack Heifner. There are eight performances in all. I watch with curiosity as the opening actor performers a ballsy version of 'To be or not to be' using a science lab skeleton and an executioners mask for props. He is followed by a genuinely sparkling rendition of Act 2 Scene 2 from Macbeth and several more dazzling adaptations. The students really go to town on their performances, throwing themselves about the stage in blood and gold, with spades and pom-poms in beautiful attempts at recapturing historical scripts. It seems however that the best is saved until last as a gender bending Romeo and Julliet take to the stage, the contestants witty performances are then followed by the last in this years event, a minimalist adaptation of 'The Importance of Being Ernest'. The Polish interpretation is gold and has me laughing out loud along with the rest of the audience. This has to be first place. Once the competition comes to a close, the audience are treated to a comedy sketch piece by some second year students. It looks to be one of those plays found free on onestopenglish.com but it is well performed and goes down a treat with the audience. The curtains close one last time and the judges retire to our smutty lair.

There are no doubts as to who the top two prizes are going to. I perch on the end of a long sofa, signing my name of several certificates and pronouncing my reasons as to who I think should win and why. The majority of the judges agree with my spilling although there are some discrepancies about the Jack Heifner piece, which seemed to go on for much longer than ten minutes. A reenactment of 'A Much to do About Nothing' is also heavily debated, I considered the four girls who performed the piece to have talent and VIGOR but my feelings are not shared with the rest of my co-conspirators. We make our decisions final and the prizes are taken to the stage, mountains of books on English literature cover a small coffee table and I am jealous. Before the results are announced, a short montage sequence depicting the life work of John Paul II is screened. Today is the third anniversary of his death and he is very sorely missed among the Polish people. The film lasts for three minutes and then the judges are invited on stage where we are thanked for our efforts. The results are announced and the winning contestants bashfully make their way up to collect their prizes from the priest director of the school. The audience clap and cheer along with the winners, who I awkwardly find myself amongst, and pictures are taken to document the occasion. There is a real sense of unity and companionship on the stage as the winners are joined by the rest of the participants for a final photograph. The lights shine brightly in my face and I make a promise to myself that I will have to perform poetry onstage myself before I go judging any more recitals...
The event was as much of an inspiration to me as I am sure it was to the contestants of the event and the audience alike. The intellect, dedication and skills that were demonstrated on stage this afternoon were nothing short of eye opening, unique and above all, bloody entertaining.

Dancing With The Swan Bride

2008-02-10T13:42:00.000+01:00

I love that feeling of sugar rush combined with the inhalation of smoke. Coke and cigarettes are great for this and I dwell in the sensation before buying my ticket to Zilina from Krakow and boarding the second class. I take a pew amongst a group of arty dreadlocked teens in an open carriage and discuss swimming styles with a skinhead fellow in his early twenties as the train hurtles towards Katowice. The skinhead is joined by a colleague from school, a midget gentleman with a hunch and teeth like Nosferatu. I open the sliding doors when the train reaches Trzebina where I mooch along the platform and up a flight of stairs to my next connection in the direction of Czechowice, a small down with a damp sky. I sit alone and ponder the open wooden shacks that loom all the way along the railway line. Temporary housing for the down and out with metal boxes for stoves and beer cans for company. The train fills with Polish village teens who swear and curse about this and that, poking fun at old ladies and spitting through the gaps in their teeth. I make my connection in Czechowice and get acquainted with two lady travellers from Krakow on their way to Bielsko Biala. I drink more coke and smoke in the rain before the train arrives, the sugar courses through me and I exhale a jet of airy white lush. I board the train with the Biala bound girls and they tell me that my Polish is nice to listen to, I was once told I speak like a retard as my grammatical mistakes are frequent. I tell my fellow travellers this and they chuckle before getting off at the next stop.

The train soon empties and I find myself lonesome in my carriage, the mountains surrounding the tracks are illuminated by the stars as darkness approaches. I feel unsettled as to what is in store for me this weekend, as long as I have my camera and enough money for whisky and cigarettes there should be no trouble. I must however also make sure that I capture something special. Six hours after departing Krakow I arrive in Zilina, the third largest city in little Slovakia. I crank Guided By Voices up to the max before I walk through the gloomy station to the entrance and locate my hostess for the next few days. Her name is Katarina and she is the manager of the band I will be working with. She hugs me quickly and we quickstep through the rain towards the city centre. She has dark make up around her eyes and hair blacker than midnight. The Gallery café on the market square is full of trendy Slovaks drinking coffee. I haven’t eaten all day and my stomach growls at me when I only order a latte. A tall, suave and polite character takes my hand as he introduces himself, his name is Fuxo and he plays bass for the Swan Bride. I take to him immediately and we discuss Nick Cave’s back catalogue until we are met by two more members of the band, Matko the front man and Miso the percussionist. We are sat in a corner of the dark café where we discuss plans for a film project. We speak in English. It seems that the differences between Polish and Slovakian are somewhat dangerous, so we remain in my mother tongue. Whisky flows and a copy of ‘On the Road’ is pulled from my bag and made the centrepiece of discussion. I find it almost uneasy that Katarina read the book when she was fifteen years old. We decide that we won’t start filming until tomorrow when then the band are scheduled to meet and MTV executive to discuss plans for a music video contract. Miso gives me and Katarina a lift back to her pad across town in a small village called Tarnowa where my hostess says that I can stay in her brother’s room.

My quarters are awash with Ozzy, Edguy and Dream Theatre posters as well as portraits of the occupant himself. I bid my hostess goodnight and try to rest. My mind swirls with flashy dizziness and I am unable to drift off. I sit up with the lights off and try and mediate for a while, my mind takes me to a corridor made of blue tak where there are stacks of motorbikes and a talking crocodile. I pursue the pillow but only manage to catch three hours of naptime. I wake up unsteady and starved, a state that makes meeting the parents for breakfast seem like a daunting task. It isn’t. In fact it is quite the opposite. I sit with the family and gauge on cereal, bread rolls and cheese while we talk about the differences between Poland and Slovakia. Katarina has to work a little as translator but my English and Polish crossbreed language is understood by most parties and we all get along just swell. I spend the morning with my hostess, listening to Venezuelan flamenco, drinking black tea and smoking cigarettes. We get a lift into town with Katarina’s father and sit in a Nighthawk diner while we wait for the band to show up. They are not with us for long before the MTV exec shows up with his sons, they are rather portly fellows with friendly faces and no interest in me. Katarina grabs hold of the situation firmly and enraptures the man with words I don’t understand. I spend the duration of the meeting talking about Nietzsche with Matko. We smoke plenty and discuss the differences between Polish and Slovakian society, he tells me that audiences in the Eastern part of his country are completely different to those of the west and I will have to go on tour with the band to experience it. He looks at me with a twinkle in his eye, his rugged stage show style, encompassing his surly speech about sub cultural divide and communism. The meeting is apparently a success, the exec offers the band a chance to support Nick Cave for his show in Austria. This is obviously very special but the Swan Bride must put on one hell of a performance tonight to sway the decision. MTV will be watching.

The line up for this evening is as follows: The Swan Bride, Lavagance and a DJ from Bratislava. The mentioned DJ gives Katarina, Matko and me a lift to the club where the band unload their equipment and I start filming. I neck straight whisky at the bar and it hits me like a freight train, I start talking currency conversions with my new companions and I feel myself having to prop myself up at the bar with my elbow. I film the Swan Bride sound check and the DJ grants Matko and me a lift to the singer's apartment where we drink white rum and I play him some Johnny Truant. We stagger back to the venue an hour or so later, I am wild eyed and on the subject of eating meat. I sing Morrissey lyrics and twirl myself about a lamppost, attracting the attention of the Swan Bride fans who line the streets waiting to get into the club. The venue fills with people and I fill my guts with whisky before plotting my filming strategy and getting prepared for the show. I smoke cigarettes with the band's make up artist and interview Fuxo about the Swan Bride's influences before they take to the stage and kick off. Scores of heads bounce up and down to the mind heavy wave of Rock N Roll as the Swan Bride leap and bound through their set list, incorporating everything great about energetic live performances. The sexy and smeared interludes the band put their audience through make their enthralling energy and tight composition even more of a treat. I duck and dive in the crowd, filming all I can before clambering onstage and sharing the limelight. I get some riotous footage and prop myself back up at the bar when the set comes to a close. Katarina is most critical of the bands performance but then again, I guess that’s the managers job. I befriend several gentle Slovakians and indulge in the delights of their Seven Crowns whisky, which is cheaper than chips and could strip a wall clean of paper. Lavagance appear on the stage in a glam-goth fashion with electronics and shouting, I like their style but don’t dig their set. Katarina eventually takes control and bundles me into a taxi where we zoom back to Tarnowa at the speed of sound. My head aches but my tapes are swimming in delicious footage.

I stumble across the hallway hung over and unshaven. I scrub the smoke off my skin in the shower and blow dry the blonde all ready and fresh for breakfast. Katarina’s mother cooks me a plate of fried eggs on toast, which instantly cures my hangover. We then retreat to the cellar to smoke Marlboro and drink tea. Katarina tells me that talking to me in English in the morning is like being at school. She goes upstairs to get ready for the day and I talk football and firewood with her father. He pours me several shots of Sliwowice, a homemade plum liquor and it sends me sideways. By the time Fuxo drives Katrina and me to the centre, I am singing to myself and talking make up. We head to Matko’s flat and I conduct some interviews with the rest of the band, I ask each member a series of bizarre questions and we retreat to the Gallery bar where the drinking and interviews continue. We don’t get back to the house until late evening, it has been a heavy weekend and I am ready to fall down.

I am a huge fan of Monday mornings, the first day of the week is a new start and the best day of the week to optimise old opportunities and seek out new ones. Today is an exception to the rule. I wake up at half past six and skulk downstairs for a bowl of cereal. I just about cram the last spoonful into my trap when Katarina’s father bursts into the kitchen and tells me that he needs my help. I understand that there is a problem with the car and he needs me to lift something. When we get to the garage I find that his tyres are flat and he needs me to help him pump. All four tyres are down and it takes us twenty-five minutes to pump them up again. The combination of sleep deprivation, hangover and belly full make the pumping almost impossible and I almost vomit over my shoes. I finish the job and collapse on the dining room sofa before we leave the house and I get the bus to the train station with my fantastic hostess. We smoke cigarettes outside Zilina Hlavna while waiting for Katarina’s lift to Bratislava, when he arrives I bid her farewell and jump straight on my train to Krakow. The train stops in Katowice and I get stopped by the police for smoking in a prohibited section. A drunken man in my carriage tries to teach me how to dance like a Cossack and a lady sells me a meat sandwich instead of a cheese one. Apart from that, the journey is straight and I am back home in time for tea.

Poland Thailand

2008-01-01T12:53:00.000+01:00

LEDGE 30: September/October 2007: The documentary stated in Malopolskie, Poland. The acclaimed CELTA course is run at International House Krakow for one of the cheapest prices in Europe and is one of the most popular places to take it in the country. After taking the intensive TEFL training course at IH just over one year ago I decided it would be the perfect place to begin filming for the project. The flickering enthusiasm and eerie quirkiness of the teachers in training enveloped beautifully on screen and I managed to interview staff and students at various points on their grueling and toilsome journeys, quizzing them on the whimsical and the customary while piecing together the documentary film angle in my brain.

The CELTA course in Krakow lasts four weeks, so when it came to an end and my subjects graduated, I traveled Poland and Slovakia on a one man documentary dice with destiny to explore the variety and scope that life in the TEFL industry has to offer.

LEDGE 34: November 12-13 2007: My first port of call was due far East Poland in a small city called Rzeszow, a place once home to the late avant garde theatre director Jerzy Grotowski. I know not much about the man, however the conceptual idea behind his 1964 play ‘The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus’, whereby the actors and actresses let their bodies represent various objects, is indeed inspirational. YES school is an independent company that employs several native English speakers to work side by side with Polish teachers, the school was the first of its kind in Rzeszow and when I arrived I received nothing but respect and admiration for the documentary project. The school director, a lady who seemed firm in her beliefs but open to suggestion, was most welcoming and hospitable. We did sit and chew the fat like a couple of old chums for several quarter hours and it wasn’t until midday that I was released onto the school grounds and to mingle with the staff and flaunt my questions to anyone that would listen. I pricked several ears during my two day stay at YES, the first pair belonging to a mysteriously gothic young Polish lady who informed me intently of her learning curves and teaching practices. I had the pleasure of filming a class full of soldiers, and then small clusters of child students before following it all up with a splendid selection of interview and interrogation. The TELF community definitely has a lot to offer if my visit to YES was anything to go by.

LEDGE 36: November 15-17 2007: The capital city is located far north of and a smidgen west of Rzeszow. The change in environment echoed enormously as the train flung through bellowing green forestry, through tripe and harrowing residential parks and claustrophobic sky scrapers. Upon arrival I heaved my heavy back pack over my lumbered shoulders and made my way to Lingwista school, the oldest language school in the capital city, which would put it in the running for oldest nationwide. My first encounter was to be with a teacher who has seen much change and assortment in his fifteen year career in TEFL, from the barrels of Turkey to the pits of Ukraine, my first subject had over half an hours worth of digital video laden with his trials and tribulations, concluded nicely with a warm and generous observations as to what the industry may have to offer those with an open mind. I was listening to a lot of Mercury Rev at this point, and their ‘Deserter’s Songs’ album accompanied me while trekking through the avenues of Warsaw while on my private journey to capture footage. After a half an hour wander I returned to the school and met with my second and third teachers of the day, both rather pleasant Polish ladies with plenty to share and more nerves than a bag of eclipsing moons. I was driven across the city to another faction of the hive, a small and rustic chapter of the school that hosted three classrooms with wooden paneling splintered across each wall. The director of studies taught a class of ten eager students, each of which crooning for information and begging to answer the next set of questions. I shot for forty of the one hundred and five minutes the class dangled for and did not return to the school until the next day when I interviewed my first teacher who preferred speaking in her native language (the old Polish) than the language she taught in (the round English). I then filmed five minutes of her beginner’s class, which proved to be some of the best footage from the classroom acquired so far.

LEDGE 37: November 17-21 2007: The train to Bratislava took eight and a half hours and upon arrival I got to work decorating my cassette tapes with delicate examples of the city center and nearby castles, the weather was strong and pinchy against my cheeks. Once my bearings were comfortable I took a bus across town and met the director of languages at the Bratislava School of Law, the students there have a large section of their classes taught in English and so my interviews with the two eager non native teachers were most insightful. I have worked alongside non native speakers of English, I have also befriended many in the past without fully appreciating just how damned smart they are, to be able to teach a second language on the other hand proves beyond exception from the dynamic and pursued, human nature can be so beautiful and assert, it is only the lack of desire and passion that keeps us from hunting the golden boy of knowledge. The students at the law school were indeed most helpful, once filming was over I was led into the city center for traditional Slovakian food with a very pleasant group of young females before they assisted me to their flat were I stayed the night, listening to My Bloody Valentine and drinking mulled wine.

Day broke and I trundled to the bus stop in the early morn to Axxent School, which was a slight journey across the city. After necking a cup of coffee and thumbing a vegetarian breakfast baguette down my throat, I filmed the school director and the ADOS in a double whammy interview of the most interesting scale. The directors dog sat on her lap as she stroked at its head and spoke of her experiences with English as a young Slovakian lady, her co-interviewee, a suave South African lass, filled in all the gaps in with how easy it was for her, as a native English speaker to fit into the Central Eastern European block. I then made my way by tram to my next port of call, Plus Academia, in the heart of the city. As I made my way through KFC and up the stairs to the main elevator I could feel an odd presence in the air, their were very few people around and after expecting the noisy clutter of a school in the center of the capital, I was a little disappointed. The lady on reception, a seemingly cautious woman in her late twenties, approached me warily. I informed her of my project and she gave a slight wince, she said that the gruesome pack on my back had given her the idea that I was a feeble traveler, smelly and on the look out for an occupational fling. Upon informing her of my identity though, her face sank even further down her head than I could ever have imagined possible. She told me that she was so sorry but she had sent me an email an hour ago informing me that the school would not be able to take part in the project. There were no eager teachers around and the ones that were in the building were all horribly offended that they head even been asked to be on film while they worked. A little taken back I put my bag down and refused to leave until I at least interviewed one person. I had arranged my meeting with this school over a month ago and I assumed that they would have been prepared for me. After half an hour, one of the non native teachers agreed to be interviewed in about an hours time. Feeling a little bad about being unprepared, my new best friend took me for dinner at a vegetarian curry restaurant. We sat and chatted about the destruction of language for an hour, which almost made up for the shamble shamble shambles. We walked back to school and I set up shot in a small room to the right of the looming reception desk, my subject arrived and proved to be most insightful and worth waiting for. Her bouncy flamboyance made light of my waiting and her clean cut and discerning answers turned my frown around when I left at just gone two o’clock in the afternoon. My twelve hour journey back to Bochnia was horrible; a scuffle with border control and several confused conversations with a deaf Ukrainian girl entertained me somewhat but I still felt slightly unprepared for work a few hours later. I still work as a TEFL teacher at a small private school in Bochnia, although my documentaries are my main focus, the thrill of teaching and sharing information with eager students is all too much to resist, I only teach once a week but it is enough to warm my need for a classroom fix.

LEDGE 41: November 26 2007: I prepared my boss for an interview, she is perhaps the nicest and most understanding employer I have ever encountered. Speaking with her is a pleasure and working for her is a breath of fresh air, the fact that we get along so well eased her nerves slightly and made the interview thoroughly interesting. Although she runs a language school, her English is not fluent, she teaches German as a second language, and although she can get by with the English she knows, interviewing her in Polish gave the document an interesting edge.

LEDGE 43: December 01 2007: A British Airways flight from Krakow Balice to London Gatwick, an intense security frisking, four whisky cokes and bus journey to London Heathrow’s North Terminal and I was in the departure lounge contemplating the next few weeks that lay ahead of me. Seven flights in ten days, boat rides, photography, interviews, sleep deprivation, drinking, self exploration and then the day after my return, twelve days of train journeys around Poland with my former collaborator Joel Carr and his playwrighting associate Mathew Stocks.
The flight across land and sea to Bangkok lasted around thirteen hours, I cannot be exact as my drifting in and out of consciousness combined with alcohol and caffeine consumption killed any track I may have only lost had I been more careful. Upon touchdown in Bangkok, the adrenaline started to kick in. Landing amongst a host of British and Australian holidaymakers allowed me a lot more of a comfort barrier than when I first landed in Sri Lanka three years previous. Making my way to the car park after haggling with the Airport Transport lady brought the effects of the air conditioning to my immediate attention, my body was just not used to this temperature in December. The taxi man seemed pleasant enough to let me try out my Thai on him, by this point I had mastered a few basic sentences and questions. I had never spoken to a native Thai before, and although I had only been learning for a couple of weeks, I felt almost weary as to how to use my language, maybe everything I had been taught was just bollocks I thought, perhaps the good fellow would just speak to me in English upon realising I had no clue how to respond to his questions. Luckily enough the man behind the wheel spoke very little English and encouraged me to speak Thai throughout the half hour mission through traffic to my four star hotel.

LEDGE 43: DECEMBER 02 2007: I got the Pathumwan Princess hotel out of breath and in a daze, I greeted the smiling doorman and proceeded up the escalators where I was looked upon most sternly in my wild like state, as if I had just escaped a brawl with a wire fence and a dirty hedge. I was handed a non alcoholic fruit cocktail and a series of forms to fill out. The dainty receptionist in charge took me to the lift and up to my eleventh floor suite. My room was glamorously standard, a king-size bed, two televisions, several phones, a kitchen complete with min-bar, microwave, toaster and kettle, a large bathroom with tub and shower cubical, an unnecessary amount of toiletries, hairdryers, dressing gowns, slippers and fruit. I scrubbed myself frantically and dried my blonde on the dryer before meeting with the sponsor of the documentary project. His name is Josef and he is from England, he is the owner and director of TEFL.net and various other EFL orientated websites and communities. He greeted me on the eighth floor of the hotel and we went for dinner by the swimming pool, I ordered pumpkin seed mash in pasta shells on a bed of fresh spinach, it was delicious. We spoke little of the film and more of my plans in Thailand; how, when, with whom and why did I want to do everything. Upon establishing ourselves socially and swigging a beer or two, we moved to the streets and walked around Siam Square, a splendid portion of the capital city aflung with markets, stools and night crawling. We then visited two of the three red light districts in the city and I plied myself with generous glasses of whisky and coke while filming elephants, photographing lady-boy prostitutes and skipping down the red light ridden avenue. We then proceeded to a pretty little bar with pretty little girls dancing on a stage in the center of the room. Each girl had a number pinned to her so that they could be identified quickly if any punter fancied getting sloppy. We got back to the hotel after midnight and had a nightcap while discussing the following days tactics. I planned to secure a deep and insightful montage of Bangkok, using as much varied scenery and scandal as possible.

LEDGE 43: December 03 2007: I woke up at half past seven and went downstairs for breakfast. A vast abundance of fruit and eggs lay in wait with large quantities of cereal and various other cereals scattered neatly about the place. I ate heartily and read an interview with Morrissey in a recent NME. At about half past eight I went downstairs and met with Josef, who I found standing by the entrance of the hotel with a Thai girl I wasn't introduced to. The three of us took a taxi across the city to Khao San Road (popular with back packers) and I shot the street with a heard of Thai men crowding around the camera screen every time I extended the tripod. We made our way through a couple of alley ways to a short pier where we boarded a long boat, mostly used for public transport and by tourists, snapping their way along each pier. The boat took us all the way down the river, past the kings palace, past down and out shacks and graceful hotels. I filmed the entire trip, capturing some of the best city footage yet while hanging by my left arm from the back end of the boat as it sped along the Chao Phraya river. After docking and taking a short stroll through the district near the pier we got off at, we took a pink cab to Lumpini Park where I was left to my own devices. After a couple of hours of strolling in the blazing sun with my tripod and DV camera in hand, I sat down under a tree by the lake in a far corner of the lush green park where I was stalked by a large monitor with big claws and a flashy tongue. I managed to signal a motor bike taxi and backied my way across the capital back to Siam Square. I retraced my journey back to the hotel and drank a cold beer from the fridge before heading back to the market place and charging about with my camera while singing along to Townes Van Zandt. Darkness hit the afternoon like a wet fish around the face, it crept up around quarter to six and tormented me. I perched up on the roof of the Pathumwan Princess hotel and filmed the cityscape by twilight, Battles on the iPod and a glass of white wine in my hand. When Josef came to meet me at eight o’clock that evening we made our way by Sky Train, basically an eccentric monorail, to Sui Cowboy, one of the big red light districts, where we met with a former TEFL teacher turned games inventor and writer called Matt Errey. Matt is from Australia and has been in Thailand for many years, we talk about time perception and the amount of space the Thai drivers leave between cars in comparison to places throughout the rest of the world. Apparently Thai people view time as something that comes and goes without the need for worry; when we die we reincarnate and live again, so what is the point of bothering about time wasted… this is not something I can particularly agree on, purely for the fact that I am obsessed with time, minutes and schedules. If something does not go according to plan then I can become very stressed, this is a perception of reality I need to alter, sadly though, my time in Thailand didn't make much of a difference regarding my outlook. I drank a bottle of white wine with my pasta and the conversation became more and more abstract; domain names, shades of green and ex-pats. Matt gave an example of how his EFL structured board game ‘Word Up’ works, the game is one of the most practical and innovative ideas for the classroom I have seen since becoming a TEFL teacher. We finished our wine and I moved down the center of the Cowboy district with Josef, stopping only to film an elephant in the middle of the street as it was manually masturbated by one of the boys leading it up and down the path. We went back to the same bar on the small strip and spoke with the ever so friendly bar maid while sipping whisky and coke.

LEDGE 43: December 04 2007: I woke up early and took a taxi straight to the central SIT/TSOL site in Bangkok. I arrived hung over, tired and disheveled. I met with the teaching staff and managed to get through the documentary purpose speel without any noticeable fuck ups. I immediately set up my tri-pod and filmed a class conducted by a trainee teacher from the States, her name was Sally and she did extremely well in her lesson on Crime. I then got permission to film a feedback session, a planning procedures class and my first three-way interview with a choice selection of teacher trainers from all across the globe. I managed to hook up with Matt the games inventor, who took me to the nearby park for an interview before we both returned to the SIT/TSOL base for my interview with Steve Tait, the course director. The interview went extremely well, Mr Tait’s answers were precise, natural and direct, something I am sure I will appreciate more intently once I get down to editing this behemoth collection of footage. Me and Matt then roped a few students together to play ‘Word Up’ and I filmed the consequences. This game needs to be in every EFL classroom that seriously wants to envelope the communicative method of learning English. I was still trying to recover from my jetlag and hangover, so after getting the Sky Train back to the hotel I crashed for a couple of hours before meeting up and coming American actor Peter Tuinstra and Josef for dinner. We sat and ate while I numbed my stress and anxiety with gin and tonic. Peter had previously been a TEFL teacher so I planned to interview him the next day in an attempt to explore his integration and career change. I left at around half past ten in the evening on my own and I chose to explore Nana Plaza. I found lots of Go-Go clubs and chatted to a couple of girls with big hands, unfortunately though, my inquisitiveness as to when and why so many Thai people choose to ‘alter’ their sex at such early ages didn't buy me many friends. I got the name of a place where there is supposed to be some live music and I danced the evening away at ‘Spice Club’ which was the best nightclub I visited during my stay in Bangkok. The music was fantastic, a hideous mixture of gunning hip-hop, soul, funk and break beats. The soundtrack fused to correlate with the bar maids clinking of bottles and tambourines while I drank a bucket of whisky and cola with some lovely chaps from Nairobi.

LEDGE 43: December 05 2007: I woke up drowsy at eight o’clock and went downstairs for breakfast, the hotel staff eying me suspiciously as I scooped fresh water melon onto my plate. I met with Peter a few moments later and we set up camera poolside on the eighth floor of the hotel. We chatted for fifteen minutes about his moving to Thailand and the transition from TEFL teacher to actor, his stories were most intriguing, particularly as he got to work on a Michael Madsen project. We finished the interview and I packed my bags, receiving a wink from the doorman as I slid into a pink taxi, I left Bangkok and made my way to Ao Nang near the South Western coastal town of Krabi.

The flight took just under two hours, but during that time I was fed twice and given two beers. Upon touchdown I collected my baggage to be immediately met by a short man with a huge beard. His name was Mal and he had come to pick me up. Mal was a great fellow, brutal to the point and damned if he was going to cut down on the swearing just because I was using his vehicle. He told me about working down the mines back home and about how he had spent fifteen years in Tasmania. He now lives with his Thai girlfriend near the town of Krabi where he plans to make a living driving people around and supporting his lady’s beauty and massage parlor. We arrived at TEFL Krabi near the beach of Ao Nang and the filming started instantaneously. Gary, the course director had set up seven interviews with various staff and students which all went very well. I then filmed an input session for the TEFL training course and shot some scenery from the roof of the building. The odd thing about this facility was that everybody was in their socks. I was used to seeing people taking their shoes off in Thailand when they entered temples and perhaps lesser buildings, but the fact that everybody was walking around in socks just seemed odd… I don’t even know why it should have, it was no stranger than seeing the same thing in a persons house but this just seemed really too twee and weird.
Gary gave me a ride to my hotel, which was closer to the Ao Nang beach. We passed several diving schools, restaurants and cafes while battling with my suitcase on the front of the bike as we rode. When we arrived at my lodgings I dropped my suitcase off and made arrangements to meet Gary later on in the evening for some food and a few beers. The room I got was cheap as it belonged to a friend of the TEFL school; I was however a little disappointed to find a view of the internal hall and stairwell when I opened my bedroom window. I made my way to the sea front and walked along the beach filming the long boats and sweeping green cliffs that blundered into the water as if stampeding from the desperate tourism collective busying the endless coastline. The sand was pure and the sea was warm, I was happy to be by the water but at the same time I felt intoxicated and trapped by the hustling of my fellow countrymen into booths, boutiques and fast food restaurants. I am told that Krabi is a developing tourist site, with the recent opening of Tesco not too far from the centre, local markets and stores are already being closed down, that is of course unless they are located on the beach and selling postcards. I love the idea of travel and exploring new countries and cultures, I also believe that there is a necessity for people to go on holiday and relax for a fortnight to get away from the stress of the city. I am still unsure why this bothers me; perhaps I should just take some Valium.
I overslept and kept Gary waiting for twenty minutes for our meeting that evening. He took me to a Thai restaurant near the beach where I accidentally ordered some spinach in diaphanous slime with a side dish of spring rolls. We drank beer and talked about what it is like to live in Krabi, I promised myself I would not disclose my negative feelings towards the place as they are completely unfounded, perhaps I was just ‘home’ sick. I slept well that night.

LEDGE 43: December 06 2007: I managed to chase down a tuk-tuk at half past seven in the morning and straddle my suitcase on the way back to the TEFL school where I met with the rest of the team half an hour later. I left my baggage and we rode to the local state school where the two TEFL trainees were to have some practice lessons. Each trainee was asked to teach for an hour on the subject of ‘Doctor’. The school was packed with children, most of whom seemed more concerned about their old and crooked stationary than learning English. The first trainee had a group of about thirty five twelve-year-old students who took a bit of interest in what the crazy white man in front of them was doing, the second group however were slightly older and they did not make the teachers job easy. The trainee seemed to be far too spooked by the prospect of teaching a class to be able to do a relatively good job, it was truly a horrible thing to watch; a middle aged man covered in sweat, throwing his arms about the place attempting to elicit the word ‘ache’ from a group of thoroughly non-plussed teens. I filmed in nevertheless and followed it through by interviewing the government employed English teacher, an extremely pretty Thai teacher called Mai. We spoke outside about her students and their attitudes towards learning English, her hair blowing in the wind and down the wires, muffling her answers and forcing me to retire.

I took a car back with Mal, the Australian fellow with the super beard. He spoke again about mining and he told me of his trip around the world with his mother. He visited every continent with his old girl, staying in hotels and seeing the sites, an obvious highlight in my new friends life. He confided that he would have to return to the Australian mines in a few months and leave his Thai lady friend behind for a while. I wished him all the best and left him at the airport.
The flight to Koh Samui lasted all of forty minutes, a short but sweet free lunch and a can of Singha beer served me well for my bus journey from the airport on the small island to TEFL World on Chaeweng beach. The driver dropped me off about two hundred metres away from the school and I managed to get lucky hitchhiking my way up the hill to the entrance, it was there that I met with Phil, the TEFL course director and general manager of the school. The layout of the place was different to anything I had seen so far, small classrooms grouped together in fabulous Thai décor amongst the leaves and green undergrowth. The cigarette packets in Thailand have pictures plastered all over them of people with diseases, amputations and disfigurements caused by cancer. This didn’t stop me smoking too much but it did convince me to start looking for a cigarette case so I didn’t have to look directly at how one of my habits has broken so many people across the globe. I talked to Phil about teaching methods, course programs and the Thai government before his wife very kindly drove me to my nearby hotel where she planned to meet me tomorrow morning to drive me back and film. I took a shower and made my way to Chaeweng beach, my hotel was a lot nicer than the one in Krabi, I had a panoramic view of the surrounding area and access to a communal swimming pool.
I have never been to Benidorm, but I can envisage it. Giant hotels surrounding a once clear beach and crystal waters, far too hot in the summer for the white skinned flabby slap heads who go there to scorch their beer bellies. If I have been completely mislead and need to get down to cases immediately in order to correct my skeptical opinion of the Valencian coastal town then please forgive me. Chaeweng beach is my interpretation of Benidorm (only with a few less sky scraping hotels… although there was a Russian restaurant that served pierogi of all things!) and I wish to write no more about it. The town next to the beach hosted a bustling night life which I didn’t really attempt to take advantage of, I could not even sit down for a slice of pizza without being menaced by snappy Thai fellows with designer suit catalogues. I retired for an early night to find that I was sharing a hotel floor with a burly brigade of southern English yob twats. This did not become apparent until about half past one in the morning when they came back to their hotel room screaming and shouting at each other. I recall the scaffolding of their dialogue as being:

A “I’m gonna just go right back into that club an fuck ‘im up”
B “Don’t do it bruv, it ain’t worth it, ‘ee probably didn’t mean it anyway”
A “why not? What do you fink? Do these trowsers look shit or not!?”
B “there fine mate”
C “Just leave ‘im alone you prick, we should go back there and just smack”

And it went on for about three quarters of an hour before they moved on. I did not hear them come back.

LEDGE 43: December 07 2007: I got up early and the man on reception made me some breakfast; a boiled egg and a few bread soldiers, grand it was. I walked down the main road by the hotel and bumped into a couple of teachers at the school I saw briefly yesterday, both from North England. By the time I got some fresh coffee and walked back to the hotel entrance, Phil’s wife was waiting for me. Within fifteen minutes I was at the school, drinking my second coffee of the day and filming the students raising the Thai flag as part of their daily proceedings. TEFL World is a unique place in that it is a private primary school for Thai children. To be able to operate it must work in cooperation with the ministry of education, which means the students must raise the national flag daily and have a certain amount of Thai language lessons. The classes that I filmed at the school were efficient and well organised, the students had respect for the teachers and seemed very eager to learn, even in front of the camera, and these were the youngest groups I have filmed yet. Unfortunately I was not at the school during the time they were running a TEFL training course, but all the teachers currently working at TEFL World had taken Phil’s course and they assured me it was hard work but good fun. Unlike the CELTA or SIT/TSOL this course runs for six weeks and gives the trainees a chance to work with students from very young ages to in company classes around the island. I came away from TEFL World at the end of the afternoon most pleased that I had visited but eager to get off of Koh Samui. I did however decide to give the island one more chance by heading to Choeng Mon for dinner. The place was almost empty of tourists but there were a few small bars open. I stopped at one place right on the front for a whisky and ended up speaking to the bar man. I practiced a bit of my Thai and he got some of his friends to come over and we ended up drinking together with the manager of the place, a most peculiar looking lady who convinced the bar man to ride me to town on his motorcycle after he clocked off and take me to a club. I specifically requested a place for Thai people only and I was rewarded by being taken to another live music event where I sampled more whisky cola buckets. I stumbled back home after midnight and clambered into bed after a cold shower, I had to be out of my room by ten o’clock the next day.

LEDGE 43: December 08 2007: I woke up and went straight downstairs for some food, after being denied at the reception desk I made my way along the main street to a German restaurant where I received an egg and onion fried mash with tomato and toast for forty Thai Baht. When I got back to my room the cleaners were already scurrying about, I asked them for five minutes and packed my stuff together, grabbing a map of the island and some complimentary mints on the way out. The lad at reception let me keep my bag at the hotel for a few hours so I walked in the midday heat in search of a cab that would take me to the old Muslim fish market in Hua Thanon. I got there three quarters of an hour later after haggling with a group of cab drivers, turning them down, walking another fifty feet, haggling with another group and paying more than the first lot. Hua Thanon was half way across the islands, but when I got there I realized it was worth the journey as my perception of the island began to change, I walked through an alley way and found myself surrounded by Thai people. With no other white person in sight I sat down next to an old man and drank a can of coke outside his shack. I tried to speak Thai to him but he ignored me. I continued through the market to the dock where a lone boat bumbled around on the waves like an angry hornet, ready to either attack or fall apart. I took some photos of the dry fish that lay out in the sun and filmed around the huge mosque in the centre of the village. After absorbing as much of the place as I could I walked up the coast to Lumai beach, probably the second biggest tourist hot spot on the island, I burnt in the sun, played in the sand, swam in the sea and then got a traditional Thai massage which was phenomenal. The girl who practiced her physical cunning told me that she massaged people by day on the beach and sold BBQ at the Thai boxing ring by night. I imagined her as some sort of split personality super villain, the chicken flinger that uses her body know-how to wreak havoc on the Thai Gulf.
I took a taxi back to my hotel just after four and picked up my baggage, the driver took me to Buddha Beach on the north of the island where I enjoyed a couple of cold beers in the afternoon sun at a bar below the huge giant golden Buddha statue that gives the beach its name. I bought a vegetable Thai curry, which was painful but too good not to eat, and although the ice cream that followed aided my tongue, it was too late for my guts and I suffered a few hours later at Bangkok airport. With that nastiness behind me, I made my way back to the Pathumwan Princess for one last night on the Thai tiles before returning to Poland. I got to my room and called my film associates who were, by that time, on their way to Bochnia from Birmingham, currently on the ferry across the English channel. Upon telling my companions I was still in Bangkok for one more night, I was convinced to go and see a ping-pong show. The temperature in Bangkok is fantastic around December, at least from my experience, and so I took it upon myself to make the most of my final night in the city. Dressed in a bath robe, flip flops, sun glasses and a baseball hat, I got in a taxi to PatPong, the biggest Red Light area in Bangkok, and went on an adventure. I was immediately pounced upon by various men with menus and drink prices, when I agreed to follow a brawny chap with a moustache I was taken through a series of markets and up a stairwell to an empty chair in a club full of all sorts. I had a whisky and coke and watched some ping-pong action, which was instantly followed by a talented young lass who opened bottles of beer with her nether regions. It was around this time I began to get hassled by various girls asking for tips, I pretended to be Polish for a long time, not speaking any English, but when they started asking me for five hundred Baht entry fee I got a bit angry. A girl with three fingers kept harassing me and I missed half of the banana show while bargaining my way out of having to take my wallet out of the bath robe pocket and show it to the boisterous doorman. I escaped only paying for my drink and I walked around the market place looking for interesting medallions. I found nothing that caught my eye and so I took a cab to Sui Cowboy after switching uniform at the hotel, this time to something a little more practical. I sat down at the same bar I had been at with Josef and befriended a cheeky camera man from Shanghai who was looking to score pills. He bought me a drink and I remained watching the hordes shuffle by as I practiced my Thai and spoke with the barmaid about life in Bangkok. She said she would take me shopping the next day to help me buy Christmas gifts for my family and so I finished my drinking at a dignified hour and was back at the hotel by half two.

LEDGE 43: December 09-10 2007: I woke up and helped myself to the breakfast buffet before meeting my shopping companion for the day. Mew (the barmaid) met me outside the biggest shopping centre in the capital and we trundled around, bargaining with sales staff, haggling with managers and hunting for psychedelic clocks. I was surprised to find that this particular Thai person sought company rather than money, it seemed that even when I offered to buy my latest peer a coffee my offer was denied. We parted company at two o’clock and I went back to the hotel room for a while, packing and signing Belle and Sebastian. Josef met me at half past and we went for dinner by the pool, we drank a few glasses of the best white wine on the menu and retired to the running track for an interview with a Bangkok backdrop for the DVD extras. Incognito and slightly tipsy, Josef talked me through his history with TEFL and the structure of his current web projects. Once complete, I retired to my room for a couple hours sleep in anticipation for my flight at half past midnight.

I awoke with half an hour to spare before I had to leave, I showered and went downstairs to check out where I was met by Josef and two random girls who I bid good day to but was never introduced to formally. One of them was wearing a Faith No More t-shirt, which I found curious. We all bundled into a taxi and hit the airport only to discover my flight was delayed by four hours, having the trusty connecting flight to Krakow from London though assured me a seat on an emergency flight and I took off on time with a prime position and a book full of movies to choose from; Werner Herzog's 'Rescue Dawn' and Wes Anderson's latest 'The Darjeeling Limited' made the tedious journey thoroughly enjoyable, which is more than I can say for the drastically poor 'Run Fat Boy Run' starring Simon Pegg, a film I endured for reasons unknown even to myself. To make matters even more interesting, I found that the old lady sitting sort of next to me was Polish. I had not come across any Poles on my journey so far and this particular lady spoke no English. Oh how we spoke of her homeland. She was seventy three years old and lived in Malborg, a small town near Gdansk. She told me that she had some family in Australia and that she goes over sometimes to see them, I helped her order her dinner and she went to sleep. I touched down at London Heathrow after fourteen hours of flying, grabbed my bags and jumped on the National Express to Gatwick where my connecting flight to Krakow was waiting. Three and a half hours later and I was back in the snow kissed rapture of Krakow, upon collecting my baggage I walked through the sliding doors to be greeted by a sign held up reading ‘Pill Dealer’ with a circled ‘E’ underneath it. My documentary journey had only just begun.

So there we were, Joel Carr, a mystical and experimental film maker with a newfound love for agriculture, Matthew Stocks, a final year film studies student turned playwright and Me, jetlagged, sore and eager, sitting in a restaurant at Krakow airport guzzling coffee and looking over Joel’s photographs from their night before. A swarm of semi-naked Germans compiled with bottles of Jaggermeister and obscenity filled the viewfinder. We then drove forty minutes in the opposite direction of Bochnia and so it took us an hour and a half to get back home, I slung my luggage in the wash and we headed into town for a slap up meal and a few pints at Kasztelania. Joined by my former colleague and good friend Alex, we jabbered of tales not to be told and spoke of stories that should remain silent until it was time for me to go to sleep. I left my trusty companions in the bar and clambered back home to get some planning done for the following day.

Ledge 44: December 11 2007: I was woken at half past five by the sound of something outside the house, I walked downstairs to find Joel and Matt strangling each other amongst a series of black and white photographs of them posing at what appeared to be an elegant photography studio. I sighed with acceptance as to what would be the prelude of things to come for the next twelve days and hung down my head. We woke up later than scheduled and cooked a hearty breakfast of boiled eggs and meat for the dirty rotten scoundrels. The train to Rzeszow left just after eleven o’clock and we were on it, the journey had begun across the land of Po and I was scared.

Having been to Rzeszow quite recently I was familiar with the city and I knew exactly what I wanted filmed. During my last visit I had concentrated more on buildings and landscape shots, this time I wanted close ups and intimacy, as well as a dynamic landscape shot of the massive vaginal monument that clings to the sky like a freshly squeezed lemon in the middle of the town. When the night drew close and the stars became clear, I went to buy myself a hairdryer, the one thing I had forgotten to pack, while Joel and Matt went hat shopping. So with Joel’s choice of headwear unnecessarily reflecting his mood; padded, ebullient and drastic, we went to meet our first subject, a teacher called Ralph. We had chosen to meet in the coffee house where I had first run into him, a quaint Costa Coffee on the edge of the market square, it was here that we met with two of his students, who also agreed to be filmed, and we drank latte. We relocated hurriedly to a language college near the Rynek where Ralph teaches once a week and we found ourselves a classroom. Matt assisted with the framing and sound, while Joel snapped some photos of the interviews taking place, this new angle was something that I have never been able to manifest, in that everything I had done on the project before this was solo. Having people around to document the documentation and capture things I may not have seen was an essential bonus. Once Ralph’s interview was over, his students took the lime light in a double team effort, the only problem with this however was that they both wanted to speak in English but their levels were completely different. Sebastian, the gentleman with the most acquired language skill, dominated the conversation while Jagoda, the graceful intermediate, became too afraid to answer and came across much shier than she really was. Upon finishing, Sebastian took Matt, Joel and Myself to an underground bar where we drank a celebratory pint and talked about our favourite stand up comedians. After filming some more of the town, we left our baggage at the hostel we were staying, a cheap as chips guesthouse on the Rynek that provided is with a three-bed room. Next door to the guest house on the left hand side was a pretty little Mexican joint where we stopped for some burritos and cocktails. Several Tequila Sunrises and a box of slim cigarettes later and we made our way to the same hangouts I trawled while flying solo in Rzeszow a few weeks ago and we met some locals who invited us back to their place for some more drinking. We declined but treated our new friends to a series of ‘Jagerbombs’ and magic tricks which came arm in arm with Donald Duck impressions, nana bashing and hat parades. We left with no shame at two o’clock and I photographed Joel and Matt as they ate kebabs.

LEDGE 44: December 12 2007: The journey to Lublin seemed to be the longest and most difficult in terms of time and train changes, but we managed to make it to the next city without any major hiccups. I use the word ‘major’ lightly, in that I mean none of us got our faces ripped off or our bottoms stuffed with Pleistocene dough. My shoes melted on the train radiator and Joel’s video camera broke though, which wasn’t so fab. When we got to Lublin we had been traveling for about six hours and we were all pretty spent. We took a taxi straight to the guesthouse and threw our stuff down before taking the same taxi across town to the school we were to film at. Skrivanek is a chain of school all over Poland that specialise in English teaching, training and translation, they should also be very proud of the fact that they were fantastic hosts and very pleasing to work with. We soon managed to capture interviews with the department director, a mature student and the director of studies, while feasting on Polish jaffa cakes and tea. Once done, me and Matt gathered some footage from around the office and outside the building while Joel tried to reassemble his broken down camera. We were finished after an hour and a half and so we all took to our beds for a disco nap before exploring our temporary environment. We walked down the main high street through the disappointingly bland Rynek and head to a Chinese restaurant where Matt claimed he would not drink for the rest of the evening and ordered banana juice, I ordered a double whisky and Joel a beer. By the time our food came though, the travel, tiredness and abuse kicked in and I felt more abused than a lizard at a tea party. I got the fever and went back to the hotel and feasted on pain killers and Fervex while my crew gallivanted around Lublin with Norwegian medical students. When they bowled through the door at three o’clock I had already been sleeping for a couple of hours and I knew what to expect. Their drunken shenanigans fused with my feverous delirium made for some interesting y-front footage and a smoking prohibition.

LEDGE 44: December 13 2007: Due to my traveling to Warsaw a couple of weeks previous I had most of the footage I needed, however after a morning of filming in Lublin with Matt, we all took to the trains and scavenged the capital city for more angles. Lots of hand held Dogme95 style shots of the Palace and ice skating rink later and we found ourselves bounding across the rink with skates ablaze. We all decided that we should perhaps take it easy and so we went to the multiplex and caught ‘Death at the Funeral’, a new balls out English comedy… not really my cup of tea, necrophiliac gay midgets on ketemine anyone? With my fever calming and my shakes succumbing we hit the old town and acquired some more footage before gorging on apple pie and hot chocolate and taking it early with Fargo beds and biscuits.

LEDGE 44: December 14 2007: Day Four and my peeked appearance started to get the better of me. We seeped into Torun early in the morning and made straight for the GiLA School for young, gifted students… which soon became the Torun school for the young, gifted and vulnerable in the editorial. We were once again graced with incredible hospitality and cooperation, receiving as required, interviews, footage from the classroom, a tour of the school and information on national projects. The footage shot in Torun was certainly the best so far, and the fact that the students and teachers alike were so helpful and eager to take part in the project was a superlative quality for which the whole team was grateful. Friday night in Torun was extremely dusty. With make up on and vodka intake up, we made the most of our first Friday night with style. Being the weekend meant that we had no school to visit in Gdansk. I had tried to make an appointment with some teachers at Bell school, who were originally interested in the idea but bailed a few days before the project really took heat. Instead we visited the north to shoot some footage at the shipyards and around the harbor. Gdansk is an influential place in Poland due to its historical reverence. Plus the fact that none of us had ever been there and we were eager to see what lurked in the mysterious city where big Lech W once took the helm of the country.

LEDGE 45: December 15 2007: We swooned, bruised and crooned ourselves into a taxi at some unearthly hour in the morning to get to Torun station in time for the fast train to Gdansk. Upon entering the taxi, the driver asked how much we had drunk this morning. We sped at lightning speed to the station and leapt aboard our train with no time to buy food and so the journey went slowly and painfully. We were lucky in that we managed to get an entire carriage to ourselves and so we sprawled out with shades on and sung the song of sleep. The train came to a sudden stop and we all bolted upright, it was dark outside and the name of the station was illuminated in neon. We jumped up harder than Panda Bear and grabbed our belongings fast, the taxi rank was at the opposite side of the road and so we had to head through an underpass to get to our bastard rip-off driver who charged Matt far too much to get to our hostel. The girl behind the desk looked sour and she showed us to our rooms, I called a top bunk length off to Matt and Joel underneath, the three of us connected but I was the odd one out. I chipped straight upstairs and showered while Joel bought a beer and wrote in his journal about what a naught boy he had been, Matt lingered and smoked cigarettes while buzzing the Internet for parties in our current location. An hour later and we were seated at a fine restaurant offering fresh fish from the Baltic and fit enough waitresses to fry it. We ordered plates of best and Joel got all oystered up, ready for the night. I had no alcohol as I was still fevered and rushed, the lattes I gulped helped me to breathe but my mood was most certainly not a ready one. After our three course, we prepared our frocks and with my mascara applied, we hit a local rock club. The atmosphere was most certainly dry and local but I buzzed it. We drunk small ones and big ones, dark ones and clear ones to make all the colours leak into one. Matt went on the retreat through boredom and Joel found a lady companion, her name was Bogna and Joel said he liked her very much indeed. I met a lady who's name I don't recall, she was a puncher and she liked the hard stuff. I left a couple of hours after midnight, with Joel's guns blazing and my door key in his pocket. When I returned to the hostel, the sour look on the reception ladies face was as if more lemons had been gnashed, she shouted at me coarsely and I recall thinking what a bad move it was to have Joel in charge of the key. Matt was still awake when I came in, I told him about the molestation I received in the gents latrine as a result of my androgynous appearance. We gigged and snored until Joel called me at six o'clock in the morning asking for the location of the hostel. I had no idea and told him I would see him in Denmark. When he arrived half an hour later, he rang the bell and woke the receptionist again, I did not see her face but I can imagine it would have been as if she had been mainlining squeezy Jif. Joel slumped down on his bed and began snoring so hard I thought he had ingested his own face. Matt punched him and turned him over as to ease the sound, it worked and I slept until ten. When I got up I travelled around the city by foot, filming the docks and the ship yards as I went, making sure that everything was all nice and captured. When lunch time came I got myself a fresh cod and chips and sat and watched the people moving outside. The air was bitter cold and my hands were frozen from filming but that cod trickled down a treat.

LEDGE 46: December 16 2007: The next filming appointment was to be in Poznan and that wasn't until Monday, therefore to cut the journey down slightly and to get us to a quiet little place where there could be no distraction, I had booked us into a hotel in a small town called Pila, which literally translates as 'Saw' - as in hacksaw or chainsaw. I met Joel and Matt outside the hostel in Gdansk and Joel told me of his love for the place, he said he had a wonderful evening out on the town and had seen more than most folk while he had been there. I was pleased for him but a little narked I was left on my own for the filming. We took a cab to the station and boarded the first of three slow trains with enough time for Joel and Matt to get themselves a McDonalds at Gdansk train station. The train took us to a small town where we made a change over to a double decker train, which took us to an even smaller town where we got a bus, and then we hopped on another slow train to our destination. We kicked open the doors at the station to a bleak little place in the dark. I had read that there were some canals in this town but that’s about all. The cabbie drove us to our hotel, giving us a guided tour in Polish on the way, noting the 'West End' restaurant, the local eatery where his daughter works. We checked into a three-bedroom place on the twenty-somethingth floor of the seemingly empty hotel and we all showered. Grabbing our cameras we walked to one of the canals and checked the menu of a boat restaurant which was way to pricey, it was Sunday night in Saw and there was nobody around, Heaven only knows what we sought but food was high on the agenda. We walked to 'West End' and ordered pizza and beer. We lurked in the standarness of the place and spoke of films. As a student of film, Matt has far superior knowledge of moving pictures with age and quality, whereas Joel is an avid Empire Online reader and is able to log and recall all sorts of information about movies of the last decade. I am a massive goon for Lynch and the Coen brothers, I love odd flicks like 'Tape' and 'Storytelling', I crave the sinister loveloss of Van Sant, have the deepest respect for Goddard and marvel at the brilliance of Winterberg and Von Trier but I am unable to recall quotes and tic-bits of information from years worth of film here and there and that often left me dangling in conversation. I would never study films, I use them as vehicles to transport me into other places and that is where I leave them. It is easy to get carried away and become transported time and time over again, but I am not one for doing this often. We found ourselves drinking half liters of Zywiec on a bowling lane, I played consistently while Matt won both games. My fever turned to a stern cough I could only tame with cigarette smoke. We had a final beer at the hotel bar and an early night followed, setting our alarms for half past seven as to get to Poznan on time.

LEDGE 45: December 17 2007: The journey was blunt and standard, the three portly gentlemen in our wagon seemed a little displeased at our choice to sit with them but that was fucking tough. Yes we were unclean and aching but we needed to travel. I had drunk a fair old bit of coffee with Joel at breakfast in the morning, leaving Matt to writhe in his bed. We had eaten yogurt, bread, eggs, salad and cereal by the time we left Pila but my stomach was aching again by the time we got to Poznan. We checked in at a students lodge just outside of the city centre and took a taxi straight to the small private school I had arranged to film at. When we arrived we were unsure as to whether or not we were in the right place, there were no signs, no buzzers, no students lurking or anything, just a residential street and a block of flats with a slide and a sand pit in the garden. I walked up to the second floor and called my contact, I could hear her phone ringing somewhere off the landing and she opened a door above my head. She greeted me warmly and took my arm before I informed her of my colleague’s presence down below. I signaled to them from the flat window and they came trudging in, I think my mascara had worn off by this point but I was still extremely ropey looking. Our subject, a lovely twenty something TEFL teacher who worked from her flat, was more than welcoming and provided us with chocolates and coffee while we explained all about the film. Her name was Lucina and she had been teaching English for a couple of years out of her home, mostly to children but also at in-company classes. She let us set up camera in her lounge, or 'learning area' and my battery died. I had forgotten to pack a spare so I relied on Matt's camera for the interview, how professional. Lucina had a great personality, very bubbly and most perfect for the documentary, the fact that she worked from home as well also gave a fantastic insight into the scope of just what TEFL could be. We left Lucina in peace and walked to the city centre where we found a Sphinx restaurant in the middle of the glorious architecture and sweet little ice sculptures. We had a plate of expensive crap each and shot some footage around the Rynek. By the time evening came we had bought a bottle of vodka and retired to the base to drink it in our pants. The group moral was pretty low considering the circumstances. The project was going well so far, we had shot tape loads of great footage and we had travelled three quarters of the way around the country. I think due to the combination of sleep lack and bad hygiene as well as heavy alcohol consumption, I was feeling particularly down in the dumps. So much so that I did something I may regret in the next few coming months. I made a pledge to myself that I would not smoke, drink booze or indulge in narcotics for a period of no shorter than twelve months, starting January the first 2008. The reason that this sounds so scary, as I write this, and as I contemplated the idea at the time, is because when I dedicate myself to such things, I usually take them seriously and the idea of not doing something almost becomes as intoxicating as the actual act of doing it. I planned to write myself a little manifesto the following morning and I sunk a few shots of vodka. We hit town and swung by several bars, holding hands and miming Icelandic to those that were pretty enough and we all woke up with booze juice on our pillows. It was time to head to Wroclaw.

LEDGE 45: December 18 2007: Rock Law! As it may appear to be pronounced is a super place. I have been there many times while living in Poland and I had visited the city with Joel Carr almost three years ago whilst on our university exchange trip to Katowice. Joel, Matt and Me arrived in the city centre at half past one and went straight to the Yes School of English, (which is of no relation to the Yes School in Rzeszow) a gloomy looking building three or four kilometers away from the Rynek. The reception we got form the place was a little shaky, we all looked like hell in our hoodies, carrying our tripods and slandering ourselves with our backs to the walls. The school director I had been in contact with was out of the office so we spoke with the director of studies who got us a couple of people to interview, most of whom were unsuspecting and incredibly blunt in their answers. I am very appreciative of the cooperation of every school that agreed to work with us on the project, but this was the most unprepared school we had visited so far and I for one was so tired by this point that I was ready to call it quits and go home half way through filming. We did however persevere and we managed to score a great interview with a gentleman called Mariusz, a student at the school. Mariusz was a most bizarre character, he spoke very slowly and refused to speak any Polish when he was utterly unsure about anything he was saying. During the interview he stopped me in my tracks and asked "Daniel, do you know how to say 'good morning' in Japanese?".

We took a taxi from the school and went to get some food at a vegetarian restaurant in the centre of town called Vega. The food was insaciable and very cheap. I vowed I would eat breakfast and lunch at Vega for the duration of our stay in Wroclaw. From there we moved to a bar I remember going to with Joel the last time we were here together. The name of the place escapes me but I remember it being very red and we had to go up a flight of stairs to get there. When we arrived on this occasion it had only just opened its doors and we were the first customers. I had myself a mulled wine while Joel got a beer and Matt went straight for the Mojito cocktails. After the first round I retired to the hostel to catch a couple of hours sleep, I went out like a light and did not stir for four hours until Matt and Joel jumped on me while I was unawares. The cigarette burn wound on my hand came undone in the rukus and I got blood on my pillow. The boys were a little drunk and had come back to get me and so we went straight back to the bar I had left them at. The bar was now crowded, obviously a popular place to go on a Tuesday night, and so we got ourselves a sort of half table near the bar. We drank multicoloured cocktails and moved onto a jazz club on the corner of the Rynek, a place that Joel and I had also been to on our trip three years ago... I think I preferred everything back then, when there was less worry, me and Joel were close like brothers and we both had more electricity. The three months I spent in Katowice with Joel were the best three months of my life and no matter how we try and recreate the past in the present, there is just no way that things will be the same. The motto for this documentary trip around Poland went 'Trow Down, Chin Up, Cam On' with various spin off variations. 'No Shame, No Doubt, No Guilt' was the tag line of the 3 monther and I still deem that as being the best, and possibly the most dangerous... Joel and Matt ended up having an argument about punk music; Matt seemed very edgy when speaking of Johnny Rotten and the atmosphere turned rather sour, making me want to leave. Wroclaw had the greatest Rynek Christmas tree I have seen on the trip so far so I went and stood under it for a time to reflect on our journey and to contemplate my actions upon our return to Bochnia. I had already vowed I would give up alcohol, cigarettes and narcotics, I also added caffeine and fish to the list.

LEDGE 45: December 19 2007: One of our team had athletes foot and our bedroom at the Centrum Hostel absolutely stunk. When I woke up at nine, I readied myself and left alone to get some footage of the city, only after having breakfast at Vega of course. I went back to the hostel at two o'clock to find my team still sleeping, I arranged to meet Joel in a couple of hours to go and film at Heather school as Matt was unable to move. I got some coffee at empik and scripted new ideas for my website in January. When I met Joel he was rearing to go, we took our gear to the school and met with the directors, a Polish lady called Anna and her English husband, Aemonn. They were both very hospitable and helpful, providing us with a joint interview with them both and a couple of interviews with their students, as well as footage from two of their classes. Unfortunately the classes they taught seemed to be based solely around conversation practice on the subject of Christmas. When we finished a few hours later, me and Joel went for a beer to discuss the direction of the documentary. It was great to be working with a team, due to the amount of effort I had put into organising the project, the interviews, the travel and the accommodation, it was sometimes difficult for me to keep my eye on the prize and concentrate solely on the film, which is what I really wanted to be doing. We went back to the hostel to drop our things and Matt was ready to go out. We decided to go for a meal at a Mexican restaurant on the Rynek where we once again met with Anna and Aemonn. We had a lovely chat with them about our journey and what it was like to live in Wroclaw, we bid them adure and retired back to the hostel for an early(ish) night.

LEDGE 45: December 20 2007: The train to Opole was an early one; my correspondence with the director of the school we were to be visiting had been most enthusiastic so I was anticipating a good days filming. The fast train that took us their though was delayed and I found myself in a carriage with the strangest of characters. He was wearing a leather jacket, had slicked back blonde hair and blood all over the postaxial finger of his right hand. When I opened the door to the wagon he told me there was no free space, when there clearly was, and when I sat down he said that I smelt nice and asked me if I 'fucked like a king'. He asked me in Polish of course and although I am a confident speaker of the language, it took me a while to recognise what he said as it was in the direct presence of the elderly couple sitting opposite and the teenage girl next to me, but before I had even comprehended an answer I had already said 'I do what I can' and he left it at that. Soon after the train departed the guy got up and slammed the door and we never saw him again, the awkward tension the man left in the carriage caused me to form an immediate bond with the elderly couple, the lady telling me how much she hates swearing and the man turning down my proposal of sharing headphones while I bobbed along to 'Strawberry Jam', the newest offering from the psycho-clipped-ultra-whipped Animal Collective.
Opole is smack bang in between Wroclaw and Katowice, I found that it resembled the gloom and hollowness of Katowice but took the edge off slightly with a pleasant Rynek and canal, more to the tune of its Westerly neighbor. The taxi man took us to our guest house, through a series of metal workshops and battled train tracks to a twenty four zloty a night absolute shambles of a building we were to call home for the next few hours. We took our gear to the city centre and made our way to Optima school, where the director, Tomasz, was more than pleased to meet us and show us around. He was very eager to share stories and tell us about his past and the founding of the school, he was also equally eager to burst in on his teachers lessons and send us into various lectures and film, much to the horror and dismay of his employees and their students. At this point we were working with only one camera as Matt's batteries were flat, this meant a lot more concentration on sound and stills, which made for an interesting change. We conducted eight interviews in total and I managed to shoot seven classes over a period of seven straight hours with a break for lunch and half an hour to get some footage from the city centre. This was the last school of the project so far and so by the time we were done we had a chance to celebrate. We munched some food and slurped a few drinks in a local bar called Rynek2, toasting to the project and reflecting on our experiences in traveling and filming around the country. Christmas was due and by this point I was too tired to even toast.

LEDGE 46: December 22 2007: So after leaving Opole and stopping for the night in Katowice to visit some old friends, the three of us made it back to Bochnia in time for Christmas. With all our tapes in tact and everything having gone as planned, aside from the occasional mishap and health epidemic, we managed to get some carp and spend a few more days lulling in each others company before the New Year.

So that brings us up to date with the documentary project so far, its roundish, boyish and charming fragments summarised in a few pages. The footage has been watched and digitized and is lurking digitally in my black hard drive, waiting for me to chop it into something fabulous.

Audio Art 2007

2007-11-26T12:48:00.000+01:00

Saturday 25th November 2007.

I pay the 20zl entrance fee and a somewhat comforting wave washes over me. Knowing that the majority of the audience are, like me, willing to part with their hard earned Zlotys to experience various sound art exhibits and experiments gives me great hopes for the evening. D'ArS Ensemble's 'Accion Sonora', an improvisational performance combining sax and electronics is a truly remarkable start. I sit and watch with glee as the rather large and balding electronics conductor waves his palms over a series of wires and plastic tubes, dancing to the twisted jive of his sax accompaniment. The frivolous and incubated performance lasts only for twenty minutes, and is followed by an hour of whirring and buzzing from sound artists across the globe. The tired, bloated and disappointing sounds they manage to produce however are nothing original and it is not until the final performance that the smile returns to my chops.

Olga Magiers and Martin Klapper from Copenhagen take to the stage and conduct a truly mind blowing performance comprising of improvised piano, toys and electrics. Their jazzy and sinister classical manipulations astound me. It seems that in order to accomplish something original, baked and unspoiled, it is time to revert back to a generation past and forget the modern traits of Logic Pro and Reaktor. Blowing a plastic horn through a crackly radio and looping the feedback through an old synthesizer to the poisoned pitch of a drunken piano proves far more exiting than haggard soundscapes of fuzz and samples of slamming doors in a dark room. I leave after forty minutes and get myself a falafal.

Sunday 26th November 2007.

The large pair of headphones I wear on my head as I patrol Krakow amplify the silent sounds of the city enormously. The bleeping, blurring and buzzing I pick up from the security gates of shops, cash machines and tram lines is fascinating. The one hour walk has been composed by Christina Kubisch and it guides me through an entirely new dimension of the city previously non-existent. The experience is free and like no other I have ever had. The map provides instructions such as 'Enter BPH Bank and listen to the internal and other screens', 'Stand still in front of the Hotel and listen to the Wi-Fi systems' and 'Take a tram and have an electromagnetic ride'. The electronic fields that the headphones pick up allow for an insight into an other wise invisible city, which is more unique and dynamic than I ever could have imagined it to be.

'ELECTRICAL WALKS'

The magnetic headphones with their built-in coils respond to electrical fields in the environment. At first I tried to filter the soft hum of the electrical wires out of the headphones. Then, in 2003, the constant increase and spread of "unwanted" electrically-produced sounds triggered a new cycle of works: Electrical Walks. With special, sensitive headphones, the acoustic perceptibility of aboveground and underground electrical currents is thereby not suppressed, but rather amplified.

The palette of these noises, their timbre and volume vary from site to site and from country to country. They have one thing in common: they are ubiquitous, even where one would not expect them. Light systems, transformers, anti-theft security devices, surveillance cameras, cell phones, computers, elevators, streetcar cables, antennae, navigation systmes, automated teller machines, neon advertising, electric devices, etc. create electrical fields that are as if hidden under cloaks of invisibility, but of incredible presence.

ELECTRICAL WALKS is an invitation to a very special kind of stroll in cities (or elsewhere) With a special magnetic headphone and a map of the environs, upon which the possible routes and especially interesting electrical fields are marked, the visitor can set off on his own or in a group. The perception of everyday reality changes when one listens to the electrical fields; what is accustomed appears in a different context. Nothing looks the way it sounds. And nothing sounds the way it looks.' - Christina Kubisch
http://www.muzykacentrum.krakow.pl/

Power Trip

2007-11-15T12:36:00.000+01:00

This is by far one of the most difficult, abstract and enjoyable projects I have ever undertaken. The following written documentation is a crude catalogue from a week of filming and production that has taken me from far South Eastern Poland to the capital of Slovakian Republic via Warsaw.

Rzeszow

This city is by no standard the most desirable location for ‘Native English’ speakers (or so I had assumed), and so I was more than surprised to find a satisfied, contempt and cooperative team of staff in one of the oldest and largest language schools in the city. I checked into a budget hotel I found on the Rynek for twenty six zloty (about five pounds) a night and made my way to the YES School of English, which is located just off of the central high street. I was immediately welcomed by the Polish and English staff, who provided me with a program of lessons and interviews I would be able to shoot during my stay. After three solid interviews, filming a teenage intermediate group and devouring a cold egg sandwich, I made my way to the city centre and experienced what Rzeszow has to offer in the way of evening entertainment. It was not long before I came across a group of students in a local bar who were more than happy to express their feelings on film towards the city, as well as exposing their true, and rather expletive, emotions towards the governing Kaczynski duo.

Day two in Rzeszow was also most productive, after meeting with another native English speaker by mistake in a coffee bar I made my way back to the school where I interviewed a thoroughly interesting chap from Brighton who had found his way, almost by fluke, to this almost unnoticed Polish city. I then captured an EFL class with a group of army officers, then with a group of ten-year-old children after mingling with the staff and harassing everybody I met with my camera. It seems that whatever your position, whether it be director of studies, rookie teacher or documentary maker passing through, staff room etiquette is the same everywhere; as long as you speak to everybody at least once a day, you can feel comfortable with your social status…

Breech

I am still working one day a week at a private school in Bochnia and so there was reasoning behind my returning to Bochnia for one day, other than being utterly knackered. The cheapness of my Rzeszow hostel was reflected in the state of the bathrooms and bed sheets. I suppose I managed three or four hours sleep in the place, needless to say the one day I spent back at home was sorely needed.

Capital (Big and Grey)

Four hours on the train is all it took from my blustery hometown to the misty city of Warsaw. Upon arriving I made my way immediately to the Lingwista School HQ where I met with a most humble gent for an extensive interview before I checked into the Oki Doki hostel in the centre of the city. I was given a half an hour margin between checking in and interviewing the next teacher, enough time to cram a fistful of aspirin into my chops and munch on a cheese roll. The second interview at Lingwista also went very well, as did my meeting with the Director of Studies, who drove me to another branch of the school and gave me permission to interview her and then to film her class. She even drove me back to the hostel where I indulged in casual conversation and beer quaffing with three astounding Brits and a lady from Canada. Sleep on night one at the Oki Doki was sporadic.

I am currently learning how to speak Thai. Ipods are fascinating things in that music seems to have been pushed to one side, at least in my playlists, to make room for audio learning and debate programmes. During this trip however, I rekindled my love for combining stroll and song. While walking around Warsaw on my second day I filmed all over the city to the sounds of Death From Above 1979 and Tom Mcrae, which both made far more than ample companions as my new boots carved pretty new shapes into my feet. As daylight turned I made my way back to Lingwista where I met with yet another bubbly soul; I shot my first interview in Polish and then filmed her elementary adults class, which looked most dynamic on screen. With my ticket purchased for Bratislava the next day and my bag full of footage I made my way back to the hostel to indulge in social delicacy. Travelling the world, in a modern science, is a strange thing, or so I gather from the people I have met thus far. It seems common to spend just two days in one place at a time before moving on elsewhere and doing the same thing over again. I do not have a clue what this is.

The latest addition to the dorm I stayed in was a fellow from Belgium who I would pitch at being the same age as myself. We instantly began talking about Soulwax and I received an invitation to a private Polish party across the other side of town. We took a tram into the suburbs and met with his friends who shared their vodka with unholy pace. Two bottles later and we all darted back into town and swung by Bar Hotel and then to the Lemon Club. Daft conversation, swappings of email and sickly coloured cocktails glued the festivities together like animal mash to the spine of a good news Bible. I woke up with a start, bid my Flemish friend adjure and made my way to the station.

Capital (Small and White)

Worn and full of glee with my wallet full of pieces of paper inked with address and telephone numbers, I got to the station with twenty minutes to spare. My train took me southwest through Katowice and then the Czech Republic where I had to switch trains. It was there I met my only friend in the world from Kansas; we got the same train to Bratislava and made it to our Hostel by nine p.m. Upon throwing my bag down and getting acquainted with the receptionist, my new Kansasian chum and I made our way to a lively sports bar for some cheap food; after sampling a pint or two of Slovak beer we decided to have a brief stroll through the city. Bratislava is a very small place, and so when we came across a rowdy bunch of fat English thugs shouting and starting fights with the locals, my impression of the city did lessen. There should be some sort of restriction as to who should be allowed to travel to beautiful places such as this, surely. The clumsy ranting of these English morons ruffled my feathers in such away I almost felt like heading straight back to the hostel and avoiding the city centre at night entirely. I have nothing against taking advantage of cheap European beer and gloriously poised city streets, but surely an element of respect needs to be taken into account. It is not difficult to assume a factor of admiration for foreign culture and tradition, so getting mind mental drunk and brawling, abusing and fighting the locals should just not be on the cards. Damn you filthy brutes to hell, may your skin burn and blister while you writhe on your beer bellies in the ashes of my scorn for disrespect and racism.

We made our way instead to a bar just outside of the city centre where we met a Slovakian girl and a Polish girl who were drinking together. We quickly became chums and after another couple of drinks we paraded through the streets, speaking in Slovakian, Polish and English about how lucky we are to live in a time where the opportunity to meet and converse with people from all walks of life has been made so easy by cheap travel and easy-pass border control. And so we did drift from club to club, singing songs and cracking wise ones. The girls invited us to see 50 Cent in a couple of days. The gun toting rapper was playing in Bratislava as part of his European tour; it would have indeed been a sight to see. I got back to the hostel around five a.m. and I slept a few hours before rising and trailing the city for footage. The snow did fall in Bratislava, coating the pristine and glamorously twee city centre with a glistening white topping. I shot about an hour of footage and made my way back to the hostel in the evening where I met a chap from Brazil who was touring Europe. He was only in Bratislava for one night and so I invited him for some traditional Slovakian food at a restaurant in the town. We ate rice and vegetables, speaking about Sao Paulo and the English language, Brazil sounds like a fascinating place. After finishing our meal I turned down the offer of beer as my guts where still recovering and I made my way to the cinema across the other side of the Danube where I caught a late night showing of the latest Stephen King adaptation ‘1408’. It unsettled me. After walking for two hours in search of a school that is not even located in the capital, I found myself taking a bus once again across the Danube to the Bratislava School of Law. The school specialises in teaching English to students of Law and Mass Media, and the classes I shot and teachers I interviewed proved fascinating. Slovakian people seem to be most kind and open, which contrasted slightly with my opinion that they would be similar to the majority of Poles. Upon filming a presentation in the Mass Media English class, I received an invitation from a young Slovakian lady to join her and some friends for some traditional food at a bar in the centre after I finished filming for the day. I accepted the offer and soon found myself dining on ‘Haluszki’ with a most interesting group of lasses from all over the country. We spoke most of the time in English as the differences in Polish and Slovakian are more common than I might like to believe. My new chums invited me to stay at their flat as they had a spare room and so after gathering my belongings from the hostel I took a bus across town and found myself drinking mulled wine, smoking cigarettes and discussing Pete Doherty with five fine examples of the Slovakian Republic. We drank till midnight and listened to The Fugs, My Bloody Valentine and The Moulettes before falling deep into the arms of slumber.

I awoke at half past six and caught a bus back into the centre with one of my new companions, I made my way to Axxent school after grabbing a coffee and a fresh salad baguette and shot my first double interview. The director of studies and the school director along with her pet hound made fantastic subject matter and were a real pleasure to work with. It was a pity the second school I visited in the afternoon were in fact not ready for my arrival and could provide me with only one chetny teacher for the documentary. I was instead taken to dinner with the DOS, a lovely Slovakian lady who, although deemed me a weirdo for not eating meat, took me to a wonderful Indian vegetarian restaurant for something scrumptious. She apologised profusely for the mix up with the teachers and wished me luck as I left for the train station.

Shoulder Deep Within the Borderline

The journey back to Bochnia took twelve hours. I had to travel all over Slovakia and change trains at Kosice where I met a young Ukrainian girl with a hearing aid. We got a carriage together and although she was unable to speak English or Polish, and I unable to speak Ukrainian or German (her second language), we spoke for an hour. God knows what about. We sprawled and slept on the lengthy cushioned seats until we got to the Slovakian/Polish border. I have never seen such an unnecessarily shocking display of authority upon crossing the borderline. That poor Ukrainian girl was forced to empty everything out of her luggage, have the guards frisk her and go through her wallet, they asked her all sorts of mad questions which I had to translate to her with the little Ukrainian I could muster and then they took her into the next carriage where they grilled her, asked her to remove her jumper and then let her hair loose to match her passport photo… all this because she had no return ticket to Kiev. She spoke no Polish and was unable to respond to the power tripping guards who swore at her and grunted in her face when she did not understand. After half an hour of interrogation they decided she was allowed to cross and we continued our journey. She locked our carriage door and I went to sleep, setting my alarm for half past four in the morning. When the time came, I got my coat on and was challenged with the task of waking my new Ukrainian friend. She was sleeping on the chair opposite me and did not respond to my shouting her name. Instead I had to strategically nudge her arm until she woke, this was most awkward and I think I scared the Hell out of her but she had asked me to wake her as to not leave her sleeping alone in an open carriage… fair. I told her one-day I would make a short film about our journey and I left.

Diced

I got home at five twelve a.m. and slept until it was time to get up and teach. I made my way to work and taught for five and a half hours straight with no break. It was all a bit of a blur. Next week I am flying to Thailand. There are plenty of press releases out and about now as to my plans, courtesy of TEFL.net

Death Rides The Highway

2007-11-11T12:35:00.000+01:00

Thank you for emails regarding last week’s banter with Cactus. Majority rules the moral of the story is never trust anyone…

…I comprehended this advice while on my way to England this weekend for a family engagement. The chance to reflect on my thoughts was then fattened after I missed my flight back to Poland on Sunday after a nasty car crash on the M25 caused me to be four minutes late for check in. “There is no one that can help you now”, the overly pronounced and proud words from the stretched lass at the help desk still echo internally.

I woke up this morning dishevelled and wry, the pizza boxes from last nights random junk food binge laid scattered and torn on the work surface and the bag of milk in the fridge smelled like butter beans. The next few weeks are going to be intense and I will need to tidy up both my act and my kitchen if they are to go well. I took the mini bus into Krakow after corresponding with various language schools and affiliates in Slovakia, my next port of call across the border, and met with my subject for the day. It is not often that one meets a TEFL teacher of such great experience and practice who finds Krakow to be an uncomfortable place to work, so I suppose my new companion is an exception. The interview went more than swimmingly as we sat on the Planty around the back of the market square surrounded by brown and burgundy leaves. I was reminded as to the reasons I became so excited with TEFL in the first place and as to just how knowledgeable and spruce the industry can make a person, should they chose to take full advantage of their position that is. The film project has really started to grip me, and interviews such as today's truly punctuate my reasoning behind working on this project.

No Name

2007-11-04T12:32:00.000+01:00

I was recently publish on Guardian sponsored Cactus TEFL.com I wrote an article for the website advising people on life as a TEFL teacher in Poland only they refuse to put my name on it! The following email excerpts are my only proof that I even wrote the damn thing.
To me: ‘I don't know how much you know about Cactus TEFL, but we are a TEFL course admissions and advisory service. We get a lot of enquiries from people who are new to EFL and want information on teaching in specific countries. I am putting together 'country profiles' that will feature on the website, and would really like one for Poland. I have attached one that I wrote based on my experiences in Italy so that you can have a look.’
From me: ‘Your project sounds very interesting and I would have no problem writing a profile for your website. I will try and get it done today but its a bit manic at the moment so it might not be ready until Monday or Tuesday, is that okay?’

To me: ‘Thanks so much for this, it's perfect! I really appreciate it.’
From me: ‘The article looks good! Would there be any chance I could get my name on there somewhere?’

To me: ‘I can certainly understand why you would want a mention on the profile and feel a little awkward about saying no, but we discussed mentioning contributors when we began this project and decided that for several reasons it wasn’t really viable. Perhaps I should have made this clear when you agreed to write something for us. .apologies for this.’

The article can be found here: http://www.cactustefl.com/jobs/TEFL/poland_info.php

Please email me with your interpretations as to what you think the moral behind this story is: info@danielemmerson.com

Fling with a Republic and the Discomfort of Travel

2007-10-21T12:16:00.000+02:00

The pending chance of sponsorship for the documentary project on TEFL teaching has got me all flummoxed and curious. Since leaving Future Planet I have not had to deal with the tribulations of film sponsorship without the backing and support of my experienced colleagues. The drafting of contracts, the intricate detail and the eagerness to get started are driving me to work and spend hard on my new project, so much so that for the past fortnight, I have been unable to spend much time away from my video camera and edit studio.

It is not very often that friends and relatives are able to take the time from work and come and visit the salty baron lands of Bochnia, the bustling jerk of Krakow seems to have much greater appeal, and so when three old chums from Southend came to visit this week, I was more than disappointed to only be able to spend one evening with them in the twilight of the city. So fractured was I from a week of darting back and forth from place to place, shooting interviews, gallivanting around classrooms and pursuing new subject matter that I decided the weekend should serve only as an adventure and I should free myself from the clutches of the film project and the now monotonous traits of Bochnia.

I awoke on Saturday morning at six a.m. with a slight hangover and a bad idea. Without paying much attention to the temperature or my agenda, I packed a bag and threw some water on my face while ranting about my desperation to cross the Polish border for the weekend. My weary companion, still awash in the bliss of sleep, followed me graciously to the kitchen and joined me for a cup of tea. To say that I had thought my plans through logically would be a down right lie, but Joanna seemed to see some logic behind my rambling and agreed to join me on an escapade to Krakow in an attempt to find a bus that may take us to a foreign destination. It wasn’t until we opened the door that we realised Jack Frost had been in the night and had left more than his standard October snail trial. The ground was covered in glistening white mounds of snow, diaphanous and smooth like large piles of cotton wool. We walked down to the city centre and jumped on a minibus to Krakow, as usual our transport was rammed with people and we were forced to stand in our winter clothes and with our pack backs stapled to our torsos, this made it almost impossible to eat the two drozdzowkas we had bought for breakfast and so the one hour journey proved an immediate challenge to our agenda. I was however able to manoeuvre my body in such a way that I could squirm round and plug myself into my iPod as to not have to listen to the tired and bloated sounds of RMF FM which boomed at full volume around the minibus. I drowned the sounds of Polish election campaigning and sloppy remixes of solo Freddy Mercury songs with the latest ‘65DaysOfStatic’ album, which proved a dazzling platform to my inner monologue of complaint regarding just how troublesome it is to travel from this supposed commuter town to the nearest city.

We arrived in Krakow dishevelled and hungry, we munched on our breakfast and grabbed take away lattes from the Dworzec PKS café. Joanna spotted a bus leaving from Krakow in twenty minutes, which was bound for a small town on the south central Polish border. I have been to Cieszyn before and have revelled at the ease of crossing the border with no queuing or stupid questions, the transformation of Polish Cieszyn to Czech Cieszyn is an amazing thing to experience and worth the journey alone, and so with a little persuasion on my part, we decided to board the bus and take the three hour trek to the border.

The road works outside of Krakow are indeed dire at the present moment, and crossing the bridge to get over the Wisła is a gruelling task. The bus jerked and pulled back and forth for thirty minutes before we even left the city boundary, and once again I must confess that if it were not for the frivolous audio pleasure of my iPod, I would have become increasingly bitter with frustration. This time however, we were able to sit for the duration of our journey, taking pity on those that had to stand, but appreciating their patience. The sporadic and spicy sounds of ‘Love is Simple’, the new album by Akron/Family made the journey glide by peacefully, the gorgeous and confused genre bending of their music combined with the scenic snow covered views of the passing mountains, reminded the twisted cynic in me that not every journey comprises of sweating, heavy, air tight vertical abstractions through grazing traffic.

We arrived in Cieszyn exactly four and a half hours after departing the house in Bochnia. Although we had been sitting down for the last three hours, we both felt extremely tired and ready to find a warm place to sit and drink more coffee. The typical picturesque Rynek on the Polish side of the border was almost empty, which made for a nice photo opportunity and a banana break. We circled the market square hand in hand, marvelling at the brave gent sitting lonesome on a bench in the corner with a fistful of crumbs and a map full of hungry pigeons. The city was indeed so quiet that it came as a surprise to find that the Tourist Information booth was still, a nimble little Polish lady handed us a free map of the area and gave us directions to the train station on the Czech side of the border. She told us that Prague is beautiful by night and if we want to make the most of our journey into the country we should make our way to the capital.

I am an awkward man. For some reason I find it difficult to accept that the capital of a country is the most worth while place to be, this may be due to my jilted attitude towards London, it may be due to my several experiences abroad, or it may be due to the pretentious artist in me that just wants to do everything differently from everybody else. Nevertheless, baring the old ladies advice in mind we took to a small café on the road to the border, the eerie rhythmic keyboard noises gracefully protruding from the stereo had an immediate impact on us both and we agreed that we should proceed to grab a table. We found ourselves sitting on a pair of exceedingly comfortable armchairs at a mahogany table with the sun pouring through the large windows at the front, the coffee tasted good and the slender slim cigarettes we smoked made us feel like we were trapped in a Leonard Cohen song. We discussed our options, either way we were going to Czech but whether we should hit the capital or try something different was still a decision to be made. Upon leaving the café, we walked straight to the border, which is located on a bridge just off of the central avenue of the small city. We crossed with no problems and in a matter of seconds we noticed the dramatic change in scenery, the shops were more rustic and slight, the people were speaking a new foreign tongue and the streets even smelled different. This was mostly due to the sudden increase in Vietnamese restaurants about the place, filling the air with the juicy smell of fried vegetables and noodle dishes.

We walked the streets and located the Rynek, if anything the Czech side of the border was quieter than the Polish side, the cobbled streets and colourful residential buildings and clothes shops gave off an appealing and almost clay like feel, as if they had been built simply for the purpose of being. All the shops and market stalls were closed and so we decided that although we had completed our mission and crossed the border, we were not far enough into the country. We traced the rough guide we received from the small Polish lady at the TI and found ourselves at a rather sober looking Dworzec. The ladies at the ticket office were remarkably helpful and for some reason I was able to understand more of their language than Joanna. They informed me of a city about fifty kilometres from here that was well worth seeing. We got ourselves a pair of tickets and danced around the one swaying drunkard, spinning on the floor in a purple anorak. The train arrived soon afterwards and we were able to clamber aboard out of the bitter cold and take refuge next to an elderly Czech couple who looked on in curiosity as I pulled the Jon Snow biography ‘Shooting History’ out of my bag. Joanna plugged herself into the iPod and the train took us part of the way on our journey to Ostrawa, the third largest city in the country.

To get there we would have to change trains again at Ostrava-Kuncice and board the waiting train straight to the city. The lady checking the tickets, like all of the Czech people we had met so far, told us that she spoke Polish and then proceeded to speak to us in her native tongue, the languages are indeed similar but without a little preparation and advanced warning, it can be awkward. We managed to gather from the inspector that our train would be waiting on the platform as soon as we arrived at the next station and we would have to jump on it as fast as possible! This was made easier by her opening the door and almost shoving us out onto the platform at the appropriate time and the second train carried us the additional two stations to Ostrava hl.n. Upon arrival we journeyed straight to the city centre, passing through the airport-like train station and travelling the two-kilometre stretch to the Rynek. When we finally got there, I found myself to be too hungry to be taken back by the abundance of modern buildings splintered around the fabulous surrounding Czech architecture. Instead we headed to a large ‘nighthawk’ style restaurant tucked away in the corner of the Rynek. We were greeted by a bubbly bouncing Czech lady in a red, white and black frock, she spoke little Polish or English but made us feel extremely welcome, granting us a free pint each with our supremely crafted pizza. After wolfing down forty inches of stuffed crust delight, we asked the waitress if she could point us in the direction of the nearest hotel or hostel. She told us, or at least I think she told us, it would be tricky to find somewhere and we would have to take a tram to get anywhere suitable. We then proceeded to pay our bill and walk another two kilometres in the wrong direction after getting some dodgy instructions from a receptionist at the Imperial Hotel who tried to charge us one hundred and seventy Euros for a night. Our stroll through the city's industrial estate proved uneventful and frightening, when we finally came across a struck old gent who could point us in the right direction, it was gone eight o’clock and I was ready for bed. Upon finding a suitable hotel however, my mood did so rapidly change from bloated and pragmatic sleep face to primitive prancing party gazelle.

We found the Trio Hotel situated in the middle of a self proclaimed ‘party district’, smitten in every direction with over sixty pubs and nightclubs. We checked into our hotel and took a disco nap before chatting to the reception staff about the city. A gent in his early twenties with a tribal tattoo all up his forearm and a head full of spiked black hair, told us that this was the city all the Czech people from Prague come to to get away from the tourists and the staggering inflation of alcohol. He said that it was rare to find a Brit in these waters and that I should be pleased to be here, for this is one of the few untapped party resources of the Czech Republic. I paid the hotel bill of thirty seven pounds and went back to our giant apartment suite to locate Joanna. She was watching Czech TV on the couch and ready to hit the town.

We visited several bars up and down the strip, we danced to Flogging Molly in an Irish bar, unwound to smooth jazz at the Acid Club and jumped about like infants to Drum N Bass at The Sherlock Holmes Pub. The drink correlated with the modest price of our hotel room, the maximum we paid for a gin and tonic was one pound ten pence, while the Staropramen and Radagast flowed at way under a pound a pint. The most shocking factor of our radiant and financially comforting spree was that we heard no English or Polish outside of our own conversations. This seemed to be utterly bizarre when reflecting on the hordes of English that swarm to Krakow for cheap stag weekends and the like. How long will it be before Ostrava also becomes a playground hotspot for drunken revelry at the hands of the Brits and the Poles alike? Only time will tell.

In the mean time we managed to do the party district justice, we hit several bars and clubs and we managed a little dancy dancy to top it all off. Although our hotel was cheap, it was in the centre of the action and we were unfortunately reminded of our location throughout the duration of the night. We managed to get our heads down at some point in the small hours, and our slumber was only disturbed at around eight o’clock by my mobile alarm after we agreed to get up early and take some photos of the city as evidence before leaving for Poland by train. We checked out and circled the city once again armed only with a digital camera, the walk back to the train station proved a pleasure and the eleven pound Euro City ticket back to Poland proved a sexy reminder as to just how little money our random excavation had cost us. The train took us straight to Katowice where we changed for Krakow and found ourselves back on the Bochnia bus in no time. With buckets of minutes to spare, Joanna placed her vote in the town centre before we headed back home for some cous cous and onions.

By the time we got back it was around half past seven and we were both a little on the tired side. The journey was a beautiful statement as to just how easy it is to travel around Europe and the incredible adventures that the Central Eastern faction has to offer. As I write this, the ballots are being counted for the Polish election and I can’t help but wonder what kind of a difference the (new) government will bring to this fascinating continent…

Fear The Subject

2007-10-14T12:14:00.000+02:00

The meeting was set and ready to take place, all that I needed to do was observe the events, follow them and film them. There were to be no mistakes this time round, the plan was set in stone, all I needed to do was follow the rules and make sure that nobody subjected me to any intense questioning. I had been told that these people were not easy to get along with and I may even suffer at the face of my work, but having found myself in all too many awkward predicaments in the past, I was sure that nothing could be too intense. I was wrong, dead wrong.

It was one week ago that I met with the RM Bochnia group in a strange building near the centre of town; it was one week ago that I endured several sessions of prayer and it was one week ago I witnessed an intense lecture on the negative aspects of Liberalism. I turned up to the meeting place a few minutes early in an attempt to compose myself and have a smoke before the transport arrived. I stood under the abandoned Hotel Florian just outside Bochnia town centre and waited for a signal from Big Ron as to where we were going to board the bus to Krakow. I got no call but I caught sight of a group of old ladies with brollies boarding a blue bus across the street, the bus was about the size of a builders van, with enough space in the back to illegally seat around ten people. I curiously lurked around one of the cracked exterior pillars outside the hotel before spotting the John Goodman character helping the women inside. I stubbed my fag out on the floor and warily walked over to the bus, JG saw me and extended his hand. I had previously stabbed my right palm earlier while washing a knife and the cut felt like it was gushing under the ruined soggy plaster. I offered JG my left hand to shake and he gripped my forearm warmly, nodding and smiling as he did so. He helped me on board as if I were one of the elderly ladies, the back end was already cramped full of festively plump women who looked up at me harmlessly as I intruded their social space. I was asked to sit between the two podgiest members of the group so that everybody could squeeze in, it did not feel good.

Within moments the bus was full of old women, and when I say full I mean that there would not have even been enough room for one of Santa’s little helpers to jam themselves into any corner should they have wanted to do so. There were four rows of people in the back end of the bus, one of which consisted of a sodden wood bench that was placed in the middle to aid the unfortunate soles who had to sit on the laps of frightened looking old ladies. As soon as the doors closed, the lights were turned off as not to attract the police, the windows on the inside filled with condensation and we began our journey to a large church in Krakow to take part in an all night prayer session.

Almost every eye in the back of that buss was focussed on me, I could not so much as move my arm from my knee without somebody either twitching violently or having a tutting fit. I considered my options, pondering as to whether or not I should remove the video camera from my bag, it would make for an excellent piece of footage. Just as I reached into my shoulder satchel just as it started, one of the bulky women in the next row along started chanting, at first it was difficult to make out what was going on, it sounded like a mating call to God. When the rest of the busload began joining her in synchronism I realised what was happening, the full recitation of the Rosary was about to commence. I was able to pick out a few words I understood while watching the hot air streaming down the windows. My heart deflated as the chanting proceeded to drown my every inner thought and suck every breath from my lungs like a sinister sagging squadron of succubae. After ten minutes the initiator lady stopped for air, she passed her thick wooden rosary to the next lady in line who began reciting solo, her prayers where then joined in chorus by the rest of the folk inside the bus. With sweat dripping from my brow and blood curdling in my veins, I new that the Rosary was heading my way, the only way I would be excepted into the clan and be able to film was if I recited something Holy, but by doing so I would be interfering in a clearly passionate ritual of the Catholic faith. The air was tight and I had to pinch myself as a reminder to try and draw breath from the clouded air, just before inhaling I was handed the thick wooden necklace of Christ. I took hold of it sincerely and prayed out loud to be set free from this bus, without thinking I subjected my conservative audience to a reel of blasphemous gibberish at a feeble attempt to win the right to film.

I stopped half way through my truly genuine attempt to connect with the mercy of the Heavens and realised that once again, every pair of eyes in the bus was fixated on me, even the eyes of the bus driver. The bus slowly pulled over to the side of the motorway and my entire body felt slippery, slippery like a slug. One of the ladies opposite me turned her head and recited a verse of the Rosary fluently in Spanish, Polish and then again in English, I looked at her blankly, utterly gobsmacked. I deserved it and everyone in the van knew it. The lady that initiated the praying then snatched the rosary from my grasp and instructed the driver to proceed, Big Ron looked at me in utter disgust, we still had another forty minutes to go to get to Krakow.

The rest of the journey proved to be of little ease, during the remaining three quarters of an hour I was forced to learn three verses of the rosary in Polish, from start to finish and then recite them to the rest of the group, the fact that I was involved in the journey meant that it was one hundred percent necessary for me to take part in prayer as to not curse the processions due to follow.

Although my situation may sound a placid and self-righteous reflection, I have never felt so condemned or outcast as I did on that journey. The situation I placed myself in was way out of my depth and although I am continuing with the documentary project, the decision has been made to eliminate all Catholic practice and worship from the filming stages. A definite separation needs to be made between the Religion that the Radio Maryja Family practice and the sweeping web of rumours, stories and charges that the seemingly majority of Polish people circulate. However, I plan to learn from my mistakes regarding the project so far and continue down a different path of documentation. The Radio Maryja Family are indeed a worldwide organisation and they are dedicated to following their faith as a Catholic organisation. So why is it then that the Polish section have such a fierce reputation?

Meet The Subject

2007-10-07T12:03:00.000+02:00

The Film Project

The idea behind the Radio Maryja project began after I heard several conflicting arguments regarding the organisation while in a local pub, on the one hand it was claimed that the Radio Maryja Family brainwash their listeners and viewers, of sister television station TV Trwam, using political propaganda and fraudulent tactics, the second point of view was that the organisation only pray on their own and anyone stupid enough to fall into the trap is asking to be conned. Both sides of the dispute reflected on negative aspects of RM and its founder Tadeusz Rydzyk. Both of these arguments were unfounded opinions, which could not be backed with specific evidence. Since listening to this debate and various others along the same lines, I have been on an pilgrimage with the ‘Family’ and have seen first hand what they represent and the incredible age range in their followers. On Sunday the 30th of September 2007 I was welcomed into the family fold by a representative and a small group of followers in Bochnia.

The Head Quarters

I had arranged to meet the organiser of the Bochnia group in the evening in order to gain permission to film and interview RM supporters. I was instructed to go to a building in the centre of Bochnia and await further information. I must admit that even though it was still daylight when I reached the building, I was feeling extremely vulnerable as the RMF have a history of being ‘anti-media’ and have often sued film makers and even television channels that have tried to record their activities in the past. Upon arrival I received a text message informing me of the whereabouts of the head quarters. I found myself walking up several flights of stairs and standing outside a Sajm government office, the door was open wide and a poster for the Radio Maryja Family was stuck firmly to the interior door.

The Meeting

I could hear several voices coming from a room next door to the office, it sounded like the room was full of people and they were discussing several private issues. One of which I am about to make public as I was afraid to disturb the meeting and hung around the office doorway. It seemed that one of the people speaking was telling the rest of the group about her husband who has recently gone deaf and is unable to listen to Radio Maryja, she said that her husband was afraid of going to Hell as he couldn’t listen anymore. The group’s combined advice was that he should try turning up the radio as loud as possible (!) and that he should also watch TV Trwam with the subtitles on. There was no real confirmation that he would not go to Hell. After about twenty minutes of listening to the most random of conversations and proposals I decided to pop my head around the corner of the door. I was surprised to find only five people in the room. The man I planned to meet (lets call him Big Ron) was sat on the right hand side of the table, he immediately stood and approached me, asking me why I am late. When I explained my reasons for not wanting to disturb the proceedings he grunted and requested to speak to me in private.

Big Ron

We took a pew in the ‘government’ office adjacent to the meeting room and Big Ron asked what I wanted. I have no intention of lying to these people as it would ruin the entire aspect of my project, and so I said to him that I was impressed with the Pilgrimage two weeks ago, however I was concerned with what Tadeusz Rydzyk said about the media being the devil. I followed this by informing Big Ron about my film history and the asked him as to why Father Rydzyk made this bold remark. My Polish has come along quite nicely since living in Poland, my interpretation of Polish analogies on the other hand is not quite up to scratch and so I was rather taken back by Big Ron’s response. He told me that the media is evil as it is tide with communism, he also mentioned several newspapers and television programmes that have given RM negative coverage. When I questioned this he gave me the following comparison: Imagine that you have two bad teeth that need to be removed, one of which represents communism, this tooth is removed without any anaesthetic and it hurts terribly. The second tooth represents something much worse than communism, something so disgusting that it has rotted the tooth away to the root. This tooth represents Liberalism. This tooth is removed with an anaesthetic and it most damaging because you can’t feel it happening. (Please write to me and give me your interpretation of this as it may shed some light!) It was at this point that I informed Big Ron as to my film plans, I told him I was very keen to capture events, marches and interviews of people in the Radio Maryja Family and piece together my findings in a documentary. To my surprise Big Ron clapped his hands and seemed very enthusiastic about my idea. He instantly asked me about my views on religion and I told him my Polish was not good enough to articulate my true beliefs.

The Fold

Big Ron then welcomed me into the meeting room where I was introduced to the four other attendees, each one a new face. I sat on the left hand side of the table, opposite Big Ron, this placed me next to a dishevelled fellow in his mid forties with horrific body odour and a lady I would guess is in her early sixties, kept on touching my arms and asking if I was cold. To my right sat a rather stout chap who struck me as being a cross between Ronnie Barker, Lenny from ‘Of Mice and Men’ and John Goodman’s ‘Big Dan’ character in ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’. At the bottom end of the table there sat a stara babka, the same lady I imagine was talking about her deaf husband going to Hell. And there I sat, amongst this group of social misfits in a room covered in RM and Trwam paraphernalia. I am by no standard criticising their beliefs or there ways of living (yet) as it was indeed I that made the choice to invade their territory.

After being grilled by a series of questions about England and my life history, the group began confessing their sins, which seemed very similar to a stereotypical AA meeting. I kept quiet and listened to their confessions before everybody stood and began to pray and chant, before I knew what was happening I found myself in a full recital of the Rosary. This scared me somewhat in that I was unprepared for such an act, it seemed far to close to a Catholic service and this is something I have respect for. Even though I was welcomed into the fold I was intruding on something I knew I should never take lightly. It wasn’t until we sat down and Big Ron started reading from the RM newspaper that I started to feel my presence was justified again. He read a column focussing on Liberalism and how the eruption of gay rights and immigration (!!) in Europe are works of evil and should be addressed immediately.

The Departure

After an hour and ten minutes of praying, singing and discourse the group started to depart, each member leaving one by one until it was just Big Ron and I discussing plans for the film project. He invited me to an all night prayer procession in Krakow next Saturday, with hope that I will be able to film the RM troop in action. Although I accepted Big Ron’s offer I am still unsure as to where the cross over is from traditional Catholicism and The Radio Maryja Family. People have told me in the past that the RM private meetings are often the most aggressive and hate fuelled but once again, I found nothing to be out of the ordinary at all, as far as religion permits, bar of course the remarks regarding Liberalism. The more I am finding out about these people, the less I am beginning to question their ulterior motives, it seems that the rumours circulated by the younger generation are desperately unfounded and only made to arouse public interest in controversy in Poland.

The Plan

I have decided to accept Big Ron’s invitation next weekend. Although I am far much more interested in filming the bus journey down to Krakow and the reactions that the RM Bochnia group may have to the tolerance of Liberalism in one of Poland’s biggest cities. I have no intention of staying for the full prayer session and sincerely doubt I will film inside the Catholic church, my plans are to spend as much time with the group as possible, steering away from their connections with the Catholic church and hoping to detail these connections through personal interviews only. In two months time I will be embarking on a twelve-day mission around Poland with two interested parties that will aid me in circulating some of the supporters and critics of the Radio Maryja family, who knows what our collective journey may reveal about this still ‘seemingly’ controversial religious group?

Language Films, Gay Bars and the Man on the Farm

2007-10-01T11:55:00.000+02:00

The four-week Cambridge University fronted language course I took in Krakow last year was one of the most intensive and strenuous learning curves I have ever taken. I have never been big on talking to large groups of people as the thought of which used to always seem terrifying. I grew out of this dehabilitating trait once I became used to standing in the centre of a classroom and teaching groups of students about key English grammar while being observed by peer teachers and marked by the director of studies on my performance. This was my initiation into Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), and taking CELTA turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made. The course had such a huge impact on the adaptation to life on the continent that I decided to make a documentary film about the integration process of TEFL teachers and the effects they are having on their students and their new environment. I started filming for the project this week and the people I have interviewed and observed in action so far have been splendid subjects for this exciting new documentary project.

I am mostly interested in the impact that the TEFL industry is having on Europe, particularly with regards to the immigration, assimilation and the impact that native speakers of English are having on the countries they are moving to, as well as the effects that the students of English are having on the United Kingdom and Ireland. Over the past year I have been able to observe some of the effects TEFL teachers have made on Poland and how the Polish have reacted, this weekend was no exception, hopping from one extreme to the other I was able to observe just how a handful of teachers living in Krakow are able to make an impact.

After filming for the documentary I made my way to the centre of Krakow to meet with a group of friends who are working as TEFL teachers in the city. The plan was to initiate some new teachers into the frivolous drinking habits and irresponsible nightlife rituals that frequently take place among my close friends and former colleagues over the weekend. We met in the centre of town outside one of the large chain stores in the market square; it had been a while since we last met as it is tendency for teachers to work for summer schools outside Poland during the months of June, July and August. We walked down one of the various avenues off the Rynek and found ourselves in a regular haunt, a pub located in a dark alley and up a long flight of wooden stairs, hidden from the boisterous clans of stag party fanatics, boozing in the town centre. We each sank a series of beers and vodka shots while catching up with each other and generally causing annoyance to the Polish regulars. The new group of teachers we accumulated seemed to be into the festivities and celebrated their newfound love for the price of alcohol in Poland. After three or four drinks we decided to trek into the Jewish district of Kazimierz where several bars and clubs can be found on the popular ‘old square’. The drinking continued heavily into the night, and as our selected group of TEFL teachers started to disband into the murky streets of the Yiddish Quarter, the remaining few occupied one of the bright, stylish and flamboyant gay clubs in the area. Upon arrival however, we discovered that the dance floor was practically empty, which meant the watchful barman and his team of security guards observed the drunken antics of our TEFL squadron closely.

Poland is a rather intolerant country when it comes to race, religion and sexual orientation, which is somewhat disappointing. There are often online news stories written about anti-tolerance marches and aggressive right wing ‘Catholic’ gangs that preach their hatred and loathing for specified minorities. I am trying to explore the roots of this unchecked aggression in one of my documentary projects, but it seems that unless these thugs are in a march, group or gang they are determined to remain anonymous and difficult to locate.

The empty bar suddenly filled with a group of about ten girls, who joined the TEFL clan in dancing to cheesy pop songs of the early eighties and shaking their skinny hips to the likes of Nelly Furtado, Justin Timberlake and Vanilla Ice. It wasn’t until this point that the bar staff began to relax and soon started clambering onto the bar and bopping along to the beat of the drum, smashing glasses on the floor and causing a general ruckus. The girls then invited us to the biggest and most popular gay club in Krakow for more shambles. Only several of the TEFL team were sober enough to make it to the party, it was then we were to discover the girls plan to lure several of my TEFL troop into their lesbian lair of rude dancing and lust for laughs.

The gay club is located on the top floor of a party multiplex just outside the centre of town, we found the place to be busier than ever and it was here that I felt the most comfortable and united with the Polish people who speedily swarmed me. It was in a mass of sweaty bodies on the dance floor I was able to confirm that although TEFL teachers in Poland have a reputation for drinking and partying in the local pubs and clubs, the influence they have on the Polish people of the same generation is in fact rather small. The majority of clients in the club were thoroughly piefaced on super strong slammers, foolishly cheap lager and mysterious multi-coloured cocktails, unsurprisingly without the aid of a small group of teachers. After a nuance of boogie and a catalogue of vodka mixers it was time to leave. Living in Bochnia and having to wait another four hours for a train led me to stay in the city with a friend I met during my CELTA training course this very time last year.

After very little sleep, a breakfast of granary bread, cereal and coffee and a hot shower I spoke with my TEFL accomplice about his experiences in the industry since we took the intensive teaching course. Due to my friend being Australian, he told me that there were several employers that had problems with him not being an EU citizen and so he had to work several jobs cash in hand. Private language tuition also seemed play a large roll in his work, but the irregularity and cancellations of private one-to-one students make this line of work a real challenge. He told me of his love for Krakow and his reasons for staying in this fascinating city, it is not difficult to see why TEFL teachers choose to come back after the summer months to continue teaching here, it is a city that can provide all the privacy, social shenanigans and spontaneous day trips one could ever wish for. Baring this in mind it came increasingly difficult to understand as to why one of our fellow CELTA crew had decided to move way out of the city and buy himself a small farm on the outskirts of the region. I soon made contact with the man in question and jumped on a bus to the nearest town he would be able to pick me up from. Although the ‘tolerance’ level of the drunken youth of Krakow seemed to be extremely high, the forbearance that Polish villagers may have to a man of Pakistani origin living in their segregated community may be a little different.

The bus journey took me sixty kilometres north east of Krakow to a tiny town, it was there my chum greeted me and we made our way to his rundown farmhouse, which is an additional fifteen kilometres from the small town. I asked him about his experience in the area so far and I explained that I had even experienced problems in Bochnia as foreigner so I was prepared for a negative response. On the contrary I was informed of my friends account of his stay so far, it seemed he too was worried about the reaction to his arrival as it is clear he is foreign from the colour of his skin alone, but he proceeded to tell me he had never felt more welcome in a closed community before this. He told me that his new neighbours frequently cook for him and they are even helping him build his house! A little astonished I listened to my friend’s anecdotes about his quirky new buddies and how they all help him out. It wasn’t until we arrived at his farm that I realised just how sincere he was being, upon arrival I was introduced to an elderly couple who were working on building a new wooden garage, they were very pleasant and sung the praise of my friend as a neighbour. I was then introduced to an English speaking local journalist who lives close by and visits my pal frequently. My friend and I reminisce of our time studying for CELTA and he tells me how, although he is happy he did the course, he is pleased as hell to get out of the city of Krakow and to have found a new life and a new project. He told me he currently works as a science teacher in Wroclaw as his central occupation but that he spends every weekend at his farmhouse, his kingdom. The property is a wreck, the main house is falling down, the two large barns to the right are dilapidated and the wooden construction his friends are building is far from completion. Nevertheless he sleeps in his settlement and uses his neighbour facilities when he gets desperate for a shower or a good meal. Of course this is only a temporary arrangement he tells me, once the property is in full working order he will live here and make a living from growing crops and vegetables on the swathes of vacant land he has behind his assortment of buildings. The English-speaking journalist invites us for dinner at his home, where I am introduced to his wife and fed platefuls of fresh eggs, tomatoes, bread and cheese while we drink red wine and sip coffee. Not particularly fancying the idea of sleeping in my friends crumbling house, I stayed with the journalist and his wife, who treated me as one of their own and invited me to join them for breakfast in the morning. I hit the hay feeling almost a little jealous of my friend’s new lifestyle with some of the most tolerant and hospitable Poles in perhaps the most unlikely place.

I was woken to the sound of a pig being executed in a barn a few doors down, the sound was worse than a child screaming which enabled me to easily reinforce my reasoning behind deciding never to eat meat again. I then joined my hosts for breakfast, a feast of fresh produce collected from the surrounding neighbours, and we discussed Polish art and its ties with modern day politics over several rounds of toast and piping hot coffee. My hosts invited me back to visit whenever I like and drove me to the tiny town I got the bus to from Krakow. Although a little thrown back and fascinated by the unanticipated scenario my friend on the farm is now in, the journey back to Bochnia was a reminder as to why I could never live in a place of this nature; although the community may have seemed idyllic and almost utopian, it is so far away from anything, the possibility of a social life outside the area would be almost impossible. By the time I got back to Bochnia I was damned tired and ready for a good nights sleep.
The continuation of the TEFL documentary film continues next week at International House as a new group of hopefuls prepare to plunge into their first week of CELTA; for sure they will be nervous and perhaps even undecided as to where their TEFL journey will take them. However, it is clear to see from my experiences over the last couple of days that whether it be frequently exposing naked flesh on the dance floor of a gay bar, buying a farm in the middle of nowhere or just making a film about the whole thing, the life of a TEFL teacher is paved with scandal, opportunity and choice, it is down to the boldness and willing of the individual as to where their adventures may take them.

The Radio Maryja Pilgrimage

2007-09-14T11:48:00.000+02:00

My plans to make a documentary film about a supposedly fundamentalist right wing Catholic organisation started today. Anti-Black, Anti-Jew and Anti-Gay where just some of the comments I had heard from various people about the Polish Radio Maryja family, who allegedly operate outside the rules of the Vatican and promote campaigns of hatred and violence behind the façade of a religious group dedicated to following Mary, mother of God.

I was raised a Catholic; I was baptised very shortly after my birth and was frog marched to the front of the altar every Sunday at 10.00 a.m. to sing songs, recite prayers and confess my sins, which was not something I was particularly fond of. I did this until the rebellious age of fourteen, when even after taking my First Holy Communion and my Confirmation, I stopped going to church. I immaturely decided that there was no room for God in my life, and even if there was, I had no intention of sitting in a mass for an hour and a half, listening to a man tell me how much of a sinner I was. It wasn’t until much later when I realised that the act of going to church and attending mass brings comfort and joy to millions of people, and the feeling of spiritual cleanliness, Holy rapture and having faith is more important than the religious eccentricities I had told myself were pointless.

Over eighty percent of Poland’s population are practicing Roman Catholics, which is an overwhelming majority. If that is the case, then why is it that a seemingly dedicated and structured organisation such as Radio Maryja and sister television station TV Trwam, are criticised by the Polish public as being manipulating and aggressive. It is easy to find such information on the Internet as there are scores of smear campaigns and hate mongering forums to digest. I am therefore taking a neutral standpoint in my film, I am only going to talk to people from both sides of the story who have had first had experience with the organisation. Hopefully, with enough footage from both sides of the argument I will be able to piece together the puzzle and make my own conclusion as to where I stand as a newly initiated member of Polish society. . .

I wake up with a splitting headache and a bad memory of what happened to my last night, over the last few weeks I have had little time for social activities but last night seemed to open a gateway of absurdity in Bochnia. Regardless, I swallow a handful of aspirin, gather my camera gear and make my way to the train station where I am to meet the organiser of the Radio Maryja Bochnia section. His name is Andzej and he takes my hand firmly as he introduces me to the rest of the group and pays for my train ticket. He seems like a rather nice gent considering my hung over state and my bag full of electronics. There are only six of us heading up from Bochnia, which is a disconcertingly small number, but apparently some of the team are ill and can’t make today. We are on our way to Częstochowa, which is three hundred kilometres north west of Bochnia, to be part of a day of prayer and celebration. Tadeusz Rydzyk the director and founder of Radio Maryja Poland will be at the event, conducting the festivities and speaking about his organisation.

We arrive at Częstochowa after three and a bit hours on the train, I am strung out and on the verge of sleep but the rest of the team are eager to get involved. I walk to through the centre of the city with the Bochnia team; two young ladies, a chap a bit younger than myself, Andrzej the leader and an eleven-year-old boy named Jacek. We come to a clearing before we get to the Cathedral and I give Andrzej a hand in constructing the Radio Maryja Bochnia sign, which I carry and wave for the majority of the day. The Cathedral is a giant place, like a small Holy village in a park, there are thousands of people crowded around a small stage at the front, each of them as part of a community, waving their town banners and signs high in the hope that they will be seen on the large television screen under a rather graceful podium.

The event is aimed at the younger generation of the RM family and is driven by live music, speeches by a few Polish celebrities and lots and lots of singing. The atmosphere is very communal and full of delight, swarms of people gather around the stage, clapping their hands and singing at the top of their lungs. After a while I hand the sign over to Jacek and take a walk around the grounds, there are dozens of stalls and tables selling Radio Maryja merchandise and cakes. Polish people seem to go nuts for religious paraphernalia so it is no surprise when I come across things like portraits of Jesus and the pope surrounded by flashing lights and glitter. I buy a skin-tight RM t-shirt.

Częstochowa is a place of pilgrimage and so there are hundreds of people walking in and out of the Cathedral and Basilica who are nothing to do with the event. I speak to some people who have not come for the Radio Maryja experience and they tell me they are not bothered by RM but would never take part in one of their celebrations, they tell me the RM is aimed centrally at old Polish people in villages who are encouraged to send money to fund Rydzyk’s private helicopter and collection of cars. This is a complete contradiction to what I see when I head back over to the central stage, there are very few old people here at all, most of the audience is made up of people my age and they all seem to be having a wonderful time.

Amid the singing and dancing there are several contributions made by the two spokespeople at the event, they both look about twenty five and claim to have been saved by RM. They continue to emphasise the importance of listening to RM, and to overcome the embarrassment they might feel in being young and being mocked for being a part of the Radio Maryja Family. It is during one of these contributions that I walk through the Cathedral to the balcony section that looks over the entire event. There is a heavily guarded gate to the overlooking podium where Father Rydzyk and his friends are sitting. Suddenly they stand up and walk to the left hand side of the podium and a group of youths queue behind the guarded gate. One by one the security guard lets them in, seeing that this could be my only chance to get a prime position, I stand in line and manage to get myself up high in full view of the audience with a group of about fifteen people. Suddenly the music down below shuts off and the group I have imposed on become the centre of attention. The group suddenly begins a synchronised dance routine to a song about Jesus Christ! I move to the beat and do what I can but it is clear I do not belong with them. Why I choose to do this I do not know.

Being stood up on the podium and being the centre of attention to a group of thousands of Polish Catholics waving banners and clapping was something of a new experience. It gave me a chance to see first hand, how much fun these people were having and how dedicated they seemed to their organisation. When I was seventeen years old, there is no way you would have caught me at such an event, waving my hands and cheering to songs about Jesus, but here, in full view are lads from sixteen to twenty five, jumping around with beaming smiles on their faces and praising Jesus Christ.

I am allowed to leave the podium without being kicked out of the grounds and so I make my way down to the crowds in time for the mass to begin, it is here that things start to get a little bit strange. A priest gets up onto the podium and begins speaking, he says a few words and the crowd respond with a slow and dreary chant. It is difficult to make out at first but I interpret the priest’s words as being ‘painful agony for him’, and the crowd respond with ‘mercy for the whole world and us’. I know the Catholic mass inside out after going to a Roman Catholic school and being taken to church so frequently by my folks and I know that there is some chanting and repetition involved, but the slogans here today are repeated for about forty minutes, with no rest bite. The chanting is followed by a speech made by the main man, Rydzyk himself. He speaks about Radio Maryja’s bad reputation in the press and blames all negative publicity on the work of the Devil. He urges the crowd to fight the Devil’s evil bidding and to listen to Radio Maryja without any shame or embarrassment.

But this is what I don’t understand, if all these people want is to be good Catholics, then why do they need an organisation like Radio Maryja to help them? What is its purpose and why do people feel compelled to join the RM Family? It is going to take more than a trip to Częstochowa to find the answers to these questions.

The event finishes shortly afterwards and I make my way back to the RM Bochnia crew, we head back to Janusz’s car and he drives us all home. The group seem very happy with how today’s event went. They ask no questions about my filming but instead they ask to keep in touch with me, I am happy to oblige. Today’s experiences were positive, I found there to be no evidence of racism or hatred toward anybody. In fact, the only negative aspect of the festivities, as far as I could tell, was the chanting, but on reflection, this was only a little more extreme than the repetition and mantra I have experienced at church in the past. My time with RM so far has been optimistic, and I for one am interested to discover what I will find next in my inquisitive exploration of this supposedly negative organisation.

Behemoth

2007-09-07T11:41:00.000+02:00

I arrived in Krakow with enough time to explore the city a little, make sure I knew where the venue was and to take a few photographs. For the last six days it has been raining continuously in the South of Poland so today’s display of wet weather was nothing of a surprise. The Loch Ness club opened its doors at six o’clock in the evening, I was able to chat with a few die hard fans that arrived early, I asked them about the support bands for tonight’s show and what they thought of Behemoth’s latest album. The majority of people I meet at these kinds of events seem rather jolly and light hearted considering their appearance; the entrance soon filled with a sea of black clad leather metal soldiers, eager to watch the first act of the evening. The line outside the doors assembled quickly, but instead of flocking with the rest of the heard, I met my mate Pawel. We grabbed ourselves a beer at a small bar near the venue and spoke of our mutual respect for the band we were about to see. The general vibe about the two unknown supporting acts was not particularly promising but nevertheless, after a cold bottle of Zywiec, we eagerly made our way to the now two-hundred strong line of people waiting to get in. The security guard at the entrance made me throw away the apple I had in my bag, which irritated me off slightly, but who knows what kind of chaos could be bred if the audience were allowed to take fresh fruit into the venue.

Loch Ness is not a big club, and that soon became apparent as the first act started and people from every corner began pouring towards the front of the make-shift stage. Rootwater, a Polish metal band from Warsaw, open things up by getting the crowd jumping around like loonies and testing the speakers with their nu-metal fused Polish jock rock. Their style is somewhat sadly similar to early Korn material; a style that I feel died and was buried along with the whole nu-metal era. But by the mawkish sound and onstage antics that Rootwater provide, they are in no danger of opening another floodgate of the genre and lets hope it stays that way.
I manage to sink two vodkas, befriend a Ukrainian fellow named Alex and get myself in a good standing position in the time between the first and second act. Danish thrash metalers Hatesphere are up next and by this point I am ready to see something hard, fast and angry. Behemoth have been one of the most talked about metal acts of the year so far, but if all they can muster are second rate nu-metal acts to support them on their homecoming tour, there is something wrong. Hatesphere on the contrary prove not to disappoint, their polished thrash capabilities are second to none in warming the crowd immensely for what is to follow. I count four crowd-surfers during their opening song, which is saying a lot for the size of the venue. Although they only have half an hour, Hatesphere plough through an eclectic set, displaying talent and prowess in thrash, doom and melodic death metal. As their show comes to a close, I manage to get myself right at the foot of the stage before Behemoth come on.

The venue is so cramped at this point that I’m pouring with sweat and gasping for air before the sound check finishes. People are screaming, jumping and punching their fists skywards even before the pentacle microphone stands, Apostasy flags, cast iron eagles and upside down crosses are brought out to decorate the stage.

As award-winning drummer Inferno initiates the performance, the crowd erupts and swallows me like a brachiosaur in a tar pit. I find myself sandwiched between a rather large woman, who must be four times my size, and her equally portly boyfriend as Nargal and the crew get onstage. They storm into ‘Slaying the Prophets ov Isa’, a track that sees Inferno displaying his immense quality as a drummer, reaching speeds of 260bmp. After getting a face full of gothic breast and having my torso repetitively punched, I clamber onto the shoulders of an overly enthusiastic, but unsuspecting headbanger. I manage to catch a glimpse of Pawel at the front snapping pictures and Alex the Ukrainian pulverising metal chumps to the increasingly fast beat of the drum. Nargal, Behemoth's vocalist, proves to be on top form, from the moment he hit the stage in his all black, spiked body armour outfit he had the audience in his palm. With their trademark corpse paint and ultra tight set list it is impossible for Behemoth to go wrong. I last several songs at the front, catching the glare of the Nargal from time to time, before being savagely flung into the mosh pit for ‘Slaves Shall Serve’. Throughout their eighty minute set, Behemoth master a variety of material, old and new, as well as covering tracks by Turbonegro and black metal legends Mayhem.

The heat of the venue and the distinctive flashbacks of being trapped at the front of stage and pummelled in mosh pits, lead me to come to terms with the fact that maybe, just maybe, I am getting too old for this. As I am lured further away from the ever-erupting carnage at the front of the venue by the sweet serenity of cool air and a small gap in the proximity of my neighbouring metalheads, I am able to stand back and admire Behemoth for what they truly are. As the set finishes and the lights return to normal, the battled state of the audience sums up my thoughts entirely, we are in the presence of one of the most practiced, confident and entertaining bands on the underground music circuit. Behemoth are not only sharp, accurate and extreme in their methods, but they are undoubtedly in the prime of their game and have certainly left tonight’s audience gasping for breath and gagging for more.

The Regional Harvest of Dzialoszice

2007-09-01T11:29:00.000+02:00

Today I took part in a truly remarkable tradition that brought together local Polish communities and put smiles on the faces of all who attended. It was a gathering of both social spirit and local collaboration to a most exciting and humble degree. I am one of the only English people to have visited the area of Dzialoszice of late and so today I was invited to interview one of the senior language teachers of the region at the annual event and take part in the local festivities.

The harvest festival is one of the biggest events of the year in the eyes of the farming community; there are hay sculpting competitions, prizes for the tastiest baked goods, awards for the ripest fruits and vegetables and a series of dancing and singing performances by children from the surrounding villages.

Dzialoszice is a small town about sixty-five kilometres north east of Krakow, Poland. It could be compared to many small villages in England, there are a few small shops, an old church and a small green in the centre with several benches about the place. Aside from the occasional local event, not much happens in this part of Poland, which is perhaps why this area of the country does not attract many tourists. I arrived at the event with a few friends who were greeted by three monks and priest who were carrying a rather large loaf of bread, carved and crafted into one of the final Stations of the Cross. Although the scene was comprised of yeast, it harboured distinct gruesome detail and I don’t envy the man who had to tuck into that for his supper.

A series of sharp trumpet blasts announced the arrival of a battalion of elderly gentlemen in traditional costume. The group numbered around fifty men in total and they proceeded to lead the way to the main square, where a small stage had been assembled next to various tents and marquees. The harvest was declared open and I was invited to inspect the various attractions.

The bakery stalls fronted freshly baked cakes and bread that were served in wicker baskets by pretty young girls. The vegetable tables where remarkably laid out and manned by large burly Chłopy in aprons. I made my way to one of the smaller cake stalls where an enthusiastic village girl talked me through the various sponge cakes. She invited me to sample a few generously sized portions before making my decision as to which of the cakes I should purchase. I was more than happy to comply and when I finally made up my mind I was rewarded by a peck on the cheek and a knapsack of fresh cake, all for the price of about fifty pence. I made my way over to a ‘fruit and veg’ table where a toothless beaming fellow clasped my hand firmly and invited me to give his apples a squeeze. I ended up buying three juicy red apples and thanking the salesman for his assistance. I asked him where he was from and how he thought the festival was going so far. He said he was from Miechow, a town not so far away and that the harvest is always a treat, “as long as it does not rain like it does in England” he added with a gummy grin. He said that his stall has won the prize for best apples and potatoes for the last five years and he would be “very fucking surprised” if he didn’t win again this year. This statement ended in a giant guffaw before the man boldly moved onto his next customer, giving me a bold wink as he did so.

I have been living in Poland for a few weeks, but I have still not become fully adjusted to the intertwining of formal and informal language that is often used by people outside of the main cities like Krakow, Warsaw and Łódź. It is common practice for younger people to refer to their seniors as ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’. I made a conscious effort to maintain this formal form of dialogue with the man who sold me my apples, but he still persisted in swearing at me.

As I made my way around the event, I came across an alcohol tent swarming with middle-aged men. Grubby gents threw their empty cups and dead cigarettes on the ground while clambering over each amongst a haze of stale smoke and the stench of spilled beer. I made my way past the alcohol tent, a bouncy castle, trampoline and carousel swing to what seemed to be the most popular at the harvest; the tractor stall.

Husky men and women alike horded around tractors of all shapes and sizes; reving the engines, clambering on top of them and even getting under them. I know nothing about tractors and so I was unable to judge the most sustainable or the most efficient when my curious colleague asked me. I was soon ushered to the main square where I was introduced to Mr Stanislaw Nowak, a local foreign language teacher. Mr Nowak gripped my hand tight and greeted me. He looked warn out but confident and had a face that looked to be stretched, so much so that one of his eye sockets seemed to be trying to escape half way down his face. “What your name is?” he asked in a deep and aspiring voice “and what you think of Dzialoszice”. I told him how the harvest seemed very well organised and that I was particularly impressed by the confidence and friendliness of the local farmers. He chuckled slightly before asking me what I knew about his work. At this point it struck me that we were speaking in Polish and I supposed he was an English teacher, when I told him this he laughed manically “no” he said, “I am retired language teacher, I learn French and Italian”. He seemed like a fascinating gentleman and I wanted to know more about him. I asked Mr Nowak how he came into contact with foreign languages, particularly when living in such a small town. He proceeded to dazzle me for the next thirty minutes by telling me about an interesting theory of his. He claimed that the best way to learn a language was by learning several at a time, starting out with everyday words in a language like French and then translating them into Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. This seemed like a bizarre way to learn, and when I told Mr Nowak that one language at a time was enough for me, he laughed. “just like all the people” he said, “and this is why there is so much war”. Without warning he reached across me and grabbed the arm of my wife’s mother. This is one of my former French students he remarked, clasping her firmly by the arm. I happened to know that my mother-in-law speaks no French at all, but I chose not to make any remarks about this. Instead I asked the teacher and his former student to pose together for a photograph. Mr Nowak thanked me tremendously for taking the time to speak to him; he shook my hand and made a strange gesture with his good eye. I winced uncontrollably before I could thank him for his time. He vanished in the direction of the beer tent.

Several more trumpets sounded and I was ushered towards the centre stage for a prize giving ceremony. First prize was a large bottle of fruit liquor which was elegantly displayed by a member of the town council before other prizes were awarded. I hurriedly snapped away with my camera as men and women gracefully accepted their prices in traditional dress. The rugged fellow who sold me the apples won first place in his category while a group of teenage boys won a prize for their sculpture of a combine harvester made of out hay. The day was topped off with performances by various groups of children singing and dancing. From the desperately inappropriate techno performance to a song called ‘Lick Me’ by a group of village girls, to a gutsy rendition of traditional old Polish songs by a scruffy old farmer in a top hat.

I never saw Mr Nowak again but I will be sure not to forget his enthusiasm and his peculiar methods of language instruction. My interview with him was indeed fascinating although the most extraordinary thing was his comment about war, which was left hanging like a cat from a branch. There could have been some truth in his comments, for if more people took the time to learn how to speak foreign languages perhaps there would be more understanding amongst people of other cultures. So much so that events such as this, without masses of security, armed police and bomb squads, are not confided to small Polish towns but celebrated everywhere with understanding, respect and a mighty fine selection of Fruit and Veg.