2014-12-25: Christmas! Noises! Emotions! Karp!

Poland has a very strong Catholic background. This was explained to me as "The communists hated the Church, so we all joined the Church". Catholics have a love of denying themselves meat for special occasions. Poles love meat.

"For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."?

Nah more like:

"For Poles hated the communists so much that they gave up meat to annoy them, even if the fish was carp. Eternal life was just a bonus".

I am told the best way to eat carp is to eat something that eats carp, but not too much of it.

Cultural Observations: White Christmas

Every culture seems to have the love of the white Christmas. Even though everyone complains about the cold every other day of the year, on Christmas day lots of snow is popular. This year in Białystok there hasn't been much snow and, as the Poles think Christmas is the evening of the 24th they missed out on a white Christmas. 

The God of the Half Arsed Traveller came through on the morning of the 25th though and we got a light dusting. Enough for my Tourist Check List anyway.

Rating: 8/10, (must find the name of the God of The Half Arsed Traveller, maybe build a shrine for him)

The family tradition here is to have fish (carp) for most of the dishes at Christmas (there should be twelve dishes). The Church said a few years back that meat dishes were okay for Christmas. The family told the Church to mind it's own damn business as the communists are gone now so we don't need you telling us what to do.

12 hrs of using the motorbike got boring. What else could go down the ramp? DINOSAURS!!!

I am on an incredible learning curve with regards to planning. I have been using my own kitchen for so long that I make lots of assumptions. A roasting tray with rack? Everyone has them. Need a digital thermometer? All shopping malls have at least 2 kitchen shops. Apparently cooking shows have only just started becoming popular here and so cooking is still something that cool kids don't do. 

Cool Kids Cook Geese. I should get a fauxhawk I guess.

When the people cooking are practical and there is no glory in it (i.e. Mothers rather than toy-obsessed-30-something-males) there is no real market for all the expensive specialty items that the kitchen shops make their money off and so kitchen shops are few and far between. 
The ones that do exist have prices roughly the same as Australian prices which be thought of meaning the items are three times the effective cost (wages  and prices etc generally being about three times lower here).

Sign Review: Highway Noise Baffles, Białystok

On one of the trips to the only kitchen shop I know of (to buy a roasting tray with rack - they didn't have one) there was a bit of highway with walls to baffle the noise. Apparently the investment in Poland recently has been well used. The roads here are invariably in good condition and there are a lot of new bits compared to just 2 years ago.

Or perhaps to attract hunters?

Anyway the noise baffles had silhouettes of birds all over them. At first I thought "looks kind of primary-school-kid-with-too-many-stickers". Then I realised they are probably to scare birds away and so prevent them flying into the glass panes.

Rating: 7/10. I like birds.

They say the snow blows in from Siberia but this is so tidy, decorative and efficient that it looks like German snow to me.