I just landed here, in a grey place full of concrete towers. Locals call it Warszawa.
I'm having a hard time trying to sneak among them undercover, looking like one of them, studying their manners, trying to figure out what they're saying...
I think it's time to update this blog and there's nothing better than brand-name-fails! There were some posts with names that were just funny. Others were big fails, like Pizza Corrida.
La Mala (The Evil), shop for kids.
Literally in Spanish: to give (the/a) can.
Here I should explain that in Spanish we have the expression "dar la lata" that means something like to annoy someone.
But my favourite and the main reason to post today:
Pepino Condoms
Pepino, which in Spanish means Cucumber. Great name for a condom brand! It's real, it's not photoshop. I'm even considering buying a box to see if it's really condoms or what.
In december I wrote about Super Sam, which had a superior form called Mega Sam.
But what I've found is even bigger than what I once thought I could ever find, even bigger than the Ultra Sam.
Let me introduce you to...
This MUST be his final form, unless there's a MultiverSam... somewhere...
Last night (sober), as I sat down in the metro on my way back home, I noticed something unusual.
A big, chubby man with long curly hair and a constant laughter was wrestling his (I guess) daughter inside the wagon. The girl was quite similar to him physically.
They were marking every single move like they were fighting in a ring and they even shouted like it was real.
Before one of the stops, the father took his daughter's head and started smashing it against the driver's door (playing, of course), and shouting: baaam! baaam! baaam! with every hit, which made the driver come out and start shouting at them, thinking it was a real fight.
They started laughing and fighting again as soon as the driver came back to his place.
It may sound stupid and it probably is (like most of the things I write about), but it felt like such a discovery as I was walking from Nowy Świat to Krakowskie Przedmieście.
I was surprised because I pass by that tree everyday once or twice, I've even been to the bar next to it a few times and I never saw it! And that makes me wonder how many things we don't notice as we walk by. What else is there that I didn't see?
And it's not even a beautiful tree...
It's funny how some people call me Captain Obvious sometimes, but there are many cases in which things are so obvious that we don't even realise.
It literally means "Cold Lech is the good Lech", but it couldn't be funny by itself if we don't think of it with a bit of black humor, which seems to be popular also here in Poland (for which I'm very glad).
Disclaimer: black humor is like legs, some people have it, some people don't. Stop reading if you lack it. I mean, black humor.
So there I was, drinking a Lech beer when a friend told me the story about Zimny Lech.
It was a long time ago, April 10th 2010, two years before the end of the world, when the Ex-President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, had a plane crash.
The story, or what I remember because I was quite drunk back then, began during the funeral. The advertising was in the street saying basically: "Cold Lech is the good Lech", where "cold" can be interpreted also as "dead". So there were lulz and anti-lulz and everything ended in the obvious way: advertisements retired.
Funny thing is that there was a new advertisement of Zimny Lech, where curiously a guy picks a Lech beer and starts flying away. And some people join him somehow and in the end... PLOT TWIST ALERT!
...in the end they crash on a roof top. But with a happy ending.
Most people I know that have travelled to Lithuania always bring a good feedback, but I'm afraid this is not my case. Maybe I just had bad luck and I met only mean people... the thing is that this is my experience.
The first contact with Lithuanian people happened in a shop, during the first evening in Vilnius. The owners, a man and a woman in their late 40's or something, didn't even say hello, but that wouldn't matter so much if when I wanted to pay they didn't ignore me. But not only they ignored me, they even crossed their arms while looking at me with this look in their faces that meant something like: please, go away!
I thought: okay, maybe it was very late and they needed to close, because it was dark and I forgot to change the time (+1 hour). I felt sorry about it and went away.
But the same thing happened in a book store, when I went there to ask for a Lithuanian-Spanish dictionary. The reaction?
- Lithuanian-Spanish dictionary? I don't know if we have. Maybe?-
-Could you please check...?
-I can.
Seconds after, when she decided it was enough time looking at the horizont, she decided to move around in the shop and found one small and expensive dictionary.
Since I didn't have money enough, I told her I'd be back the morning after.
She went away.
I decided to try in another super market. This time: some hot meal, cos it was like -25ºC out there.
So I ask the woman at the other side of this bar: could you please give me one of this and one of that?. Her answer, after looking at me like holding her vomit was a bark. Human style.
I didn't know very well how to interprete it, so I asked, politely, if she could warm it in the microwaves a bit.
She barked some more, put it there and gave it to me.
I said thanks, but I wondered if maybe barking back would have been the polite way to respond.
By the way, there are weird stuff in those shops, dude! look at this!
WTF IS THIS!? is that a pig or what?
Pork in own juice. Well, if Americans consider pizza a vegetable, maybe this people think pork is a fruit. Whatever floats their boats!
Next step: trying some typical Lithuanian dishes.
I went to a restaurant in the Old Town, the typical place, you know. There was this so-typical restaurant with typical stuff... so typical that it had to be typical.
So I went inside and waited for the waitress. After five minutes she noticed I was there, but she went away. She came back, only to look at me again and leave one more time.
Since it was extremely cold and I was starving, I decided to go, break the ice and talk to her. She said I could sit wherever I wanted, so I did it. And since nobody came to bring me the menu, I stood up and took it by myself.
A new waitress, who was faster, nicer and more normal appeared and for a moment I thought everything would be okay again. Dude, was I wrong!
The typical dishes weren't precisely good. The soup was okay for someone who's starving and freezing, but those things called Zeppelin, made with some potato dough, oh God, no. It was like chewing a tasteless jellyfish. I almost threw up...
Time to pay.
-Can I pay with credit card?
-[Bark] yes, you can (feel like Obama).
After this great experience you expect to just go, lay down in bed, watch a movie, relax...
But then you see Lithuanian TV has lector, just like in Poland. But this one goes one step further.
Okay, I think lector sucks, I think it's the worst invention ever. In fact, I always do that to ennoy my parents while they watch TV, and it works! they end up hating me! so who thought this would be a good idea anyway????
In Lithuania, lectors don't only read every single dialogue/monologue or whateverlogue. They also translate and read the lyrics of the songs. If you don't believe me, look at this!
This song is grFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUU
But not everything is bad. The Old Town in Vilinius is a really, very beautiful place. I swear!
Members of the Polish Parliament wearing the Guy Fawkes' mask
In the beginning I thought it was a joke. Like those we're already used to see of politicians or policemen taking Anonymous as a kid's game, making fun of the mask, ignoring what it really represents.
That, in my opinion, is more of an ignorant behaviour than anything else. They may think it comes from a movie, but the idea is much older: Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot.
The irony here is seeing the members of the Polish Parliament wearing masks of the guy who once tried to bomb the House of Lords, which is nothing but a parliament aswell.
Then I found out that they're not mocking it, they're wearing it to express their support to Anonymous. And this, sincerely, made me really happy and proud, not as a Pole, but as a citicen of the world.
P.s.: I'd have liked to see something similar in the rest of the countries signing it. At least!
P.s.2: if it leads to censorship, then this is goodbye.
or: How I learnt to stop worrying and love University of Warsaw.
Three exams to finish this thing people here call Sesja and two works to write (wait, two? now I'm doubting, I don't remember what the second work was about, but I have a feeling like I had to write two... hmmm...).
However, this means a week of studying extra-hard and then like 2 whole weeks of freedom in which I'll see the sunlight without windows inbetween. Exciting!
The title of the post comes from the movie and I chose it because it rules. End of story.
But it's the truth: adapt yourself or die. So I addapted myself to go on with the craze. If I have long lessons in a language I don't understand (YET!) then I'll spend my time writting poems or taking notes for short stories I have in mind (and I'm doing quite good).
So that's it.
Shouldn't we take the best from what we can get? that's what I'm doing now and I must say I'm feeling happier. Isn't that how things should go?
I'll share one of my poems now (in Spanish). Disclaimer: I write them during the lessons, it's some kind of automatic writting and therefore it's influenced by the situations in which I write them. I, under no circumstances, wish any bad for any person involved.
Oh, tú, Rayo que bajas,
que rompes el aire y avivas el viento,
que arrasas el monte, que paras el tiempo
y mandas el bosque al eterno destierro.
Calcinas con rabia si bajas con tiento.
Eres furia, eres fuerza, eres miedo y respeto.
¡Eres Midas!, ¡conviertes el oro en estiércol!
Despiertas al sordo, revives al muerto.
Revientas la roca con puños de fuego.
Eres Dios y diablo y veneno al veneno.
Eres suave a lo lejos. De cerca, un infierno.
Oh, tú, Rayo de muerte, tú, lanza amoral,
baja un rato y revienta a mi profe de alemán.
I always wanna take a pic of the bus stop and then I think: bah, this isn't that funny (if it's funny at all - plus Google is your friend). But for me it is.
The truth is that every morning, even if I keep swearing mentally because of the constant traffic jams, I can't avoid thinking of Tourette's Guy everytime the PA system says "Następny przystanek: Foksal". Why? this is why!
P.s.: Foksal is actually a really nice place. Just have a look here!
This goes to the driver of bus 128 that was stopped for one whole minute in Centrum stop at 14:40 on the 10th of January 2012. To that piece of shit who ignored how I knocked the door so he would open it. He's responsible for me being 15 minutes late to my exam of Norwegian language (which consisted on translating a text from Polish into Spanish with a dictionary and then into Norwegian, if that makes fucking sense! but that's another topic).
So... you, piece of shit. May a 5 kilometers queue of sumo fighters with XXXL dicks fuck you in the ass until you break in two. And may an angry dwarf with tourette's syndrome read you Les Onze Mille Verges by Apollinaire while he hits you in the eyes with a whip. And may this be a slow and painful death.
And don't dare to survive, because I would tape it HD so you watch it again and again Alex style until you don't dare ever again not to open the fucking bus doors.
I hope you had a good night full of the sweetest dreams.
