2014-12-18: Jestem Białostoczaninem

(I really need to work out the keyboard shortcut for ł, at the moment I search for "Bialystok" and copy the ł from the results).

Back in Białystok. Immediate requirements are foods and drinks hard to get in Australia. For bonus difficulty points I will do the initial ordering in Polish. This is to impress my Polish teacher.

In preparation for when the water freezes

As a warm up I had a bout of Staircase Math Combat. Adrian (4 I think, small anyway) was showing off counting in Polish. I fought back but he was decimating me. Then we passed "10". He played "jeden, jeden" then "jeden, dwa". So I won that with my counter of "jedenascie" followed with a critical hit of "dwanascie". Ewa claims she couldn't really understand either of us but then she is just an Industrial Chemist; pure math might be beyond her.

Food and Beverage Review: Traditional Polish, MultiBrowar

Malmeda 8 15-440 Białystok (it is around the corner so look behind you when you reach number 10 and get confused)
http://www.multibrowar.com/

I nicked this image from a recipe. we are not so delicate with our layers of fat

Smalec. Smalec is a rendered fat, normally pork. It has little crunchy black bits in it and some spice. Given the Polish traditions regarding spice I believe this means "salt, maybe some pepper but not too much". Commander Vimes would love it. Comes with strong bread. Unfortunately usually has a side order of thieving girlfriends that are "too full to eat a bite more, oh no I could have a little bit I suppose". 9/10. I believe that, counter intuitively, the absence of a thieving girlfriend would actually reduce the score as the tears of loneliness would probably make it too salty. I didn't see any obvious "thieving girlfriend for hire" services on the menu but I am sure if you asked nicely they would help.

Tartar. The French claim this as something they stole from the Tartar people. I think they probably stole it from someone around here though. Notable difference from the French version is that here there is often no egg and the onion and gherkin yes, yes, I know they aren't gherkins and I am not reducing Polish culture in a simplistic fashion but english only has one word for pickled cucumbers and we already had that conversation and I know that I just have to learn Polish so I can properly express the diversity of your culture and its gastronomic skills and I am working on it okay, didn't you see me crush that 4 yr old this morning? where was I? Oh Yes. The onion and the ogórki kiszone are much nicer than what you will find in other countries versions plus it comes with good bread. I think it needs cold weather to be really nice though. 8/10 7/10 if you say the word gherkin

Elegant and Grzaniec

Grzaniec Galicyjski. Hot Mulled Wine. Like a hot sangria. Or Scandinavian Jule glog without the nuts. At a guess Galicyjski is some kind of dig at the French for claiming to have stolen Tartar from some other people. Given their propernsity for learning languages is marginally better than a native English speaker the French will never know. Laugh at the French while sipping away happily. 8/10. +1 if there are any French nearby.

Rating 8.5 (average, rounded up, if it had snowed for real would be 9)

Innocent and Grzaniec

Special thanks must go to my sister, Claudia, who found the place for us despite being in the lard free wasteland of cooked beef and cold wine which is Melbourne. The place is pretty cool, has all old bricks and exposed beams and such. Pretty much what all the Brunswick St bars aspire to. It is worth noting that the smalec was particularly good here. The tartar was above average. Grzaniec was maybe a little too sweet. I think the beers were all from Polish brewers and the Fortuna porter was a good example of the style, lots of coffee notes without being too bitter.

Linguistic Skills: Polish

Followers of previous rants and rambles may recall that on New Years Eve 2012 I was informed I speak Polish with a Russian accent. My lack of beard means I must be a gangster (rather than a professor, these Poles are very racist and assume all Russians are one or the other).

To be fair this does have an element of Gangster Movie about it

I ordered (admittedly badly) and forgot that Polish for "Menu" is "Menu". Showing creativity I figured that Plakat na mięsa was a pretty understandable concept, all Poles love meat so a menu here is pretty much just a "poster with meat", that's not racist, just an observed truth. I was then asked if I would prefer to speak English or Russian. I am never going to get this Polish citizenship.

Rating 3/10 (at least I got the stuff we wanted.)

Those bricks don't come in packs of "Distressed Finish"

Plans:

1. Contact local Kendo club and see if we can train
2. Go to gym, too much bread on the plane
3. Find stables and do some riding
4. Make sure the xbox here isn't uploading silly pictures of me not understanding Adrian telling me what to do when we played Pirates of the Caribean on kinect in a vague attempt to get some exercise. His grasp of strategy is weak at best. The fruit throwing pirates nailed him. I ducked and wove like a champion.