Farewell Bydgoszcz!

Well, after 2 years in Bydgoszcz and 3 in the wonderful place that is Kujawsko-Pomorskie as a whole, I finally had to leave the place in the middle of September this year. As I have family there now, in a sense, I will naturally be back, so this blog will lay dormant but not dead. But, as a regularly maintained blog, this is farewell from “A City Called Bydgoszcz.”

Anyone who would like to follow my new adventures, after my move to Lisbon are more than welcome here. In the meantime, if you have any questions about Bydgoszcz, do feel free to message me. Powodzenia!

A Little Bit of Summer

So, after many months of Spring flirting with us in Bydgoszcz, with a constantly changing combination of warm sunshine and torrential rain, it seems we’ve finally evened out into what can really be called summer over here now. And with the milder season have come a few things of note.

First of all, right next to where I live, in Kochanowskiego park, there is a new water fountain installation which has a dancing water show with music and lights, three times a week. I happened upon it when walking by last Friday evening and was rather impressed. As you can see in the video below, it’s a nice thing and really brightens the place up. Previously, the fountain had been out of order for more than a year and in the last 6 months had been surrounded by corrugated steel fences during renovation, so this is definitely a positive. Shows are on Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Friday was also my first evening of this year sitting outside until a late hour in the fading sunshine. It’s amazing how many bars & restaurants have outdoor areas this year: Merlin, Strefa (of course), Widzimisie and more besides, as well as the usual suspects in the Rynek, Barka, Kubryk and so on.

Saturday saw me volunteering with a friend as a stooge for my school’s treasure hunt. We readied ourselves at our station just before the scheduled 3pm start only to see this appear over the horizon.

 

Within 5 minutes of this photo, the blazing sun from the right had been replaced with torrents of water and all of Thor’s rage in the form of a terrific to watch thunder and lightning storm. This is what happens when British people organise an outdoor event of any kind. Fortunately, with our wealth of experience, the indoor alternative activities were well received and the afternoon and evening that followed were excellent.

Sunday arrived with a jolt – thanks to 5 hours’ sleep – and soon after I awoke, I was greeted by the information that Myślęcinek’s zoo had acquired some llamas. Generally speaking, I don’t need much encouragement to spend a sunny afternoon at a zoo, so the presence of llamas made it a certainty.

While the llamas were a bit timid and stayed quite far from the fence, in spite of my calls of “hey, Mr Llama!” the general zoo experience was pretty positive. The cages for the Japanese Macaques are a bit small and the birds of prey could do with some space, but generally the animals seem well looked after and quite jolly. I was cheerfully able to pet the goats.

Hey Mr Llama! Really though – come here!

 

 

Such a bloody showoff, this guy. His cage is bigger than it looks, by the way.

Goats are soooooo delicious, errr… cute! 🙂

At the end of my zoo trip, I was to witness a bit of a surprise. In a huge enclosure in Myślęcinek, you can find a small pack of wolves. They seem quite laid back and disinterested at the gawping masses, such as myself. But this time it was different. Some crows, sitting amongst the trees above the really quite hot and bothered wolves, decided this would be a good place to have a squabble. The culmination of this was a crow wrapping his feet around another one and tossing him to the ground. The wolves, usually unperturbed by intruding birds, were obviously a bit sick of this whole kerfuffle and took decisive and murderous action. With one swipe of a lupine paw, there was a distinctly former crow lying on its back. The crows in the trees were mortified and began shouting at the crows, like a cacophony of disgruntled politicians (all bluster and absolutely no chance of anything approaching action). The wolf, having made his point, simply toddled off and sat down somewhere else.

I heartily recommend to other crows not to tick wolves off. Doesn’t end well one bit!

I took that as my queue to do the same. So begins my last summer in Bydgoszcz.

 

The (Annual) Resurrection of Bydgoszcz

For those poor unfortunates who have never visited the great country that is Poland, it may or may not come as a surprise to you that most Polish cities are centred around a Rynek or town square. These would have served as the market in the old days and now serve as a social hub for cities. You can normally find people meeting friends, lovers, pigeons (if that’s your thing) and generally being social.

Bydgoszcz is no different in this regard and I myself, many a time, have said to people “meet you in the rynek at 6” or whatever. But the rynek in Bydgoszcz is a strangely dichotomous place. I think the reason for this is that it’s absolutely huge and has nothing at all in the middle of it. Come to the city during the latter part of autumn or winter and this is the view of the rynek that greets you:

Grimness that places like Halifax would be proud of.

This, however, brings me to the content of today’s blog and Bydgoszcz’s annual resurrection. For, you see, when the sun begins to shine at the end of spring, the rynek is transformed. Every pub and restaurant situated around the square’s edge flings open its doors and lays great sets of decking, with tables and chairs. Hell, the city even allows an extra bar to open just for the “ogródek piwny” (beer garden) season. I struggled to find any decent pictures today, but this is more or less how it looks once the tables are laid out:

What these pictures can’t communicate, because of the lack of people in them (they were taken early in the morning, over the last couple of summers) is just what a transformation this brings about in the whole vibe of the town. There is a real part atmosphere, all of a sudden, and it begins to feel like a warmer, more sociable place to be.

This year, the outdoor tables are only just starting to appear now, at the end of April, but it’s hoped that for the Majówka holiday weekend, next week, the Bydgoszcz beer garden square will be in full flow. It’s a great opportunity to go and experience a warmer side of the city.

On a similar theme, this year Bydgoszcz’s council have commissioned some new sculpture pieces around the city, which people can really get involved with. The first of which is on Wyspa młynska – the windmill island – and takes the form of a giant chair, beside the Brda. Lots of children (and adult children like myself) have already taken the opportunity to climb on it and sit in the sunshine. More of this kind of stuff please!

Basically, get out there and enjoy the city. There really is no better time to be here. Make the most of it!

 

A Top Drawer Restaurant

First of all, I will warn you that you may feel a strong desire to kill me, as a result of the pun in the title. But if you want to find out some information about a really great new restaurant in Bydgoszcz, then read on and fetch your axe later.

It was Easter weekend and I was enjoying the liberties of being a teacher and having an extra 2 days off, either side of the regular holiday when I decided that I hadn’t been out for lunch with my girlfriend in far too long. I’d been galavanting off to other places most weekends and I thought that us having a day off at the same time was a great chance to have a date of sorts. As we both love food, lunch seemed like an obvious choice. So we walked down to the city centre and strolled from restaurant to restaurant, not really sure of where to go. Finally, after being attacked by a bug infestation at Warzelnia – the only place with a decent sun trap to sit in – we elected to try the new(ish) Polish restaurant, Stara Szuflada (The Old Drawer – see what I did there?)

I had been here once before, with my friend, for a coffee and had been impressed by the ambience and the service (and also, the coffee, come to think of it) but I’d never tried the food. The theme is of an old fashioned place – homely and full of non-matching antique(?) furniture. They take care to light candles for all the guests, as it doesn’t have a lot of natural light and the “old drawer” motif is displayed everywhere, with your menu arriving in one and various others being used to hold candles and other decorations up on the wall. The atmosphere is homely and welcoming.

The menu is not that extensive, but has some original ideas and, after we’d got seated and very quickly served by a friendly young lady, I ordered a beer and the Kurczak Myśliwsku. This translates to Hunter’s Chicken, pretty much and involves chicken cooked in a plum and chilli sauce, with rice and a side salad. My good lady ordered some pancakes with Mexican chicken. 

Our waitress moved us to a different table, as the one we had chosen was too small for beer glasses and dinner plates. She did it in a cheerful, unfussy way and was more than happy for us to just choose a new table for ourselves, as it was pretty quiet. My beer came out and I noticed right away that they must really look after their beer here, as it was one of the richest tasting Warkas I’ve had from a barrel in a good while. And I know my Warka. We were pretty happily chatting away when, after a short wait, our food arrived. 

My food looked good. It was a large portion, and I could see there were quite a lot of prunes in with my chicken and sauce. I tucked in and was really quite surprised to find an excellent blend of flavours with the sweetness hitting your palate first, followed by the bite of the chilli and then the rich dark-fruit-taste of the plums at the end. I was expecting something that was quite good and had got something much better. My girlfriend’s pancakes were full of Mexican chicken and associated “Mexican” vegetables and then topped with cheese and finished either in the oven or under the grill. She enjoyed the taste, but felt they could have done with a little more spice. Still we were both very happy with our meals and quite full. I tried to take a photo of my meal, but my camera on my phone is hopeless indoors.

Far too full to manage any dessert, we decided to just have a couple of affogatos, both made with smooth, strong coffee and tasty ice cream. When we asked for the bill, we were brought a coffee bean grinder – with the bill in the drawer, naturally – and we were offered a shot of their homemade coffee cream liqueur, on the house. Some of my friends have said this is too sweet for them, but I really like it. And it’s home made. And it’s free!

So, if you feel like trying somewhere new to eat, with great service, more than decent food, a nice ambience and which will not hit your wallet too hard, give Stara Szuflada a go.

“Would you like a mixed bag with that?” – The Perils of Customer Service in Bydgoszcz

As someone who doesn’t really get any overt joy out of the process of shopping, I tend to avoid going into shops, other than when I have to buy food and drink. As such, I tend to forget about the nuances of shopping over here, relative to most developed consumer economies. I do witness the generally apathetic approach of supermarket staff and the looks of contempt they give you on realising that you don’t have the exact change required for your 27.58 zloty shopping bill. But, having recently been positively frightened when engaged in an extremely jovial and in-depth conversation about my flight, country of residence and raison d’être in the Birmingham Airport branch of Marks and Spencer, perhaps I prefer to be under serviced in this area?

But I digress. Today was an opportunity to buy a luxury item – in this case a mobile WiFi router to see me through to the end of my stay in Bydgoszcz – and so off I popped to the Play store in Focus Park. Focus Park is the largest mall in our fair city and is by far and away the most central, so I had assumed that this would be the most likely place to find said product. In I walked, with a lazy Tuesday morning smile on my face and a couple hundred zloty burning a hole in my pocket. A lady made her way from her seat and the back of the stool and said “słucham” – “I’m listening” to you and me. This is a little bit abrupt, perhaps what you might expect at a busy bar, rather than a deserted phone store but, unperturbed, I made my enquiry about my product. Her face immediately soured and she told me that she didn’t have it. Still trying to remain upbeat, I queried whether this was an internet-only product (I had found it on Play’s website) or if I might find it in a different Play store, elsewhere in the city. “I don’t know, but I don’t have it!” she spat at me. I replied that this was fantastic and thanked her more than a little sarcastically for her ‘help.’

Artist’s impression of shop assistant

I left the store in something of a state of rage, at this total lack of customer service that simply would not be stood for in another country. What perhaps grates the most though, is knowing that a fair number of people in the city are unable to find work at all, while this miserable hag sits on her high stool in the store, biting customers (metaphorically) for having the audacity to want to buy something.

I should take pains to point out that, after this, I went into Saturn and was greeted by two really helpful fellas, who even offered to switch to English to make life easier for me. I was really impressed by this and, despite them not having the product I was after, I departed feeling much less tension.

This got me thinking more generally about the whole customer / seller relationship and I have found it to be truly remarkable, some of the things which are considered “norms” here. For instance, my girlfriend works for the CCC chain, the biggest shoe company in Poland, with a store on every high street and in pretty much every shopping centre. The returns policy in this store is absolutely bewildering. If you have a pair of shoes which, it becomes evident, are faulty, what, dear reader, would you do? What I would do, is take them back and request either a new pair of shoes, my money back or, as an absolute minimum, store credit. In CCC, when you take your shoes back, the company takes the shoes from you and has a period of 2 weeks to inform you of their decision as to whether they will refund you, exchange your shoes or repair your shoes. If they decide they ought to be repaired, they will then also set a timescale for the repair. As a man with a non-stellar income, I only really have one season-appropriate pair of shoes at any given time. According to CCC’s policy, I could face walking around without shoes for up to a month, for something that is their fault. While I disagree with the throwaway policies of British culture on clothing and shoes, the disparity between the rights of the consumer and the seller seem to be way off here. I’m still not sure, incidentally, whether that policy is in fact legal under EU law. 

One thing that is encouraging here though, on a positive note, is the real step change in the approach to service in the catering industry. Even since I’ve arrived in Poland in 2011, I’ve seen that a friendly, attentive approach to service – particularly in restaurants – has gone from being a pleasant rarity to more or less what I expect. The hope is that this trend will continue and spread to the retail industry, where some places seemingly have a long way to go!

Bloody Foreigners – There are Loads of us!

Those worrying that this is a Daily Mail/UKIP sympathising post can relax. Rather, this is a reflection on just how many foreigners there seem to be in Bydgoszcz, of which I am of course one. For me, this is great news. I love the diversity that migrants from different nations bring (it would be pretty hypocritical, as a migrant, if I didn’t!) and in an endeavour to meet both more of them and, indeed, more locals who will either tolerate my grammatically disastrous Polish or even want to have a natter in my mother tongue, a few months ago, some colleagues and I decided to set up a monthly language exchange club. After some umming, ahhing, and general faffing about, one of our number – my colleague Judith – set up a meeting with a likely establishment to host the thing. With furious speed, the following month breezed by and, on the ominous date of Friday the 13th December, we had our first “Language Zone” meeting, at the wonderfully chilled café bar Strefa.

We had about 30 guests, from as far and wide as Spain, Portugal and Egypt. It was a really nice night and everyone who attended made at least one or two new contacts, with whom they could meet for more coffee or beer. In a city that is, as I’ve mentioned before, quite difficult to meet people from scratch, it was a real success. We quickly liaised with the wonderful Ewelina, who organises the events at the café, in order to book another event and so it was that our next event was booked up for the middle of January. This time it was on a Saturday night and we were hopeful that, thanks to a bit of word of mouth advertising, we might increase out attendance by half.

When the night finally came around, I found myself at the end of the kind of week where I felt like I’d done everything it was possible to do apart from sleep and relax at all. I was cream crackered.  So, I found myself mulling over whether to brave the freezing weather, or just tuck myself like an old man with lots of tea. Realising that while I am a reasonably old man, I still have the maturity and common sense levels of a 20-year-old who’s spent the majority of his life in a cupboard, I put on a jumper thicker than a prison wall and headed out.

What waited for me when I arrived, some 15 minutes after the event had kicked off was quite astonishing. The place was jam packed and there were so many new faces. I found some friends of mine and took a seat, finding my way to a beer, as I did so. A short while later, a Polish English-language-teacher stood up and insisted that people begin to mingle and, using the languages written on their name badges, try to find someone new to talk to.

More or less everyone did so, and the whole event erupted into a whole night of chat, laughter and getting to know new people. I met people from as far afield as Armenia, as well as some really charming local people, and everyone I spoke to had had the same experience. Now everyone is eagerly awaiting the next event and, even though I have a very exciting holiday planned before then, I can’t wait for the middle of February!

Here are a few snaps of the last event. If you are in Bydgoszcz, be sure to check out Strefa on Facebook and come to the next event, to speak English, Polish, German, Spanish, Portuguese, French, or whatever you like! There’s bound to be someone to talk to you!

Brrrrr!

This is the first of two posts I’ll be serving up today and is, I promise, the last one (for a while at least) about weather. As regular readers will know, over the Christmas period, I wrote about how unusually mild this winter had been – a phenomenon which has affected most of the “cold bit” of Europe, while the folks in the USA are freezing their bits off in one of the worst winters of the last few years. Anyway, over the last week or so winter arrived, and has been a particularly vicious, biting one at that!

On Monday morning, I awoke and took a look at my weather forecast, as usual, so I had an idea of what to wear. It, rather shockingly, told me that the day temperature would be -12 and that we could also expect “freezing rain”. Now, I’m no meteoroligst, but to me, that sounds like snow. You know, when it’s cold, the water freezes and – yay snow! This was peculiar. Curious, I had a look at wikipedia. It told me that freezing rain was when rain was released as liquid and turned to ice as it falls. Fair enough, but it still sounds like snow to me. Anyway, I drank my coffee and wrapped up warm, before heading in to work.

Less than a minute after leaving my door, I learned what freezing rain is. One thing it isn’t, is snow. Snow can be annoying, at times. It’s difficult to walk in, trains, buses and cars are horribly delayed, you tread grit and sand everywhere, when you go indoors. It’s a pest. But, at the same time, it looks pretty and, as far as I know, never commits assault on your person. But this freezing rain stuff is an entirely different matter. Imagine, if you will miniscule shards of glass falling at speed at a 45 degree angle, and you’re pretty much there with freezing rain. It was like having a really annoying person breaking a window over your head FOR THE ENTIRE TIME YOU ARE OUTSIDE. Mercifully, this monstrosity disappeared after Monday and has yet to be seen since. Long may that remain the case.

Bydgoszcz’s main city park, thoroughly snowified

After the horror of the freezing rain, I’m happy to be able to report on one really pleasurable effect of the cold snap. Yesterday, also while walking into work, there was something quite different in the air. Due to a brisk wind, a glorious burst of sunshine, and lots and lots of snow and ice all around the place, we had the wonderful experience of what appeared to be falling glitter. Tiny ice crystals were being blown about in all directions and, because of the low height of the sun above the horizon, each tiny one was lit up in a quite spectacular show. It was like being inside a (bloody freezing) snow globe. Here’s a short video clip. You can’t get the full effect, but maybe it’ll give you some idea.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZRTd-OKvxk

 

Polish Christmas (and where the devil is winter?)

Despite being an affirmed heathen, there really is nothing to do in Poland at the end of December other than embrace the feelings of revelry surrounding the Christmas holiday. In general, as with British Christmas tradition, it is moving further away from being a religious festival and is focusing more on taking an opportunity to spend time with family and friends (hurrah!), to eat a lot (hurrah!) and to spend a fortune on gifts, particularly for miniatures (booo!). This was my 3rd Christmas in Poland, but only my second one where I got actively involved in the Wigilia – the vigil – the Christmas Eve feast, celebrating the “birth of little baby Jesus”.

The whole process starts after the first star appears in the sky which, at this time of year, is not terribly late, around 4pm, I would imagine. Before the eating, everyone is given an ornately decorated piece of opłatek (communion wafer). Usually it has an image of the nativity, or one of those jolly saint people on it. Each person takes their wafer and walks around the room with all the gathered guests. As you encounter each person, you break off a small piece of their wafer and then give them some wishes for the future. This can be as generic as a simple “best wishes,” or a lot more personal, as you decide. While this evidently started off as a form of layman’s religious blessing, nowadays, it’s really just a nice moment to offer some goodwill to your nearest and dearest.

Once all that blessing business is out of the way, it’s time to get down to the serious business of eating. As a traditional Christmas feast, there are 12 dishes served on Wigilia, representing the 12 apostles of JC. These are often not small dishes, so we’re talking about a lot of food. As a Catholic feast day, the dishes are all, sadly, free of any meat. But, as a man who enjoys fish almost as much as land and air animals, it’s not really much of a hardship. Generally, the meal starts with barszcz. This is a thin beetroot soup, referred to as borsch in Russian circles. I think it’s really delicious, which surprised me when I first arrived in Poland. It has the sweetness that you get with fresh beets and there are some lovely aromatic herbs in it, such as marjoram, which gives it a little something. Often served in the barszcz, but not at our table this year, come uszka. Literally, this is translated as “ears”. They really do look a little like pigs’ ears and that is perhaps why. Essentially, these are miniatue dough dumplings. At other times of the year, you can find these with all sorts of fillings but, at Wigilia, of course no meat is allowed and they are generally stuffed with minced mushrooms and cabbage. Sounds terrible, tastes great.

After this, there is a barrage of fish. The main event, as it were, is carp. Yes, carp. Back in Blighty, carp are sport fish. People fish for them, enjoy a good old battle with them on the line and then chuck them back in for the next fisherman to have a go at. Not in Poland. Here, it’s a delicacy and never more so than at Christmas. In order to keep them as fresh as possible, the supermarkets actually keep them alive in their stores in great paddling pools and fishmongers have to take on the dual role of fishermen to serve their customers. These fish are really enormous and, as I witnessed in Tesco last week, can put up a bit of a fight.

Once they have been fought into a plastic bag and sold to the customer, looking like some kind of freakish funfair prize goldfish from a nightmare, they are taken home and deposited in the bath, where they excrete the remaining silt from their year round lake abodes until the morning of the 24th, when a senior member of the household will bash its head in and prepare it for cooking. Lovely.

In seriousness though, I rather enjoy the taste of carp. It’s flesh has a creamy texture and an enjoyable, delicate taste. But, as my girlfriend’s family don’t like the stuff, we opted for a trout the size of a small dog, instead. This was no less straightforward to prepare, but at least it came already dead (not to mention gutted and mainly descaled). Great cross sections of the mighty fish had their skins expertly floured and were then fried. Accompanying the main fish were: herring in a cream and cucumber sauce, herring “po grecku” – which means in the Greek style, but alas has absolutely sod all to do with anything Greek – herring in a chilli marinade, and possibly some more herring. They really like herring. So do I, fortunately.

This being Poland, there were, of course, also some pickled things. I also made a potato salad which people treated with some degree of suspicion. It was honestly quite tasty, but there you go. That was about it for the savoury table which, as you can see from the image below, was frankly too much for my flat’s table.

After this came the sweets. Along with some home baked chocolate topped, jam filled cake there was the traditional, compulsory, makowiec. This is a rolled cake filled with poppy seeds and iced. Back in Blighty, poppy seeds are regularly used as toppings for bread and even baked inside the bread, or in muffins – in a variety of situations, basically. But in Poland, this use of what they call mak – great thick layers of poppy seeds is something quite different, and something I really love.

Before and after dinner, there was of course this plate of different typess of gingerbread and Michałki chocolates, to make sure that none of us would escape without hugely overeating.

 

As I mentioned earlier, I am seriously non-religious, so there were no trips to the church for midnight mass – though a lot of Poles do carry out this tradition. All that was left was to relax, have a few drinks and then prepare the British traditional Christmas roast for the bewildered Poles the next day. Roast potatoes – non existant in Polish cuisine – were a huge hit!

 

As an aside – where the hell is winter?! After one white weekend in early December, temperatures all over Christmas have been a balmy 7 – 10 degrees centigrade. What is going on? Queue snow drifts tomorrow now, naturally!

Winter is Here

As I look up at the calendar and see that the first week of December is already all but behind us, I can’t feel too cheesed off at the arrival of this year’s winter. Having grown up in the United Kingdom of course, prior to moving to Poland, I didn’t really have any idea of the concept of winter. Sure, for the past couple of years we’ve seen the return of snow but, generally speaking, it’s a 2 week period at worst, the snow is never much more than ankle deep and the temperature regularly gets above zero during the day. Britain being what it is, this inevitably still leads to the universe being cancelled, but it isn’t really a really real winter.

Enter Polish winter then, for a real cold season experience. Over here, in the past week, we’ve seen day time temperatures climbing to a balmy 3 degrees centigrade, while the night is something more like around minus 3. Pretty tame, you might say, but that generally means that we’ve got a fair bit of ice kicking around. Of course, this is also just the beginning. Over the course of December, we’ll see temperatures continue to drop and, in the early months of 2014, we’ve been promised the frigid prospect of minus 40, as Poland grips itself for the winter of the century(!). I can confirm I am not looking forward to that, should it come to fruition.

So, how do you cope in winter, with weather that is so hostile? Well, first there’s attire. As with most things, Poles do winter clothing with far more style than we clueless Brits (perpetually tracksuit wearing no-necks aside, naturally). Outside you can see a variety of brightly coloured thermal tights (mainly on the ladies), puffa jackets that would make the Michelin man look like he needs to lay off the pies a bit, and more silly hats than the Mario Balotelli fan club. For example, those that know me well will know that I don’t particularly feel the cold and am normally a t-shirt toting kind of fella. Witness here the transformation that Polish winter necessitates:

Ordinary, T-shirt-wearing, tired Kev after work

Far from ordinary, coat, hat and scarf-wearing Kev, ready to face the elements

Thanks to the bigger and thicker-than-usual beard, I am fully prepared for what nature plans to throw at me in the coming months.

After you sort out your clothes for Polish winter, the next part of how to stay alive concerns food and drink. Over here, we have a wonderful thing called “grzaniec”. This is the area of all things mulled. We naturally have the mulled wine that is also available over in England. Here it is brewed with fresh spices in most bars and restaurants and is a great way to get some warmth into you when you come in for the cold. One thing we have here which isn’t so prevalent in the UK is mulled beer – “grzane piwo”. This is brewed with similar spices to the wine but is, surprisingly, made with ordinary Polish lager. I was highly dubious in my first winter here but, particularly after trying a variety with a spoonful of honey added, I am a big advocate.

The other way to stay warm here is in fact simply to stay inside. While, in England, temperatures of -2 will make the average house feel like you are outside, here, due to decades of experience of the cold during the harshest months of the year and good old Soviet-era architecture and insulation, you can be positively toasty, even when it’s -25 or worse outside the window. The result of this is, of course like a ritual (de)mummification every time you enter and exit a building. But this is substantially better than shivering in your bed at night and worrying about frostbite on your nose.

Disappointingly though, and contrary to my hopes on arriving in Poland, the arrival of winter heralds the arrival of neither bears, nor wolves to the city. Not even a zubr, in fact. Oh well, you can’t have everything.

“One More Step & We’ll Kill You.” – Welcome to Bydgoszcz

A rather serious tone to today’s blog as, while on my way across town at 2pm this afternoon, this very threat was made to me. Walking to the bus stop to catch the number 64 bus up to see some friends on the other side of the city, I saw 2 burly looking gentlemen. They call them “no-necks” here, and it’s easy to see why. Beyond their compact, terrier-like bodies, the 2 men also had faces which, it was clear to see, were carrying the signs of multiple broken bones, cuts and other mishaps on their faces. When one started moving to block my path, I immediately felt that trouble was about to unfold. What I didn’t expect was the calm voice that, very clearly, said to me “one more step and we’ll kill you.” I physically shivered and began to go back on myself, retreating from the situation. As I did so, clearly irritated by the prospect of a scuffle being dashed, the 2 men had turned to the bus shelter and began kicking and punching the plexi-glass side panel and screaming a barrage of swear words. 

A couple of chilling things struck me about this. As I was silent before and during the encounter, these men clearly didn’t know I was a foreigner, so they were evidently just hoping for a fight. Furthermore, if I hadn’t understood Polish, as one of my friends pointed out later, I might well have taken that step closer and told them I hadn’t understood, thereby getting pummelled. I don’t really even feel the need to state to anyone who knows anything about Bydgoszcz that both of these men were wearing Zawisza Bydgoszcz hoodies.

Having lived in Poland for 2 and a half years, I have to say that one of the reasons I prefer living here to living in the UK is the lack of random acts of violence. The drinking culture in towns and cities in Poland is far less likely to end in brawls than in any similarly sized cities in the UK. But I have definitely noticed a change since moving to Bydgoszcz from Torun where, particularly in the case of men, it’s not a very safe place to be walking around on your own. After speaking with people who’ve been here far longer, the general impression I’ve been given is that this is not the only place. Other cities like Katowice, Rzeszów and others have a similar reputation. What connects these places is that they are former industrial heartlands and that they have a football team whose fans have a notorious reputation. 

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have already written at length about some of the negative impact of Zawisza on life here for non-thugs. I don’t really want to go into that again, but today’s events, along with other things I’ll come to later, have made me think a little about why the situation is as it is. So those are the thoughts I’m going to present here today. 

First of all, I want to mention my upbringing in football. I’ve always been a Man City fan and I can recall, on more than one occasion, being dragged or carried away from utterly explosive fan confrontations during the 1980’s. One particular time after an FA Cup match away at Reading (long before the Madejski stadium was built) where my dad had to hold me in his arms and run as fast as he could while fellow City fans jeered and encouraged a mass of Reading supporters towards us for a fight. It was a terrifying situation to be in as an 8 year old boy. I talk about this because I know this is a problem that was rife in the UK during my lifetime but nowadays, thankfully, it has been mainly eradicated. The way it was eradicated, of course, is through a change in approach from police, football clubs and society as a whole. In the modern era, if you are arrested after a football match for assaulting someone, not only will the law come down relatively hard on you, but also you will likely find yourself barred from attending any of your club’s matches for a substantial period of time. Being a football hooligan in the UK is now something that brings only problems and, in this way, “firms” – the organised hooligan movements are reduced hugely and stadia at most levels are generally safe environments for real fans who want to enjoy the spectacle of the game.

Now let’s look at the situation in Poland. Zawisza Bydgoszcz are having a tremendous run in this season’s top flight, after being promoted for the first time in a great many years. the standard of the football in the Polish league is woefully low, but even so, by their own standards, they’re having a great season. Sadly, the ground, on matchdays remains, more or less, a war zone. If and when violent trouble does kick off in and around the stadium, the approach of the police is essentially identical to that of the hooligans themselves. They wade in with batons and riot shields and will simply seek to inflict the maximum possible damage on the people in their path. When you watch videos of police intervention at Polish Ekstraklasa games, time and again, you see riot police moving through the crowd, indiscriminately raining blows on fans, regardless of whether they themselves are involved in violence or not. This is part of a wider problem with Polish police in general. They are viewed by the majority of people as corrupt and, most of them being over 6 feet tall and built like heavyweight boxers, they like a bribe and they like a fight. With this hooligan mentality seemingly endemic in the group who are supposed to be chiefly responsible for combating hooliganism, it’s small wonder that no progress is made. In the general public forum, when not protected with their riot gear, even though they are armed with batons, stab vests and all the other trappings of a modern day police officer, they allow violent crime to happen, in order to keep themselves from harm’s way. I know of 2 incidents in Bydgoszcz where police have been present during relatively serious assaults, but where they have waited until the assailants have moved on before intervening. A cause for concern, some might say.

After the police, we see the role of football clubs and the Polish FA. There seems to be no concept of banning orders in place, which have, by and large, worked very effectively in the United Kingdom. If I go into a premier league ground and get involved in a huge brawl, I should not expect to be allowed in the following week, or indeed for a substantial period of time after that. Sadly, here, it is very much a case of “see you next week” from thug to (thug) police man. Zawisza make a lot of noise about how their fans make… well… a lot of noise. It’s a cauldron of an atmosphere and, without a doubt, opposing teams find that intimidating. I truly celebrate this idea of fans being the “12th man” and would hate for the stadia here to become the quiet, soulless places that we see in Britain but, at the same time, you can achieve a great atmosphere without the bloodshed. The parade of fans down the city’s main street in June last year, after they secured promotion, seemed to be an expression of hate over and above any of joy, which you might expect. The team has an army affiliation and banners talking about death and killing abounded. Of course, I don’t believe that these hooligans are, in the main, murderers. But certainly they have brutal, violent intentions. I would also like to say that the authorities and clubs here should do more about racism, but as UEFA are so pitifully poor in leading the way on this, it’s clear that this issue is a long way from resolution in football, in general.

I guess the main thrust of my feelings on today’s events and the violence in this sub-section of Polish culture in general are deeply entrenched. When the police and sporting authorities create a situation that does nothing to discourage and arguably even encourages violence, you need a reaction from the people at large, saying that it won’t be tolerated. When people simply evacuate the city centre or their neighbourhood on a match day because they feel it’s the best and/or easiest way of staying safe, the situation will just continue and even be perpetuated further. In Britain, the Hillsborough disaster focussed minds tremendously on the way stadia were designed, the way the game was policed and governed. It is to be hoped that something of this kind is not necessary to make Poland open its eyes to this matter. For along with the hooligans who are being allowed to behave as a vile plight on the society, real fans too are being marginalised, simply in the interests of maintaining their safety and well-being. This needs to be addressed. Criminality needs to be treated as what it is, and the rule of law needs to be something people follow, and that those in charge of implementing it need to abide by, themselves.