I've started a new blog in order to record the Polish adventure on which I am about to embark.
I am travelling to Krakow on Wednesday 25th July to spend a month doing a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course and, with any luck, to find a job there and stay until June 2009.
I decided to dedicate a new blog to this trip and my future teaching/travelling/TEFL-ing experiences for the interest of other people, and hopefully as a source of useful information for other people thinking about taking a similar career path.
The URL is www.beetroot-soup.blogspot.com . I hope you enjoy it.
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label travel. Show all posts
Saturday, 19 July 2008
Thursday, 6 September 2007
Bienvenue à Paris, have a lovely day!
The notoriously rude Parisians should perhaps take a leaf or two out of New York's new, friendly book. The city's mayor has launched a campaign called Just Ask the Locals, whose strategies to improve New York's grumpy image include tips for visitors easily accessible via a phone line, special maps on street corners, videos designed for tourists in taxis, 50 street teams of chirpy "ambassadors" and the support of several high-profile celebrities, including a grinning Robert de Niro and an unusually cheery-looking Julianne Moore.
I can't quite see residents of the French capital taking this idea on board, though the odd improvement in their general attitude towards the rest of the population sometimes wouldn't go amiss. It has even been known for a bizarre psychiatric problem labelled "Paris Syndrome" to develop amonst Japanese tourists, triggered by the shock of an aggressive "bof!", an unprovoked "non!" in a restaurant or even a filthy look and a "merde!" during the push and shove to get on the train before the doors shut at a busy metro station platform. Some travellers are left shellshocked and unable to cope, and require counselling on the flight back to Japan.
It seems that the Parisians are aware, maybe even a teensy bit proud, of their characteristic lack of civility towards others, and perhaps their rudeness contributes a little to the town's haughty charms. Television adverts for the city's local paper, Le Parisien, include a scene of a tourist asking for directions to the Eiffel Tower, the Frenchman pointing him down one street, then the camera zooming out to reveal that the monument is in fact just around the corner, in the opposite direction to where the tourist has just been pointed. The scene is accompanied by the words: Le Parisien, il vaut mieux l'avoir en journal!, meaning The Parisian: better as a newspaper!
I can't quite see residents of the French capital taking this idea on board, though the odd improvement in their general attitude towards the rest of the population sometimes wouldn't go amiss. It has even been known for a bizarre psychiatric problem labelled "Paris Syndrome" to develop amonst Japanese tourists, triggered by the shock of an aggressive "bof!", an unprovoked "non!" in a restaurant or even a filthy look and a "merde!" during the push and shove to get on the train before the doors shut at a busy metro station platform. Some travellers are left shellshocked and unable to cope, and require counselling on the flight back to Japan.
It seems that the Parisians are aware, maybe even a teensy bit proud, of their characteristic lack of civility towards others, and perhaps their rudeness contributes a little to the town's haughty charms. Television adverts for the city's local paper, Le Parisien, include a scene of a tourist asking for directions to the Eiffel Tower, the Frenchman pointing him down one street, then the camera zooming out to reveal that the monument is in fact just around the corner, in the opposite direction to where the tourist has just been pointed. The scene is accompanied by the words: Le Parisien, il vaut mieux l'avoir en journal!, meaning The Parisian: better as a newspaper!
Wednesday, 22 August 2007
The seven let-downs of the world?
It's a familiar feeling for most tourists: excitement about your trip, the anticipation of the wonder you are going to feel when faced with the Pyramids or the Eiffel Tower, a mounting sense of adventure at the prospect of escaping from the humdrum routines of getting up, driving to work, sitting at a desk, driving home, watching the telly, going to bed then getting up the next morning to repeat the process, and the sense that in a foreign country, far away from home, you'll also be estranged from your worries.
So with all these expectations, it's hardly surprising that even when standing at the foot of the French 324-metre triumph of engineering in Europe's most beautiful capital city, or drinking cappuccino in St Mark's square, disappointment sets in. You're still the same person as you were back home, with the same problems, stresses and worries, but with aching shoulders and sore feet.
But it's not really Paris or Venice at fault; it's unrealistic expectations that are to blame for your dissatisfaction.
Having said that, I can understand visitors' complaints about Stonehenge's unflattering location between two motorways, but what I can't get my head round is the visitor who complained that the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain was "wet and pointless". I mean, just what exactly did she expect?
Source: The Guardian
So with all these expectations, it's hardly surprising that even when standing at the foot of the French 324-metre triumph of engineering in Europe's most beautiful capital city, or drinking cappuccino in St Mark's square, disappointment sets in. You're still the same person as you were back home, with the same problems, stresses and worries, but with aching shoulders and sore feet.
But it's not really Paris or Venice at fault; it's unrealistic expectations that are to blame for your dissatisfaction.
Having said that, I can understand visitors' complaints about Stonehenge's unflattering location between two motorways, but what I can't get my head round is the visitor who complained that the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain was "wet and pointless". I mean, just what exactly did she expect?
Source: The Guardian
Saturday, 11 August 2007
Learning the hard way
Last year, I lived in Paris for 11 months. By the end of that time I had acquired and polished many different skills. My spoken French improved considerably (I know five different words for "joint" as well as an impressive array of swear-words); I dealt with a wealth of French bureaucracy, studied at university and found employment in a variety of different sectors (including waitressing in a restaurant, serving chizburrgurrs to grumpy Frogs and eating frogs' legs on my lunch break); I found my own place to live, made French friends and navigated confidently around the capital. The thing that I perfected with the greatest success, however, was none of these CV-worthy skills, but was the art of staring expressionlessly into the middle distance whilst on public transport.
I don't know what it is about the underground networks of big cities that reduces their citizens to unsmiling statues who avoid looking at you whenever possible but, like the street entertainers you find above the ground, occasionally surprise you with a blink of an eye or a sudden sneeze. The same is true of London. It seems to be an unwritten rule that you must not acknowledge the presence of others.
Wonderfully inventive and useful though underground public transport is, the residents of a city must get pretty fed up with having to suffer smelly, crowded, noisy trains every day just to get to work and back, so it's not really surprising people aren't at their most communicative when travelling through a city. Things only get worse in the summer months when the hot weather and the tourists arrive, and you're forced to commute with hundreds of other smelly beings, with your nose in someone's armpit. And all this whilst trying desperately not to make eye contact.
Cross-channel cultural differences become apparent, though, when you do inadvertantly look somebody in the eye and acknowledge their presence with a small smile. Whenever I've done this on the tube, I've either been met with a bemused look, a returned smile from another non-Londoner or someone else whose guard has momentarily been forgotten, but in most cases, no response at all.
Being a young woman in Paris, however, a meeting of the eyes or a twitch of the lips, when directed at a member of the male half of the species, is frequently mistaken as a kind of mating call. More than once in my year in Paris, I found myself warding off invitations to "come to my 'ouse tonight" and firmly removing wandering French hands from my knee as a result of nothing more than a polite smile or a glance that lasted a second or two too long.
One time, my landlord was having some building work done on the exterior of my apartment, and for a few days I would wake up to find two or three men clattering and banging around outside the window. It seemed rude to ignore them, so in true English style, I offered them a cup of tea. They looked slightly surprised, but accepted, so I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When I returned, with two cups of strongly brewed Tetleys with milk and no sugar (I'd brought the teabags to Paris in bulk - the French don't really do tea a l'anglais) and some Garibaldi biscuits, I found them perched on the edge of my bed. It was my turn to be surprised, but I handed them the tea, which they tasted with suspicion, put down on the floor and proceded to chat me up. After an hour or so of various not-so-tempting offers, which included an invitation to go and stay in their house in Egypt, I managed to get rid of them. I poured the cold tea down the sink, locked the windows and put the kettle on. They did seem to like the Garibaldi biscuits though.
My experiences with Parisian men then and on the metro taught me a lot more about public transport etiquette, the European method of seduction and French taste in tea and biscuits than any grammar lessons or lectures at the Sorbonne ever did.
I don't know what it is about the underground networks of big cities that reduces their citizens to unsmiling statues who avoid looking at you whenever possible but, like the street entertainers you find above the ground, occasionally surprise you with a blink of an eye or a sudden sneeze. The same is true of London. It seems to be an unwritten rule that you must not acknowledge the presence of others.
Wonderfully inventive and useful though underground public transport is, the residents of a city must get pretty fed up with having to suffer smelly, crowded, noisy trains every day just to get to work and back, so it's not really surprising people aren't at their most communicative when travelling through a city. Things only get worse in the summer months when the hot weather and the tourists arrive, and you're forced to commute with hundreds of other smelly beings, with your nose in someone's armpit. And all this whilst trying desperately not to make eye contact.
Cross-channel cultural differences become apparent, though, when you do inadvertantly look somebody in the eye and acknowledge their presence with a small smile. Whenever I've done this on the tube, I've either been met with a bemused look, a returned smile from another non-Londoner or someone else whose guard has momentarily been forgotten, but in most cases, no response at all.
Being a young woman in Paris, however, a meeting of the eyes or a twitch of the lips, when directed at a member of the male half of the species, is frequently mistaken as a kind of mating call. More than once in my year in Paris, I found myself warding off invitations to "come to my 'ouse tonight" and firmly removing wandering French hands from my knee as a result of nothing more than a polite smile or a glance that lasted a second or two too long.
One time, my landlord was having some building work done on the exterior of my apartment, and for a few days I would wake up to find two or three men clattering and banging around outside the window. It seemed rude to ignore them, so in true English style, I offered them a cup of tea. They looked slightly surprised, but accepted, so I went into the kitchen to put the kettle on. When I returned, with two cups of strongly brewed Tetleys with milk and no sugar (I'd brought the teabags to Paris in bulk - the French don't really do tea a l'anglais) and some Garibaldi biscuits, I found them perched on the edge of my bed. It was my turn to be surprised, but I handed them the tea, which they tasted with suspicion, put down on the floor and proceded to chat me up. After an hour or so of various not-so-tempting offers, which included an invitation to go and stay in their house in Egypt, I managed to get rid of them. I poured the cold tea down the sink, locked the windows and put the kettle on. They did seem to like the Garibaldi biscuits though.
My experiences with Parisian men then and on the metro taught me a lot more about public transport etiquette, the European method of seduction and French taste in tea and biscuits than any grammar lessons or lectures at the Sorbonne ever did.
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